Chapter Two - The Awakening, Part One

He tasted mud. It lined his mouth like bile, clinging to his teeth and throat with grit and bitterness. It was a sensation with which Cole was familiar. His mind returned to him in lapping waves, recovering fragments of memory and feeling in increments. Slowly he felt his skin was wet. Around him people were shouting, in the distance great sounds bellowed over the wind and periodically, the soft, wet earth shuddered as if in revulsion.

In a haze he attempted to move his body but found that his limbs didn't want to respond. A fatigue seemed to be holding him back. Languidly his arms attempted to purchase the ground beneath him but even they felt weighted and heavy. Shaking his head, Cole opened his eyes and wiped clumsily at the coating of cold soil that sealed them shut.

He was lying in a ditch, gouged from the earth and banked on its higher side with sharpened trunks of wood. Lying in puddles, half obscured by the mire, were bodies.

Panic set in as the details became clearer. The violent sounds were coming from beyond the ditch. Desperate energy compelled him to his feet and he floundered in the mud, uncertain of where to go now. He stumbled over the uneven ground until he found the nearest body and his hands trembled as he turned the bloated corpse over. He needed answers. Images were beginning to return of his last memories. His hands around someone's neck – a dark, gaping chasm lined with teeth – anger unlike anything he'd ever felt.

The man's face was drained of colour, whiter than alabaster and flecked with blood and dirt. His cold yellow eyes stared up into oblivion. From his chest two arrow shafts jutted at violent angles. Cole's head reeled in incomprehension, his hands gripping the dirtied leather tunic of the man pulling him away from the surface of the mud.

This couldn't be real.

Dropping the man Cole stumbled onwards, trying desperately to climb the bank and face whatever horror lay on the other side. An innate sense of danger rang in his mind, he soundly ignored it, wondering instead where his strength had gone. Why was he so fatigued?

His questions silenced in his mind as he faced the sight beyond the ditch. A siege was underway. Great wooden engines were assailing a white city wall that seemed monumentally high. In the intervening no-man's-land a sea of turned earth and pitted crates filled the space. Fields of arrows and embankments of defenses coalesced across the landscape like tufts of grass and shrubbery.

This couldn't merely be unreal, this was impossible.

Violently, Cole's mind sought to betray and deny the compounding sensory evidence before him. Where was Sarah? Where was the Carnivale?

In a wave of nausea and bewilderment his footing failed and he fell backwards into the ditch. He lay there staring up at the sky for what seemed like an age. His eyes roamed the new world around him as if he were watching a movie or a music video. Dimly he observed that he was dressed head to foot in chain mail, soaked leather and a drenched tabbard. Woven into its surface was a embroidered image that he traced with his fingers.

His senses whispered betrayals. You are part of this world, a part of its very fabric and what scares you is that you know this can't be a dream. Nothing this real is a dream.

Even as hands gripped him by the collar and lifted him to his feet, dragging him from the sodden prison, his mind denied the vast terrifying truth that was unfolding around him. Bright eyes looked down at him calling out for recognition and life. Cole could only stare back blankly.

Cold terror gripped his bowels. He began to weep as he was guided down the trench by strong arms, out of the wasteland and into the heart of the attacking army's forces. Faces and bodies passed him by in waves of total unrecognition. His guides found a long tent and lay him down on a pallet. Cole stared upwards at the canvas ceiling as brisk hands examined him.

"He's fine." The field surgeon decreed before moving on. His saviours evaporated into the background and their voices drifted over to him with the breeze.

"We heard him muttering – something about Karnival and Saraii." One of them muttered worriedly.

"Ah." The surgeon sighed, "Pray for him. This war and Venger's evil have unmanned him. His body is fine. Time will tell if his mind has the same strength."

Cole's breath caught in his throat.

"The retreat has been ordered. Pray for us all."



Eonid braced her hands against the stone floor and shook her head. Around her chaos was tearing the city streets apart. Falling masonry; the clambering of people as they sought refuge. For a brief moment though, from the corner of her eye she'd seen something in the reflection in the puddle at her feet.

A severe looking woman with a round ball of thick, kinky hair had been staring back at her, wearing strange clothes no less. The experience left her cold and vulnerable. The woman was her – she was seeing her reflection, but the face she bellonged irrefutably bellonged to someone else. Tentatively she felt the back of her head as the crowds piled around her, jostling her, narrowly missing her fingers on the cold pebbled street.

