Moonday, Week 9, Month Unus, Year of God 488

  “Go clam,” Ruvaniel said boredly as he slapped a card down onto the rickety wooden table.

  “Dammit,” Bartholeman hissed. “Guess you win this match, Ruve.”

  “Yes!” Ruve said as he swept fake wooden coins into his lap. Kane watched the two Sun Castemen play cards as he slumped against the wall, stroking and pulling at his long, scraggly beard. He had been here for many months, in a dingy prison on the outskirts of Elairael in the Are District. This was in the far west of the Holy Kingdom, as close to heathen territory as one could get.

  He shared his cell with four other Sun Castemen - Ruve, Bartho, another man named Sebaston, and an elderly woman named Lucenderah. Baston was sleeping on his cot, loudly snoring and Lucie was playing solitaire on hers. Ruve and Bartho were former janitors who had accidentally wounded a Rain Casteman during a bar fight, and Baston had been a serial killer who had murdered four bootmakers in Ylnyn before he was captured. His murderous tendencies had been seemingly curbed in prison, but his cellmates nonetheless acted warily around him. Lucie chose to remain silent about her reasons for being arrested. All four had been Fire Caste, making Kane the odd one out. They’d been friendly to him, but the undertones of class had permeated their interactions with him - they still thought of him as Rain Caste and treated him distantly.

  All of a sudden, Lucie spoke, in a terrified, ranting voice. As she spoke, she scattered her playing cards all over the floor. “Pain will happen today, yes, yes, we’re all going to die, die, pain, oh, make it stop, something will happen, please, Gaia save my soul, please,” and then abruptly stopped. She came to, jolting awake almost as if she had been asleep. Kane and his cellmates looked incredulously at her - this was probably the greatest amount of words Lucie had ever uttered in her time in the cell.

  Baston jolted awake. “What the hell was that?” he exclaimed.

  “Sorry,” Lucie said. “I don’t know what overcame me.”

  “What the sun is Gaia?” Kane asked. He had never heard that name - it obviously was a name.

  Lucie visibly tensed. A look of fear entered her eyes. “I don’t know,” she obviously lied. “Just… popped into my mind.”

  They let the matter slide, resting for another few hours. During that time, the guards entered the room and ladled slop and water into the prisoners’ wooden bowls. The food was repulsive, but it kept you alive.

  Kane was just ladling another spoonful of abhorrent food-excuse into his mouth when a key turned in the lock.

  “Eh?” Ruve said. “Guards just came here a few hours ago.”

  “Funny,” Bartho replied. He snickered. “Maybe they’re bringin’ more food.”

  Unfortunately, the six men who stepped through the door weren’t the regular guards. They wore actual armor instead of the blue cloth uniforms common to the regular Wind Caste guards. They were actual soldiers instead of the peacekeepers common in the interior of the Holy Kingdom. They had to contend with armed, disciplined enemies instead of poorly trained criminals. Kane had never seen armored men, but had heard of them from his education. They were merciless and selfish, making them good soldiers but awful police.

  “Listen up, rats!” one of the men said. His helmet had a golden plume on top of it, marking him as the group’s commander. “Today, your test begins.”

  Kane and his cellmates gasped. The “test” was what every Sun Casteman had to go through. When the soldiers spotted a noticeably large group of heathens, they brought in the Sun Caste. Having to fight armed soldiers (albeit ones without Lux) caused most of the unlucky prisoners to die. Once the Sun Castemen died, the soldiers would fly in and blast the enemy to ashes with their Lux. If, by some miracle, a Sun Casteman survived, that person would be promoted to Fire Caste and sent to a Fire Caste village to work.

  “Follow us,” the guard continued. “Make one step out of line and you’ll be fried like a rat for dinner.”

  The guards moved into the prison and began to prod at Kane and his cellmates with long clubs. Having no choice, they went along with the treatment. Kane was flooded with fear. Every part of his mind screamed, “I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die…”

  Ruve and Bartho were breathing heavy with terrified looks in their eyes, even more scared of their impending doom than Kane was. Baston was grinning. Kane looked incredulously at the former serial killer as his face was split in a rictus grin. Clearly he was happy about the prospect of maybe killing people. Lucie was emotionless. Her breathing was normal, and her eyes conveyed no fear whatsoever.

  “How can you be calm at a time like this?” Kane harshly whispered to Lucie.

  “Whatever happens, Gaia is with me,” she responded. “If She decides that it’s my time to die, then I’ll accept Her will.”

