Rebirth, Orphans and Ash

  Marcus tried to blink and open his eyes, but they felt sealed off. He tried to focus and strain his eyelids to open them, which only ended in pain around his eyes. He tried to lift his arms to touch his face but found he could only move one of his arms. The other felt trapped under something heavy with an edge, so he dared not move it; with his movable free arm, his left arm, he pulled and felt a piercing pain cut across the back of his hand, leaving a shallow wound across his entire arm as he pulled it out. He reached up and touched his eyes, finding them shut by crusted dried blood. Ignoring the pain, Marcus rubbed his eyes, feeling the crusted blood fall off, and when he could finally see, Marcus found he was surrounded by ash, broken iron and the sound of crickets in the distance; it felt like he had fallen asleep on the battlefield.

  “Where am I?”

  The place looked dark, and the air smelled of burnt flesh and wood. This was a battlefield. In the distance, he could see a large towering wall and a city beyond it. There was nothing like this on earth. If there was, he surely would have seen it somewhere or heard of it, a city… no cities built on and around a mountain. He should have known about such a thing if this were earth. All he could remember was going to sleep in his apartment room.

  Marcus tried to pull his other hand free, but the pain in his back suddenly grew heavier and uncomfortable as he was pressed down onto the ground. He looked around behind him and cursed. It was not only his arm that was trapped; his entire body was under a pile of broken chariots, wagon wheels and bent irons.

  “What the hell?”

  He tried to kick, but even then, he realized he couldn’t move his leg. There was little to no space to move his legs. He looked around and, uncertain or unwilling to starve here, he called out.

  “Help, anybody help.”

  “Anyone.”

  “Help!” he yelled.

  The wind blew, and suddenly, the cold he had been ignoring stung against his skin, causing him to shiver. A jacket would be good right about now, he thought. Wandering why it was so cold, he looked up and saw the black clouds that extended across the sky, blocking out all light from the sun and casting the entire world in gloomy darkness, the only place as far as he could see that the dark clouds did not appear to touch was the sky was the place above the city where the highest buildings touched the silver clouds.

  The entire sight felt unnatural, and even then, he would have to free himself to understand what was going on.

  Or it was simply a dream. Then, all he had to do was wake up.

  His teeth chattered and clicked from the cold, and he tried to pull himself out again. He felt the pile of scrap iron shift, and then a scream left his lungs as pain lashed his leg; something had shifted and landed on his leg. All he could think was that his leg was broken. He tried to control his breathing for a time, and he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks; he ground his teeth, and after an even longer time of enduring the pain, he felt his eyes go heavy as the world went dark slowly but surely and his head hit the ashy soil.

  _____________________________________________________________

  “Where are you going?” a girl's voice asked.

  “Is this what you heard,” another voice tried to say, indicating something else.

  “That’s probably a monster,” a deeper voice said.

  “No, I heard it this way,” a sharp voice replied to the three.

  Marcus heard the voices come closer. But in his dazed state, he could not make them out clearly. All he could do now was wait for help to find him. Perhaps call out, or they would be headed straight towards him if he was lucky.

  “There is nothing here.”

  “If we go any closer, we’ll be close to the Forgotten forest.”

  “Don’t be a scared gremlin, it's close.” the sharp voice said.

  “She’s right, Clara.”

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity of listening to the bickering of children, the children climbed over the mound of ash and earth and looked down to see a boy, beaten and bruised, helpless and trapped under the rubble of the war-torn AshFields.

  “There you see, I was right,” She said, a smug look on her face.

  Clara could be stubborn at times, but this time, she knew what she had heard and she had been sure it would be something good this time. Like every other day, she had gathered her friends and come to the Ashfields to scavenge for scraps of metal to sell for food or clean water in the lower city of Srok.

  Like the other orphans, it was desperation that drove many like her and her small crew of street rats into the land beyond the wall and even then, none of them dared move past the very centre of the Ashfields. None of them were brave enough to even step a mile or two next to the forgotten forest as they called it, comfortable with staying in the Ashfields where the people from the higher city came to fight the Tides of monsters.

  Clara, Like many others rejected by their mothers and fathers, or those who lost them to starvation or illness, were left to fend for themselves in the slums of the lower city of the fifth wall. Even though the group treated each other like a small family, they were all of different races. They were mostly halfbreeds who could not fit with the Goliath giants, the Aasmar high lords and sometimes even the humans, they were offered no help by the people of the city, and soon they got used to it, avoiding those and most parts of the city where the white hair common among half bloods got you thrown out into a dark alley at the least.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The group of street rats looked up at the forest beyond the Ashfield battlegrounds, and they felt eyes looking back at them.

  “Clara, we should hurry.” one of the teenagers said, causing her to look away from the forest in the distance.

  “Hurry get him out,” she ordered, and the group of seven children looked down at the pile of iron scrap and war rubble. Sure, she had thought she would be getting something better than another mouth to feed, but she just didn't have the heart to let the boy die out here.

  Marcus looked up from his daze and saw the different faces looking back at him. Some looked at the distant forest and were frozen in place by the sight, and it seemed for a moment that none of them would move.

  Finally, someone had come, and now all he needed was a little help to free himself and get out of this place.

  “Help me,” Marcus croaked, lifting his one good arm.

  “Is he alive?”

  “Of course he is,” Clara said, “Geneve, Zek get down there and help him.”

