2412, Iclis 1, Daleth

Cyrdel awoke to voices. His mind lurched with the jumble of memories that came rushing back. Right. His parents died in front of him while saving him. Why? Synketros open-fired on Alkara. Elshire was too far and too occupied to help. Edgerift, instead of prosecuting such crimes against the pacifist territory, was uncharacteristically silent, allowing the Sovereign and the Heiress to move without shame across the island.

He saw Ravalee and Airene for a short time. He was sure a wagon and some tarp were involved—what was that about?—and now, he's back in Depandes, with at least a thousand voices for company.

His hand snaked up to a sore spot in his neck. A little harder and whoever hit him might have broken his neck. What did they strike him with? And what for? It's not like he'd bother fighting them off. Not when it was clear what the outcome would be.

Staying away from war didn't mean it'd shy away from them in return. That had been their weakness. In their aim to preserve tradition—the one their ancestors left them—they have brought doom earlier. Their ancestors must have smoked oshella on the side. This was war. No one would be safe, and choosing not to fight didn't mean something noble or righteous.

It just meant cowardice.

In a way, Cyrdel deserved every bitter dish handed to him. He brought it upon himself and his people.

A chain clinked nearby. He lowered his gaze to find a metal hewn out of lesium around his shoulders. He could never mistake that deep purple sheen anywhere. This was mined deep in Rabante. How in the world was the Sovereign able to procure so many in a short time? Moreover, how much did she know about the results of the Alkaran siege so as to prepare every bit of necessities?

He yanked at the chains but it came up short. A wall. He was chained to a wall like a damned creature bound for slaughter. His analytical mind attempted to look into the mechanism of the lock—maybe he could crack it open when no one was looking—and found he couldn't. The instant understanding he sported for all things mechanical was replaced with nothing but confusion. Was this how everyone else felt when looking at machinery? He forgot the names, what they did, and how they fit into the system. He discovered that, in fact, he knew nothing at all.

And it couldn't have been all the blood in his recent memory.

Lesium blocked magic—all kinds of it—from manifesting in any Umazuran form. It cuts a person off from the abundance of magic in the air, preventing them from performing something as simple as a barrier spell. While it worked as a temporary disabler and containment measure, prolonged usage would deteriorate the captive. Fairies, after all, couldn't survive without magic.

He wouldn't past the Sovereign to know that information but still using lesium anyway. To her, everyone was simply a means to an end. Her intended end. They were merely prices to pay, lives to gamble. She would claim she's playing a bigger game, reducing everything Cyrdel and his people stand for to just playing sticks.

The voices intensified around him. He wasn't alone. Brownies in coveralls and other mechanic regalia joined him. The walls weren't the typical four-face kind. They're not even the cornerless curve of a circular warehouse. Arrays upon arrays of short walls, each one containing at least twenty inventors, ran parallel to the western and eastern partition holding up the ceiling.

This was once a stable. The poor dagrinis were cleared out—no doubt, killed—and the spoils of the siege were slotted inside. It's the perfect formula for reminding the captive who their captor was. And if his estimates were correct, the stable contained almost every inventor in Depandes. Those who escaped could probably be counted by hand.

He looked at the inventor behind him and ahead of him. Both had tear-stricken cheeks and streaks of blood, ash, and dirt staining their skin and clothes. They didn't look like adults, but they didn't look like they were in their youth either. War had that effect on most people. Like him, they analyzed their chains and, as expected, they came up with nothing. Their Brownie instincts were simply inhibited.

The sound of heels clacking against marble flooded the entire room. Heads snapped up to a lone figure striding inside the stable. Cyrdel's gut churned with hate. It's the first time he wanted to strangle someone for just showing up.

The Sovereign grinned, blood-red lips parting to reveal rows of white teeth. They could have been fangs and it wouldn't have made a difference to the predatory smile she gave them. "Greetings, inventors of Alkara," she said. Her voice, while soft and silky, carried all the way to either end of the huge building. "I'm sure you're all wondering why I have gathered you all here."

Cyrdel's hands clenched, rumpling the torn fabric of his stained trousers. The Sovereign appeared to never notice he sat among her captives even as she turned her head here and there to scan her success. Dressed in a bland khaki coat hanging to the back of her knees and form-fitting tunic, vest, and trousers, she looked more like a whiny tourist than a leader of an interracial organization.

"You, my dears, will be part of the grand plan of building my empire," the Sovereign revealed through the thickening hostility in the room. Cyrdel wasn't alone in his sentiment, it seemed. "One that is built on imperial might, powered by the mechanisms you all hold in esteem."

The Sovereign's green eyes flashed. Under the fresh morning sun shining through the skylights, they looked almost yellow. "Together, we will make Alkara a powerful state filled with artillery," she said. "You, as a race, will never be oppressed again, and I, as Sovereign, will help you."

