Chapter 1: Chapter One—A Lost childhood

Many people presented with the chance would give everything to go back in time and fix their mistakes. Make their future a better place. However, I find that mindset incredibly flawed and disillusioned. Our memories make us, and our negative experiences are the foundation of our growth. Would you sympathise with the poor man if you had never been poor yourself? Can you truly grasp the idea of loss if you have never felt it? I would change nothing. Every favourable and poor outcome prepared me to arrive at my moment of truth, unwavering. All the loss and pain were worth it. This choice was worth it. Her loss needed to mean something. I needed it to mean something. I could not let myself shatter.

The soldiers in scuffed armour breastplates and Kettle hats were not being picky with their selection. I wasn’t impressive by any measure, I barely stood taller than a woman my age, and my strength probably fared little better. Leaving my life behind was not something I had wished for, even with the monotony of each passing day and the complaints that accompanied it. Boredom wasn’t that painful for me, and getting stabbed to death doesn’t really inspire much enthusiasm. But here I am, fourteen… and drafted into slavery—I mean, honourably chosen by a couple of soldiers who had about the same amount of zealous as I did when standing in line for three hours. You would think they put more thought into it than, “Eh. He looks old enough.” It was clear I would probably be nothing but a meat shield for the more valuable people… how incredibly boring.

This was my father’s fault. Mother insisted she go with me, but he was adamant about me going alone to get twine from the market. He always complained that I did nothing, but all he did was sit around smoking tobacco and reading books. Honestly, my mother should kick us both out. We were just consuming space.

Mother would worry, and father would probably be neutral about my disappearance. The cat would likely be the saddest. I at least knew he would be taken care of since my mother was obsessed with him. At times I wonder if he was really my cat since she would often barge into my room and just snatch him up to carry around like a small child. No matter how much she pampered him he still found his way to my bed at night.

I glanced back at the families being torn apart without explanation; none of these men spoke Tsalagi. This was no doubt going to cripple the island tribe. They were removing way too many men. Why was the Chiefs allowing this?

Finally, I arrived at the front of the line to a middle-aged man sitting at an old foldable desk. An ocean of wagons filled the meadow behind him, shoving men into the carts like cattle. The council approved this, considering the wagons and horses were ours.

“Cyrus Reed. I would like to add I am only fourteen years old,” I said as he slowly wrote my name down. He, too, was so thrilled to be here.

The soldier glanced up, raising his eyebrow, “a little young, but at least you can speak proper English.”

I shrugged, “I’d rather leave…” I tried.

“No, get in the wagon,” he commanded, shooing me off.

I reluctantly wandered over to the old wooden wagon near the front, jumping inside one with a bunch of men from my town. After giving an awkward wave, I sat down on the hard bench. My eyes were glued to the floor to avoid any unnecessary eye contact. I didn’t know these people, and I’d be lying if I said I had any friends. My free time was spent enjoying what books my father had brought back from the crown and learning the specific things a boy living in the Outlands typically didn’t care about.

It took hours until the horse-pulled wagon began moving along the coastal cliffs that made up much of the island’s borders. My ass had become numb from the wooden bench underneath it long before our departure. The orange sun was setting in the distance, dropping under the shimmering ocean, and I just watched out the back of the cart to the giant green treetops swaying. The faint smell of pine filled the air every time the wind blew, and I took in the natural beauty of my home, probably for the last time.

We travelled through the night to reach the fleet of transport ships bobbing in the dark sea. Everyone disembarked, looking around at the rocky beach as the soldiers aggressively pushed us towards the large rowboats. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but that didn’t stop them from expecting us to paddle out onto the sea.

They demanded the recruits row, and on my boat sat a single soldier, puffing on a pipe. He appeared important, seeing he was the only one on this vessel and the other soldiers were crammed with the drafted. Unfortunately, this vessel was significantly larger than the others, seemingly for no reason, but he didn’t want to be smashed together with others. This, in turn, just caused more work for us. We weren’t even at the halfway point as the burning began to spread into my back. My arms were on fire. If this was any indication of how my life would be in the army, I’d hoped death would be swift.

The man turned his attention to me, giving me a stern look of disappointment—one I received many times from my father.

He leaned forward. “Son, if you can’t row a boat, you can’t swing a sword,” he finished, blowing smoke onto my face.

This soldier was a veteran; his face was covered in scars, but the one that stood out was the large x slashed across the left side of his cheek. The soldier’s bald head and scruffy face only helped the intimidation factor.

“But your intelligent men handpicked me—”

The soldier slapped my face so hard it almost knocked me unconscious. My head bounced off the boat’s side, and before I slipped into the water, he grabbed the cross string of my tan shirt, pulling me to a sitting position. The sarcasm probably should’ve been held back a little…

After grabbing a handful of my wet black hair, the soldier forced eye contact. “Listen, boy. You’d be absolutely correct about my soldiers, but no child is going to make fun of a grown man. Got it?”

I nervously nodded as I felt my right eye closing from the swelling. Finally, he let go of my now bloodied hair, glaring down at me as I grabbed the paddle. I continued rowing as fast as I could, with my vision swirling. His anger was something I didn’t want to invoke again; I just kept from making eye contact, hoping he would direct this intense stare somewhere else. The pain scorching through my face was by far the worst I had ever felt in my life. My father had smacked me a few times for being a smartass, but nothing like this. He sat down, returning to his still burning pipe, and I forced myself through the excruciating pain.

