When Carlos finally opened his eyes, he felt as if a great weight had been shrugged from off his shoulders. In fact, he felt light, almost as if he were floating. A cool peaceful calm swept over him as he lay nestled within the nest of dry hay that had been used to fashion his makeshift bedding. A series of laughs were what roused him, the mirth contained within them produced a sweet infectious and invigorating effect on him. They were the first laughs Carlos had heard in months. Even before his imprisonment he had stewed and wallowed in isolation, the shame of his panhandling punctuated by either the clinks of loose copper into his tin cup or else noiseless ruffles and shoves by exhausted miners. Godsprings had contained no traces of laughter or mirth, instead it seemed to have suckled from the very teat of misery herself. The oppressive bleakness had hung over the city like the way a filthy curtain might be laid over the rotting corpse of a battlefield, thinly veiling the desperation and waning hope of its inhabitants who clung to her meager wages like rats clinging to the driftwood of a storm bashed ship.
Carlos sat up from the hard cave floor and looked over towards the two other prisoners who sat on the bench where they had been chained earlier. He could see that the color had returned to their cheeks, casting a soft pinkish blush over their once gray faces.
In front of them was a large tin plate filled to the brim with assorted meats, cheeses and breads. At their feet was a large tankard with some unknown liquid, for which Elandris took greedy gulps in between mouthfuls of his makeshift sandwich. Each gulp seemed to redden the blush of his face, slowly spreading across his cheeks. The intoxicating effect of that liquid seemed to imbue him with the very essence of mirth and debauchery filled bliss that only liquor can truly provide.
Elandris partook of the liquors with the confidence of a man who had once survived wholly upon them. The pupils of his eyes seemed to loosen and then shine with the glossy glaze of a familiar comfort and escape filling him with a numbing solace against a long painful lifetime of horror and trauma. As he ate, he spoke to his new friend, the occasional wine-soaked crumb dribbling and spraying out in between slurred syllables. The lumbering Kthollite sat cross legged on the stone slab. His meaty frost colored thighs bulged in and over each other like twin pythons embraced in a murderous rage filled combat.
Carlos heard his voice for the first time and was surprised at the softness of its tone. The Kthollites words were spoken in a surprisingly high-pitched tenor that flowed from his lips in a singsong-like poetic tempo. Despite his colossal clumsy looking girth, Carlos could feel a deeper more educated man hidden underneath.
This made two prisoners so far, besides himself, who were distinctly out of place for a Corporate slave mine. First was the mystery of the noble prisoner, a man who had been slaughtered in a clumsy undignified manner. Why had he shared their prison? Clearly, such a man would lack the strength to be of any value in the mines. If he had been a political prisoner, what value could there have been in killing him outright?
Carlos knew the reputation of the guilds of Godspring. They were more ruthless than any tyrant or warlord. But more importantly, they were predictable, driven solely on the basis of maximizing their profits. While the competition among them was fierce and often bloody, they did operate within the bounds of a shared code. An organization of corporate elected representatives known simply as The Council carried out the executive functioning’s of their charter law via the enforcement of an elite musketeer brigade called the Stingers. Their creeds were simple, dictated by a single unifying rhetoric of efficiency and effectiveness above all else. Logic, and Reason, they claimed, was their only master and so sought to punish all who threatened equilibrium or profit.
So then why let the Chloridian Corporation invest such exuberant funds in securing his capture only to let him be murdered in such a clumsy clearly uncalculated manner? How could death in this way possibly contribute to profits?
Carlos finally sat up, rubbing the small of his back which sent dull aching pains up his spine, payment for his slumber on the cold stone surface of the cavern floor. He stood up; bits of hay drifted down and around him in flurries like a shower of golden colored snow. He spun on his heels facing his companions and strode to the food, stuffing his face with their contents.
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He gulped down the food in a fury of hunger fueled passion, pausing only to steal gasping breaths in between chews. The more he ate, the more ravenous he felt. His body needed the nourishment, his stomach urged him onwards in this glutenous binge.
