Drothiker
1.

“Alpenstride.”

Syrene Alpenstride’s eyes cracked open at the overseer’s harsh voice. The sound she didn’t have to ponder carefully over to decide she hated the most in the world. After the whispering and snaps of whips.

One would expect light to itch in their eyes at the wakening of dawn, but thirty-five ceaseless years in the dark, light itself would be a curse to her eyes. And she secretly wished they would never have to endure such brutishness.

Only this four-walled stone room for five years her eyes had encountered in the wake of dawn. Only this cell, where she’d wake up and be provided the dim light venturing from some door open far down the hallway of the Voiceless Pits.

Jegvr, the Voiceless Pits were the dungeons where planet Ianov’s criminals were incarcerated. Those whose crimes were worse than the ones that fitted death an end. Worse punishment than decapitation was keeping alive for myriad years, torments bestowed until one lost his mind, lost any will to live. A Saqa for immortals like Syrene.

A literal bloody Saqa.

One would also expect to feel softness beneath themself when they awoke, but having felt nothing but cold stone for five Abyss-damned years, Syrene had long ago called a halt to that dream to replace softness and the soft light of morning she’d long forgotten after these constant thirty-five years of dark.

For moments and moments, Syrene blinked and stared at the boring ceiling, unheeding the overseer deeming her still asleep. He could go to Saqa. They could all go to Saqa.

“Alpenstride.”

First years, that tone had had her trembling with fear, terrified of that whip she didn’t have to look to know he held in his right hand, gripped tight enough.

“What on Ianov do you want.” Her voice flat. Dead.

She hated that her body felt the need to stiffen when the lock of cell unbarred. Hated that fear still seethed deep in her gut as the overseer stepped in and the whip whispered to the stone. Hated that the hair on her neck arose as he grinned down at her, as if tasting her fear.

The dresteen of the shackles in her wrists clanked as she sat up. Dresteen, a steel-sort metal to keep mejest from her veins. To refrain her from shifting. These bastards didn’t even know Syrene held none. That being the Heir to the Lady of Wolves did not mean that she was a wolf.

For someone who relished in whipping Vegreka, the overseer seemed too cowered from all those who bore mejest at all.

Tribes from forests represented the countries, more so than soldiers did. There were myriad tribes; wolves’ and sorceress’ being the burliest ones. But wolves were feared the most, thanks to their prime—the Lady of Wolves, Raocete. Each tribe was elected a prime, had to maintain peace, despite the sparking rivalries. Though many primes bore stronger mejest, the Duce of Tribes happened to be a half-hemvae—one of the weakest Vegreka. Simply because the woman had gained everyone’s respect, demonstrated the power she held without much mejest innumerable times.

Syrene respected the duce—lots. The duce had proved that no matter what mejest, real power kernelled deep within oneself if held the heart sturdy.

She had also allowed the Lady of Wolves—Raocete, one of the mightiest Vegreka to ever exist—to accept Syrene as one of the wolves, never minding the fact that Syrene was not.

She had not been to forests in past thirty-five years, so it was arduous to say what befell there. What changes had arisen.

Snapping her out of it, the overseer rolled the whip in his hand and Syrene’s swallow was audible. He chuckled, another sound she loathed, that chilled her very bones because it hinted what was coming. And she braced herself for it. But he spoke, “As much as I would relish in the last round,” disappointment molded his features as he said, “you have been Chosen.”

The words snapped the breath out of her.

Chosen. Every year at least fifteen criminals were Chosen, the only occasion to tread out in the world. Not free, of course. But slavery. They were sold to anyone who could afford, uncaring of whether the buyer could deliver right shelter. Needless to say, those Chosen by rulers were the wretched ones. The work in castles must be unending, a torment itself.

You have been Chosen.

People spent years and years in a fool’s hope to hear those words, hoping someone would pick them. And the convicts were ranked to be Chosen only after they’d spent at least fifteen years in Jegvr, the Voiceless Pits. Fifteen years of torments were enough to make someone want slavery, if only it meant to be able to perceive the world.

