Chapter Five - Heat

The set of stairs stared back at me.  A long corridor in a depressing angle.  It was rather depressing if you think about it.  Cobwebs grew in crevices on the walls.  I stared into a deep (yet shallow) abyss.  Was Basil down there?  She had to be; I saw her go down there.  But I couldn't hear a sound from the basement.  The lights were  off, so she couldn't see...

All of a sudden, it happened.  It was fast and unexpected and it all happened in a matter of seconds.  Ear-piercing crashes filled the house.  I turned around and saw in a split-second what I had earlier feared: the campaign.  The windows shattered as torches flew through them.  A group of men burst through the door with angry expressions.  Their faces held a message: "You were warned."  One of the men pushed me down the stairs and locked the door.

I eventually reached the bottom of the steps, although I was bloody and bruised.  I could hear Raven from the top of the stairs.  I couldn't see anything, though.  I screamed for Basil.  Perhaps she could help me.  And herself...

A light flickered on and I immediately saw Basil - her face hollow and gaunt.  She looked horrific.  Basil fell to the ground.  I rushed to her side and immediately drew back.  Her body didn't feel...human.  It was hollow and light, like a snakeskin.  Perhaps she came down here to shed...  I brushed off that thought and wondered if she was dead.  She had to be...

The smoke was starting to suffocate me by this point and I knew I would choke to death soon if I didn't get out of here soon.  The struggle upstairs must have moved to the forest outside, as I could no longer hear anything.  Or... They hadn't killed Raven, had they?  I had two reasons to leave the house immediately.  It wasn't until I started to climb the steps that I truly realized how injured I was.

I must have had multiple broken bones, not to mention that I was bleeding heavily from several places on my body.  I was covered in blood, and the floor was too.  I had to get help.  I crawled up the steps slowly and reached for the doorknob.  It was locked.  I cursed the government.  Not only were they destroying villages, they were purposefully stealing the lives of their residents!

I breathed heavily - I could almost feel the ash lining my lungs.  I seized all the power I could and bashed my shoulder against the door.  One two three four five six seven eight nine tries and the cracked door yielded.  Now I was out of the pan and into the fire.  I still had to make it out of the house.  Fire greeted me like an old friend as soon as I peeked out the new opening.  I mustered up strength and headed through.

I felt myself burning.  I made it to the door.  Perhaps it was just an opening created by the flame, but I took it anyway.  The forest offered no respite - it was burning as well.  I couldn't make it.  Pain overtook me and I fell into darkness.

Moments later, or either days later, my eyes opened to the sight of Raven.  We were on a carriage, and we rode through the night.  "Did you...save me?"  I let out a cough.  Everything hurt - no, burned - as I moved.  Raven nodded.  I mustered up the strength to file another inquiry.  "And did Basil...die?"

"Yes.  And no.  I don't think that was Basil after all.  I've received a letter telling me to go to a certain sector."

"More travel?"  I tried to fake a grin.  I must have fallen asleep, now content.

The next time I awoke I was in a strange building.  Raven said it was a "hospital."  They did something over the course of a few days to rejuvenate me.  I felt completely normal afterwards, albeit a bit drowsy.  We set out again to Basil's house.  Or were we?  I'm not very sure anymore.  Will this person be Basil?  I was doubtful.  Basil was becoming more and more a myth with every passing moment.  Had I noticed her before my return to the village?  No.  Perhaps she was an illusion conjured up by my mind wishing for my little village to not be all gone.

Chapter Four - Butter and Basil

As we made the trek to Basil's house, we passed through the city I had once found shelter in, back before the village was burned down.  Raven and I rented a carriage to take us the rest of the way to Bel-air Basil's house.  As we rode through the ruins of a once thriving ecosystem, I thought about the government's "campaign."  This campaign that started with burning down has escalated to burning down everything that isn't a megacity.  The world is slowly being reduced to a charred mess because of the government.

After I had talked to Basil about the village being burned down, everything else is a blur.  I do know I went back to the city eventually.  I started to learn about the government.  Most of my studies have been forgotten between then and now, but I do remember I learned of the heads of the government - the Judges.  There are seven sectors of the empire.  Each sector has a capital city and a few dotted cities like the one I was sent to.  (I hear the government's after them next.)  Each capital city is headed by a Judge.  I'm not sure of their role, but I do know that they jump-started the campaign.

