The Sovereign System

CHAPTER THREE

A voice echoed in the darkness, deep and resonant, like stone grinding against stone.

“Sovereign.”

Kaiden’s eyes snapped open, to a clear blue sky.

He blinked for a few seconds, before the odd feeling of movement came upon him. But he wasn't moving, not exactly. He was being carried on something that was moving. The realization came when he heard rolling wheels beneath him.

“Where am I?”

His voice hurt when he spoke. With a groan, he tried to sit up and was rewarded with sharp pain, running up the length of his chest and trunk.

“Take it easy, man,” someone said. “You've been hurt pretty bad. It's a miracle you're even alive.”

Miracle? Alive?

Then he remembered the shock of getting zapped with lightning, and the last feeling he had was of life leaving his body.

The pain was still there, but it had grown dull, far too dull. He stared down at himself. Dried blood still stained his rags and there were holes in his shirt, but…no scars on his body. No marks to show where the lightning had hit him.

“You okay?”

He turned slightly, wincing with pain. The person who spoke was a boy with sandy brown hair and dark eyes, but none of that registered in Kaiden’s mind. What he really noticed was the heavy chain, connected to a pair of blue bands that went round the boy’s wrists.

Kaiden sat up again, this time, looking round properly. He was sitting in the back of a moving cart, both of his wrists locked in heavy, blue metal cuffs. A chain extended from them, and linked him to five other boys.

All of them looked about his age, sixteen or seventeen. They all wore rags or dirty clothes like him too. One boy slumped unconscious against the side of the cart. The rest sat up, looking afraid or resigned.

Three of the boys (including the one who had spoken to him) looked normal, with dark eyes like him, so he could tell that they were non-users.

The other two were users, that was for sure. One had pale, silver eyes that revealed he was a frost-user and the other's green eyes revealed he was a verdant-user.

But there was something else, something strange about the two of them: a faint text that hung beneath their faces.

[VERDANT, LEVEL: 2]

[FROST, LEVEL: 3]

He blinked and the texts disappeared.

What the hell just happened?

“I'm Garrick,” said the boy with the sandy hair, interrupting his thoughts.

“Where am I?” Kaiden asked, shifting his attention back to him.

“You’re on a cart.” Garrick jerked his head towards his left. “And those are our captors.”

At the front of the cart, two huge, muscled men guided the horses. Thick leather clothes strained over their broad backs, and they both wore masks.

Above their heads, the texts appeared briefly again:

[FLAME, LEVEL 5]

[FORGE, LEVEL 6]

“Can you see that?” Kaiden whispered, just before the words faded off.

“See what?”

Kaiden shook his head and asked another set of questions, “Who are they? What am I doing here?”

“Uh…you were captured? You were unconscious when those two brought you to join us. And like I said, they are our captors.” He leaned forward slightly. “Hey, what's your story, anyway?”

Kaiden wasn’t listening. Memories were slamming into his mind in flashes.

The men wearing Elite Guard armor, Mira’s scream, the metal in her throat. Her eyes, wide and pleading, then empty. The soldiers laughing while she died.

Rage flooded his chest, hot and sudden, clouding his mind. He jerked forward without thinking…

And the metal bands around his wrist tightened instantly. Fire engulfed his body, burning like flames under his skin. He gasped and fell forward on the cart. The burning eased the moment he stopped struggling.

Garrick winced. “Sorry, I shoulda warned you. That’s a dampener. It locks down affinities for users. For non-users like us, it just…keeps us quiet. Hurts like hell if you fight it.”

“Fuck, it hurts.”

“I'm sure it does.” Garrick pointed at the unconscious boy. “Roden tried to jump off the cart. The chains shocked him to sleep.”

Kaiden said nothing in reply. He already knew where this was headed. He had heard the stories back in the village, whispers around the market tables about the very situation he just found himself in.

They were captured by Reavers. Men without honor or morals who swept battlefields and backroads for fresh meat. They captured or bought anyone they could lay their filthy hands on: non-users, weak users, orphans.

Then they would be sold as slaves for entertainment, for dungeon crawls, for experiments, for the highest bidder. If there was anything worse than being a rat, it was being captured by a Reaver.

And now he was one of them.

He closed his eyes, pushing back the sting of tears. Mira’s bright laughter echoed in his head. He could still see their shared sleeping spot under the market tables, could hear the dreams they had whispered for years, even as he gave up on them. They had survived so much together, scavenging, starving, hoping.

And all of it ended because they were disadvantaged. Because they were nothing.

Just rats.

The cart suddenly screeched to a halt. Everyone jolted forward. The unconscious boy, Roden, woke with a panicked gasp, eyes wide and darting.

“Where…where am I? What’s happening? Let me go!”

The other boys barely acknowledged him. Except Garrick, who merely gave him a sad smile.

“Where are we?” Kaiden asked quietly.

They had stopped in front of massive wooden gates reinforced with iron. Two guards stepped forward, frowning at the chained boys. One of the Reavers up front tossed a small pouch of coins at them. The guards weighed it, nodded and waved the cart through without another word.

“Looks like a city” said one of the boys. He had a large cut on his chin, and hollow eyes that stared dully.

“It's not,” said another boy. “We're at Barrowtown.”

Sure enough, the town unfolded around them as the wheels clattered down broken, busy streets. It was bigger than their village, but still small and rough. Falling stalls lined the roads, merchants shouting over the noise of foot traffic. Kaiden stared in quiet awe despite everything.

People with visible affinities were among the crowds: a man forging a sword with his bare hands, a woman shooting gusts of wind at flies from her fish stall, little kids setting their little beasts against each other in street fights.

Smoke rose from forges, and distant cheers suggested an arena or training ground somewhere deeper in.

The cart took a sharp turn, then another, leaving the main street behind. The buildings grew closer, the alleys narrower and darker. Refuse piled against the walls and the air smelled of damp stone and blood.

Roden started panicking again, voice rising. “Where are we going? Please…someone tell me what’s happening!”

“Shut up!” yelled one of the captors. Behind the mask, his eyes were a fierce amber color, so he was the flame-user.

They both stepped down from the cart and walked around to the back with heavy footsteps. The flame-user tugged at one end of the chain, and all six of them were pulled forward. Kaiden winced as he got off the cart, his body still racked with pain.

“From now on,” said the flame-user,with an evil smile on his face. “Your lives have been forfeit. You will work for the air that you breathe, for the clothes on your backs and the food in your bellies.”

He leaned forward slightly. “Fail, and you will die as miserably as the rats that you are.”