Fortune imagined a striped, black-and-yellow bee landing on a flower. He remembered those beautiful, yellow, radiant meadows up above. He sniffed the air. The stench of decay tightened his throat, and he began to cough. He opened his eyes a crack. He was lying in the mud, his head pressed against a tree trunk. The crimson light of dusk shone through the bare branches of the trees. Their red, rusted leaves had grown tired and spun to the ground. The sky was overcast, and the wind blew through the trees, rustling the leaves. The world swayed around Fortune, as if he were on a ship. He didn't even try to stand up; he already felt nauseous. His hands and buttocks were chilled, he was cold, and he needed to piss. He pounded the mud with his fist. The breeding tent was just a few meters away. In his hand was an open vial. He forgot to breathe for a moment. He lifted his hand to look into it. It was almost full; not much had spilled out. He put the cork back on, then held it up to his eyes, staring at the dark liquid for a while. He thought that if he didn't start working immediately, they would beat him to death when it was time to account for his day's work.

  Dizzy, occasionally tripping over his own feet, he began knocking apples off the trees. He brought only a little to his sanctuary, but at least the few apples quickly roasted over the fire. He tossed the sack onto the cart and set off for the warehouse. He slapped the reins to urge Broom on, who nearly knocked his head off with the club on his tail. The warehouse was a long, wrought-iron building at the heart of the estate, beside the main building and the watchtower. When he stepped out the door, the shadow of the tower fell directly on him. There were always five or six guards standing in front. Like at the food distribution, the slaves lined up to present the results of their work. They unloaded the sacks full of sugarworms one by one, each bringing their own. If the inspectors didn't find it sufficient, they would whip the slave at best, but in many cases, they would simply execute them and have the others haul away the trash.

  Most were already heading back to the pen; only eight carts were in front. He found himself looking for a way to dash away as the line dwindled before him. He stood there waiting, like the other useless wretches before him. He would have liked to plunge a dagger into his own stomach.

  "Is that all?" the guards said, then dragged one of the women aside and took her into the dark depths of the building. The line stood still, and the slaves began whispering and laughing among themselves. Fortune listened to the squelching sounds coming from deep inside the warehouse.

  When they reappeared, one of the guards grabbed the woman's arm and pulled her forward. Her face showed no sign of suffering or humiliation. There was no sign of anything, as if the light had been switched off inside. Only the red handprints on her face and thigh suggested that something had happened in the past few minutes. She adjusted her slipping sackcloth dress and hurried away with her cart. The guards called after her, telling her to work harder next time, or she’d be whipped.

  Fortune was next in line. He brought half as much as the woman. He held out the nearly empty sack.

  "Something's wrong with the mosquitoes; there are no worms in the apples," Fortune muttered, lowering his eyes. He could only see the red mud and horse manure on the guards' boots while suppressing the urge to gouge out their eyes. He took deep breaths.

  One of the guards threw him against the iron girder of the warehouse.

  One drew a whip, and the other a sword.

  After a few lashes, Fortune's sackcloth was hanging off his back in shreds.

  "Stupid, stinking scum. You should have reported it immediately. Are you stealing from your master, loafing around? Because of you. They'll. Come. After. Us."

  The guard spat, screaming at him while lashing the whip. No matter how Fortune tried to protect himself, bloody welts sizzled across his stomach, thighs, arms, and back, wherever the whip struck.

  "You're lying. You've been slacking off. Admit it, you worthless scum!" Fortune couldn't even say he wasn't lying between two lashes. Each time, his cries were split and distorted by the whip. The whip hissed through the air with every word of the guard, cracking across Fortune's bloody back.

  The man holding the whip stood in front of him, panting, wiping the saliva dripping from his chin. Fortune whimpered, curled up on the ground.

  "I'll report this to the watchers," said the guard.

  ***

  At night, Fortune would crawl into his tent and wait until every sound had died down. But his tent had been taken away. The ground was damp, and he had no doubt that it would only take a few weeks for him to fall ill, cough up all his internal organs, and have his remains devoured by his neighbors and the mice.

  He hadn't eaten for days, and weakness clung to every fiber of his being. Even keeping his eyes open felt like a struggle. He could have at least lined his bedding with something, but he didn't need to look around to know he was being watched. If he tried to do anything to improve his situation, his remaining weeks would be cut short to mere seconds.