The Judges have meetings every few weeks in the capital city of the empire, which is also the capital of the Seventh Sector.  Seventh City is said to be the grandest city in the world.  The seven Judges have a special hall in the Seventh City that they lock themselves up in.  What they do in there is a mystery, but after every meeting, papers come out of the hall that are called decrees.  What is decreed must be done.  One of the decrees was the campaign.

If I had one wish, it would be to rid the government of the corrupt Judges and replace them with just officials. But that will never happen.

"Raven," I said.  "Where does Basil live now?"

"In a different sector.  I know where it is, but I'm not sure of its title.  I do know that she doesn't live in this sector anymore."  Raven explained.

The weird thing is, I don't know the name of my home sector, either.  It's almost like it's a secret..

We arrived at Basil's house after an indefinite amount of time.  She was knitting inside of a cottage that must have been hers.  Basil still didn't live near society.  This time, she was living in a serene forest clearing.  But with her living in a forest, she could get burned up with it when the government's campaign extends to this forest.  "You're finally here!"  She welcomed us in and insisted on letting us eat some of the meal she had prepared.

She sat down her knitting project and headed into the kitchen, which was almost a part of the living room.  She put a glob of butter into a concoction in a pot on her stove.  Basil's dish was smelling very good and I couldn't wait to eat it.  "So, Raven, what has taken so long to get yourself here?"  Basil inquired as she stirred.

"I had...complications gathering together the party you requested."  Raven said.  He must have been talking about me...

"I see, I see..."  Basil's stirring was rhythmic and mesmerizing.  As I stared at her spoon spin, time seemed to melt.  Before long, Basil proclaimed that dinner was ready.  Everyone sat at her small table.  A kitten in the corner purred and stretched onto the armchair I had just occupied.  I changed my gaze to the plate.  I don't remember what was on it, but I do remember that I ate it and it was the best thing I had had since I was a child in the village.  "What do you think?"

"It's wonderful," I said through bites of food.  Raven and I had had to ration food during the long journey to visit Basil.

"I'm surprised I still have that magic touch.  I hardly notice how good it is anymore, myself.  You're the first person other than myself to eat my cooking for years."  She turned her attention to Raven and changed the mood.  "Are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" I wondered, perhaps aloud.  Raven nodded.

"Excellent, it's down in the basement.  I expect to see you both down there promptly as you finish."  Basil exited the dining table and headed through a door.  She hadn't so much as touched her plate.  Raven and I finished several minutes later and followed her through the door.  We were greeted by a long set of stairs going down.

"Let's go see what she wants," I muttered.

Chapter Three - One Foot in the Past, One Foot in the Future

The comfort I felt as I traveled alongside Raven was immeasurable.  I knew why he had been in the skyboxes; I had figured that one out soon enough.  But there were other sides of his appearance here that didn't add up.  I decided to worry about the future, which was what really mattered, instead of the past.  "Raven," I began.  "I thought Basil would be dead by now."

"She's not that old."

"You're sure?  You know what's happened."  Raven's sarcasm didn't sit well with me.  Something about him seemed off.  He was never sarcastic before...

"The elders were spared," Raven said, surprisingly nonchalant.

"Basil is the only elder..."  I realized the true weight of the past.  I used to live in a small village, far away from the castles and kingdoms of the empire.  The village was completely secluded.  It was a month's worth of travel away to the nearest city, and even that city was fairly far away from anything with a high population.  The empire's population is pretty spread out.  A small percentage of its citizens live in tiny villages like mine and the rest live in huge megacities that surround the capitals.

Our village did for ourselves.  The farmers gave food to everyone in the village and the housewives provided clothes.  There was no concept of trade; everyone helped each other out.  Everyone mostly fell into an archetype, though.  The fisherman fish, the fortune tellers told, and everyone got along.  Raven was different.  I couldn't describe it, although he felt different.  He was never one of us.  He wanted to go away from our meager village and live in a sparkling castle of the capital.

I was never very close to Raven, but one day he all of a sudden became close to me.  He wanted us to leave the village and take the trek to a better place.  It was fun to dream of grandeur, but I never would have actually left.  But Raven did.  One day I woke up and he wasn't there.  Nobody knew where he went, except for me.  He must have left for the cities.

Time progressed very slowly after that.  Days became normal when you didn't have dreams to dream, and I soon realized something was amiss.  The townspeople were getting antsy.  One day when I was still young, my mother gave me a month's worth of travel supplies and told me to go to the nearest city.  I was scared at the time, but did what I was told.  The city was much larger than my village.  While my village was just houses and farmland, the city had so much more.

