Book of Kayal: Strength of Unity Read online

  “Unfortunate yet necessary.” She looked at Kismet, her eyes free from grief and pain. “Terrible events happened during the reign of the Council, many of which I had a role in. I cannot escape my past, neither the cruelty I have inflicted on others or that which was inflicted upon me.”

  “Our experiences are lessons, Ganis.”

  “Only if we chose them to be.” She turned around and brushed her hand against the ripe blades of wheat. “Without the burning of my father’s farm I would have never joined the Peacekeeper Core.” She held a blade of wheat in her hand, gently without plucking it. “The Peacekeeper Core led me to meet the Demigod Emperor Servak and gave me a reason to seek penance.”

  “And your actions helped save Nosgard eventually,” Kismet added. “You will be given another chance to protect Nosgard once more, if you wish it.” She stepped back gracefully. “Now, Ganis, is time for you to return. Your time here is about to end.”

  6

  Ganis grew accustomed to darkness, and the smell of death, yet she accepted neither. Bones covered the floor of the Pits of Carcer, some older than others. She saw an old set of bones covered in dust and reached out to grab them to remove them from the clearing below the hatch.

  Lonely.

  At her touch the bones turned to dust. They were the bones of the first man she saw in the Pits of Carcer, a once frail man on the brink of death. Has it been this long?

  Death surrounded her, many stages of it, and Ganis was still alone, frustrated and angry. She had thought many times about escaping, knowing no way to do so, and tried even more times to climb up the hatch, the source of her food. None of her attempts were ever successful. Something had to change.

  Forgotten.

  Shapes had begun to appear to her, disappearing as soon as she reached out, and echoing voices with no source. Have I grown mad?

  At times Ganis would start speaking to herself, reenacting prolonged conversation she once had, each time slightly different that the previous conjuration. Whenever she cried out or called for someone, a distorted image she remembered from her past, she would be met with no reply.

  Abandoned.

  Her sanity could not hold for much longer, and Kismet did not show herself for a time feeling longer to Ganis than it was. The boredom had consumed her, and the little hope she had faded into the darkness, a far echo of the past.

  The piles of bones, no matter how she arranged them, always seemed to be in her way. She moved them from one corner to the other, and returned them once more. Once her frustration grew too much for her to bear, she lashed out in a bout of screams and violence, kicking at the wall. Then a crack, a flicker of hope.

  Ganis grabbed one of the bones, a sturdy one which had not yet fallen to time, and scratched at the crack adamantly, fueled by a new vigor. When the bone has been blunted by the effort, she picked another bone and continued her task. When it became difficult to find a suitable tool, Ganis decided to use the ones given to her by fate.

  She clenched her fist as hard as she could and punched at the rock, first cracking her skin and then breaking her bones, but not without result. The wall crumbled and a new passage was revealed, leading to a magnificent hall.

  It was still dark, but Ganis’ eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness of her sentence. She saw shapes, but not colors, and had enough sense to feel those she could not identify. Her unbelieving fingers were met with a welcoming sense, a candle.

  She knew matchsticks would certainly be around, or perhaps flint and steel, anything to light the candle. Her fingers searched with success - matches. Reflexively, she struck the matches and lit the candle.

  And darkness faded.

  An endless supply of scrolls and wall carvings extended as far as Ganis’ eyes could see. The forgotten library dwarfed that of the Parthan School of Knowledge’s. Knowledge, Asclepius taught her, was the greatest feat one could achieve. The Elder had hid most of their knowledge in mysterious obelisks scattered wherever life went, and finding a treasure such as this was unprecedented.

  ”My destiny,” she said to herself, “is finally revealed.” Ganis no longer without purpose, regained her sanity. It was no longer the time for loneliness, but that for diligence. She plucked a scroll from the shelf, found a comfortable seat, and started reading.

