Arn heard their voices before he saw them. There were two guards coming, chatting quietly at the top of the ladder. Arn’s cell had only a small hallway beyond the metal bars. There were no neighbouring cells either.
“Should have just killed him,” came one of the muted voices.
“Nah, he’s just like us,” mumbled another.
The first voice scoffed, “He’s insane. I’m nothing like him.”
“That’s not what I meant,” defended the first voice. “Listen: before all this, we were the ones breaking the laws, killing whoever we hated or stealing whatever we wanted. This whole thing, this whole army, war, whatever… it’s our chance to build a system where people aren’t punished for doing what they want.”
There was a pause, then armour clanked loudly, and the first guard said, “Gods, man, you have to get your nose out of those books. ‘Systems’. Ha!”
The wooden hatch opened with a creak and the guards descended. They had matching skull-plate masks, marking them as the elite warriors that served the leaders of the armies around Starath. One brandished a key and unlocked the cell door.
Gamden stirred. He had been asleep.
“It’s your lucky day,” drawled one of the warriors, with the voice of the guard that had suggested Arn be killed. “You’re getting moved.”
Arn chuckled. “I’m lucky enough to have stone walls already,” he muttered. All the buildings in the siege camp were wood and canvas, not rock. This cell was the cellar of an outlying farmhouse. “I didn’t realize I was so valuable.”
The guard lashed out with his metal gauntlet. Arn’s head jarred against the stone, his sight obstructed by blinding pain for a moment. He blinked and spat blood onto the floor. It caused ripples across the surface of the red glare that continued growing there, ever since that chilling walk in the dreamworld. Arn forced his eyes away as the fiery glow resettled its shape.
From his belt, the guard withdrew a length of black cloth—a head-sized bag. He paused, and peered at Arn through the small holes in his skull mask. “You know, I want him to see it.”
The other guard, the one that had defended Arn, said nothing. The two of them unlatched his shackles and heaved him to his feet. As Arn was ushered sideways through the cell door, they picked Gamden up and brought him along. “See what?” Gamden asked quietly.
Arn ignored him. His hands were free, but he didn’t try seizing a weapon from one of the warrior’s belts. Instead, he climbed the ladder as instructed, he let them bind his arms behind his back as instructed, and he left the farmstead, as instructed. There were more guards outside, more common soldiers than elite armoured monsters. They followed quietly, while the man who had defended Arn went immediately ahead of him and the man who wanted him dead went behind.
As they descended the grassy hill toward the rest of the siege camp, Arn noticed that the base had dwindled. Many wooden buildings were half-disassembled, while others had only left behind the trodden soil of their foundations. The number of bandits and pirates had decreased as well, though many warriors still stepped aside to give Arn’s group passage. Arn couldn’t see much of Starath besides its usually smoky aura; the palisade wall obstructed the lower half of the cityscape.
But the guards led him to one of the wooden gates and then right through, into the corpse-scattered fields between the siege wall and the small stone buildings that lay outside of Starath’s enormous walls.
There were others out here, traversing the terrain toward or away from Starath. Each of the besieged city’s gates had become the mouth of a road now. Arn imagined that this is what the city might have looked like before the siege. He glanced back toward the siege camp; glimpsing some bodies hanging against the walls. This is what the people in the city could see.
The guard behind him shook his head and shoved Arn forward. Arn stumbled but kept walking. The warrior snarled, “That’s not how the city fell. They did it to themselves.”
Arn shrugged and watched as the city drew closer. More bodies hung over the gate—were they enemies of the leaders of the city? Or were they soldiers from the besieging army that had been caught? Arn would never know. He followed the guards quietly now; he caught himself wondering what Gamden must think of it, but rapidly quelled that thought.
Then they entered the city gate, and everything changed. Blood was smeared across the cobblestones of the first street they walked down, and stained a few of the walls of the first stone buildings they passed. Metal grates in the ground were now vents to dispose of red sewage. They passed a line of prisoners being transported by another troop of guards. Each of the prisoners, be they man or woman, was stained with blood. Their mouths were ringed with it, their eyes wide and bloodshot, their hands gloved in red.
“They ate each other,” the guard behind Arn whispered.
Arn’s eyes widened as he passed a dead body in the street that was missing an arm and half of its torso. The siege was over because the people inside had… killed each other? Fed on each other? He shuddered. On Razaad, there were stories of hunters who had been trapped in a tidal cave and had lost their minds in starvation, only to feed on one another. There was no greater evil—save, perhaps, that which Arn had seen deep beneath Scoa, where the dead had still walked and moved.
The guard was insistent. “See? We’re the good guys.” He seemed proud.
They delved deeper into the deathly city. Arn saw metal everywhere. It had, like liquid, run down some streets and dripped from doorways of some buildings. Whatever this place had been before it was consumed by cannibalism… it had been something mad all along. In other buildings bars of metal were stacked like piles of bones. What was this place?
“Here we are,” said the guard in the lead. They had not passed any of the elite guards since leaving the siege camp, but the building they approached—a looming stone cliff taller than Scoa—was protected by a handful more.
Arn was led inside, only to realize that there were other buildings inside of the large stone wall. It was like a city within the city. Here there were more slaves, common soldiers training, and a stable full of those strange creatures—horses. Aside from the stable, there was an enormous manor, a small storehouse, and a guardhouse against the outer wall. Near the guardhouse was a stairway down, and that was where they brought Arn and Gamden.
When Arn saw a long corridor of small metal-barred cells, he started to laugh. “Oh, you’re just getting me a cell with neighbours.”
“These are the worst of the worst,” said the angry guard, while he unlocked an empty cell in a huff. “You want to become friends with them? Be my guest. Might finally seal your fate.”
Arn wasn’t sure what the man meant, but his more mild-mannered escort seemed bored by his comrade’s taunting. He guided Arn into the cell and closed it while the angrier man leaned in for another leer.
“Some of them talk to themselves, too,” he told Arn. “You’ll fit right in.”
Arn glanced at Gamden, who fumed nearby. At least they could agree on this one. “I never did anything to you,” he told the guard. But if I get out, I will…
“You assassinated one of our leaders,” the man growled, and—at last—the guard’s armoured fellow managed to pull him away. He had spoken those words like it was a curse, but Arn didn’t understand. On Razaad, killing a leader would have earned you respect, not hatred.
He glanced around his cell. His neighbours were as bloodstained as the prisoners he had seen in the street. The small window at the back of his cell—too small to crawl through, even lacking the bars that obstructed it—already cast an eerie orange glow onto the floor of his cell, where that growing fire lurked.
“We’re important,” Gamden said.
“I know,” Arn whispered.
Gamden smiled. “My plan worked,” he said. “This isn’t the end for us.”
“I know,” Arn repeated. He sat down, closing his eyes wearily. “Now, quiet.” Together, they listened to the ramblings of the madmen in this metal pit beyond the Deep.