Atop the Triceratops

When Locke came to, he found himself sitting on a rocking wooden platform on top of a massive triceratops as it made its way east.

'Hey, you're awake.' A girl he did not recognise smiled at him. Before he realised what was happening, she had handed him a bowl of rice and a fork. 'Eat up, eat up. Stag will want to speak to you, so eat up while you can. I'm Trys.'

Trys had orange hair that fell to her shoulders. Eyes as green as moss and freckles that stretched across her face, she had the mien of a cheerful and jovial girl who let little bother her.

'I heard about what happened,' she said as she shovelled rice into her mouth. 'Really sucks, I hope you can find her again.' Locke could hardly make out what she was saying from all the rice in her mouth. He was still in that state between dream and reality, and he was struggling to remember what had happened.

'Where am I?'

'You're on top of Dorothy the triceratops. Come on, eat up. Or I'll eat it for you.'

'Who are you?'

'Huh, I already told'ya. I'm Trys. Recruit of the Amber Army. I'm pretty useless in terms of combat. Well, most of us are, except those three. Arla, Miles, Stag.' She counted them out on her fingers with one hand and shovelled rice into her mouth with the other. 'Are you going to eat that or not?' she said through another mouthful.

'Oh, Arla. That girl.'

'The Red Elf, yeah. First one I really met. At first I was scared of her, you know what they say about Red Elves, but she was really nice, and we get on pretty well. She tries to get along well with everyone. Look, she's looking at us now.' Trys raised her hand to wave to her.

Arla returned the wave and made her way over to them. All around the wooden platform, soldiers sat in their social circles and talked amongst themselves.

As Arla sat down to join them, Trys took the bowl that she had offered Locke and started pouring the rice down into her mouth.

'You're awake, Locke. Are you feeling alright? Let me know if you need any help. Especially after what had happened.' Arla rested a hand on his shoulder.

What had happened …

The words rang in his mind.

What had happened?

Where was Fahrla? Where was that familiar weight, clutching to the hem of his rags, or riding on his shoulders?

He raised a hand and stared at his palm.

Then the images from earlier rushed through his mind. Of the lightning, of Straza, of the scythe, and of how Straza had pulled Fahrla from his hands. He could feel the tears start to well up inside him, then whack!

'Don't you dare, kiddo.' Stag stood tall over him, staring down at him. He no longer wore the antlers. 'If you start crying or being a pointless hassle, you'll be walking the rest of the way, you got that?' Locke made no response. 'Trys, hand back that bowl of rice. He needs to eat. He needs to get strong and healthy. You want her back, don't you?'

Locke nodded. That made Stag smile.

'Stand up, boy. My name is Stag, don't ask me for more than that. I'm the captain of the Amber Army, a group devoted to bringing peace to the land and combatting the efforts of the Black Hand, who bring terror to all the land. That skeleton man is a member of the Black Hand.'

'Straza is from the Black Hand?' Locke asked.

Stag raised an eyebrow and Arla tilted her head up in surprise. 'You caught wind of his name?'

'Y-yes.'

'What else did you catch? These people are a mystery to us, so any information is key to our eventual victory.'

'His name is Straza, he had a scythe that he called the Soulsucker Scythe, which rips the motivation of whoever it cuts, and he is searching for people who he calls the children of the dream. Apparently, my sister is one of them.'

'Children of the dream? Never heard of that. Have you, Arla?'

'I haven't.'

'Never heard of it before, either.' Trys' hand slowly reached for Locke's bowl of rice. Arla slapped the hand out of the way.

Arla and Stag exchanged looks. 'We'll look into it when we're back,' Stag said. 'Any clue or direction is in our favour. Locke, her name was Fahrla, wasn't it?' Locke nodded. 'Did Fahrla have anything odd about her? Anything that separated her from anyone else?'

'Well, about a year ago, she started developing cataracts. She was always physically weak. Other than that, nothing.'

Stag cupped his chin in his fingers, deep in thought, then wiped a hand back over his flowing blonde hair. 'Thank you, Locke. You're a strong man. Rest up, recover your mental vitality. I want you in this army.'

'Me? In this army? I've never even held a weapon before!'

'Oh, I think you'll learn fast enough.' Miles was behind them, twisting his moustache as he always did. 'I saw from afar how long you evaded him for.'

'Was it really that impressive? I didn't avoid him for that long.'

'The heat of the moment is clouding your memory, my friend. Must have been a good minute or so, and that made the difference between you living and dying. You should be proud of yourself. Now go and eat that bowl of rice. You look emaciated, what were you, a beggar?'

'A thief.'