  All of a sudden, it dawned on Kane. Lucie had been arrested for heresy. She believed and worshipped a deity other than the God of Rain. That was a serious crime, but Kane wasn’t in any position to judge, considering his blasphemous nature. The guards continued prodding Kane down the hall, causing his fear to only grow.

  TWO HOURS LATER

  Kane and his cellmates stood beholding a large field. Over a hundred other Sun Castemen gathered in clumps alongside them and farther down the field. At the other end of the field was a ten-foot-high chain link fence that stretched off to the horizon both left and right. This border wall ran all around the Holy Kingdom of God and prevented anyone from entering or exiting, aside from well-fortified gates every twenty or so miles apart. The Sun Castemen were currently standing around a hundred feet from one of said gates. Several Wind Caste soldiers were hovering at various heights above the assembled crowd, some on the other side of the wall.

  “All right, listen up!” the nearest soldier called, his voice magnified by Lux. “A group of heathens has been spotted on the other side of the wall! Your job is to kill every last one of them! Failure to do so will be responded to with execution! Also, if you flee, you will be executed! But if you succeed and purge God’s wilds of these degenerates, you will be promoted to Fire Caste and lose your sinful status!”

  At this, some of the assembled criminals cheered, but most remained silent and solemn. They knew that they were going to die in agony despite the propaganda from the soldier.

  In a few minutes, the guards opened the gates. They began to herd Kane and his companions forward, a tide of bodies sweeping through the hole. Then, they were out in the wilderness. A couple people tried to flee to the north, but they were slaughtered with beams of fire from the guards’ eyes. One of them laughed and said something in Highchant. The rest of the group moved forward to the west. While there were several clumps of trees scattered about the field, the rest of it was flat and empty as far as the eye could see.

  Quickly, the group spotted their enemy. Hundreds of figures stood in loose clusters, milling around aimlessly. As the prisoners got closer, they could clearly see the enemy now. They weren’t humans.

  The 200 or so enemy soldiers appeared to be made out of dirt, clay and chunks of rock. They were a facsimile of a human figure, like a child might make with modelling clay. They had no neck or facial features, and had hefty, club-like arms. They wore no clothing, but had no discernable physical features to hide. Each had a faint red line, almost like an incorporeal string, reaching from its head to a distant point behind a small hill. Upon noticing the humans moving towards them, the earth-creatures advanced.

  Since Kane was at the back of the mob, he could only hear the sounds of fighting and death. Shouts, screams and rumbles ripped through the air. A plume of dirt flew high into the air a few dozen feet in front of Kane. Suddenly, the throng of bodies cleared just enough to give Kane a view of the field.

  Dozens of human corpses, chunks of viscera, and piles of dirt littered the ground. The earth-men punched humans with enough force to knock off a limb or send you flying ten feet in the air. The humans fought back by scraping chunks of earth off the enemy, using their rocky body parts as impromptu weapons. A group of around fifteen people stood in formation, using primitive hammers fashioned from large stones tied to sticks. They were presumably criminals with military training. How they made those hammers in prison, Kane had no sun-damned idea.

  As he watched, the formation began to break. Earth-creatures swarmed around the armed criminals, bludgeoning them to death with arms and legs made of dirt and pebbles. While the formation felled many earth-creatures, there were simply too many. Kane looked around frantically. He saw that many of the other Sun Castemen were dead, downed, or otherwise injured. He looked around, and saw the horrifically mangled corpses of his cellmates. Ruve and Bartho - or what remained of them - were lying in a pile, unmoving. Their unblinking, glazed eyes stared up at the clouds as rain began to turn the bloody ground into crimson mud.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Baston wasn’t dead, but he might as well be - he was missing both his legs and his left arm. He still twiched fitfully as an earth-creature moved away from him, its rocky arm covered in blood. Miraculously, Lucie was still alive. She had plucked a flat, wide stick from the ground and was using it as an impromptu shield to deflect blows from a mangled earth-creature as she punched and scraped at it. She and the earth-creature were surrounded by mountains of corpses and trod-upon earth. Kane quickly surveyed the battlefield. There were around 20 or so humans still standing, and only 10 or so earth-creatures.

  In a split-second decision, he rushed towards Lucie. The elderly woman was surprisingly spry, dodging out of the way of the rocky monstrosity’s lethargic yet powerful blows. She scraped dirt off its flank, creating a noticeable gouge. Kane picked up a bloodstained rock off the ground and bashed the earth-creature on the head. A chunk of dirt was dislodged from the back of its scalp and it turned to Kane, focusing empty eye-holes on him. Lucie pummeled it with her fist and shield and Kane slammed his rock on the creature’s head, causing more earth, gravel and pebbles to fall to the ground.