  7

  An increasing supply of prisoners allowed Ganis to maintain her wakefulness and study the contents of the library to her satisfaction. She read about the history of Nosgard, Tur, Utyirth, the Trakian Isles, Deadice and many other lands, both charted and uncharted by her kind.

  Her studies made her discover many hidden crafts - the art of elemental rune carving reserved to the Men of Alv alone, and the spoken runes of power which summoned the very meaning of the word - to the sentient people, and taught her much about the predecessors of her living kind, even thought she had been mistaken about the identity of the library’s creators when she first saw it. The Elders, it seemed to her, were still a mystery to the scholars who wrote these scrolls.

  And in her studies she came upon a way to escape the caverns imprisoning her, Koa, the invocation of force. The library, Ganis judged, would await her for an eternity, yet the world she struggled to protect would not last as long. It was time for her to master Koa and wield it to escape.

  8

  Once more Ganis awoke in her father’s wheat fields. It was raining, a discomfort for travelers yet a blessing for farmers. She was hopeful - anything different from the caverns was a relief, regardless of how different people interpret the omen.

  “The time for your escape is near,” Kismet said. She stood behind Ganis, patiently waiting for her as she basked in the beauty of her surroundings.

  “I know.” She looked at Kismet, smiling, and paused for a moment. “I can see clearly now. All the events that were forced on me and the actions I have taken led to me being here now. It was all some elaborate plan by someone.”

  “And yet you continue to deny the gods.”

  “What I speak of is beyond the gods, dear Kismet. I have seen what gods do and what people do for them. It is merely an illusion, the linking of one outcome to another unrelated action. If nothing else, my time here taught me how little the gods mean, and how far they can be used to serve the purposes of lesser beings. The gods are simply a tool for those keen enough to will others for their own desires.”

  Ganis closed her eyes and tilted her head back, allowing the rain to fall on her face before they reached the fertile soil. She raised her hands, the water coursing through the black leather she wore, cleansing it from all the dust and filth it collected. The rain seeped into her outfit and cleansed her skin too.

  She then lowered her head and stared directly into Kismet’s eyes, a new person reborn. “I speak not of gods, Kismet, but of Fate.”

  “Now you understand.” Kismet faded, the rain washing her presence away.

  And Ganis returned.

  9

  Within the darkness Ganis waited.

  The hatch opened and a man fell, a new prisoner deemed unfaithful and condemned to the Pits of Carcer. She let the man be, caring little for his fate, and invoked the power of force, Koa.

  A great power crashed through the slope and broke the hatch, producing painful screams from above. The once-fine slope was jagged with chipped stone, suitable footing for Ganis to escape, and the new prisoner should he will it.

  Under the night sky the hatch erupted, it was shattered into a fine dust, nothing else remained from the once-impenetrable entry to the Pits of Carcer, where only the most vile of traitors and faithless were sent. A small figure, polished entirely, appeared once the dust settled.

  Ganis, clad in her cleansed black armor, stood proud under the night sky, seeing stars she had long forgotten. She breathed deeply, it was sweet air compared to the air below, and rejuvenating. Her eyes fell on the guards, twisting in agony as they held to their shattered limbs. Bone was broken and blood was spilled, but the limbs were still attached.

 
; What terrible force, Ganis thought. I will wield it well.

  She collected the guards and pushed them into the Pits of Carcer, hoping that they would at least suffer on their way out. One of the guards, as he fell, struck the prisoner attempting to escape, delaying his effort, but causing no harm. The man cursed in anger.

  Ganis knew that more guards were bound to come, and she struggled to resist her desire to unleash her vengeance upon them. Only her memory of Eirene’s oath to avenge Pertinax prevented her. Ganis remembered the moment of insanity that consumed the priestess and how troubling it was.

  Now was not the time to risk all, it was the time to escape and plan. She had to blend into whatever complex she had emerged in.

  She looked around and found a crude pickaxe resting on the ground. Taking the tool, she followed the sound of footsteps leading her to a mass of catatonic-like men working. A large crowd of men and women dug at the mountain and moved large piles of rock they had quarried.