And though five years had swept by, Syrene hadn’t decided whether being Chosen was good news. Five years, she certainly hadn’t thought of it. Someone had to be powerful—too powerful to have Chosen her before fifteen years hit.

“Who.” Her word a breathless rasp, gaze fixed at the whip the overseer held so tight.

Had it not been for the spikes in the dresteen collaring her, threatening to gash with each movement, Syrene would have bitten his hand off. Three decades in a monster’s body, she certainly knew how to do that.

The overseer did not reply to her question, only called a male servant and instructed him to bathe her, clad her in a clean, untorn dress for once.

Syrene succeeded at secreting her shudder. The task of the day she dreaded. Bath. Being scrubbed to bone wasn’t entirely the most pleasant thing, exclusively when the wounds of whips were yet in the healing process.

And after fifteen minutes of feeling as if she was being skinned alive, her face red and bleeding no doubt, the overseer harshly tugged her by arm and steered her to the cluster of other fourteen convicts waiting at the end of long hallway, outside an office. Smiles on faces, despite the redness and what lousy future awaited.

The overseer touched her back, and Syrene only grimaced. Her throat tightening at the scars he very well knew were carved beneath the delicate cloth. The scars bestowed by himself. He lowered just a bit and whispered, “I don’t suppose you will be forgetting me.” She heard the smile in his voice.

“Fret not,” she seethed, “I don’t imagine forgetting pricks would be easy.”

His hand lowered to her ass and Syrene felt every bit of dread awakening in her. “I hope not.”

Gazes of the cluster ahead drifted from the office to her, hearing the clanks of her dresteen, undoubtedly, as she approached. Syrene surveyed them, their scars, and wondered whether they’d broken any laws or were they here just like her because world was so messed up and unjust. Wondered whether they reproached Destiny, or were they deceived by their own beloveds to have petered out in the Voiceless Pits.

A woman from the cluster—immortal, as the golden core in eyes suggested—caught where the hand of the overseer was and a muscle in her jaw feathered, rage flickered. The golden lights from office sheen in her white-as-pearls hair and dark skin. She was beautiful—captivatingly beautiful. A sorceress, judging by the lilac eyes; and Syrene shoved down the image of a certain other sorceress she’d once known.

Sorceress’ power was undeniable, incomparable—one of the most lethal Vegreka—in rare cases, their mejest went deeper than the depth of a sea.

Those lilac eyes soared to Syrene’s face; the rage seething there made Syrene wonder just how long had the sorceress been here. Certainly not long enough for that rage to be alive. Or maybe it was born here.

Syrene didn’t particularly give a shit. About anyone, anything. About her body, about the overseer’s hand, about where she was being led. What Saqa awaited her. She didn’t give a care in the whole damned world.

About nothing, except one thing.

She halted. The overseer halting with her, hand reaching for the sword dangling from his hip. “Keep moving.”

Syrene only said, “My sword.”

“What.”

Everyone in the hallway motioned to her. She ignored them at best she could. “You took my sword when I was brought here, where is it.”

A scoff. “Are you serious?”

She angled her head. “Your definition of joking must be the worst. Not that I’m surprised.” A few sneers from the cluster, grimaces from the sentries. “Where in Saqa is my sword.”

The overseer attempted to grip her by her arm again, but Syrene swept it past. Her snarl that boomed in the hallway was inhuman enough for all the sentries to draw their weapons. And she could have sworn the sorceress behind the overseer was smiling.

But a snap of that whip on stone was enough for Syrene to drown in fear. Still, she managed, “Where is my sword?”

Someone from the office stepped out, had the cluster stirring and recoiling, but she was too busy hearing the reverberations of that snap. “What is happening here?” a soothing, manly voice demanded.

“She’s a prisoner no more,” the sorceress muttered to the red-haired man, “her belongings must be returned as law suggests.” The laws voted and concluded by each ruler on whole damn Ianov.

Tcoiines were the ones appointed from each continent to put forth the rulers’ decisions, to finalize the laws for the Voiceless Pits. Jegvr belonged to tcoiines. The cluster sometimes more powerful that the queens and the kings, for they represented whole continents.

The man stated, a harsh-soft tone, “Your belongings are all in here.” Syrene stilled. “They will be returned to you when you reach your owners.”