  “Go for the core of its head!” Lucie cried. “There’s a hard rocky bit that causes these things to instantly die!” Kane heeded her warning, and dug his rock deep into the creature. It thrashed, hitting Kane in the side.

  The blow hurt like sun, but wasn’t enough to knock him off his feet. As his rock dug into the earthy flesh of his enemy, Kane hit a hard bit. Smirking to himself, he raised the rock, then drove it deep into the creature’s skull. It instantly collapsed into an inanimate pile of dirt.

  Lucie was panting heavily, gasping for breath as she sunk to her knees. “Gaia got us through that pretty good, I’d say,” she rasped. “Earth Mother, though, I thought I was gonna die.”

  “Is Gaia your god?” Kane asked, curious of the figure the elderly woman kept mentioning.

  “More or less,” Lucie stuttered. “It’s why I’m out here fighting heathens instead of making rain barrels.”

  All of a sudden, it dawned on him. He pictured the green-clad woman from his last dream before being imprisoned many months ago. Could that be Gaia? He didn’t have time to think about that, and he steeled himself.

  Kane helped his comrade to her feet, and the two of them surveyed the carnage. Three other humans survived - two burly, muscle-bound young men and an out-of-shape middle-aged man. None of the earth-creatures were alive.

  The human survivors rushed towards each other. One of the muscular men burst into tears. “Is it over?” he said in a tentative voice.

  “No, it is not!” cried a voice from above. A ray of light cleaved through the ground a few feet away from the survivors. Kane, upon looking upwards, spotted the soldier who had given the propaganda speech hovering two dozen feet above the ground. “The other heathens are just beyond that hill,” he said, gesturing to the hill where Kane had saw the red lines that protruded from the earth-creatures going to. “Go kill them.”

  The five Sun Castemen groaned. They began to trudge towards the hill, winded, wounded and shaken from the death and pain they’d been around and experienced. As they got closer to the hill, they saw two human figures standing at its peak.

  Unlike the other enemies, they were unmistakably humans. One was a man and one was a woman. Both were young, muscular and had reddish-brown hair. They wore suits of metallic rings underneath long green cloaks. They carried what looked like arm-sized knives (swords, Kane remembered from his studies) and shields. The man barked out something in an unfamiliar language, then retreated down the other side of the hill. His companion stood, surveying her enemies.

  The two burly men hefted their rocks and charged the woman. She put her foot backwards into a defensive stance. As they rushed her, she swung her blade, deftly maneuvering so as not to be an easy target. Her sword cut the arm of one of the men, causing him to cry out in pain. The other man slammed his rock against the woman’s helmet, causing a noticeable dent. She shouted in pain and drove her sword through the chest of the other man. He screamed, then fell limp as she pulled her weapon out with a sickening squish.

  As if on cue, the middle-aged man rushed up the hill. Lucie looked at Kane, then, shouting, “For Gaia!”, barreled up the hill. Kane followed behind at a slightly slower pace. He stopped focusing on the fight, as he was so tired and stressed that he could fall over if he stopped focusing.

  As he crested the hill, he saw that the two men were lying bleeding on the ground alongside the woman. Her head was smashed in and bits of brain and entrail were spilled on the ground next to the rocks the men had used. The one who had been stabbed was pretty much dead, and his companion was missing his right hand and some of his toes. He was clutching his stump with his left hand and howling in agony.

  As much as it pained Kane, he knew that the man was already dead and there was no point in saving him. He turned his attention to the other side of the hill. Looking down, he saw three heathens. One was the armored man. The other two, whose genders could not be discerned, were slumped on the ground. They were wearing black cloaks studded with stylized moons, stars and suns with the hoods up. Kane could barely glimpse their faces, groggy and scared at the same time. The man was apparently trying to get his companions to get up and run away, shaking them and shouting at them in his language.

  As if on cue, the middle-aged man and Lucie charged down the hill, shouting. The warrior rushed up to meet them, but the middle-aged man dropped to his knees in front of the charging fighter, tripping him. The two began to tumble down the hill as the robed figures began to crawl away.

  “Go! Get him!” the middle-aged man shouted as he tumbled down the hill with his adversary. Lucie rushed down the hill, stopping when the rolling people ceased movement. Kane surveyed the fight, and coughed with revulsion. The Sun Casteman was dead, his neck sticking out at an odd angle. The warrior was still alive, albeit barely. Lucie removed the man’s helmet, then dispassionately slammed her rock down onto the man’s face like a machete on a watermelon. As Kane ran down the hill, gingerly so as not to fall and meet the same fate as his other comrade, he got a good glimpse of Lucie slamming her rock over and over again into the man’s face.