  The first lights on the wall flickered on, and the campfires in the slave pen flared up. The gossip began about the estate, the estate lord, the lord's new whore, the guards, the smell of each other's armpits, and anything else they could argue about. Facing them, Fortune saw dark silhouettes waving their hands, jumping, or leaning forward with their hands on their hips, shouting and spitting into each other's mouths. He closed his eyes and let these sounds blend in his ears. He inhaled the cool, damp air, which smelled like an open wound shoved under his nose. That was all it took, and the shouting around him transformed into a chorus of screams, final cries, and gurgles; the ground beneath him became a blood-soaked battlefield. He took deep breaths and lowered his head onto the blood-drenched earth.

  He clawed at the mud as his eyes snapped open. He immediately looked up at the sky. The stars were still there, and the sun was not yet in its place. His heart pounded in his chest as he wondered how long he had slept. His face was wet with mud and his own saliva. His eyes teared up, and his arm trembled. In the camp, most fires were just embers, conversations had died down, and only a half-wit was still awake, biting off a bird's head in front of the fire. The man was quick, and the bird barely had time to squawk. He spat the head out onto the ground, and blood splattered onto his face from the bird's neck. It twitched a few more times before its claws clenched for the last time.

  "I've made a sacrifice to you, god of bones. Absorb every bit of it into yourself. Help your servant, god of bones. Spill their blood, take them to your kingdom," the man chanted, holding the headless body.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Fortune's blood pounded in his ears as he clawed at the ground. The man plucked and gnawed the bird down to the bone. He tore off both wings and painstakingly hung the feathers on the bone totem. He also added the fresh, still-bloody remains to his masterpiece. He knelt before the totem, muttered another prayer, and then crawled into his tent. Fortune waited a while longer, then headed for the pen fence. He needed to collect bones, preferably as soon as possible. He had to be ready with everything by morning. The mosquitoes always left behind carcasses on the ground, so he knew he'd find some there, but he had to set out right away. When he grabbed the edge of the pen's wooden fence, he stopped, then turned toward the bone totem glowing in the red embers.

  Fortune stood before the totem. Its top was crowned with skulls, like a crown on a head. Most were torn from birds and mice, but there was also one human skull. Fortune didn't know who the lucky one was.

  He stroked the bones. Fortune's hand clenched around a bone. Amid cracks, rattles, and crunches, he tore it off whole.

  "Who's there?" the servant of the god of bones shouted as he crawled out of his tent.

  He looked around, turning his head up and down, left and right. Fortune hid behind the totem.

  "Did you call, god of bones?"

  For a few moments, all he could think was that if he were discovered, it would be the end of him. Then he spoke anyway:

  "Yes, it is I, my loyal servant."

  The slave fell to his knees. "Oh, god of bones, why have you called me?"

  "Foolish mortal, can you not see with your eyes? My totem, which you built in my honor, has been attacked, desecrated." For a moment, the slave looked like a fish out of water with his mouth wide open.

  "Who did this?"

  "A stinking, pathetic, worthless unbeliever who does not respect me. Does not respect the supreme god, the god of bones."

  "Who?"

  "The servant of the shit god. He did it. You must avenge his deed."

  The slave unhooked a small trinket from his belt—a sharpened piece of bone shaped into a blade. It was about the length of Fortune’s index finger. "I will avenge the insult," the man muttered and headed off into the shadows toward the totem of the shit god.

  Fortune followed him, hiding in the darkness. The stench soon hit his nose. The fire was barely flickering, but the shit god’s worshipper was already snoring in his tent. The bone god’s follower crouched down to pull back the tent flap. His yellowed teeth glistened in the dim light as he sneered at the sleeping man. His eyes were narrow slits, his skin wrinkling around them. The sleeping worshipper’s head and neck lay right before him. The bone god’s follower raised the bone knife high with both hands, then plunged it into the man’s throat. He grabbed at his neck, but by then he was already getting the next stab, and then another, and another. Blood poured from his throat, pooling in front of the tent. He likely wanted to scream, but the last of the air in his lungs gurgled through the gash in his throat. The puddle of blood grew larger in the firelight, and Fortune couldn’t help but chuckle in the shadows.

  "I've done it. I've avenged his sin, god of bones," he muttered, then stabbed the man two more times. Panting, he looked toward the bone totem.

  "No, your task is not yet finished."

  "But I did it, I killed the blasphemer." He lifted the dead man's head. The knife was still in his throat.

  "The shit god still lives, his totem still stands," Fortune whispered from the shadows, just loud enough for the slave to hear. The servant immediately set to work, pounding away at the stinking structure. "There is only one way to destroy the shit god."

  "How? I'll do anything!"