We soon bumped into the side of a transport ship, and I glanced up at the godly wooden fortress as ropes dropped. Hastily, we fasten the tethers to the boat, being hoisted up slowly. It felt like an eternity before we eventually arrived at the ship’s deck and were shoved off the rowboats to the haul. Unfortunately, we were crowded shoulder to shoulder, and I had hoped they didn’t plan to leave us like this, but that was too much to ask.

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The soldiers had recruited way more than they could transport. Which would indicate we’re going to be slaves, or the rebellions father mentioned were going horribly because cramming like this signalled panic.

Time blurred together as standing in place took its toll on us. Some of the men forced their way to the deck, throwing themselves into the ocean. Others just succumbed to the poor conditions and were pushed into a corner. I endured until there was enough space that I could lie down where I stood. The first time I sat was a relief I cannot explain; my feet swelled so bad, that the skin looked like it would split.

There were a lot of deaths in the next two months as the ship skirted the Demnion Ocean. I was mentally shocked, to put it lightly, between the severe storms that left me huddled in the corner and the men that starved to death around me. Maturity was one of my strong points for my age, but nothing could have prepared me for so much suffering, so many nights of shivering and days of dehydration.

When people started dying, we would toss them overboard, but at some point, we lost all will to live or to move the dead. This, in turn, made the lower deck reek of decay—creating fumes that were unhealthy to inhale. Some days, the putrid smell made me contemplate killing myself—many of the men had already done it. At this point, I felt no shame in the idea, but I never worked the nerve to pick up the glass shard that so many others had.

When my meals were stolen, which often happened because it was easy to overpower me, I would be forced to kill rats. This mainly involved catching them off guard and hammering them with my fist into the ground. It was barbaric and left me traumatised as the rodents would twitch before going limp, but I had to do what I could not to starve to death. My deterioration was faster than the others, and every day I managed to outlast someone was a miracle and a punishment.

The rat population declined rapidly, and I felt like I didn’t exist most days. I just sat in the warm, humid sewage of every human fluid imaginable. Fevers were common and happened weekly, which didn’t help me, considering I was dehydrated most of the day. If I had anything to vomit, I would, but I had moved far past that point. We got a small amount of water in the evening, and by small, I mean I went days without pissing. A scrape was a death sentence in this cesspool. One scratch could lead to your arm rotting from infection, and I witnessed a lot of men slowly and painfully waste away.

I don’t remember the last few weeks prior to being dragged out of the hull to the top deck. The uniformed strangers threw buckets of cold seawater on me, drenching my stiff clothes; the rehydration of the fabric just made them disgustingly slimy from what they had absorbed from below.

“For fuck’s sake,” the scarred man from the rowboat said, shaking his head. “How did this shit happen?”

A man walked over in a long black fur coat, “General, sir, between the weather and the boat getting lost in a storm. These men ended up not faring well,” he said, staring down at me with disgust.

“That’s clear, Salvin, but my question was why they’re all fucking skeletons,” the General screamed, kicking a bucket off the ship’s side, pinching the bridge of his nose as he just walked circles around me, mumbling to himself.

The corpses they dropped next to me had sunken faces and showed they died from starvation. I was no better, if not days away from a similar fate. My arms seemed like they were just skin wrapped around a skeleton. Most of my hair had been lost.

Salvin cleared his thoughts. “We prioritised food for the pure soldiers,” he mumbled quickly, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked down.

“If you’re going to be racist, Salvin, say it with your chest,” the General said, staring him down. “I don’t like men that tiptoe around their undesirable opinions. Got something to say? Say it.”

“Food was rationed, recruits died, that’s it,” Salvin replied, getting annoyed. He was done with this conversation.

The General kneeled next to me. “You’re the one I slapped the shit out of. Impressive,” he said with what I thought was unnecessary curiosity.

I couldn’t respond to him or even really do anything but lie hopelessly on the frigid wood deck. Even if we got treated for the diseases and fed, we would likely die from this abuse. It was a miracle I was even alive.

“Get this one fed and taken care of, and I want him to report to the barracks. Save what we can of the rest, and the ones that are too far gone give a quick death,” he commanded, leaving the boat as they picked me up, and I noticed the massive blurry city in the background covered in snow.

I was tossed into a carriage like a corpse rather than an injured person, and the cart accelerated quickly, rolling me around at every sharp turn. The soldier sitting in the back put his leg against my side, stopping me from hurting myself. He sat bored in his tarnished gold-plated armour that looked incredibly heavy for someone his size. He was an older man, but not yet out of his prime.

“May the creators help you.” He said in a sad tone. “This cruelty needs to stop.”

We finally arrived, and I was roughly carried into a cathedral. I couldn’t really focus on anything; my vision was a blurred mess. However, shapes and the familiar sound of footsteps echoing gave me a sense of awareness. The smell of candles and a slight earthy scent filled the air—maybe they had given up on me and just taken me to the catacombs like in my books. I had always wondered if the champion’s tomb was real, but I guess I will never find out.

“General Jameson wants him taken care of and educated, Not indoctrinated, you understand?” The soldier from the cart said before my focus was lost from the continuing conversation and darkness took over my consciousness.

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