The voice message had given me some really strong chills. Like someone had come back from the dead and they were out to get me. Regardless of this, there was no trace of Wraith, and the ship might have had other clues for me to remember things.
Dad seemed deep in thought over the message, after I had explained it to him, anyway. However, I decided to leave him be a bit and continue on looking for other memories. Most of the place was wrecked, but every scrap seemed just as familiar as the next. No memory triggered at all, not even one of those stupid foggy glimpses that I’d come to hate. Just when I had wanted one, of course none had come to me. There was one thing I noticed though. I reeked.
Today’s scavenging trip had gone longer than usual and I had been sweating a decent amount. Besides, I’d been wearing these clothes since the last wash day, the next one would be tomorrow, but I just couldn’t wait. Besides, I kind of wanted to try on some of the new clothes I’d gotten. Before we headed back home, I asked Dad if he’d step out for a second so I could change into something else. He obliged and sat outside, waiting.
I had decided on going with the pink floral dress, it looked like the comfiest one of the bunch. I had had a preconceived notion that dresses were hard to get on for some reason, but this one was a lot easier to just slip on than I expected. Either way, I was no longer wearing the stinky makeshift dress that I’d been wearing nearly the whole time. Not saying that it didn’t have a charm to it, but its charm certainly wasn’t very evident when it stank to high heaven.
When I stepped to the edge of the door, Dad lifted me up and out of the cabin.
“That looks very pretty on you, good choice Kaelynn.” Dad complimented my attire. I don’t think I, or any of my clothing, had ever been referred to as “pretty” before, but it made me really happy to hear it for some reason. Probably because Dad said it.
“Thanks Dad,” I hugged his leg tightly, “now let’s get going before it gets too dark.” And with that, we set out toward home. The sun was getting pretty low, it’d been a long day and being out here at night didn’t seem preferable. I held Dad’s hand for a bit, but let go after realizing that I still had some energy to burn. I decided on running around a bit and hiding to jump out at Dad, I know, childish right?
After hiding and jumping out a few times, it had gotten pretty dark. The light was just of the cloud-hidden moon, so I figured I’d just hide one more time. As I settled behind a rock, I felt the sand shift underneath me. I was grabbed from behind, once again... dang, I must be really unaware...
However, the grasp that held me this time was not the familiar embrace I’d gotten used to. Instead, rough, yet hairless hands grabbed my face aggressively. A tight and hostile grip wrapped around my waist, pulling on me to keep me from squirming. I tried to wrestle my way out, but I was unsuccessful in this tiny form.
My line of sight tilted from straight forward to straight up as I felt myself fall back on top of the attacker’s torso. Suddenly, I felt the weight of sand piling up over me, my attacker still gripping me tightly. I closed my eyes as a wave of sand assaulted my face, the weight now covered my whole body as I became buried in sand.
A silence persisted for just a few seconds before I could hear my Dad’s muffled voice calling out for me. I tried to call back to him, but my voice was so stifled that I couldn’t even hear it. Then another noise stood out from the background of my Dad’s shouting. The noise of crude engines roaring throughout the open desert. Bandits.
Once the engine sound had become so clear and unchanging that it was obvious they had arrived, I heard the voice of someone.
“Stop, Eindresil! We will kill your follower if you attack!” The commanding voice shouted out.
I wasn’t sure who “Eindresil” was, but that question was soon answered as my Dad’s voice replied.
“I have no follower, Rider of Koujax! You have ten seconds before I slaughter all of your men!”
“Heron! Show yourself!”
I felt the sand beneath me begin to shift once again as my attacker and I rose from the sand. I squinted open my eyes, trying not to get sand in them as my attacker and I shifted into the sightline of my father and the group of bandit riders.
“If you find no value in this female,” the commanding man let out with a sneer, “then we will take it and be on our way, Eindresil.”
My Dad looked at me with a sad expression and then to my attacker with a terrifying rage, causing him to take a stagger backward. As my father’s gaze shifted back to the commanding man, he grimaced.
“What do you want from me, Rider?”
“Nothing from you, Eindresil. We want you,” a short pause ensued before the commanding man spoke again, “there is no greater trophy, after all.”
Dad looked between me and the commanding man a few times, eventually submitting to be taken with the promise of no harm to me.
Tears began streaming down my face because of the stress of the moment. I was pushed onto the ground and my hands and feet were bound before I was set on the back of a four-wheeler type vehicle. My Dad was approached with caution by the bandits as they clasped thick metal cuffs onto his wrists. He was guided to a separate four-wheeler. As he sat on the back, the vehicle’s rear end sagged almost into the dune below. The bandits set their heaviest man as a counterweight to drive that vehicle, lifting the rear slightly higher from the dune.
The vehicle that held my dad was the second in the formation, behind only what I assumed to be the leader of the group. He was the one who was doing all the talking previously. I cried the whole way to our destination. If only I wasn’t such a weakling...
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
***
The camp had been visible well before we had arrived. A few plumes of black smoke arose from inside the massive stone walls. It was less of a camp and more of a fortified “luxury” prison. “Luxury” for the actual inhabitants, that is, not the ones who were there against their will. We stopped at a large front gate, it soon opened, sending the door upward as the four-wheelers began to be able to comfortably fit underneath.
They unloaded us from the vehicles, we seemed to be their only cargo. They must’ve been planning this for a little while, it wasn’t just spur of the moment. For some reason, they thought my Dad was this “Eindresil” guy who was worth a lot in the currency that is honor, if Bandits had any. And to his credit, he probably was "Eindresil".
We were led into what looked to be some kind of reception room, there were three visible doors after we had entered. Two of them were closed and locked with padlocks, the other was wide-open, but looked to be more heavily armored than the other two. I could see some lockboxes inside the room, but they probably had more stuff hidden from sight, it looked to be quite the large room.
