The Chains Of Freedom

  Skye’s ordeal lasted well into the night. He visited every police station in Troqua, arguing, demanding and pleading for anyone to believe his story. Instead, he was rejected, ridiculed, threatened, and almost arrested.

  Though disheartened, he didn’t give up. He tried to switch his narrative, to hide some facts and fabricate others. Sometimes, he revisited the same station after ringing his bell to make the constables forget they’d just chased him out. He’d summoned the bell until the act became instinctual for him, an afterthought. Until its sound struck him with a terrible headache, its chime banging painfully in his mind.

  He’d thought the reason for his failures was his disheveled state. And so, he cleaned his face, washed the grey dirt from his black fuzzy hair, dusted off his clothes as best he could, then entered another police station.

  He got yelled at, slapped, and only escaped by ringing his bell.

  His tale was simply… too wild. And the respect people held for the wardens couldn’t be shaken by the words of a lowly fourteen-year-old. Had he told the constables he was a shrooms addict, or confessed for murder, they wouldn’t have reacted as harshly.

  Finding shelter in his exhausted state proved just as hard. Troqua was riddled with caverns and hollows, yet they were all occupied by vagrants, territorial animals, or swarms of insects. And they all stank. As dawn neared, he finally found a small crater near Photrine District’s market square and surrendered to his fatigue.

  **********

  Gemlight brushed his face.

  Skye jolted upright, panting and slick with sweat. He turned left, then right, blinking hard as he tried to remember how he’d ended up in this filthy hole. The weight of last night’s event resettled over his mind, heavy, like dirt burying him alive. He didn’t fight the feeling. Didn’t push at the weight. He simply lay back, retreating to a dark corner.

  The aftereffects of the fantasia had expired, the petrification in his muscles and joints gone as if it never happened. But the deeper aches in his body, belonging to the fall, the exertion, and the beatings, lingered.

  The light crawled toward him, poking with sultry fingers at his eyes. He tried to crawl away, but he’d reached the end of this miniature cavern. Small wonder it had been unoccupied.

  Sighing, he sat up, stretched, his body aching at every move, then summoned the bell.

  It hovered at the edge of his sight, tiny, teasing with dread. It was real, not simply a dream.

  He wanted to know what this bell was, how he’d acquired it, and what its effects were exactly. It had saved his life, yes. But it also made it meaningless. No one knew him anymore. All his possessions were gone.

  There had to be ways it could help him. It was useful for avoiding capture, and sneaking, but nothing more. He wondered if there was a limit for rings before it expired. Or whether he could use it to secure some substantial evidence and stop those wardens.

  Sighing, he dismissed it, then exited his hideout, massaging his face. He was so absentminded he almost collided with a floating carriage, skimming past on lavender amegravo crystals.

  The streets were rife with traffic. The air swarmed with songbirds and bats. Eastward at the open-air market, vendors announced their products and services, their shouts and promises mixing into an uproar, while the smells of their coffee, perfumes, and spices filled the air. Today was a Zyxday. The wardens must have completed another trade run yesterday and brought heaps of merchandise for the city.

  Skye felt like a sealed steam engine, about to explode.

  His friends were slaughtered, and he’d failed to convince anyone to search for their murderers. He hated meandering about with no purpose. He needed a solution. A plan. Some sort of guidance. At the very least, he needed something to do to ease his mind.

  As he walked, he shifted his focus to his surroundings. Troqua was a world unto its own. Pillars like thin mountains, rose hundreds of feet high to support the roof, with vast walls as barriers separating the city into districts. Spiraling around the columns and settled across the walls, inside large stalagmites, and even some stalactites, buildings were dug into the stone, riddled with windows like the work of a vicious descent of stonepeckers.

  Skye loved gargantuan places, and he loved everything about the city. Its charm. Its grandeur. Its antiquity. But with the steel gates to the surface locking him from the rest of the world, Troqua felt less of a home and more of an oversized prison.

  Nonetheless, strolling through its streets felt like getting lost in a dream. Gemstones and crystals of every size and hue adorned the fa?ades of houses and shops, hovered atop street poles for illumination, and shimmered across the canopy above like a million shining stars. During daytime, they shone with the intensity of the sun, lighting up the city in gold and fire. By night, the gems were dimmed or covered, veiling the city in total darkness.

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  Skye loved the scenery, but not for the same reasons as many of its residents. To them, the flaunting of their city’s wealth was a symbol of pride, even if no foreigners were able to witness it. To Skye, hanging fortunes on walls while many of the city’s lower districts starved felt like cruelty. Moreover, he disliked how everything blinded him with its brilliance. And although pyrpphires were great for heating, he detested how they leered at him from every window, like the menacing red eyes of stalking deepbats.

  He sighed. He’d wanted to clear his mind, not cloud it with memories of the Deeps.

  Breathing deeply, he imagined how it’d feel to bask in Erillea’s light—their world’s golden sun. He’d heard it looked like a burning disk in the sky, and it hated to be glared at, blinding anyone who dared meet its gaze. Conversely, their second sun, Nemental, glowed with a soft blue radiance, but was too shy to show herself at the city. She shone only on the northeastern hemisphere of Inma, her light warming the opposite side of the Avyhandouse Mountains.