'Ahh, probably not a good one, then.' Miles knelt and unscrewed a bottle and poured a red sauce onto the rice. 'Go on, eat up, you've deserved it.'

Drool dropped from Trys' mouth as she watched Locke pick up the bowl and taste a mouthful of the rice, which fuelled him with energy. 'What is this sauce?'

'Tomatyne source. Not that uncommon, but a soldier on their normal rations won't find much of it. Now, eat up, and make sure Trys gets none of it, or else you'll be punished.'

'Punished? What for?'

'You're going to be a soldier now, son. Soldiers need discipline, and that goes for Trys. Soldiers who aren't disciplined or are complicit in having another soldier not being disciplined, are punished, so you had better watch yourself.'

Miles and Arla rose in unison and returned to the far end of the wooden platform with Stag to discuss matters in private.

'Are you really going to look at me like that?' Locke asked. Trys stared at him and the bowl of rice.

'I can't help it man. I'm always hungry.'

'Really? You're a skinny little thing, though.'

Trys shrugged. 'I don't know. I just keep eating and eating and nothing ever happens. By the way, you don't seem like a very emotional person. I thought you were going to cry earlier.'

Locke shrugged. 'Stag told me not to, so I didn't.'

'Do you want to cry?'

'I can't. Stag's right. I can't cry, because Fahrla isn't gone yet. It's my duty to get her back.'

'Man, I wish I had your determination.' Trys hung her head and sighed. 'I shouldn't even be here. I just got conscripted, but now that I'm here, I always think "why not put in some actual effort and try and get somewhere? Why not try and make Stag or Arla or Miles proud of me?" but all those thoughts are short and fleeting, and I can never do anything. I'll never become one of the Shiners, no matter how much I humour the idea. I'll never be able to return to my family with my head held high.'

'What's a Shiner?'

'Once a year, all the common soldiers like me, and soon to be you, practically everyone on this triceratops besides Stag, Arla and Miles, are allowed to participate in an examination process to gauge your skill. Those deemed worthy are granted the position of Shiner and are entitled to far more privileges to separate them from us common folk.'

'What's the examination like?'

Trys shrugged. 'Stag told me it is the most gruelling and punishing examination that you'll ever experience, then went on to elaborate that to him, it was no problem at all. When it comes to opinions, you should try your hardest to ignore Stag, or at least see through his egoism. I asked Arla, and she told me that everyone who attends is forced into a pact of secrecy regarding the specifics of the examination. She said that it took everything she had and more, and she just barely scraped a pass.'

'Is it really that dangerous? There's hardly anyone here to participate.' Locke pointed at the few dozen soldiers on the wooden tablet.

Trys broke out into laughter. 'Oh Locke, you silly. There's far, far more soldiers than just us. Hundreds, thousands of them. There are so many armies in the Jutisar's Royal Army. They're called armies, but they're more like squadrons. But despite all this, there is no army that is given more flack than us at the Amber Army.'

'That's a comforting thought.'

'The Amber Army is only given the scraps of what's left, so that's why it's just a bunch of hopeless fools that can hardly hold a spear or a sword who get in here. So, uh, reckon I can have some of that rice?'

Locke, captivated by Trys' descriptions of the army structure of Justisar, which he knew to be the grand capital of the Arrondra country, said 'sure' without a thought.

The instant Trys put a forkful of the rice into her mouth, a hand grabbed the back of Locke and Trys' heads and forced them face down against the wood. Arla stood over them, laughing as she held their heads against the wood.

'I knew you'd end up giving your rice to her. I knew you would. Ha ha ha.'

'I … I forgot,' Locke managed to say as his lips pressed against the wood.

'Doesn't matter. Trys, you really should learn some constraint. There's no helping it. You two are getting punished. Give me a hundred push ups, you couple of rats!'

'A hundred!' Trys cried. 'I can't even do ten.'

This made Arla laugh even harder. 'Shouldn't have been such a glutton now, eh?' By now, the sun has started to dip below the sand hills to the west. 'No sleeping until you're done, and if you collapse, you'll be cleaning the boards all tomorrow.'

They began as all the other recruits started folding out their sleeping bags and drifting to sleep.

Trys would give ten push ups, lose her strength, recover for a few minutes, then try again. Locke, as if fuelled by that distant determination to find Fahrla, did not faulter, no matter how much his muscles screamed. Watched over by Arla, by the time he finished, he found that Trys had collapsed and was now peacefully sleeping.

'Impressive,' Arla said, throwing him a sleeping bag. 'Now make sure that you give Trys no pity tomorrow when she wipes this board clean.'