Caeus stood over his mothers bedside, holding her pale sickly hand slick with sweat. He stared into her eyes. Into that thin, withdrawn face – her eyes struggling to focus back on his. Why was she always so sick?
“Do you understand?” Caeus asked, after explaining about the trial. His mother gripped his hand in response. Caeus shook his head, looking at her pale form. “I can’t leave you, not like this, not now.”
“Leave Caeus, and don’t ever come back here.” His mother’s voice was surprisingly clear. Caeus looked at her in shock.
“What do you mean? Even if I complete the trial, of course I would come back.” His mother shook her head slowly, and Caeus felt a hand on his shoulder, pulling him away. Caeus let his father, who had been silent up to this point, pull him away into the other room – the tiny room that doubled as a kitchen. Caeus tried to ignore the fact that he could see the seer and the Blessed standing outside of his room like guards, in case he tried to run presumably.
“Your mother is right.”
“What do you mean?” Caeus asked.
“I don’t mean to never come back Caeus. Complete the trial, complete it and you can get our family out of this place. There is no way they would let the parents of an Blessed live like this.” When he said it, it sounded ridiculous even to my ears. Someone from Erebus becoming a Blessed, it was unheard of… I couldn’t shake a sinking feeling that there was something more to me being suddenly chosen to compete. “Perhaps we’d be invited to Concordia, or maybe even to the Cradle of the Gods itself.” I tried to keep the doubt from my face, not wanting to tell my own father that I didn’t think I had a chance of passing the trial, or even making it to the Cradle of the Gods alive.
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“But mother-“
“If you complete the trial you could get her an angelic healer, none of the doctors down here know what to do with her. Your mother will never get better unless she gets out of this place. It’s the air, boy. The ash and smoke…” He took a deep breath as if to emphasis the thick air, his dark beard shifting as he did. Nothing you can do down here will ever help her. If you really want to help her, get out and win.” Caeus just nodded halfheartedly in response, not wanting to tell his father what he really thought. What chance did someone like him have of winning the trial, when the son’s and daughter of Blessed would be among the other contestants?
Caeus said his final goodbye’s, trying to ignore the pit in his stomach that told him he really wouldn’t be coming back, one way or the other. He stepped outside the house, not speaking as Mereum glanced over at him. He was once again struck by the golden pallor of her skin, looking down at his own sickly pale color of his thin hands which he knew was only highlighted by his dark hair. He wondered if everyone on the surface looked like that. She was beautiful, he realized. Beautiful in a way that frightened him, so unlike the sad, dejected faces of those from Erebus.
He turned, taking one last glance at his house, little more than a boarded down and decaying building thrust between two others so tight it looked like it needed to lean on the others for support. But it was the only home he had ever known. The seer took out a small device from her pocket, a pocket watch; gold of course.
“Ready?” She asked. When Caeus didn’t respond she snapped the pocket watch shut and started to walk towards the exit – a large elevator that he’d never had the privilege to take – separating him and the rest of the world between a metric ton of rock.
“Time to meet the other contestants, Caeus.”