Of Heroes And Villains (Book 4) (16 page)

Suddenly, the creature transformed, dropping its monster shell in what seemed like seconds. The little boy stopped squirming, and just stared up at the woman in surprise. The children in the cage leaned forward, just close enough to avoid being stabbed by the slivers of steel. They watched as the creature turned to woman let go of the little boy. The little boy didn’t run.

He just stood there and waited for something.

And then something came. A scythe. Stabbing the boy right through the chest.

The lights dimmed on impact.

The boy died instantly, but something awakened in every child standing up in the cage.

They understood now. This was no dream. Their nightmares had taken them away from their parents, and they would do with them whatever they pleased.

This horror. This truth…in an instant, it aged Bastion more than he ever wanted.

The next day, another cage was added to the room. This time, it was filled with Langoran children. The next hour, another cage was thrown into the mix, this time with more Allayans. As the years went on, more cages were added to the bare room, each filled with children.

All of them screamed and cried. All of them grew hungry and scared. After a few more days, the creatures began to feed them. The children didn’t know what the meat was, but they didn’t care. All they knew was that it would fill their bellies.

Eventually, they realized more truth. That filled bellies meant experimentation.

The creatures would come in the next hour and begin picking out children. The lights would always be turned up to the max, and a show would always be performed for all in attendance. Sometimes it was a simple, quick death, but often, it was torture.

Raw, unbridled torture.

Eventually, the children that survived for a long time became experts. Giving in to the darkness that slowly wrapped its long fingers around their young hearts, they would become cold and observant. They would mumble and comment, on how the creatures were doing it all wrong. How if they wanted this result, they should have done that. They began forming tiers within their cages, pushing those that they didn’t want to the front, so that the creatures could grab them first. The “leaders” of each cage, usually the biggest kids, would fight back the others once food arrived. The leaders would ration out the food, giving small morsels to each of them to survive, but not enough that their stomachs would protrude. That honor would be reserved for the new guy or girl, or the outcast, who would usually eat the excessive amounts of sustenance with glee. With stomachs full and a smile on their stupid little faces, the creatures would come, and experiment on that child next. The smiles did not last long after that.

The tortures were long and meticulous, and many wouldn’t survive, but if one did, they knew that they were given a reprieve while they healed. The creatures would ignore you for at least a few days, and that was all anyone wanted.

For better or worse, it was how Bastion ended up becoming the longest surviving child.

He was scared the first time he was grabbed. He had seen eighteen deaths at that point, and he was sure he would be number nineteen. Tears had somehow replenished themselves, and he screamed for mercy, but he didn’t fight the creature. He knew it was no use. If Daddy hadn’t been able to stop the creatures, and he was the strongest man in the world…what hope did he have?

They began with a substance that he had seen before. An acid. He knew it would kill him almost instantly, but that was better than the slow ways. The acid came down upon his head. It was hot and the feeling was excruciating, but…his skin did not burn or crackle or tear. He remained whole.

The creature began scratching him with its blade like scythe, but each scratch healed as soon as it was made. It began hitting him, but the blows were more like being pushed. He felt the pressure, but there was no pain registering. He didn’t know what to make of it.

The creature grew tired of him, and threw him back in the cage. The other children looked at him like he had once looked at his father. But he wasn’t his father. He wasn’t invincible. He knew he wasn’t strong. He was just like them. Just a child. Wasn’t he?

Other kids survived the tortures over the years, but barely. It wasn’t like when he was selected. As time went on, he grew less afraid of the creatures’ experiments. By the fifth time he was grabbed, he didn’t even scream or cry. He accepted it, as if it was a perfectly natural thing. They would perform all sorts of terrible things upon him, but he endured.

When in the cage, he would examine himself and the others. He would sit and think for hours, meditating internally for answers. He would pray to the Maker for answers. He would ask the Dark One for answers. He would ask the children for answers. He would ask the creatures for answers. But no answers ever came.

All he knew was what he felt and saw. And he felt and saw much.

The children were not like him. Even the ones that survived the experiments were forever paralyzed or maimed. The ones that fought back were killed immediately, and the leaders only survived by pushing others forward in their stead.

With each passing day, he became more powerful, and it was not because of anything he did necessarily. It just was. As if some unseen force was nurturing him for a purpose he had yet to realize. It was an intense boiling within him that sought to be released, and he held it back with all his might, for he feared what would happen if he unleashed his will upon the world. He was a child. He looked like one, spoke like one and acted like one when necessary, but he was not one by any means. He soon saw the error of his cellmates’ ways, and he couldn’t understand why they could not see what he saw.

“We could all rush the door,” he said one day to the leader. “We could fight the creature and be free.”

The leader struck down the notion, and therefore everyone did. But why? For what reason? It wasn’t like the creatures were going to suddenly change their ways, and free them out of the kindness of their hearts. What were they waiting for? What was he?

He didn’t want to be a leader, because he was disgusted by followers. He wanted everyone to be leaders, but not to the point in which they would all bicker. Just enough so that they could all be independent, and then follow only when necessary. A leader didn’t mean he always led, and that a follower always followed. A true leader just meant that they knew when to go back and forth between the two, so that everyone could have the best outcome.

But they followed the cage leaders so blindly, without question and with foolish hope, believing that the next day would be different than the last thousand.

He didn’t want to become a leader…no…he knew he couldn’t. He thought about it only one time, when the cage leader of that week had tried to push him to the front. Bastion had stood there, and not moved. The cage leader pushed his chest, tried kicking in the back of his legs and punching him in the face, but all he did was wear himself out.