  "You must eat his totem. Every single piece."

  It took only a moment, and he grabbed a handful of the stinking dung heap and began shoveling it into his mouth.

  Fortune watched from the darkness, grinning broadly as the servant stuffed fistfuls of dung into his mouth, then swallowed and reached for another handful. He gagged, the filth dripping down his chin, foam bubbling at his mouth, but he kept going. He muttered something to his god, then suddenly doubled over, grabbed his throat, and his eyes bulged. He died facing his totem.

  ***

  After he had his fill of watching the slave's final, agonizing, silent scream, overwhelmed by filth, he stripped the bones and feathers from the totem and then set out. He stealthily traversed the pastures to snap a few reeds from a lake. He carried these to the breeding tent where he was supposed to meet one of the watchers. Fortune had no idea when the sun would rise. There were no more days left for preparations. He unpacked the bones, feathers, and reeds, then continued on to the thieves.

  His legs barely carried his own weight, and it seemed like every twenty steps he wanted to fall asleep. He was forced to stop at each tree to shake or slap himself, just to force some alertness into his body with pain. The growing scent of the blood season made what little saliva he had left pool in his mouth, and a sharp pain shot through his stomach as if a spear had been thrust into him.

  When he finally arrived at the spot where he’d found the sword and the sedative, it was as if Darkness itself had reached out from the shadows to seize him. A thick hand grabbed him under the arm and slammed him against a tree. Fortune lost consciousness for a moment. If the man hadn't screamed into his mouth and he hadn't inhaled his breath, he probably wouldn't have woken up until morning. The same voice, the same force. He was the one who had nearly decapitated him. Now he pressed his neck against the tree with the blade of the sword.

  "I'm not in a patient mood. I want to see you here tomorrow when the sun sets, with the rizus in your hand. Do you understand?" Fortune wanted to respond, but he could only gasp and choke. When he was finally released, he fell to the ground coughing.

  "You'll get your rizus tomorrow," Fortune said when he finally caught his breath, but by then there was no one there anymore. "You'll get your damn rizus. I don't know how, but you'll get it."

  ***

  There was hardly anything left of the night. Back at the breeding tent, he scraped resin from the trees and used it to start a fire. His head felt like it was being dragged down by a stone. He thought back to the looks from the slaves and the thieves, just to rile himself up and keep from falling asleep. He used a small knife to craft the blowpipe, which, like the bone god’s servant’s knife, was made of bone, but it wasn’t nearly as sharp. As he worked on the reeds, his hand slipped several times, cutting or stabbing himself. Melted resin also dripped onto him, causing fresh blisters to form on his fingers and palms by the time he finished the first three darts. By the fourth, his hand was shaking; he searched the sky for the sun. He threw it down, stood up, grabbed the reed blowpipe and the small darts, and pinned a fallen leaf to the trunk of a tree. He backed away fifteen paces, loaded a feathered dart into the blowpipe, put the other end in his mouth, and blew.

  The dart didn't even reach the tree.

  The same happened with the remaining two; they were no better. Fortune threw the blowpipe away and paced back and forth before starting to search for them among the branches, wasting more time. He tried again.

  He had no more success than the first time.

  He picked them up once more and blew into the pipe again. After a while, he took a much deeper breath before giving it another shot, but even that was insufficient. Then he forced air through the tube even harder. His mouth tensed and numbed. If he had to strain his face any more, it would have simply burst like the blisters on his hands.

  Another blow, the leaf remained intact, but at least this time the dart flew past the tree.

  More attempts followed, sometimes reaching the tree, sometimes not.

  He soon realized that the hole in the blowpipe was too wide and the thickness of the darts was uneven. There was no more time to correct these issues. He pinched the front of the tube, which helped somewhat.

  He tried to aim as accurately as possible, but out of ten attempts, maybe one came close to the tree. Perhaps out of two hundred attempts, one hit the edge of the leaf.

  He collapsed, exhausted. He had neither the time nor the energy left. The Moon was still up. He clasped his hands together, looked into the eye of Darkness, and began his prayer. He asked for the Light’s blessing for his darts to be accurate and for the Darkness's blessing that every slave and every thief he had encountered should suffer under his hands. He vowed to fulfill the path set out for him, starting tomorrow with the first step towards freedom. Then he asked for two more blessings from the Light, for his darts to be accurate.

  Fortune keeps walking deeper into the dark, and Ignis still can't see the flame.

  A new chapter will be released every day at 6 PM (UTC) – until the end.

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  See you in the Darkness.