The boys have only known each other for little more than a day. Their entire lives were turned upside down after being purchased and drafted into a group some of them looked up to and some of them deeply feared. But somehow, as happens often in life, in the short time they’ve been together they have formed a tight knit bond of brotherhood.
They were born “rats”– the lowest rung on the ladder of society. Their entire existence was only tolerated because they were raised to do the hard work that civilization didn’t want to.
Yet, many questions remain, and one of the biggest among them is: who is this noble boy that wandered nonchalantly into their group? The only way to find out is to read on!
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Part 5: Crom
I received my first injection when I was eight, just like was the practice for all high born. The commoners who pass the tests receive it at age ten. The rats, at age twelve. The most important moment of my life, however, was not that injection. It was the time I spent with my older brother prior to it.
Alfonse woke me at five that morning. Night had yet to break and darkness bathed the room everywhere except where the open door forced its retreat. At that hour usually only the breakfast cooks, the night guard, and a few housekeepers were up.
The royal quarters were split into seven bedrooms on the second floor. Mine was all the way at the end of the hall. I was the second male from my fathers third marriage, and that made me fourth in the line of succession.
Alfonse, one of the First Three, had received his first injection two years before me. Everything went fine for him. There were no bonding anomalies. There were no blood abnormalities.
“Do you think I’ll be a Ghost, like you?” I asked as I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I’d been counting down the days to my birthday for over a month. My wrist monitor was set to alarm and wake me at sunrise.
He just looked at me with the blank stare he always gave. His expressions never changed. I believed he felt emotions just like everyone else, but he either didn’t know how to or wasn’t able to show them properly.
“Still a couple of hours,” I looked at my wrist and then asked, “are you nervous too?”
There was no change in his face. His blue eyes looked at me as cold as the frozen lake beside our castle fort. His blonde hair, once flowing down his face and to his shoulders, was buzzed off and he was rubbing his head with his hand where it used to be.
“Father isn’t coming,” he said, not callously, but as an affirmation of expectation. Before I could reply, he threw my blankets onto the floor and tapped my leg. “You’ll want to pick those up and make the bed, or else the maids will tell mom again.”
I didn’t expect dad to be there. I was the fourth. That meant I was the first of the expendables– the one that mattered least. Dad was the king afterall, for seven years now.
“There’s only five years left,” he reminded me in the monotone way that the computers directed children through street crossings. He’d moved away from the bed and began throwing clothes from my dresser. A pair of blue cloth pants landed beside me. A blue linen shirt hit me in the shoulder and draped across my back.
“I can get dressed myself!” I yelled, “and I know, but I don’t think dad believes in that stupid prophecy.”
His face turned to look at me and then back to my dresser. You shouldn’t yell. Mother isn’t awake yet. You’ll end up worse than the last time, birthday or not.”
He was right. I quickly covered my mouth with my own hand. I did it with flair to make him laugh– he didn’t.
I dressed and made my bed, cleaned up the mess Alfonse had made of my dresser, and we left my room together with nothing else said. The two of us tip-toe’d through the hallway. Slowly and carefully, especially so as we passed mom’s room.
“Where are we–” I started to ask, but he nudged me and put his finger in front of my mouth.
When we made it to the end of the hallway he opened the window. He held every click for a few seconds to make sure there was no one coming. Then, finally, after being certain we were alone, he stepped through it and onto the roof.
I reluctantly followed. It was freezing. Small bands of moisture had frozen to the outside of the window. The building itself was made from stone, but the foundation, roofing, and siding were reinforced with a special polymer that held up against blasts and quakes– they hurt to touch in this cold with bare skin.
My hand slipped from the window I was using to balance myself. He caught my arm and steadied me. My brother had always been a little strange, but I’d never known him to be reckless.
“Are you going to tell me why we’re out here?” I tried asking again, a little annoyed and not expecting an answer.
“What do you see?” He asked, motioning in the direction of the city.
Mom ruled over Tollton, but we didn’t live there. We lived a few miles outside of it. There was a small town surrounding the castle. A few thousand people lived in it, but the vast majority of our people lived inside of Tollton.
“Well, this is Castle Collinsworth, built about twelve years after the calamity. Then there’s Collinton, surrounding us. There’s Servant District, a few hundred of our maids and servants have families there. Then those walls surround–” he interrupted me before I could say Tollton’s name.
“Shh,” he said.
I was confused. I was cold. I was damp from all the frozen surfaces melting in the presence of body heat. My brother dragged me onto the overhang of our palace before sunrise on the most important day of my life.
When he quieted me, though, his entire demeanor changed. It was only slight, but he was smiling. I had no idea why, but it made me smile too.
