Chapter 16: Brain-Quake

"You are a fuckin' dunce, Sedrick."

"All I said was that his coat was missing a button! THAT'S ALL I FUCKIN' SAID!"

"YOU DONT SAY ANYTHING TO COINERS YOU FUCKIN' IDIOT! Because you can never keep your mouth shut, instead of relaxing at the Coiner Gate, I have to sweat here in the sun all day, WITH YOU FOR FUCKIN' COMPANY!"

"Thought you'd be used to it by now, brother." The guard muttered.

"Just keep quiet, alright. I'll talk to anyone that comes. You say nothing."

"Fine."

"We got two men comin from the Northwest hill. Let's put what we just talked about into practice."

David and Tunk tread down the hill and onto the dirt path approaching the arched entryway to the town. On either side of the arch, a rigidly standing guard watched them, both outfitted in worn gray quilted tunics and holding pikes.

Once they were a few feet away, David realized that the similarities did not stop at their equipment, the two guards were identical twins. Their skin was olive-colored, a shade darker than Tunks and looked to be their natural tone, not the result of a suntan. The identical faces were hawkish, with sharp jutting noses and depressed cheekbones. Both had long black hair—one styled theirs in a ponytail and the other let it flow loosely to their shoulders—this seemed a likely indicator of their personalities. From the naturally relaxed way they held their pikes, David concluded that they were either experts with the weapons or would rely on their abilities in a fight. Or, perhaps they simply didn't view them as a threat. Yet, with the way they were eyeing Tunk, that seemed unlikely.

"Here to sell some tunks, are ya, Tunk?" The ponytailed guard said straight faced.

"Right ya are, Jedrick. Thought ya boys got posted to the Coiner gate?"

Jedrick glanced icily at his brother and then returned his gaze to Tunk. "We did, but you know my brother. If he kept his trap shut for more than a heartbeat his head would explode with all those words inside."

Neither Jedrick, nor Sedrick, nor Tunk laughed. Like a fish squirming for freedom, a quiet awkward chuckle sprung from David.

As if they had just chanced upon a hapless rabbit, they honed their attention onto him. "And who might you be?" Jedrick said.

Tunk answered for him. "He's from a farm out yonder. Went out huntin' to git some extra coin. I found 'em bein' circled by some tunks. Decided to take 'em in, show 'em a few things."

"Always takin' in strays aren't ya? Well come on-"

"What's that flame he's got on his arm?" Sedrick interrupted.

Jedrick daggered his brother with his eyes before looking back at Tunk, this time with a wrinkle of distrust on his face.

"That is peculiar, Tunk, even for one of your strays."

"That is a remedy of mah own creation; little bit of cournut oil and acha leaves, light it up and the flames keep the wound from decayin. Beauty, ain't it?" Tunk asked with an inflection of pride.

"Surely is, Tunk. Come on through." Jedrick motioned them to move forward while Sedrick still eyed David suspiciously.

Once through the arch, a pent up sigh of relief exited from David.

"That was quick thinking. Thanks."

"Quick thinkin'? Already thought it up 'fore we left. Like my momma always said, survivin' is preparin'."

"Smart woman."

"That she is. Maybe we'll drop by the house after seein' the white robe."

As they walked the dirt path, they passed two looming white plaster complexes on their left. Both were sizable enough to fit two ordinary houses, and had lattice wooden bridges that connected from their second story to the crystal wall.

On the right side of the path, was a cobbled square—racks filled with swords, pikes and spears lined two sides of the square, while standing wooden practice dummies notched with countless blade markings were the only sign of life in the vicinity.

Past this, the path widened into a street, with white stone sidewalks adjacent to smaller white plaster buildings. Some of these buildings had lacquered signs painted in black script: "Toolsmith," "Mender," "White Flame Inn." That last one caught David's attention. Besides the eerily pertinent name, it was the only building to have any windows. Inside, he saw a dreary-looking man playing the flute to an audience of one, the barkeep, an aged woman with silver knotted hair nursing a flagon of beer.

The emptiness of the town felt suffocating; a thick transparent sludge coating every building and alleyway. As the street turned sharply 90 degrees, David's wish to escape the prenatural silence was granted. A clamoring buzz reached them as Tunk led him down a shady alley between two identical white houses.