I found a house that allowed me to stay the night, but only if I cleaned for them.  I did, and it was okay for a while.  Eventually, I got what was called a "job."  Doing this, I earned money and bought a small room to stay in.  I must have stayed in that city, alone, for years.  I know I grew a lot.  One day, I decided to return.  Whatever trouble the village had must have fixed itself, right?  I gathered supplies and made the tiring journey back.

Nobody was there to greet me.  Nothing was left but ash.  Everything was gone but one house situated at the far end of what was once our village.  I entered it and I saw Basil.  Basil was the town fortune teller and was very elderly by the time of my original departure from the village.  She sat calmly in her chair, sipping tea, when I entered.  I don't remember our conversation exactly, but she was very sympathetic when she explained what had happened.

I was told that the empire is on a campaign to thin the population to where it only lies in the sprawling megacities.  This campaign would begin with every small village and move onto every average city.  A group of men on horseback would enter the village carrying a bunch of supplies unfamiliar to us in the village.  They would give out a proclamation: If you didn't leave the village within one week's time, you would be burned down with it.  The village was given a couple of years's notice.  The population thinned out a bit and I was sent away during that time.

The village's people were very protective of it, and so, most of them stayed put.  They wanted to put up a fight for their little village.  The entire remainder of the village and surrounding farmland was burned down, save for Basil.  They didn't see her as a threat.  So after that point, Basil began to live in solitude.  It has been years since that date, but now I'm going back to my lost village.  Or so I thought.  I began to realize that we weren't going towards the village.  Raven told me Basil had taken up residence at a different address...

Chapter Two - Flight and Fright

It was beautiful.  I only had seconds to suck in the serene wonder of this new world I had stepped into.  It was unlike anything I had ever seen before - indescribable.  If I could go back today, I would.  The trek up here was worth it.  I had a few seconds of perfection before it was shattered.  I gazed into the next compartment over and in it stood a ghostly silhouette.  It seemed pleased that I had made it up here.  It must be the master of the arena.  But the figure in the other box felt familiar...

As the misty figure slowly started to take form, I broke into a run.  However, I had nowhere to run.  I couldn't go down.  There was no way down.  The room I was in now had no escape, either.  You could see through either side wall and the wall facing into the arena was completely open.  What would I do?  Before I could think of an escape, the figure in the other box broke into a run towards me.  Terror overtook me, but I couldn't do anything but watch in horror at the acts committed next.

The wall between the two boxes smashed.  It was the biggest shattering, ear-wrenching sound ever.  My terror turned to pain.  My ears hurt so much that they could be bleeding.  All of a sudden the figure came into focus.  It looked like a man, but at the same time it looked eerily like a... bird.  The long, black cloak led up to its face where there sat a mask that cemented the possibility of it being nonhuman.  All of a sudden I realized I knew this person, from a time a long time ago... "Raven," I gasped.

"I'm surprised that you remember me, friend."  I couldn't move.  I was petrified.  It was him.  I had to get out of here... But how?

"You seem scared.  Is it me that you're scared of?  Why ever would you be scared of me?"  I could feel the sneer below his mask.  Then it happened.  All of a sudden, all of the boxes were gone.  They didn't just disappear, either.  They crumbled quickly and violently.  I, along with the debris from Eden, was falling.

Raven regained his title.  He seemed to be flying towards me.  His flying always had an elegant and mystic sort of feel to it.  Way back then, when I didn't know him as personally, everyone believed he practiced dark magic.  Looking back, they were probably right.  His flight seemed to last hours, but it couldn't have lasted longer than a few seconds.  I was, after all, falling towards my doom.  He eventually grabbed me.  I felt safe with him.  He had a higher authority with the world than I did.  "They tried to kill us..." he murmured.

I knew he wasn't going to allow himself or I to end our lives just yet.  The falling became gentle as soon as he grabbed me.  We calmly blew over to the side of the stadium, like a leaf in the autumn.  We landed on of the seats I had so desperately been climbing just a bit earlier.  "Safe..."  I said what I felt.  Honestly, I don't even remember if I said it aloud, but there was an intense feeling of that word.  Safe.

"You are always safe with me." Raven said.  I felt happy.  I didn't feel the joy I had felt for those few precious seconds in the skybox, but at that moment, sitting on the seats of the arena with Raven, I felt legitimately happy.  "Are you ready to go?" Raven said after a moment or two.

