Chapter I

Pancho awoke with a loud sneeze. He’d been sick with the flu for a week now, and the weather wasn’t helping things. Nor were his sleeping barracks. He sighed heavily. Of course, slaves weren’t given actual barracks. They had raggedy tents that could fit four people comfortably. Which meant that ten people could fit in there. Comfort wasn’t a concern.

His friend Will was the only other slave who had wakened. Pancho’s sneeze had been lost in the noise of the outside blizzard. Tundaria had such blizzards every now and again. “Well,” muttered Will. “It’s gonna be bad day.”

“How can you tell?” asked Pancho.

“Bad omen,” replied Will. “The wind’s blowing south and hitting the biggest holes in the tent.” He was right of course. While the tent had holes all around, the biggest lie on the north side and growing worse every day. “Come on, let’s go. And be quiet about it.”

Pancho nodded. They wanted to get up and do their morning chores before everyone else woke. With any luck they would be first in line for breakfast. Due to limited quantities, those at the end of the line often went without. Granted, their breakfast consisted of a horrible slop made up of cheap ingredients. Calling it gruel would be giving it too much credit. But they would rather eat it than go without.

They left the tent and headed towards the tower that Stax had claimed as a base. The tower had stood since ancient times. On the first floor there was a piece of a trident frozen in ice. Adepts often came here to try and unseal it, but even the hottest fire would not melt it. Legends held that on top of the tower there was a power that could break the ice, but no one had ever been able to climb it. It would be many centuries before Felix scaled the tower and gained this power, but this does not concern our story. Far to the north was the town of Madra on what was then southern Osenia.

Pancho and Will separated to do their morning chores. Pancho had to clean the windows on the scattered buildings at the foot of the tower. These were the soldier’s quarters. As the soldiers were sleeping, Pancho only had to clean the outsides. Of course, he could not use water, as it would freeze quickly. So Pancho began his lengthy task.

He was on his third window when he was slammed forcefully to the wall. “What do you think you’re doing, you dog?” demanded on of the officers. His name was Reich, and he took special pleasure in picking on slaves, Pancho in particular. “I want to see myself in that window!”

“But, sir!” gasped Pancho. “I have no water to use!”

“Then lick the scum off! Dogs like you love to lick things, right?” Reich cackled loudly.

Rather than argue, Pancho did what he was told, only to find that his tongue froze to the surface. “What’s the matter, mutt?” sneered Reich with mock concern. “Did your little tongue get stuck? Then let me help you.” Reich took a few steps back and assumed a stance with his right foot forward. He stomped it on the ground, causing a large rock to fly up. In the next instant, he hurtled it towards Pancho, freeing his tongue and knocking him thirty feet. Reich, as you may have guessed, was a Venus Adept. That is, one who uses Psynergy to manipulate the element Earth.

Pancho was forced to repeat this until Reich finally got bored with him. Pancho, bruised and beaten, stumbled his way to the kitchen, only to find that they had stopped serving. In fact, the slave in front of him got the last bowl. Pancho resigned himself to finding his friend. He found Will in his usual corner of the kitchen. He reasoned that it was a lot easier to see any one coming when you cut off two directions.

Will looked sympathetic. “I saw what happened to you. Rough, huh?” Pancho grunted in response. “Here, I saved you half my breakfast.” As he said it, he offered up his bowl.

“You didn’t have to do this,” said Pancho flatly.

“After all we’ve been through? Forget about it!”

Pancho ate in silence, his appreciation for his friend growing. When he finished, he got up to relieve himself before he was assigned another task. Reich and some officers came in, but he barely noticed. He was heading to the counter when he tripped on something. He hit the floor hard, scraping his chin and arms. His bowl went flying. He looked to see what tripped him but saw nothing. He could only guess the Reich decided to have some fun with him using Psynergy.