"Hmm, market looks busy."

They emerged from the alley into a cacophony of excited sound: the bellow of hustling meat vendors, the harping of canopied merchants, a street performer banging a carved bone against a metal pole, the metallic clank of hammers being swung by hulking green skinned men—from every inch of the huge cobbled square, a different note of chaos.

"LOOK UPON YOUR KIN, DAVID, EACH WITH THEIR OWN WARPED SELFISH PURPOSE, ONE THEY WILL PASS ON AS THEY BREED LIKE INSECTS. DISGUSTING, IS IT NOT?"

David's head was swimming, not from the usual brutal comment from Kleymon, but from his brain attempting to take in each and every detail of the scene before him. He wanted to slink back into the alleyway, and watch from there, but Tunk was already continuing forward through the throng of passerby.

David followed absently a few feet behind Tunk, focusing his attention on the people they weaved around. They were, in fact, people—humans. Yet, there was something else there too. Perhaps it was the way they walked, like panthers, ready to spring forward or dart back at a moment's notice. That quiet tension, they wore it with comfort, a cloak of confidence that they had sewn from years of desperate struggle, moments walking the tightrope of death.

He found that in their appearances, this notion was only reaffirmed. Adult, child, man, woman, they were all lean, dark skin taut over corded bunches of muscle found in their calves and forearms. Most were dressed in woven tunics of dusky blue, brown, and dark green—the more vibrant sea-green and plum-red decorated tunics were worn by merchants who often had an accompanying brown cloak. As David observed those passing him, he too was observed. The people here held nothing back in their stares, with a clinical coldness, their eyes traveled from his face, to his arms and legs, and then lingered on the white flame enshrouding his wound. He could feel them come to the conclusion that he was an outsider.

Passing through an aisle of wagon merchants selling wooden tools, vegetables, and animal-skin sandals, Tunk had stopped and was talking to a stout middle-aged woman with frayed shoulder-length black hair, sun-splotched skin, and dirt brown eyes. Unsure of what to do, David looked at the wares of the tool merchant just behind the pair.

The woman spoke in a dry, rasped voice and gestured to David. "And where'd ya find this one?"

Tunk answered quickly, looking past the woman towards a line of people extending out from the doorway of a white house at the far end of the market square. "In mah huntin' grounds. Lad was wounded and 'bout to be dinner for some tunks. Gonna see the white robe, and git him fixed. Best git there 'fore that line grows any more."

"Needa speak with ya 'fore that."

"Speakin' now, ain't we?"

Her lips tightened. "At mah wagon, without the lad."

"After the white robe, sure."

The woman's eyes turned hard and she practically growled. "Now, Tunk."

Tunk glanced back at David and then at the line with a look of frustration on his cracked face.

"Wait in that line. Don't do nothin' else. Be back in a heartbeat." Tunk handed him the sack of tunks.

David said nothing, just nodded.

Seems like Tunk isn't as isolated as he told me.

When he reached the back of the line, bile seeped up his throat and the tunk stew he had eaten looked for a speedy exit.The rancid stench of rotting meat and infection hung in the air. He pushed the vile liquid in his throat back down, a good thing, because the huge man ahead of him, missing his right hand and with a bastard sword on his back, did not look like he would take having vomit on his black chainmail kindly. The whole line was like a grainy black and white picture of wounded soldiers in World War 2: men and women missing limbs, chunks of flesh torn from their bodies, bones sticking out, and each one with a bloody sack of meat on their backs or at their sides.

The line shuffled forward slowly. The doorway it led into was narrow and David could not tell how many people waited ahead of him inside the white house. He contented himself with observing the gigantic green-skinned men, seemingly the only non-humans in the square, swinging hammers as long as his legs with expert precision at a section of cobblestone at the far right corner of the market. Each time their hammers struck the stone, rubble scattered from the impact and struck the knee-high wooden barricade they had fashioned around the zone. Even with the sun now blazing down on them, and the gigantic metal belts they wore over their black tunics, they seemed to hardly break a sweat.