  Where am I? Ganis though.

  Chapter 8: With Initial Escape

  ‘The power to grant or take away freedom is the purest form of power. However, when enough is taken, men become beasts and their taming becomes nearly impossible.’ Philosophical Lessons from Utyirth (Volume II: Scholar).

  1

  Initium Keep was a bastion attesting to the power of the Scylds, the northern zealots. Ever since Ganis had arrived at Utyirth, she had only heard stories of the Scylds, never coming upon any before her failed attempt to spy on them.

  While she, clad in her leather armor, investigated the prison camp, she noticed peering eyes upon her. Her attire made her stand out, and she started gaining the unwanted attention of the prisoners with enough life in them to care. She had to discard them, as dear as they were.

  The stench of a rotting corpse guided her behind a big slab of grey rock, where suitable clothing was ready, dressing one of the many deceased once-workers around her.

  Within a few moments, Ganis had removed all of Thalia’s gifts and stowed them away – the last objects she had linking her to the Ona. I never belonged anyway. After covering the hole she had dug to hide her belonging, Ganis returned to her investigation. She looked back briefly, checking how well she concealed her equipment, and gasped.

  She quickly found a stream of broken workers, walking aimlessly towards their duties. An odd combination of action and intent, Ganis though. Her past, after all, appeared to have been much more pleasant than she thought it was, now that she saw what suffering the complex workers went through.

  She spotted one of the prisoners, not as broken as the other, and yanked his dirty brown sleeve. The man looked at her and she asked, “Where are we?”

  “Initium Keep.” He then looked ahead, ignoring her as he followed the denizens of catatonic workers,

  An awe-inspiring view of Initium Keep met Ganis as the path curved with the prisoners. A mighty keep, rivaling a large Nosgardian town and dwarfing any keep Ganis had ever seen, stood atop a mountain.

  Tall stone walls encircled the gargantuan structure, making the keep seem impenetrable. The labyrinth of walls spiraled, layers and layers of defensive barriers to halt any intruder, until they reached the high structure.

  Initium Keep was fashioned to match the magnitude of beings far larger than even the Highborn, a troubling structure when occupied by a hostile force, and what a force it could hold.

  Ganis’ wonderment came to an abrupt end - before she could shrug off the impression Initium Keep had left upon her to study the complex – when the path led the marching wave into the labyrinth of stone leading to the keep.

  The sound of working men, shouts of coordination, and steel hitting stone rung louder the closer she got to the site marked by wooden scaffolds. Hammers hit thick iron nails into wood and stone, and the stench of sweat glided through the air. An occasional scream brought to an abrupt end signaled an accident, and the reaction of the workers gauged how common the occurrence was. If Ganis believed in hell, that would be it.

  Wherever Ganis looked, she saw guards observing the prisoners from atop the completed segments of the large walls the prisoners built. Wooden watchtowers appeared at every corner of the incomplete sections, with even more guards atop them.

  A watchtower was being taken apart, carefully disassembled by the workers, at one of the sections of the wall that had been recently completed. The workers cannibalized the watchtowers to make up for the damaged wood from the disassembled scaffolds. What they lacked in resource, they made up for in resourcefulness.

  Then the crowd led Ganis to where new slabs where being carefully placed to extend the wall. Two dozen guards, armed with maces and pikes, served the workers small meals in return for wooden coins Ganis had never seen before.

  On the march, still amidst the helpless crowd, Ganis saw four guards brutally handle a malnourished prisoner. They tossed a wooden coin – the prisoner’s - to one another and taunted the prisoner with it. Every time he came close to one of the guards, the guard would pass it to another, driving the tortured prisoner back and forth, wasting energy he could not afford.

  The crowd’s final destination, a quarry at the side of a mountain that would undoubtedly be leveled upon the completion of the wall, was marked by dozens of guards patrolling a clearing and thousands of prisoners carving large slabs of stone out of the mountain.

