ELEVEN - Atherton

Atherton wakes up and makes a shocking discovery.

Atherton’s eyes opened as slowly as the main gate into Xantom.  I’m alive?

There was a throbbing pain in the back of his head.  He reached back to feel the wound and flinched when he touched it.  Probably shouldn’t do that again.  He was lying on his back in complete darkness.  There wasn’t even the faint glow of fire in the distance, just complete darkness.  Where am I?

It was impossible to survey his surroundings.  Instead, he used his hands to feel around him to get a sense of his location.  The ground was stone, both wet and cold to the touch.  Instead of smoothed and polished stone like in the city, it was rough and jagged.  In the distance, he heard the sound of dripping water.

The other unmistakable sound was the echoing of someone speaking in the distance.  No, multiple people.  Did they bring me back into the castle?  Am I in some sort of dungeon, one they didn’t put me in before?  What attacked me?  And who saved me?

He rose to his feet carefully, quietly, and made his way in the direction the voices were coming from.  To his surprise, there were no bars holding him in place.  He stepped with caution, the ground slippery and uneven.  Why is it so wet?!  Did somebody pour an entire bucket of water beneath me after they brought me here?

He ran his hand along the wall to feel where he was going and keep his balance.  To his surprise, the wall was also coated with water.  As he felt the dampness beneath his fingers, his mouth felt as dry as dirt in the Outskirts.  Suddenly he forgot the pain in his head and there was only thirst.  He pressed his cheek up against the wall to try to get something to drink.  After the first drop touched his tongue, he gagged and spat.  It didn’t taste like water.  There was something wrong with it… something else in it.

When he stopped choking, he realized that the voices had stopped.  They heard me.  Whoever rescued me, or kidnapped me… they’re coming for me.  Up ahead, the dull red glow from a torch illuminated part of the wall.  It wasn’t man-made, like he had assumed, but natural… he was in a cave. 

The light from the distant torch grew brighter, filling more of the wall ahead of him.  The person holding it came around a corner, revealing himself to be a large, hairy beast of a man.  It was the same shape as the creature that had knocked him unconscious earlier that day.  It wasn’t a Bareland Beast… it was a man.  There was a man alive in the Barelands.  And he brought me here… why?

Unsure, Atherton tried to back away from the man but slipped, landing on his face.  Now both sides of my head hurt.  Ahead of him, the massive man began to laugh.

“Careful there!  These caves stay pretty wet most of the time.  We don’t want you to hurt yourself.  At least, not anymore than you already have.”  Atherton rolled over to look at the man who was now standing over him.  Close up, he could tell that the man wasn’t massive or hairy at all.  He was simply wearing the hide of a Bareland Beast, making him appear a lot larger than he actually was.  Then there was the light from the torch, which had made the man’s shadow appear a lot larger than it actually was.

“I thought you were a Bareland Beast,” Atherton said, still looking up at him.

“Did you?  I’ve been mistaken for some ugly things in my time, but normally they’re just other humans!”  The man began laughing loudly at that.

Atherton had a hard time believing that anyone had every mistaken this man for being ugly.  In fact, one might go so far as to say this man was pretty.  He had a sharp jawline with his beard trimmed short, his head covered with wavy brown hair.  The man shifted his torch to his left hand and extended the other.  Atherton took it and the man pulled him to his feet.

“Thanks.”

“The name’s Hadrian.”

“I’m really glad to meet you.  I thought I was dead for sure.  I’m Atherton.”

“Ath-er-ton,” he said, sounding it out.  “I like it!  Good, strong name.  Come on, let’s go meet the others.”

“Others?”

“You didn’t think it was just me, did you?”

“I didn’t really think anything.  I got hit pretty hard on the back of the head… I didn’t even know you were human.  I only just found out that there are people out here.  I thought�"”

“�"that everyone who got Exiled was dead,” Hadrian finished his thought for him.  “I’ve heard it a hundred times if I’ve heard it once.  A lot of people do die before we get to them, but we try to take in as many people as we can.  I’ll let Draven handle all the complicated stuff.”

Hadrian spun and began walking swiftly in the opposite direction.  Draven?  The Exiled are still alive?  Why have the Hunters never returned with any reports of people surviving?  And how did they manage to find me in the middle of the Barelands?

“Are you coming?” Hadrian asked, peering from around the corner up ahead.  Atherton didn’t even notice how far ahead the man had gotten.

He ran to catch up.  “Sorry.  It’s just a lot to process.  Who’s Draven?”

Hadrian laughed heartily.  “This is my favorite part, you know that?  The confusion when someone new shows up.  The look you’re giving me right now… it’s like I grew another eye.”  When Atherton didn’t respond, he snorted and said, “Draven is our leader.  You’ll like him.  We all do.”