She should look in a mirror and tell herself the same thing. By claiming to undo oppression, she's building it upon the same foundation. And her empire? The Brownies should be an independent nation, and saying they're part of her empire meant the artillery they'd be making would be for her and her alone.

In short, they'd be making arms to aid in the war she's waging against the island and the fairies, humans, and half-bloods who lived on it. And no matter how much Cyrdel rejected it with every bit of his being, he would be a part of it.

It's the shortest but surest way to getting more blood on his already-stained hands.

The Sovereign's heels clacked against the floor again, taking her closer to where Cyrdel was. Ah, she knew he was here after all. Nothing slipped her notice. She turned to the rest of the audience, no doubt keeping him in her periphery just to see how much he'd squirm. "Expect the numbers to multiply over the next few days," she said. "I've already taken over half of Alkara so I expect the other cities to follow soon. In the next few days, I imagine I'd have all of the territory excluding Penleth. If I'm being generous enough, maybe I'll consider taking Penleth under my wing too."

A bubble of emotions unfurled from his gut. His chains strained against the wall as he leaped up and lunged at the Sovereign, the barest of weapons—his nails—stretched to the full. In a flash, deep gashes opened along his arms, staining his red overcoat in a deeper red. Pain erupted in his gut as the tip of the Sovereign's knee-high heels slammed into his stomach. He slammed back to the wall and slid to the floor, coughing and writhing. It wasn't because of the ache.

It was because of something far more acidic—rage.

The Sovereign stepped backwards in two clacks of her heels. Not a strand of her mahogany red hair was out of place. It's as if the scuffle didn't even happen. Her clothes remained without a crease. Pristine. She faced the rest of the inventors.

"Let that be a lesson to you, future dissenters," she said. "If I catch any of you misbehaving or attempting to escape, I swear on Daexis' name I'm going to do something much, much worse."

Then, she turned away and headed towards the exit that has been so close but could have never been more out of reach. Before she went, she made sure to look over her shoulder, straight into Cyrdel's eyes. Then, she winked.

Within seconds, she was gone, leaving Cyrdel with bloody arms and a heart stripped to shreds. Everything happened because of that woman. She was a blemish in the face of the island, a festering malady in need to be exterminated.

At that moment, Cyrdel ceased to be a Brownie in his core. The Sovereign had to die, and he'd give anything to the gods in Calaris for it to be by his hand.

2412, Iclis 14, Reshpe

Even with the lesium blocking most of his senses, he found out he could build a rifle just by looking at the parchment laid out in front of him. Whoever drew these plans out for at least a hundred artisans could only be another victim of the Sovereign's game.

The materials to build a working rifle were made by the forge workers in the far corner of the stable. After the Sovereign delivered her speech a few days ago and the new drafts came as promised, they were divided into several factions, each with their given duties. There were factions for forge work, ammunition, and assembly. Cyrdel got lumped with the last division mostly because they thought he couldn't lift a bucket of water without melting into a pile of clay.

He preferred it that way too. The folks at the forge couldn't last for more than a few days. He and the rest of the assembly faction could hold out for weeks longer considering the nature of their job.

Every exit available in the stable was flanked by Synketrians dressed from head to toe in black. Which meant black cloak, tunics, trousers, armor, and boots. Even their masks, which they wrapped behind their heads, were black. They rotate every final hour of a quarter. While they're not expected to stay through the night, most of them did. Whether to rub into everyone's faces their newfound power or something else, Cyrdel didn't have the time or care to think about it.

It didn't matter how long he was here. He lost count of the hours and the days a long time ago. His desk mates—people he shared an assembly space with—sniffed, their forms ripe with the sickness that seemed to have spread in the stable over the week. To his left, Felmon scratched the back of his pointed ear, peeling more of the scabs from the wound torn into it on the day of the siege.

"Damn, how much more of these would we make?" Sero, the inventor to Cyrdel's right, gruffed. Cyrdel sneaked a cautious glance at the sentries near their desk. They didn't make a move towards the inventor. Showed how little they cared about spoken sentiments. They could speak as much as they wanted, but as soon as they started taking action, they're shut down without a blink even finishing. "My eyes long for something other than silver."

Cyrdel's eyes strained from checking into the muzzle for the rest of the day. Even with his addled mind, he registered the mechanisms riddled in the heart of the rifle. A little tweak in the wires, in the placement of the flints, or in the way the bullets lined up in the snout, and the entire thing would jam and be useless. It's the best sabotage he could come up with, something that would even pass the strict quality check at the end of the line.