  It was at this moment that the two hooded figures got up and charged at Lucie. She got up and turned around just as the enemies reached her. They punched and kicked at her amateurishly. She dodged the first couple blows, but a kick to the groin area caused her to stagger.

  “A little help here, kid!” she called to Kane as the other robed person uppercut her side. Kane, heeding her request, rushed in and punched the nearest figure on the back of the head. The person shouted - in a female-sounding voice - and crumpled to the ground. Kane turned his attention to the other figure, but the person raked his long, sharp fingernails on Lucie’s throat.

  Normally, the blow would have hurt and required medical treatment, but wouldn’t have necessarily been lethal. However, in addition to the frailty from her age, Lucie had been winded and wounded. Additionally, the person’s nails were long and sharp, almost like small knives. She crumpled to the ground, clutching her throat and gurgling as blood dribbled out.

  With an adrenaline-fueled roar, Kane rushed the other figure and wrestled him to the ground. The person’s hood came off, revealing him as a young man with similar features to the other heathens. He looked up in terror as Kane repeatedly slammed his fist into his face. He groaned a few times, then went silent. His eyes glazed over as blood streamed out of his nose, mouth and neck.

  Kane panted, catching his breath. The adrenaline surging through him lessened as his body realized he was no longer in danger. Then he remembered. Lucie.

  The elderly woman was lying on the ground, drawing in ragged breaths. Her hands had staunched much of the blood flow, but she couldn’t breathe properly. Kane winced as she tried to speak.

  “Ga… Gaia bless… You, child,” she wheezed. The sentence was broken up by several coughing fits.

  “No, Lucie!” Kane exclaimed “Please…”

  Lucie continued to cough, each fit growing worse and worse. After a minute of this agony, she stopped. She closed her eyes tight, and drew one last shaky breath.

  “P… p-praise… G-Gaia,” she rasped. Then, she stilled and the muscles keeping her eyes closed ceased their grip in death.

  “No!” Kane cried. “Don’t die! I can’t be the only survivor!” At this point, he was more or less shouting at the sky. Grief surged through him. Although he had only known Lucie for a short time, she had saved his life and sanity more times than he could ever repay her for.

  “God’s rainy will!” came a response from the heavens. “This degenerate actually survived!” The voice came from the soldier from before, hovering along with a companion.

  “At least we don’t have to mop up the ones the fodder didn’t get,” the other Wind Casteman replied. He lowered himself to the ground, then grabbed Kane by the shoulder.

  “Up you go, friend,” he said in a condescending voice. “We said that if you survived this, you would be pardoned. It’s a once-in-a-rainless-day occurrence that anyone does, but we’re devout Rain-worshippers and are true to our word.”

  The two Wind Castemen grabbed Kane by the arms and soared through the sky. His breath left him as a feeling of weightlessness overtook him. He looked down, and saw the true horror of the carnage from the sky. Piles of mangled bodies lay surrounded by mud and chunks of earth and rock. The rain soaked into the ground, mixing with the horrific stains. Smaller chunks of entrail and material began to wash away.

  Kane barely paid any attention to it. He was… shaken. So much had happened in a short period of time, and his mind struggled to process it. For now, he settled to look in front of him, at the rapidly-approaching fence a yard or so below. The guards flew over it, then unceremoniously dumped Kane on the ground a short distance in front of the wall. They landed a few feet away.

  Kane tried to pick himself up off the ground, but he was too tired. He heard the soldiers talking as he drifted out of consciousness.

  “The Yalen District needs more farmers,” the first one said. “We should probably bring him there.”

  The second one grunted in agreement. “The plague there’s been wreaking havoc. That district is one of the more populous ones, so it needs every hand it can get.”

  “I, on the other hand, need some more clams in this belly of mine,” the first soldier responded. “Mossrain Hold produces the best ones.”

  “No, you idiot! Mossflower Hold does!” the other soldier responded. The first guffawed goodheartedly and lightly punched the other on the shoulder. The second began laughing. Kane was disgusted. They had witnessed the brutal massacre of a hundred barely-armed people, and were laughing and enjoying themselves. He eventually lost consciousness, and fell into a fitful, dreary sleep as the distant screams and cries from the dying people on the battlefield swept across the rainy air.