  Skye pictured himself climbing the highest peak of the Avyhandouse. There, the forest surrounded him. The blue ocean waved from afar. Oh, how he longed to exit this place and breathe the fresh air of the surface. If only he could sneak by the guards at Heaven’s Door somehow and-

  Sneak by?

  He stopped mid-step, realizing what a ginormous fool he was.

  **********

  Forty wardens manned Heaven’s Door. Their astra gleamed, hoods donned, black cloaks curling in the wind. An orderly line of workers and cargo snaked across the slanting passageway to the surface. Every person and parcel were inspected, checked, and matched against lists held by supervising officers.

  Heart bounding, Skye approached the steel gate, weaving among the laborers and crates, ringing his bell every time an inspector glanced his way. He wondered whether any of these wardens were present in the cave last night. Even moving slowly, fear made his breathing ragged by the time he reached the head of the line.

  He waited for the metalsmith channelers standing guard to twist their astra and open the great gate. It grated terribly, like the yawn of a slumbering beast. Then a group of cooks, janitors, and gardeners passed.

  Skye bolted.

  He shoved through the crowd, bypassing surprised guards. Chaos erupted. Wardens shouted, rushing from every direction, aiming their astra at him. Then a single ‘Dong!’ sounded and everything returned to normal.

  Shaking, wheezing, he rushed toward the bright exit at the end of the tunnel. When he fell under Erillea’s direct glare at last, he raised an arm to shelter his eyes till they adjusted. Then stared in awe.

  The sky stretched wider than he could ever imagine. It radiated a sense of endless possibilities, of freedom to visit everything it saw. White clouds drifted with the winds, and he wished to fly after them wherever they sailed. A cold breeze caressed his face, toying with his hair. It brought the fragrances of flowers mixed with the earthly aroma of the forest. He let it sweep through him, filling his soul. His entire body tingled. The hairs on his arms stood on end.

  I’m on the surface! he thought, breathless. I see the sky!

  It was so magnificent. So Gorgeous. So glorious! He spun around, taking it all inside him, swallowing the heavens with his eyes, laughing his heart out. Laughing aloud. Louder! Laughing the world’s worries away. Before today, he’d never felt sad, never experienced grief. He’d been happy his entire life. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes. Then sighed.

  He was free.

  He glanced around, noticing that his joy had drawn the attention of wardens and passersby alike. Grinning ear to ear, he rang his bell, and marched forward.

  The streets were narrow, lined by trees like soldiers standing at attention. Solarite District had more traffic than he’d anticipated. Servants were easy to spot in their meticulous uniforms, while merchants flaunted gem-studded dresses and tailored tuxedos.

  The houses here were built from wood instead of being dug from stone, with wide windows and grand gardens. They were nude of gems, which only made them more beautiful as the sunlight fell naturally, reflecting off puddles and foliage instead of brilliant crystal. It warmed his skin, feeling like a soft hug. In the absence of echo, the trills and tweets of birds sounded different, livelier. Even the insects looked beautiful here, more colorful, flying peacefully around the roses.

  Another patrol rounded the corner behind. Plenty of wardens walked about, seeming relaxed and gearing for a fight at the same time. His prospector’s outfit signaled him as out-of-place, and so he ran, ringing his bell, an ache exacerbating in his head with each additional chime.

  His short tour ended at the district’s edge. A massive wall rose almost a hundred feet high, separating Solarite from the forest and the rampaging monsters. Unlike the walls in the city, it was undecorated and rough, made to resemble the natural face of a cliff. Likely, stonemasons built it this way to avoid drawing unwanted attention.

  A hunger brewed in his eyes, demanding to see more. Rubbing dirt into his hands, he climbed like he often did in the Deeps. There were no steps or ladders, just the irregular handholds, but that was enough for him. Every step up brought him closer to the sky, to the place he felt he belonged. When he finally reached the top, his heart fluttered like a bird out of a cage.

  The forest stretched for miles and miles in every direction, a living ocean of green that made the vastness of Troqua, and even the Deeps, seem insignificant. Far away, the Avyhandouse Mountains ringed the horizon, grander than anything he could imagine, lethargic in their rest. Their snow-crowned peaks pierced the clouds. Clouds which scintillated with Nemental’s blue light like pixie-dust. Skye wondered how it’d feel to stand atop those mountains, basking in the lights of both suns at once.

  This was what life was all about. Living this beauty, being a part of it, was the apotheosis of everything he’d ever desired.

  What’s behind those mountains?

  He turned to his bell, or at least, chased it with his eyes as it floated away. He wanted to grasp and kiss it. To let it know how grateful he was.

  After getting forgotten by the Medhars, he’d thought it a curse imposed on him by some demonic force. But he was wrong. It was a heavenly blessing. Without it, he would have been destined to a life of roaming the Deeps. No, without it he would have died in that cave.

  If only Gideom could come here to witness all this beauty. The old man had spent his entire life underground and had never laid eyes on this azure expanse.

  A knot formed in his throat. His long-sought dream was fulfilled, but he had a much more crucial purpose now. He had to sabotage those wardens’ plans and bring them to justice. He couldn’t keep on wasting time like this.

  As he descended the wall, his stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday but hardened rations. From somewhere nearby, the appetizing scent of spice and baked bread invaded his nose, taking over his senses. Perhaps, a warm meal would help him conjure a proper plan.