Her gaze firm at the overseer’s hideously lined face. “Were those words not forming in your aging useless brain?”

Rage was all Syrene caught before the overseer’s whip dashed for her.

Her instincts and reflexes from that inhuman form of three decades still nested, and had her dodging, her heart hammering with terror, earning a rip from the spike in her neck. Warm liquid trickled down her neck.

He launched the whip again but—

A wall of fire emerged between them, burning the hideous whip to ashes as it grazed the flames hot enough to heat the whole hallway.

Syrene blinked as the overseer recoiled, seething.

The man outside the office snarled, wall of fire fell. “Enough.”

“We will meet again, I swear it to all the otsatyas,” she promised the overseer. “And I will be the last person you will see.”

Syrene turned to the man by the office’s door. And stilled. Her heart paused as she took in the tall man’s waist-length red hair, tanned skin, eyes like fire burning bright in them, golden core tattling about his immortality. The predatory, still posture.

Beneath the layers, Syrene knew lain a tattoo of a dragon on his back. Everyone did.

Whether he held the power to burn everyone here if he willed, he did not let on. But he certainly noticed the stillness in her, fire eyes descended to the dresteen collaring her and demanded from the overseer, “Why is she still chained?”

It was then Syrene noticed the other fourteen were unchained. No shackles, no collars.

The overseer, the man who had had no fear or shame touching her ass in front of everyone, the man everyone here was horrified of, deemed him the most petrifying person alive, was now dwarfed by the one lingering by the office’s doors. The overseer’s voice held an unmistakable tremor as he spoke. “We were strictly warned about her.”

“That does not answer my question.”

He stuttered, “She might shift.”

Syrene restrained herself from rolling her eyes. She was not an Abyss-damned wolf. But there was no point in declaring that.

“Unchain her.”

She blinked at the easy command. Dangerous command. The overseer himself flinched. “But—”

“She is Queen Felset’s property, not the tcoiines’,” the man said simply. “Unchain her.”

Syrene hadn’t the faintest idea whether to be terrified or even more terrified that the Enchanted Queen herself had purchased her. That she was going to be living in one of the most pristine places she’d ever heard of—meaning, the merciless work. Too much light.

It was an effort to stay still as the overseer approached her, but she did. Succeeded at remaining still and yet … couldn’t contain her swallow. As the Heir to the Lady of Wolves, what a shame Syrene was. What a shame she’d become.

She felt each bit of it as he unlocked the shackles of her wrists first—the key turning in the lock reverberating in her skin. Felt them loosening and air grazing her skin. Five years. Five bloody years.

Syrene held the burning in her eyes, blinked through it as the dresteen shackles dropped and clanked to the stones, as he moved to the collar.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. And yet a warm tear slithered down her cheek as the free air grazed her neck in a smooth touch. A necklace of pale beads must be scarred on her neck—of the spikes. Just as her wrists were.

The overseer crouched to unchain her feet and it took everything in her to not kick his face and break that bulbous nose.

And when her feet were free, the Second to the Queen of Cleystein—looking and dressed well enough to suggest he was a prince—beckoned for her to stand with the others. The man who could turn to fire. An Abyss-damned firebreather. But all Syrene said was, “My sword.”

“Only the Queen of Cleystein decides when you’re handed it.”

His own dangled from his hip, its citrine glinting in golden lights of office.

She didn’t say more and stalked for the rest of the convicts—slaves now, Syrene supposed.

“Should’ve slit his throat with that dresteen,” the sorceress murmured as Syrene stepped beside her. “Bastard,” she spat.

Syrene stayed silent, glaring back at the overseer, at the chains in his hands. How many times had her blood caked those spikes every time she’d had to motion while being whipped? How many times had that metal brutally scratched at her wrists?

“Faolin Wisflave,” the woman named herself. “We’re both going to Cleystein’s capital.”

Feeling every moment of air on her neck, Syrene whipped her gaze to Faolin Wisflave’s direction, tried not to glare at the twin of her own scars on the sorceress’ neck.

Syrene’s words were simple, to the point. “I have no interest in friends.”