"Go?  Where would we go, Raven?" I asked.

"We need to visit Basil."  Basil... I remembered Basil.  Why would we need to visit Basil?  "Don't worry about the 'why,' worry about your situation."  Raven was reading my mind, and I knew he was right.  Let's go then.  I stood up and the bird I was beside did as well.  It was time for a new page in the book of my life, but this time I wouldn't be alone.

"I don't want to be alone again..." I said.

"You'll never be alone again."

Chapter One - The Arena

I walked forward at a brisk pace and came to a halt when I entered.  I was in a massive, open area.  It could have been an arena, or a coliseum.  As of right now, I'm not sure what it was.  I do know it was gray.  The most muted and ominous gray anyone's ever seen before.  I surveyed my surrounding and I felt chills as I did so.  Premonition overcame me.  Something bad was going to happen...

The arena was dead.  There aren't too many words that describe it, but I think "dead" is a good choice.  The whole room was slowly, surely crumbling.  It must have been crumbling endlessly at an awful pace forever.  It was dingy and damp and dreadful.  Moss and other plants of muted green littered the walls and stadium-like seats.  There wasn't much to the arena - there were a series of doors opposite from the opening I entered from.  The sky was completely open to view.  Looking up, the abysmal sky stared back.

The more minor details are where things became more remarkable.  The arena reached so high it seemed it could touch the sky.  There were a series of boxes circling the top of the ring.  They must have been where the affluent spectated.  How nice would it be to touch the sky and make life-changing decisions for the people while watching a twisted Olympics and sipping a cup of tea?  That must be what happened in those lovely boxes, millennia ago.  The skyboxes were truly the most elegant part of this arena's dismal façade.

I decided I wanted to reach to the sky - to enter a skybox.  It was childish, yes, but I had to be part of the most royal elegance in the stadium.  How would one get up there, however.  There was no way up, also meaning there would be no way down.  But I had to get up there.  I was drunk on the wonderland that was  the arena, and I had to be on the top of the pack.  I had to be.

So I started climbing.  But God knows how.  There must have been ten feet between the arena floor and the first row of seats, but probably more.  The adrenaline I felt came from the drug that is this arena.  Curse it, I thought afterward, but at that point, I had to keep going.  My life depended on it.

As I hopped up the rows of seating, I felt like I was being watched.  But more than that, I felt like I was being preyed on.  Perhaps this was all some plot to trick people like me into being lunch for a cannabalistic tribe.  Like the animal that is targeted, I continued going, but now at a much faster pace.  At least a hundred rows later, I hit a wall.  The seating had ended, but there was still kilometers to travel before I reach beautiful affluence.

So I grabbed onto the wall and climbed up it.  There were a few tiny cracks up the wall for footing.  It was almost like they wanted you in the skyboxes.  But they weren't skyboxes anymore - they were Heaven.  I climbed forever.  This endless climb lasted hours.  It felt like it, at least.  The higher I went up, the farther I was from Heaven and the closer I was to Hell.  The ground was creeping up on me like quicksand.  If I didn't hurry, I would fall and die.  It was Heaven or Hell, and I had to choose Heaven.  Now I just had to make it there before I lost grip and fell into Hell.

I realized I was nearing the top.  Heaven and Hell were meters away from each other now.  They would soon merge into a ghastly paradise.  But I wanted perfection, not flaw.  I had to make it before they touched.  Corruption would not enter my paradise.  Centimeters away, it seemed like.  I could touch the sky.  I doubled my speed.  Five meters per second and I would beat Hell and claim my prize of untainted paradise.

It felt like it had just begun.  The whole reason why I was here, in this champions' ring.  But hours passed as I made my way up to the top.  Almost there.  There were seconds left before I touched victory.  But I did the worst option.  I looked down.  Hell was about to touch my feet.  I had to hurry.  A little bit faster and I would arrive in Eden.  Two minutes, that's all.  Eden must have decided to defy me.  The faster I went, the farther it moved away.

But I made it.  Somehow I did.  I made it to my beautiful Eden.  It was then that I noticed that I was covered in blood.  Perhaps I'll die in paradise and wake up in Heaven.  Yes...

I woke up from unconsciousness and gazed around.  I realized my journey was over.  I'm in Eden.  I stood up and looked around.  But I wasn't alone.  In the next box over was a dark silhouette staring back at me.  It had an air of victory about it and I knew paradise was lost.