Two centuries earlier and it would have all been a forest. There would have been no kings or queens, no Priests, no shattered country, and no machines giving people god-like abilities and prophecies of coming doom. I wondered if that’s what he was thinking about.
I wondered how many brothers looked out over the same landscape just like we were, only in their own time. Had two Native Americans stood and looked nine-hundred years ago? Two settlers? Two Sons of Liberty?
“There’s more than what is on the surface,” he began to explain, “a lot more. After your injection, it won’t matter if you’re a Ghost or Horde, or even just an Amp. You’ll learn about the real past, and why we exist.”
While he was talking I got hung up on the part about being a Horde or an Amp. I had never been a Brother– one of the devoted worshipers of either god– but in that moment I said a silent prayer to both gods. Please not a Horde or an Amp. Anything else would do.
My mind quickly ran through the options. First, I thought of being a Ment. We stood on a beach, the sun high in the sky. An enemy clad in leather with two vibro-daggers ran at me. Suddenly my eyes turned blue and a flaming chunk of the Earth itself landed mere inches from crushing him. In the chaos, I charged, running through the fire– a quick killing blow.
Then, I imagined myself trapped in a room flanked on all sides. My eyes turned blue, like the deep ocean, before fading into a milky white and finally disappearing altogether. I was still there, only unseen. I bounced quietly between enemies, taking them in silence one at a time– the perfect Ghost.
He let out a long breath and looked into my eyes. He could tell I had lost myself in thoughts of grandeur. The smile was gone, but just like before, the emotion remained.
“Brother,” I said under my breath. It hurt to see him flow from feeling to feeling right in front of me. It hurt to think I was letting him down in some way.
I knew him as a stoic symbol of steadfastness. The sincerity in his voice resonated, even with the fragile insecurities of a little boy that should have been playing with toys. There was no order within the new world order.
Carefree adolescence was an idea for a more civilized time. The calamity replaced it with the anxiety of a world that didn’t struggle for any one thing in particular. Struggle became a passive state of existence.
“I wanted you to see this, so that one day you may remember peace,” he said. “Power is both tempting and deadly. Don’t wish to be mighty if it’s only to hold someone’s neck under your heel.”
It was against royal decree for him to do it, but as soon as he finished talking his eyes flashed a dark blue hue that quickly began to fade. The iris of his eyes went first. After about a second or two he also began to fade from sight.
It was like looking through glass. At first I still saw him there. Then I started to see through him. Finally, nothing but what was behind him. The light from the moon caught him at just the right angle and I noticed a small shimmer, but nothing else.
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. Then, like my eyes had seen him all along, he was back. His skin was pale, like when you’re sick with the flu. His nose bled down onto his lip and started dripping to his shirt.
“Power goes both ways, Crommy,” he said as he let go of my hand and rubbed my head. “Father, our uncles, mother, the Priests, they’re all going to tell you different things. They’ll all want your respect and attention. Just remember they won’t always be right,” he paused for a second and wiped the blood from his lip, “or always wrong.”
“Why are–” I began to speak just to be interrupted again. I hated being interrupted, but I could tell this was important to him.
“We won’t be able to have this conversation again,” he warned, “the most important thing is, whenever you hear the Mind, always be skeptical.”
The sun began to rise on the horizon. I saw the light glisten from the glass steeple of the Church of the Brothers From Above. It had to be two miles away, but it rose toward the sky with glory.
My brother jumped from the second floor roof onto the ground below. He stood and looked at me. With one last raise of his hand in my direction he was gone.
The light intensified and I had to squint. The steeple in the distance began to fade. A girl’s voice echoed in my head, “Wake up, Lord Crom.” The voice was familiar, but frantic and scared.
I was having a dream. The dream of the last time I saw my older brother Alfonse. I rubbed my eyes and looked around.
The scrommer that the Priests activated the previous day was smashed and laying on the ground in pieces. Two of the chosen boys were standing above me. Bren was with the boy she’d been fixated on, standing a few yards away.
“No rush, your royal asshole-ness, but I don’t care who you are or how much Loud Mouth’s girl likes you,” the skinny boy with bruises and cuts all over his body yelled as he crouched beside me, “I won’t die in the wasteland just to save your ass!”
My head was still hazy from the dream, but I managed to ask, “Where did the Priests go?”
“Who the hell cares? They left us,” he yelled again. Not one for quiet negotiation, he continued yelling, “Hope you don’t needa piss, ’cause we are outta here!”
As I stood and collected myself, the faint echo of my brother looked on from the distance. He stood in a thicket of the sharp grass. Just an apparition from the past, but like a compass, it reminded me of my direction. I knew what we needed to do.
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