Standing up she dusted down her skirt and heaved Feold in his basket up onto her shoulders.

Wait. A baby?

For a moment the thought of her having a baby felt abhorrent, alien even. She shook the thought away and felt the back of her head again. She felt woozy and didn't trust her legs to walk very far. Overhead a siege boulder struck a nearby building throwing the street into a cloud of dust and screams. Quickly, Eonid heaved Feold into a recessed alcove that normally housed a market stall. Sitting down on the step she decided to wait for someone who she felt certain was following her. She couldn't remember having heard their conversation though, she just knew he was coming.

Feold slept within the comfort zone of his blankets, soundly ignoring the noise around them and Eonid held him close to her, taking him from the basket.

She felt uncertain, her memories felt dimmed as if she couldn't remember significant pieces of information, but she could – they were all there, tucked within her mind. Gall and fear welled up within her chest in equal measures as her head darted around looking for a familiar face among the crowd.

"Eonid!" A voice cried over the clamouring din. A man emerged from the swathe, tall and dressed in a guard's leather uniform. She recognised him at once, but the sensation was strange, she felt as if she hadn't seen him for years.

"Irik," the name passed her lips in recognition and bewilderment as she and the baby were swept up in his arms.

"I thought you were lost," he muttered his fear into the privacy of their proximity, "Come, we must away. Venger's forces have locked down the city. We must find your Company and get you out." He kissed the baby on the head and held her hand tightly. She felt naeseous at her own fear as Irik led her down the street to an alley. His sure footing and intimate knowledge of the city led them away from the crowds and into the heart of the city's backstreets.

Light and dark mingled in equal measure as the sun tried to penetrate the tall tenements and tightly packed stone buildings. Wooden extensions, fences and scaffold frames interrupted their passage. From above the light was dappled and broken by the cobwebs of washing lines and abandoned clothes. Here, the noise of the chaos was dimmed. Distinctly she could hear the distant roar of the people.

With a sharp movement from Irik they were tucked into a recess, hidden by a wooden wall. Eonid wondered briefly why they'd stopped, then she heard it – the regular rhythm of armoured bodies marching towards them. Through a crack in the splintered wood they watched as black armoured troops filed past them, their alien design and raiment sending erratic shivers down her spine.

Suddenly the soldiers stopped with inhuman precision.

The officer in charge stepped forward. His armour was more ornate; a long cloak flowed from the recesses of his violent looking shoulder pads. The helmet the officer wore bore two Ram's horns making him look demonic.

"Brother soldier," the Officer said, his voice rattling inside his helmet making it sound hollow and metallic. He was addressing someone Eonid couldn't see. "You and your men have fought valiantly, but the war was over before it began."

There came the sound of a struggle, the rattle of armour, a cry and then silence.

"Don't stuggle Brother. It will look bad on your men. Join me in subduing the masses. Lord Venger doesn't want any more bloodshed."

"I wont submit. I wont surrender." The subject gasped against the stretched silence, his voice rattling in his chest.

"This one is dying. You have brought me a dying man. He cannot command." The Officer spoke harshly to his soldiers.

"Kill me." The wounded man begged in an undertone.

"Tell me this soldier," the Officer demanded, ignoring the dying man's request, "Will the people yield?"

"Depends," the soldier replied bitterly, "on your definition of 'yield'."

"Hear this," the Officer replied, lifting the man to his feet, "Your people will accept Lord Venger in time. They hold their lives in too high regard. Your obstinacy is pointless." The Officer's chest swelled with the pride of his thinking. "Venger offers strength. He will make this city strong again, he will stand up for your rights at the Forum of Voices and you will cheer for him in time."

The Officer dropped the man to the dust and turned to his soldiers. "Take him to the Castle."

"Strength in division," the soldiers chorused.

"Strength in division." The Officer replied.

The party departed leaving the alley empty again. Only a long trail of blood led away along the cold stones. Eonid squeezed Irik's hand as he led her tentatively down the valley of stone and into the shadows, the echoes of the Officer's prophecy resounding in their ears.



Boy!

Boy!!

A hand gripped his face and shook it gently. A wave of nausea rippled through him so intensely that he sat up too fast, his eyes jammed open. He stopped himself from being sick but only through the shock of what he saw around him.