It took all his effort to force himself to slow. Carlos knew, from his experience in the wilderness, that binge eating after starvation could easily lead to death. He had seen it with his own eyes, men who seemed like the living dead, refugees from the skirmishes in the marshes of his homeland, whom his platoon had been tasked with replenishing with supplies as well as to gather reconnaissance on the makeshift border such villages created.
He remembered the ravenous and greedy devouring of these skeletal men on the supplies which they had brought them, the way in which they had seemed to devolve into beasts, biting at their peers who dared to get in the way of their frenzy. He also remembered what they had looked like dead, their bodies splayed out along the road or else slumped over in heaps and in puddles of their own vomit and excrement. He remembered how bloated their bellies had looked. Carlos shivered at the memory, putting back the rabbit’s leg haunch he had lifted to his lips.
Instead, Carlos emitted a loud belch and patted his full belly. His eyes drooped as his stomach churned into overdrive in an attempt to break down the sugars starches in the food and convert it into this newfound energy after so long without proper sustenance. Instead, Carlos squat low, not sitting, but letting his haunches support his weight, the slight effort proving enough to keep his mind from drifting off back into unconscious sleep.
“We don’t have long I expect” he said, not directing the statement at anyone, but instead letting the words linger in the air, acting as tendrils which tentatively probed the atmosphere between the other prisoners seeking out any hint at hostility. Instead they just laughed, shifting around so that they half faced him creating a sort of semicircle.
“It might not feel like it now” the old man muttered in between mouthfuls. “but this is likely our last moments of freedom” He gulped down more wine which increased the shiny glaze that had formed over his eyes. Elandris continued, “I’ve heard the stories I’m sure we all have. Stories about the slaves of the Albino canyons. Those companies that have sought to replace the indentured miners with secret blood magics. Can any of you remember anything from the time since we got here? It’s fuzzy and I think… mixed with nightmares and dreams but I think I can remember… something”
The Kthollite, who had until this point adopted a look of jovial and genuine warmth, quickly darkened. His eyes suddenly sunk, and it felt like in a moment that the shadows from the alchemical lights intensified the dark shade that cast over his squared face. He looked down, kicking at the loose rocks that littered the floor of their cave prison. He then spoke, “I can remember. I remember everything. Elandris is indeed correct, these will be our last days of freedom. This is why they feed us now. They haven’t realized yet, but I have been immune to their drugs. While you both slept, I have been cursed with sentience, loneliness and thoughts of my past. I saw you both slip into madness, the drugs twisting and warping your minds as they sought to pacify you.”
His face brightened “but that is all over now. Come now we are friends, let us embrace companionship and merriment while we can. Let us indulge, for soon we die.”
“What do you mean? Soon we die?” Elandris retorted “how much sense would that make. The mining guilds of Godsprings may be cruel but they wouldn’t waste precious resources on our food or imprisonment only to murder us. No, not in Godsprings, not when at least four of the councilmen hails from Dalm. They love money, it said that gold flows through the veins of us Dalmatians” he chuckled to himself over that one “perhaps for the nobles that’s true. At any rate they won’t kill us”
“No” the Kthollite stood dropping the heel of his bread back onto the platter and stretching his arms high above his head. Their cracked in an audible popping noises as he pulled his massive arms into stretches. “They will not kill us, but we will die”. I’ve seen the blood magics that are implanted into the miner’s napes. They are under control by the infernal ghosts of the machine. Similar blood magics as those original shackles which had taken the arm of our umm… former companion. We will become drones and so we will die but our bodies shall live.” He sat back down, but his body leaned forward as he spoke, his eyes widened and bulged as he struggled to bridle his rising hysteria and panic. “But before that happens let us share or stories. In this way we might still live. At least in the memories of each other or else in the dreams that the infernal dreams will drown us in whilst they wrest control of our minds.”
He paused for a moment, watching to see if the other two would interject. When he saw that they were listening, he continued. “At the day of my christening I was named Orion son of the hunt masters. At least I was, before the day of betrayal”