  A group of prisoners dragged their stones, each dragging his own, to a station where an officer - Ganis judged from his attire, same to the others in all respects save for a grey cloak and a sheathed sword - sat on a wooden table with an opened chest, filled with wooden coins, at his feet.

  Whenever a man approached him with a slab, the officer examined it and gave him a single wooden coin if he deemed the slab satisfactory. Most prisoners got their coins, but a few were forced to sculpt their slab some more, and even fewer were forced to abandon the endeavor, quarrying another slab entirely.

  “To work!” a guard commanded, and the prisoners scattered, each to find an empty spot to earn his wage, a wooden coin to be exchanged for food.

  “I haven’t seen you around here before,” a voice erupted from behind Ganis. She looked around and saw a tall muscular man, seemingly unaffected by the harsh conditions of his sentence, smiling at her. “Are new to this Gehennam?”

  Ganis nodded. It has been a long time since she had a conversation with someone real. It felt a little strange for her and, somehow, she was embarrassed.

  “Oh, where are my manners.” The man wiped his hands on his once-white cloth shirt, and extended it. “I’m Prometh.”

  Ganis shook his hand. “And I Ganis.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Ganis. Have you been here for long?”

  “Years, I believe.” Ganis did not know how long she had spent in the Pits of Carcer, yet years felt as an accurate estimate, even accounting for the slowness of how time felt.

  “Strange.” Prometh rubbed his chin, squinting as he strained his memory. “How is it that we haven’t met before?”

  “I was thrown in the Pits of Carcer,” Ganis said, casually. She had forgotten, for the briefest of moments, that none ever emerged from such fate. Years spent alone dulled her mind. It was a mistake.

  Prometh’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Impossible! No one has ever returned after being condemned.”

  He speaks true, Ganis thought. I suppose telling him my truth can do little more harm now. “Go see for yourself.”

  “How?”

  Ganis shrugged. There was a limit to what she was willing to reveal.

  “I understand,” Prometh said. “A friendly advice, my own wooden coin, is for you to keep this between us. I promise to keep your secret safe, but others might not be so kind.” He turned around to check for anyone who overheard Ganis’ revelation. “I must see it with my own eyes.”

  “And I will accompany you.”

  The guards did not concern themselves with what the prisoners did, except for violence directed against them, and knew that th
eir need for sustenance would make them work or die. It was an easy task, and they reveled in the opportunity of doing the little that they did, an ideal stance for them to adopt in lieu of Ganis’ investigation.

  2

  Prometh stood atop the ruins, contemplating the causes of such devastation. “How did you manage this?”

  “Does it matter?” Ganis stared at Prometh intently.

  Prometh smiled, “So you are a quick learner.”

  Ganis nodded. She eyed Prometh closely as he walked around and looked at the destruction her newfound ability allowed her. Whenever the man stopped for a moment to focus on a particular part of the rubble that attracted his attention, Ganis would scan the area for any suspicious figures watching them.

  Ganis had not gathered any information about the Scylds, and even less about Initium Keep, it put her in a precarious position and alerted her to many actions she mistakenly deemed as suspicious; a prisoner walking by with his pick on his back; a woman whispering to her delusional self; a crow fixated on her.

  “In all my five years here, I haven’t seen the hatch unprotected even once.”

  Five years? “Then we should expect some guards soon.”

  “Aye, but not too soon. They change shifts twice a day, and the last shift changed not too long ago.” The man then folded the sleeves of his shirt, revealing strong forearms, and started descending into the dark pit.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get the uniforms.” He vanished into a darkness Ganis’ eyes could no longer pierce. She waited patiently for him to return, crouching at the edge of the hole while watching for any unwelcomed eyes peering at her. Her suspicion of the prisoners faded the longer she watched them.

  Then Prometh appeared, with two sets of guard uniforms. “Will you help me up?”