Rubble and books piled like mountains in the gloom. Fires burned in sconces along the walls and in little pockets of destruction scattered around the room. Above him, light streamed down in shards from a hole in the roof.

"Boy!" The face in front of him beamed, all pimples and freckles and blue eyes. "You're alive! By the creator I thought you'd be dead for sure."

Blinking he felt himself being pulled to his feet.

"I can't remember anything." He muttered, his voice rattling in his head.

"One too many knocks to the head, eh?" The freckled boy laughed. "Come, we must gather in the Hall of Runes." The boy dragged him to his feet and towards the door at the end of the room.

"Wait." He muttered, panic setting in at the blankness of his mind. "What's my name?"

"How the hells should I know?" The boy replied brightly, "I've never met you before – I just heard a noise from the library and found you, floundering in the rubble."

Who am I?

"But don't despair, I'm sure somebody knows you. There are hundreds of us after all." The boy responded kindly to his dismay. "Look, my name is Xete. For the time being I'll call you… Pere."

Pere… the sound was familiar. P – p – p…

The newly christened Pere nodded his head and accepted his new name. Xete led him swiftly out of the library and into a narrow corridor, richly carpeted but bear walled.

"My eyes – my vision is blurry."

"I daresay you wear lenses, like most adepts. I have Giant's eyes, of course, one day I will be enormous." Xete laughed. "I think you've learned your lesson about spending too much time with your head buried in books."

Pere couldn't quite find the courage to laugh. So much of this felt new yet familiar, the corridors and stout wooden doors, the bowels of a vast castle, the networks of activity.

Xete led him into the gallery of a large hall. Below, there was activity and a wide stone staircase led them to a line of similar youths of both sexes all dressed in the same blue tunics as Xete and Pere. They took their places briskly and watched as soldiers in black armour discussed things on the far end of the hall.

Screams from outside the castle followed a vast and earth trembling explosion. The sounds died quickly but a wave of sharp breaths rippled through the assembled youths. From among the guards their leader strode into the centre of the hall, his armour rattling in a chorus of sharp clinks.

"Adepts of the Academy, I salute you." The voice of the soldier filled the room, as alien and metallic as his steel skin. "From among your ranks my glorious leader rose. Now, in our hour of triumph I speak to you not as a conquering Captain, but a brother. As your brother I am concerned for your welfare and the endurance of this great institution."

Pere's eyes tried to discern a glimmer of humanity from the cloaked, helmeted figure before him. He watched the swirl of the horns adorning his helmet. Apart from the two arms and two legs, there seemed little to prove he was a man. Everything about his bearing was wrong.

"This Academy will continue its teachings." The Captain continued, "Our Lord Venger will address you in due course but I was ordered to speak to you, to reassure you that your lives are safe, that your new leader values learning and the arts. He has expressed a desire for this institution to move forward and guide its people in the difficult days of transition ahead."

The Captain bowed his head and retreated from them into the shadows. They were ushered from the hall quickly and sent to their quarters by the teachers who prompted them like nervous sheepdogs, nipping their heels anxiously, their voices hushed.

Whispering erupted among the adepts like wildfire and Pere was forced to listen mutely as events swirled around him in confusion.

"Don't worry. We'll find you a healer." Xete muttered, standing at Pere's side while the others gossipped.

"Thank you," Pere replied quietly, his muscles bunched. He didn't know whether to run or cower.

Steadily they were all encouraged into their rooms, small cupboards in the walls lined with straw with a single cot and desk. Xete smiled encouragingly as Pere listed unconsciously towards the only unopened door. Around him the others disappeared into their own rooms, the sound dropped into the background as his hand gripped the door knob and pushed.

Behind him Xete disappered into the crowd. He was alone. Pere closed the door and darkness enveloped him but for a beam of light from a small window in the wall. He turned and breathed heavily against the reality of the door's strong wooden surface.

Frowning he waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. Glimmering in the darkness were trinkets arrayed across the surface of the small desk. Idols, bracelets, cutlery, paper – all manner of junk. His stomach lurched at the sight. Were these his? He couldn't remember anything specific but something told him these things had been taken. Each invoked a curious sensation within him, an association he couldn't quite recall, memories that lingered like shadows behind a veil.

Who am I? He demanded inwardly, sinking to the floor, weeping.