  “Me, why me,” Geneve asked as she twiddled her large thumbs.

  “You're the strongest, you should do it.”

  Geneve and Zek were both half human and half Goliath. At fifteen, the two siblings were as strong as any common man and just as tall. Geneve, like Clara, wore a rugged, dirt-filled dress and covered her body in a brown rug over her shoulder. On the other hand, Zek wore a dirty tunic shirt and trousers that left his bulging arms, three times the size of Clara’s, out in the open.

  “What do you think happened to him,” Zek asked, sliding down the mound of earth before stumbling into the pile of wagons and metals.

  “Don’t know but heard the noise when I was looking around for something good to sell in the lower quarter,” she said.

  Seeing what they were doing, the two of the other boys jumped into an earthy mound crater and started pulling out the scrap metal and wagon wheels and throwing them to the side. One tied the parts that looked valuable on their backs with a cloth to be sold in the city.

  Once the large pile was lifted off the boy, Clara, their leader, slid down into the pit and looked down at the frail, bloody body of a boy with skin the colour of earth.

  “Is he alive,” one of the boys asked, poking the figure of Marcus on the ground.

  “Of course he is,” Clara said before looking at her second,” Gabe, is he alive?”

  Gabe, like Clara, was a human orphan by all appearances. That's if you didn't look closely at his earthy-coloured hair. He was skin and bone. When he needed to see, he often squinted. He was considered the smartest of their lot, and some even said that he once lived in the higher walls.

  “Who are you? What is this place?” Marcus asked, and the group of small children looked at him, confused.

  Marcus looked back at the dirty and scrawny-looking kids dressed in medieval tunics and lacking basic hygiene, waiting for an answer. He tried to move and was surprised by the pain and numbness of his body as he felt two beefy arms grab him, holding him like a child, a feeling he had long forgotten in the days after he left home. The two hands helped him to his feet, and he grunted in pain as he realized his foot was turned sideways and limp.

  A small, skinny boy looked at him curiously, inspecting his eyes.

  ‘Wait… what is he looking at and why am I so small.’

  “What is he saying? “Clara asked Gabe. The other boy turned and looked at her with a confused look on his face, and he shrugged.

  The skinny boy turned back, grabbed Marcus's eyes, and opened them wider with his two dirty musky fingers, looking at each one, looking for something.“Clara, I think he is one of us?” Gabe said, and the girl pushed him to the side.

  “What?” Clara asked, and all seven orphans looked at Marcus curiously.

  “His eyes,” Gabe squinted from behind Clara, focusing on the boy, “his halfblood.”

  They all squinted in imitation and looked at the boy's eyes. One of his eyes had the golden iris of the Aasimar lords, and the other was clearly human.

  The girl, whom all the other children looked at for their decisions, came closer to Marcus, and he soon realized she almost stood as tall as him as he limped. From what he could remember, he was as tall as any man on earth. So why was he clearly as short as the thin, white-haired girl standing in front of him, and why did he feel small and thin? Compared to the two burly children whose arms held him up, his arms felt smaller, similar to those of a Teenager.

  The girl stood in front of him like an adjudicator. “What’s your name?” she asked, pushing her finger into his chest and narrowing her eyes at him.

  “Listen girl I don’t know what is going on but maybe I can talk to your parents or someone grown up?”

  The kids, no, the gang of street urchins, looked at each other and laughed at him, some pushing and shoving each other to the ground.

  “We are orphans and you are like us," she pushed him harder.

  “What?” Marcus asked, confused. When he tried to move, he felt the hands of the two large children holding him still where he was.

  “How old are you, boy? Maybe you can join my House.” she said, lifting her chin.

  “Twenty-seven,” Marcus said, and the girl, Clara, looked him up and down, then turned and looked over at Gabe, who twirled his finger around his head in a gesture clearly indicating a scrambled head.

  “Twenty-seven tides,” she tried counting on her fingers and gave up. You look no more than fifteen or seventeen tides old.”

  “Clara, I think it’s some sort of dark magic.” Zek said in a deep voice that Marcus did not believe a child capable of, before the larger boy quickly looked down and avoided the intimidating girl's eyes.

  “Maybe we should ask him,” Geneve proposed, looking at the scrawny half-human half-Aasimar in her and her brother’s hands.

  “Was it dark magic?” Clara looked up at Marcus.

  “Dark magic… What is that? There is no such thing as magic,” he said as he suddenly felt the pain in his leg and arm.

  Clara turned back to Gabe, looking for answers, and again, the skin-thin boy twirled his finger around his ear.

  “So where–” the white-haired girl started, and the scrawny boy interrupted him before she could finish.

  “If you all don’t have parents, Can you take me to whoever is in charge?” Marcus asked, using his hand to feel his bruises before he was painfully yanked upright by the two giant children holding him.

  “His right, I think we should take him away from this place," Gabe said, squinting at the dark forest surrounding them.

  Clara, realizing where she was, quickly looked up in panic.” Zek and Geneve curry him Gabe and the rest of you bring the metal, I think we have sayed in this place long enough.”

  After that, the band moved swiftly at the girl's commands, and before he knew it, they walked at a hurried pace through the Ashfields, dragging him along seemingly worried about the forest behind them. They then returned to the safer parts of the Ashfields and to the city, moving past other scavengers and making their way towards the city.