8th of Winter
"So now you have an inkling of what I've endured for a hundred years…" Seros quipped, feeling an odd sense of satisfaction that his brother was experiencing something akin to his own imprisonment. It wasn't quite the same, as he still had full control of his body, and he slept secure in the knowledge that it was only temporary, but the darker Other supposed that it was the closest Aren might ever come to knowing the hell he had imposed on his own brother.
"Oh? I don't recall you ever having to toil away in the recesses of my brain with a damn pick." Aren replied, sweat covering his body as he brought the aforementioned tool down, again and again, until the stone beneath him gave way.
"Only because you weren't paying attention." Seros dourly stated, the memory of a century of banging at the gates to his brother's mind quite fresh in his.
"I thought you were a psychopath! Neri tried to kill me when his Other awakened, so can you blame me?" The Akalak retorted, his mind briefly flashing back to the day that produced his only known hatred of anything. The hunt, the glassbeaks, the death of boys no older than him… some days he still had nightmares about it all.
It was amidst this chaos that Seros had been born, and Aren had always naturally associated his brother with the event. He had just been a boy, traumatized by seeing the death of friends, by having to fight those monstrous predators from the Sea of Grass, by seeing his own dreaded monster awake inside of him... On top of it all, his best friend had tried to kill him when he lost control of his own nascent Other, so was it really any wonder that Aren reacted to his brother in the way that he had? Given all of this, it was fortunate for Seros that decades of travel and experience had eventually opened his captor up to the possibility that he was wrong.
"You’re never going to let that go, are you?" The Akalak complained, fully conscious of the exact reaction this would provoke,
"Why the hell should I ever-!" Seros exclaimed, before realizing that he had merely been baited. Incensed though he was, he wasn't willing to give Aren the satisfaction of getting to him. He was the one that did that. He was the one who played with his brother’s head. If he lost that, what then would he have left?
Before Aren and his brother could actually get into the inevitable debate that Seros’ recriminations would spark, the Akalak’s apparent reverie was interrupted by Max, the suave inmate he had met a few days earlier.
“And how finds you this brutal, shit hole of a day?” Max beamed, his peculiar turn of phrase not to be taken as an indication of his mood. This was generally how he spoke, at least once he warmed up to someone and dropped the pretense of being an “educated gentleman”.
Max had been down here for quite some time, having drawn the ire of the Syliran Knights for one offense or another, but the story seemed to change depending on who you asked. There was even one patently ridiculous rumor that he was Loren Dyres’ illegitimate son. Whatever the truth was, however, it didn't matter, because down here a man constructed his own legend. In this pleasantly grim cave, nobody cared who or what you used to be, only what you were now, and Max was the man who could get the things nobody else could. For the right price, your stay in Lyko (as the inmates generally took to calling it when they ran out of colorful aphorisms) could be downright civilized. And that’s where Max’s interest in Aren came in.
Since the Akalak was not here as a criminal, per se, but as a debtor who was working his debt off, he fell into the unique niche of not actually being nearly as disreputable as most of the other inmates of the mine. The men guarding him didn't treat him with as much disdain, the actual workers of Lyko, the one who were here by choice, did not think him as much a scoundrel. Aren was also friendly, personable, and intelligent, making him easy to like, which was something the rogue’s gallery of Lyko found somewhat difficult. Even Max, who could probably be said to be the most charming of all the long term inmates was often treated as a contagion one would do best to avoid. As such, sometimes he needed a little help if he wanted to approach one of the more respectable residents of the mine with one scheme or another.
After a couple of laborious swings of his pick, the Akalak looked up to identify the aggravatingly upbeat voice which assaulted his ears. Although the gesture was unnecessary, as he knew of only one man in Lyko who could produce the pitch necessary to give the impression that he was perfectly content living down here, Aren always felt like he needed to keep an eye on Max whenever he spoke. Sometimes it felt like if he didn't, money he did not actually have might find itself disappearing from his already empty pockets. Somehow.
“How do you manage to look like you’re actually happy down here?” The Akalak queried, unable to fathom how anyone could genuinely pull of some of the facial expressions that Max employed on a regular basis.
“Well, it’s easy, once you've realized and accepted that you’re never leaving here any other way than as a corpse. Plus, I'd hate to give those armored shitheads the satisfaction of thinking this place gets to me.” Max explained, with his trademark cheeriness.
Aren couldn't even imagine spending the rest of his life down here, and the thought suddenly brought about a swell of sympathy for his poor brother, who had found himself in a similar position through no fault of his own. At least the men down here had done something to earn their stay in Lyko, whilst Seros’ only crime had been being born at the wrong time.