When the creature came for a victim, Bastion considered pushing the cage leader to the front, but he quickly dismissed the thought. He wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t give in. All it took was one push, and he would become a creature too.

A time came when he didn’t even hate the creatures. He certainly didn’t like them, but he understood that there had to be a motive to the madness. A reason they experimented on them so often. He didn’t excuse their behavior, but he understood then that there was more than good and evil, right and wrong. There were intentions behind every action, and once he discovered the intention, and what the creature or person truly meant, then he could act accordingly.

But finding out one’s true intentions took time, and that he didn’t have.

The creatures were catching onto him. They were discovering upon every session that he was different, and that he was the answer to whatever they were searching for. He knew he had to escape, before they designed a way to paralyze him for good.

And one night, he did just that. Without warning, and without a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and crushed the bar with his bare hand, and then another, and so on. He leapt out and opened the other cages, letting the other children choose their fate, for better or worse. All he would do was forge a path.

Breaking through the wall with his uncanny strength, he plowed through the subsequent walls, roots and dirt, until he reached the surface. He didn’t know that they had been underground, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to be free.

When he emerged, in the middle of the Quietus forest, he was spotted by a few of the creatures, but they were of little concern. He was able to crush them with his bare hands easily. He maimed them quickly, and a disconcerting urge came over him.

He had felt it back in the cages. Many, many times. But this was different. The boiling within him had reached its maximum temperature. He had never hit one of the creatures before, but now that he had…now that he had felt the liberating sensation, he had the urge to continue. To reciprocate. To kill them all. To make them scream and cry out for mercy as he broke their limbs. To put them in cages and take
their
children from them. He wanted their entire species to be extinct, and he could have done it.

But then a little boy, only three, had taken his hand and intertwined their fingers, snapping him out of his trance. He returned to the present, and decided to help the children return home. Like a school of fish, they traveled out of Quietus, and to their prospective homes. The Prattlian children would wave good-bye and hug them as they reached their turning point in the journey. Especially him. They hugged him tight, and he wasn’t sure how to feel. They would have pushed him forward to be experimented only hours before, and now they loved him forever? It was all so confusing.

The Langorans left, and they also hugged and cheered for him. The Allayan children would smile at him as they continued on. Even when they made it back to Allay, they sung his praises to the villagers and spoke excitedly about what he had did for them. But the villagers didn’t see him the way they did. They saw a child. They saw his age and his frame, and nothing more.

The adults were as blind as the children, but worse, they fooled themselves into thinking that they had clarity. Bastion didn’t try to persuade them otherwise. He just listened, as they created stories for them, saying that they had been orphan children that had run away and gotten lost. There was no way they had lost their parents in the Siege, or that they had been kidnapped by Quietus and held hostage for nearly ten years. Those were lies, fibs and tall tales.

The children were all divided accordingly and fostered by adults who wanted children in the village. It was a community decision, that didn’t involve what the children wanted at all. No one believed the trauma they had gone through. No one excused the following nights of weeping, the bouts of depression, the sweating nightmares and the crippling memories. Out of the eighteen Allayan children that had made it back to Allay, seven ended up taking their own lives. Two became mute and lost within themselves. Five more ran away, and three others reinvented themselves, choosing to forget that their ordeal had ever happened. A self-inflicted amnesia of sorts. Even so, they couldn’t get rid of the listlessness that plagued their eyes whenever their thoughts wandered. Bastion saw it, but he never made them acknowledge it.

As for Bastion himself, he became a combination of them all. He tried to forget, but found it unrealistic and impossible. He tried to take his own life once, but he found out that it would require more effort than living. He thought about running away, but he feared that he would find himself back at the Quietus forest. If he took one step into that sea of darkness, he would lose himself to it. And so, he tried to reinvent himself. But without a guide, or direction, he didn’t know how.

He was grateful that he hadn’t destroyed the Quietus, especially after learning about what Thorn did to them, and how the Siege had been out of their control. He didn’t know what he would have become if he had killed them all and then came privy to
that
information. The fact that he almost had scared him more than anything.

But still...at least he would have become
something.
Perhaps the Sage Academy would give him the direction he longed for. He prayed that it did. Because he wasn’t sure he could hold back the urges forever.

Chapter 12 – First Day

Catherine and Talia combed the list once more while leaning on the large table for support. They had already spend hours in the deliberation room, and they definitely needed more. But time was pretty much up. Catherine squinted her eyes and yawned as Talia fell back into a chair.

“What time is it?” Catherine mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Talia closed her eyes and stretched her neck back.

“Dawn,” she replied. “Do you want me to tell the guards to cancel all of your appointments? They will start pouring in soon.”

“Might as well,” Catherine sighed, lifting her eyes from the table. “Besides, the Sage Academy opens today. I should probably be there to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

“I could—“

“—no, it’s okay. He should be back any minute.”

“Even if he is, he will not have had any rest in three days now.”

“It doesn’t matter. He will get the job done. I’m sure of it.”

“Whatever you wish, my Queen.”

“You really need to stop that. It’s Catherine.”

“I know,” Talia gave her a smile. “But it’s better for me to stay in practice. I don’t want to slip up in public.”

“If you like,” Catherine said, as she scanned the list once more. “Are we forgetting anyone?”

“It’s hard to say considering we came up with this so quickly. However, with the Academy opening and with us being on a time crunch, this will have to do for now. I’m sure we’re forgetting someone though.”

“I want you to go through it again,” Catherine frowned. “Include Langorans and Prattlians too. They can release their eidolons if they truly wanted to. Despite their reluctance, we can’t rule out the possibility that someone is trying to frame Allay.”