“Welcome to Fort Koujax, Eindresil. We will now begin our full-body search on you and your follower, our new inhabitants.”
“Don’t touch my daughter, Rider. You must know I could break these cuffs if I wanted.” My dad slowly, yet menacingly, told the commanding man.
“Your daughter?” The man laughed as my father’s face lost a bit of color. “What a grand surprise! But don’t you worry, Eindresil, I thought you were more aware of our culture than this. We men do not touch those who aren’t... ripe. We wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of the goddess Ankorah. Her search will be performed by one of her kind.”
The commanding man walked over to my father, feigning courage, and reached out to touch one of his armor plates. He smirked.
“Take the female to another room. Let us tear Eindresil’s famous armor piece by piece.” A cheer erupted from the men in the room as I was dragged to the door on the left. As the door shut in my face, I could hear laughter and thuds on the other side of the door. The thought of them beating my father because he was too selfless to just let me be taken brought the recently faded tears back to my eyes. I pounded on the door as I sobbed and fell to my knees.
A door opened behind me and then quickly shut, I paid it no mind. A set of hurried footsteps came up behind me, I ignored them. A woman’s voice met my ears, I tuned it out. A hand grabbed my shoulder, I pulled away from it. I was ripped to my feet and a palm slapped my face, I awoke from my trance.
An old hag stood in front of me, her ugly mole and scrunched up skin giving her away. She looked angry at me and began screeching something at me, I couldn’t quite tell what the shrill witch was spouting. I became despondent as she lifted my dress skirt up over my face and began patting around, looking for contraband.
“You’d better not be hiding anything, girl. I’ll hit you again,” The hag screeched at me, “too bad, nothing here.” She let my dress back down and sneered.
“Give me my dad!” I shouted at her, ignoring the obvious consequences.
“Why, aren’t you just a demanding little princess? I’ll clean you of that attitude!” She raised her hand to slap me again, but before it could be used, she was caught by her wrist.
A guard had somehow gotten in without either of us hearing and had seen what the witch was about to do.
“I’ll kill you if you hit it again, hag,” the guard spoke with true sharpness in his voice, “this is the daughter of Eindresil, it is not to be harmed.”
The witch’s face went very pale at the guard’s words.
“Ei–Ei–Eindresil?” She stuttered through her corroded dental structure.
Obviously my dad was a big deal in these parts, I just wished the witch would hit me again. In other news, it felt mildly degrading to be referred to as “it” by the guard, but I didn’t have enough left in me to care. The witch fainted.
***
The guard had led me to another room without saying a word and set me down in a chair, doing up straps on my arms and legs. He put on gloves and grabbed a pen that made some noise and had a tube on it. I realized that he was holding a tattoo pen only after it started to dig into the skin on my neck. I couldn’t tell what he was doing with it, but it took a while and a lot of pain before he finished. It had kind of felt like he was writing letters? But it didn’t matter now.
He unstrapped me and began to lead me somewhere else once again. He was silent until I spoke up and asked him a question.
“Is my dad ok?” My question caused him to chuckle for a moment.
“He’ll be fine as long as he is who he is rumored to be.”
I didn’t quite know what that meant, but the guard’s tone indicated truth. He actually seemed to be trying to comfort me a bit, but maybe that was prejudice or just me adding context that wasn’t there. Either way, we now entered a courtyard of sorts.
Four large stone walls connected to each other to create a big rectangular area. The area was separated in the middle by a large fence with rusty barbed wire atop. I could see the shapes of men laboring on the opposite side, along with hearing some shouts of guards. On my side of the fence, I saw a few middle-aged and old women working in a garden and there were some buildings in clear sight; it was still night but the now uncovered moonlight was enough to make out this much. We walked toward one such building.
The guard opened the door and rang a little desk bell. Soon after, a young woman, probably in her early twenties, came to the entranceway. The guard greeted her while playfully hiding me behind his back for a moment.
“Ryn, I have another delivery for you,” he said with a smile as he pulled me out from behind his back, “this one is special, read the tag on its neck.”
The woman gave out an audible gasp before speaking.
“And what of him?” She inquired.
“He is being processed at the moment, gives me time to try to win you over.”
“You know that I am not mine to give, Atolis.”
“Of course, but love is not limited to–” he cut off mid sentence, “I have to go, there is someone in the parlor. I leave you with this gift.” He softly pushed me into the room before dashing off in the direction we’d come from.
As the door closed behind me, I found myself in a dimly lit room with the young woman. I looked at her blankly for a moment, waiting for her to make the first move.
“Hello! My name is Ryn, but you can call me ‘big sister’ if you want to,” she said cheerfully and plastered a smile on her face, “what’s your name?”
“Kaelynn...” I replied. There was no way in hell I’d call her “big sister”, but I would try to get some info out of her, “do you know what’s gonna happen to my dad, Ryn?”
She looked at me solemnly for a moment before deciding to just completely avoid my question, she must’ve taken me for a toddler or something! She countered with her own question, surprisingly on topic to my train of thought.
“How old are you, Kaelynn? Four? Five?”
Damn. I was a little short, but I’d figured that this body was at least six years old!
“Six,” I answered with some indignation, “now answer my question.”
She sighed.
“He’ll be ok, they are just going to process him.”
“And what does that mean? Be completely honest.” I tried to phrase my demands as adult as possible, that way she’d get the point.
“Well,” she sighed deeper, “he will be beaten to the brink of death, branded by the Koujax symbol, and then made to do labor, as the rest of the men.”
Reality sunk in a bit deeper. They were gonna do what to my dad?!