David shifted his gaze to the sound of horseshoes clattering on the cobblestone to his left. Two pristine white horses were reigned in by a man seated on the driving bench of a white carriage with an ornately carved golden roof. The driver hopped from the bench, rolled out a stairway folded beneath the carriage, and opened the door. Worn leather boots stepped down, and under golden locks of braided hair, a scowling face swept its glare onto the line where David waited.

He recognized her instantly: dark-skinned, golden hair, sharp angled ears—one of the inhuman visions Kleymon had shown him in his apartment.

They had a name…what was it?

"A NIVEN."

The Niven faced the carriage door and nodded her head. Black leather sandals with wooden blocks on the sole prodded down carefully, as if distrusting of the integrity of the carriage steps.

David struggled to process the man following the Niven who was striding in the line's direction. Proportionally, the man seemed… off. He was heavyset, with squat legs like an elephant, yet where you would expect a large belly to be, his stomach tightened itself into an hourglass figure, as if he was wearing a corset. His face was abnormally long and porcelain smooth—no sun damage or wrinkles—a stark contrast to the skullified people who milled about in the market square. The frilly silk shirt, the black overcoat, and the tight white leggings he wore were soaking up the copious amount of sweat that somehow already dripped from his body.

Instinctively, he knew this was not a man to get involved with. To megalomaniacs, even a wrong stare could be seen as a slight, so he returned his attention to the broad-armored back of the man standing ahead of him.

A woman's cavern-deep voice spoke a few feet behind him. "Move. Now."

Prickles of sweat danced on his palms. He didn't move.

Two seconds passed. He heard a shuffling behind him, and the clack of the carriage owner's shoes walking by. Thankfully, the Niven hadn't been speaking to him.

"Filthy grubs. You'd burn their flesh and bones if I asked, wouldn't you Daiya?" The man's shrill voice was loud enough for the entire line to hear.

Tonelessly, the Niven responded. "Yes, master."

"Excellent, yes, so very excellent you are Dai-"

The man had stopped walking.

"Oh… how intriguing. An opportunity. Undeniable, yes. Bring that man to my carriage and watch him. I will endeavor through my dealings with Sadrius without your company." Excitement bubbled in his voice, like he had found a new pet to take home.

He could be talking about anyone. Certainly, not me. No, not me.

"You. Come."

An obsidian grip dug into his shoulder and spun him 'round. The Niven's jade eyes bore through him.

"Walk. To the carriage."

Some orders, though they are orders, have space, a foothold to cling to from which you can plead or persuade your way out of them. Her command was as dense as iron, no space was left for a response.

"WHAT WILL YOU DO, DAVID, WITH NO ONE TO SAVE YOU FROM YOUR WEAKNESS?"

David began walking. His left hand trembled. Inside, his mind was shaking as if his brain rested on a fault line. Through this brain-quake, only one thought survived.

I cannot go into that carriage.

Was it just fear? Intuition? He did not know why, but he felt with absolute certainty that if he followed the Niven's orders, a despair he had never come close to experiencing would consume his life, shape him into a lifeless clay doll for the porcelain man to play with as he wished.

Ten feet from the carriage, David bumped into an older merchant laboring with an open crate of red-winged birds, and with a light touch of his index finger, lit the man's cloak on fire.

The man screamed as the flames crawled up his cloak, flinging the crate to the ground. The birds fluttered to the sky in distress.

In the midst of this turmoil, David lunged forward, and began sprinting, crashing through people, making his way towards an alley across the market square.

"AN INTERESTING TACTIC."

He did not glance back to see how close the Niven was.

If he had, he would have seen that she had not moved an inch from the still-flaming cloak of the bird merchant, and that the makings of a knowing smile were forming on her face.

A mere five feet from the alley now, seconds away from freedom, the blunt pommel of a sword struck his temple and he crumpled to the ground.

People not currently engaged in bartering with a merchant watched as a guard in a gray-quilted tunic heaved David's unconscious body over his back and brought him to a wooden bench on the perimeter of the market square. Like a sack of potatoes, he dropped him onto the bench.

"This the one who used his ability?" The guard addressed a figure seated cross-legged on the dirt next to the bench—it had the shape of a human, yet seemed to consist entirely of gray flower petals.

The petal creature lightly placed a buzzing hand on David's head.

With the softness of silt carried in the wind, it spoke.

"Yes. Bring him to the dungeon."