“But I didn't come here, away from prying ears, to regale you with my life’s story. I came here to-“ Max started, before Aren’s hand came up in protest, “-offer me a mutually beneficial business arrangement. Yeah, yeah, that’s all I've been hearing for the past three days, and my answer is still no.”
Consummate businessman that he was, Max did not seem at all put off by the summary rejection of his offer before he had even made it. A no, the way he saw it, was just an opportunity to get someone to change their minds, making yourself look like a persuasive bugger in the process.
The Akalak was proving a worthy opponent, having already turned down several lucrative proposals that any other grimer in this cave would have jumped at without a moment’s hesitation, but Max remained undaunted, “I understand that you’re here temporarily, my son, and that you don’t want to make waves for fear of your sentence being extended, but everyone has something they want…” When he smiled, this so-called businessman gave the impression that he was more closely related to a snake than to an actual human being. Maybe he was; in this world, you could never be sure of someone’s true nature.
Unfortunately for Max, however, the inmates were all provided with food, water and a place to sleep, which was all that Aren required. He was accustomed to living without the finer things in life, and so essentially had no need for Max’s service; the whole notion was apparently something the man found absolutely unable to wrap his head around, however.
As the much smaller human stood there, candle in hand, wondering what he could offer the Akalak to make him come around, he realized that the bastard didn't even seem to need light. He had been working down here absent any nearby source of illumination, the sound of his pick hammering away against the stone the only indication of his whereabouts. Residual traces of heat generally lit up the tunnels sufficiently for the Akalak's other sight to afford him with all the light he need, but there were very few people down here who knew how that worked.
To the long term residents of Lyko, the sound of a striking pick was as distinctive as the person who swung it. The rhythm, the force, the specific pitch which rang out across the tunnels was almost like a signature. If you wanted to find someone, all you needed to do was listen carefully, and pick out the noise of the individual amidst a chorus of others. It was an acquired skill, and one not everyone mastered, but almost all who spent too much time down here were able to do it, to one degree or another. Max, however, was able to find a person no matter how many others obscured the one sound he was looking for, perhaps because he had the singular distinction of having served the longest consecutive sentence of anyone in Lyko. There were a lot of older inmates, but maybe they only looked older because a place like this could age you if you let it, which he refused to.
“So long Max. Come back tomorrow when you figure out how to get women in here,” Aren joked, aware that this was considered some kind of mythological treasure by the inmates of the mine.
Apparently, the way he’d heard it, every once in a while a rumor would start circulating that they had thrown a woman in here with the lot of them, or that someone had sneaked one in. Invariably, the rumor confirmed that she was a dainty little flower who had been sent to the mines for her promiscuous nature, or that a guard had been bribed to allow a prostitute inside. Either way, this generally started a mad dash by all and sundry to find the young lady (for she was never old) in order that she might be “safeguarded from the predations of the ravenous beasts which inhabited this hole”. Of course, this delicate rose would never materialize, inevitably prompting a rise in confrontations and violence throughout the tunnels.
From what Aren had heard from some of the more knowledgeable inmates, though, the knights did not sentence people who were not physically suited to this kind of labor down here. As such, unless the woman in question was possessed of some decidedly unladylike features, it would be very unlikely to see one wandering about. As for sneaking one in, that seemed even more improbable, considering just how many people would need their palms greased for the simple act of looking the other way. How much more coin would it take to justify the risk for a guard of being caught doing it, especially considering that his punishment might be being thrown into the very cage he kept others in? Not many men would be willing to put themselves in such obvious peril for a handful of mizas. It was possible, certainly, which is what made the story compelling, but the sheer likelihood of it happening was so remote as to be essentially unfeasible.
Max grimaced at the Akalak’s statement, all too aware of his own failed attempts to acquire this most sought after of commodities. One day, he swore, he’d have all the pieces he needed to make that happen, securing his place as a legend in Lyko. For now, however, his concern was the Akalak, and how to get this particularly unyielding piece to dance to his tune.
“I’ll see you later, Aren. And when I do, I’d suggest you’d be ready to make peace with your reticence.” Max said, a look of devilish confidence actually giving his audience pause.
Lifting his pick high, Aren brought it down in a practiced gesture which shattered a particularly intractable-looking stone (in addition to rattling every bone in his body). The display was a message to Max not to try anything that involved force, because even without a real weapon, the Akalak was perfectly capable of killing a man without too much difficulty. And, unlike on the outside, not even the knights gave too much of a damn when inmates dropped dead in these mines. Not that Max struck him as that type of person, but it was entirely better to be safe rather than sorry. |
|
by Aren on February 13th, 2015, 1:16 am 