The Sovereign was no fool. She knew some of the crafty inventors would try and make crappy versions of her weapons. That's why she placed more sentries in quality inspections. Cyrdel had the opportunity to watch what happened when a product didn't pass. The Synketrians would drag the poor brownie out of the stable and a ringing blast of a rifle later, they would return minus a soul. Then, everything would go back to how it was.

Nights have been a hell for Cyrdel. Every time he closed his eyes, he found muzzle after muzzle pointed at his face. Triggers would always click and a bullet would always fly towards the spot between his eyes. He would feel the Dwarven metal casing dig into his skull, into his flesh. But he'd always wake up before his death could be fully realized.

That's why he spent some nights up, assembling under the faint glow of whatever moons were out. He did this so many times he could build a rifle even in complete darkness. But he couldn't risk it with every rifle he made. There were some he let slip while knowing it would work perfectly well, that it would kill who the user intended to kill.

He would want to sabotage each and every rifle and flintlock coming out of this stable, but he was just one fairy. When he tried to recruit Felmon and Sero, the ones in his proximity, they looked at him like he had sprouted feathered wings like a vulkraine and started speaking the Ancient language.

"Nah, that's not going to happen," Felmon had said, going back to hunching over his project and wiring the mechanisms to near-accuracy. He even tested the aim and scope by raising the muzzle to the air. "I value my life. No offense, Your Highness."

It's a common thread around him. Most of them had simply accepted their fates and moved according to it. Brownies were resilient people, and the Sovereign did her best to profit from it. From his people. They weren't born to go against a system. They're too attached to keeping the peace. Sometimes, Cyrdel wondered what in Nira's bottoms was wrong with him to think of things not natural for someone who belonged in the same race as him.

He was about to slot the last of the screws to the stock when a loud clatter echoed in the stable. An inventor collapsed backward, exhaustion marring her features. Even in assembly, without enough food and water to go around, they're forced to swallow their hunger and thirst, focusing instead on producing more and more rifles in hopes of exchanging it for a little bit of gruel.

Cyrdel dropped his project and rushed to the girl's side. "She's too tired!" He looked around him. Only passive stares and blank faces met him. "Somebody, help!"

Some of the sentries even went back to talking to each other after sparing Cyrdel a glance. His stomach groaned, in need of food all the same, but if he would have to give up his ration for dinner to this girl, he would. But the ration hasn't come. It wouldn't come until later in the evening. This girl...she needed food now. The lesium around her wrist wasn't helping either.

"Please!" he screamed, his voice growing hoarse. Inventors either found their work interesting all of a sudden or turned blind for a second. "Help her!"

Nobody moved. Not a finger was lifted in her favor. He looked down at the girl to find her smiling at him. She mouthed two words—thank you—before closing her eyes and breathing her last. Within seconds, he held a pile of clay between his hands.

Before he could process the death, a butt of a rifle slammed hard against his shoulder, sending him crashing to the floor with a newfound ache on his bones. The threat of the tip against his spine nudged him away and back to his space. "Stray away from your lane again and you'll find yourself without hands," a sentry sneered at him then rolled his shoulders. "Or a head. Kriachoria didn't specify, so it's up to interpretation."

He picked up the winder and watched the sentry stride away, slapping the stock of his rifle against another inventor's head, barking at them to take over the girl's abandoned project. It didn't come to him how hard he squeezed the tool's handle until his knuckles started throbbing.

Nobody deserved to be treated like this. He had to save them, not because he wanted to, but because of the same reason he thought he's different from everyone else. He was the only one who could save his people because out of all of them, he had the heart to stand up for them, for himself, and for what their race and territory meant to them.

Unlike them, he had the heart to scream, to make sure his voice was heard.

The rest of the day wore on. Cyrdel finished one or two or twenty-five more rifles. All passed inspection. At least half of those would malfunction or implode upon contact after the first shot. He was in the middle of finishing the next project when he felt the air stir beside him despite not a breeze straying inside the humid and cramped stable. He looked up to realize night had fallen once more and the moons had hidden themselves behind a veil of thick storm clouds. It'd rain soon. And when it did, it would hopefully wash the blood off the streets enough to make the otrite shine again.

Maybe.

He was about to go back to his project when a voice hissed from the shadows. "Cyrdel," it called. "It's me."

He knew who it was but he still flinched like there's no tomorrow. His eyes flicked to the sentries posted in corners too close to his desk. Felmon and Sero were knocked out and it couldn't be from sleep. Did she...?

"Airene," he whispered back, hunkering into his unfinished rifle before anyone saw his lips move. "What are you doing here?"

The older woman could have been smiling as she hid in the shadows. "I'll bust you out," she said. "Rav needs our help."

At the sound of her name, all his senses latched on to it. Saving his people could wait. Let him be selfish and pick her over them. He'd come back. Daexis would be the witness to that.

"Let's go," Cyrdel replied.