Pancho stood up and tried to find his bowl. He gasped in horror to find that his bowl landed on the face of the camp’s commander, Lorad. Lorad glared towards the offender, in this case Pancho. The fire in his eyes was fierce, but the fire in his hand was fiercer. Lorad, as a Mars Adept, could control flames with his Psynergy. He’d been using it to try and thaw out the aforementioned block of ice. Legend held that with all three pieces of the Trident, they could defeat any enemy on the sea. Stax would reward him greatly for such a gift. He might even be relocated to a base on the Gondawan front, where it was at least warm.

Of course, Lorad repeatedly failed to free this piece of the Trident, which made him quite irritable. Therefore, having a bowl filled with the saliva of one who made every effort to lick it clean fall on him was rather infuriating. With Reich’s help, he successfully identified Pancho as the culprit and, much to Reich’s pleasure, was sentenced to a week on the Chain.

The Chain, a most savage method of punishment. Pancho was chained to a small post with a chain shorter than his arm’s length. It connected to him via a tight collar around his neck. It was covered with large spikes, which made it impossible to get enough of a grip to free himself. He was not fed or watered during this week, and his only means of shelter was a very small tarp. He fed on the few insects adapted to arctic weather (though of course in Weyard the word ‘arctic’ does not exist, but it conveys the point quite well). He obtained moisture from the snow, which constantly blanketed the ground. It was fortunate that the post was shorter than the chain, so that he could reach the ground.

The most horrid part of this punishment was not actually physical, rather it was psychological. It gave him a chance to think about his horrible excuse for a life. Many people doubt the potency of such a torture, but none who experience it wish to repeat it.

At the age of five, fifteen years prior, Pancho’s village was attacked by Stax’s troops at the start of the war. It had existed at the southern end of Hesperia. The village, named Torac, was completely destroyed, though Pancho was as of yet unaware of it. His parents were killed, and he was captured for slave labor alongside his younger brother Pincho. From what he could gather that night, Pincho would be sent to Magma Rock to forge weapons for Stax. True, the Guardians might take the Rock before the whole of Stax’s troops could arrive, but they honestly expected most of the slaves to die in the magma. Of course, Pincho might not of been sent there at all, considering that Pancho was supposed to be sent to Prox. It didn’t matter, though. Pancho gave up hope of seeing his brother years ago.

Pancho’s first days at this base were quite agonizing. Being unused to hard labor, he was punished often. He was more than familiar with the Chain. He made enemies with Reich soon enough. The only good thing was meeting Will during his third year. At least, he thought it was his third year. All the days looked the same, so Pancho had little sense of time beyond today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

After three days of thinking of this, Pancho finally gave up any hope he had. He decided to just sit there and die. But fate likes to make it difficult to die for those who want to. In the end they usually suffer greatly first. Such as the man Daniel Smith, who had to throw himself off a cliff three times before he would die. Even then, the third time down, his legs were impaled on the rocks, so rather than instant death, he was forced to wait two agonizing days to die. He realized during this time that, as a Venus Adept, falling off a cliff might not have been the best way to die. His brother John took this lesson to heart, and drowned himself three years later.

In any case, Pancho was waiting to die when the worst thing he could think of happened: he was picked for the Coliseum. The officers and soldiers got bored sometimes, so they had set up a small mock-coliseum so that they could fight slaves. The idea was, in essence, to pummel the slave as much as possible without killing it (though if the slave died, no one was too fussed). They kept score based on how long it lasted and the number of hits landed.

Though he wasn’t that surprised, Pancho was horrified to find that his opponent was Reich. Without so much as a word, Reich began his assault. The details of this horrid encounter shall be withheld for the sake of the reader’s stomach. Just know that a brutal combination of Psynergy and physical assault was used, and many a cheap shot given. Reich was preparing to finish him when the most wonderful sound Pancho had ever heard filled the sky. It was the alarm; the Guardian Military was advancing on the base.

The next several minutes were a blur to Pancho. All around him, soldiers were fighting, killing, and dying. Up on the nearby hill, he saw Lorad and a red-haired man fighting. The red-haired man seemed to be a Mercury Adept, one who controlled water, due to the fact that streams of fire and water were dancing around them at super high speeds. But before Pancho could tell who was winning, something slammed into the back of his head. He never saw what it was; he simply slipped into unconsciousness.