They turned a corner and Atherton saw where the dripping sound had come from.  Water slowly rolled down a rock formation hanging from the ceiling and dripped into a small pool of water on the ground.  Hadrian stepped nimbly around the obstacle and Atherton mimicked his movements, although far less elegantly.

“You’ll get the hang of walking around through these caves.  Until then, I’ll gladly watch you try to figure it out on your own.”

“Thanks,” Atherton said dryly.

“Oh, and don’t drink the water in here.  The stuff in these caves is what we call drywater.  Drink too much and it’ll kill you.”

I can’t tell if he’s telling me the truth or making another joke.  I hope this Draven is a little more straightforward with me.  “Drywater?”

“From outside the Dome.  Comes in from the top of the cliffs, down through the caves.”

“Outside the Dome?”

Hadrian stopped and turned around.  He studied Atherton for a long second.  “Have you never thought about it before?  You have to have thought about it.  There’s a big Dome, keeping us all inside, and you never wondered what was on the outside of it?”

“No.  I was more focused on staying alive.”

Hadrian leaned in and spoke very seriously.  “Part of staying alive is knowing what’s out there.  So you’d better start thinking about it.”  He turned back around and continued walking.  I have a lot to learn if I’m going to fit in out here… I feel like such an idiot.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t�"”

“Don’t apologize,” Hadrian said with another laugh.  “You didn’t know!  But you’re here now, and we’re going to teach you everything you need to.  And if you can’t learn, well, it’s no sweat off my back if you don’t make it.”

That’s comforting.

They turned another corner and Atherton got his first look at how many people had survived Exile.  There were at least three dozen of them, all sitting around little fires, wearing Bareland Beast pelts.  Some of them were eating; most were resting or talking quietly with one another.  So many… and I had no idea.

“Well, well!  If it isn’t our new friend!”  Atherton turned to see who spoke.  It was a man in his thirties, with a trimmed black beard and a smile on his face.  He approached Atherton with open arms.  “I’m glad to see you’re awake and feeling well.  I was a little worried about you at first.”

“That’s Draven,” Hadrian whispered.

Atherton extended a hand.  He was still in complete shock.  “You have firewood,” was all he managed to say.

Hadrian laughed and Draven smiled.  “Yes, we do.  And that’s not all we have.  Welcome to life outside Xantom.”

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Atherton said.  “It’s perfect.  And I thought�"I thought a Bareland Beast had me for sure.”

“If we hadn’t found you when we did, one might have.  Luckily a few of us were already in the area waiting for our friend Quintessa here.”

A woman stepped forward.  “I was exiled this morning.  Just before you, apparently.  We were on our way back here when we heard the drumbeats and turned around.”

“That was you,” Atherton said.  “You were exiled this morning.”

Draven exchanged glances with Hadrian.  “We have a repetitive one on our hands.”  Hadrian smiled, stifling another laugh.

“Yes, I was exiled,” Quintessa repeated.  “Funny enough it’s my second time.  I don’t think Xanthus remembered me.”

Atherton’s head was reeling.  This was too much information to process at once.  Not only has she been exiled, and the people who are exiled are alive and well, but she somehow managed to get back into the city and get herself exiled again, and then afterwards, still had the energy and time to save my life.  How is all of this even possible?

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.  “It wasn’t easy for me at first, either.  I’m originally from Xantom, but I got exiled when I was younger, probably not a whole lot older than you.  Today I snuck back in to see the King.  Had to steal a baby from the Outskirts and kill a couple guards to get there, but after you’ve been exiled once that doesn’t bother you as much.  And I still didn’t even get to say what I went in there to say.”

“You killed guards?”

“I did what I had to do.  If I hadn’t killed them I wouldn’t have gotten past the front gate, and they certainly wouldn’t have brought me before the King.”

She’s talking about it like she didn’t do anything wrong.  How can she think it’s okay to murder innocent people?  Am I surrounded by murderers?

Apparently Draven could tell Atherton was troubled.  “We don’t condone killing,” he said, “but some death is inevitable.  And there’s going to be a whole lot more of it if we don’t get into the city soon.  I would prefer it if we didn’t have to kill anyone, to do so, but it was the only way.”

It isn’t the only way.  He fought the urge to tell them that they were wrong, that there was another way into the city… a crack in the wall.  They might try to sneak in again and murder more people… I have no idea what these people are capable of.  “So everyone here was exiled from Xantom?” Atherton asked.

“Not everyone,” Draven responded.  “Some of us were born in exile.  We’ve been living out here for a very long time.”

“But a lot of you were exiled.”

“Yes, we were.  I’m sensing another question.  Does it bother you that a lot of us were exiled?”

“I’m sorry, this may sound bad, but… doesn’t that mean most of you are criminals?”

Draven’s face turned hard as stone.  There was ice in his voice when he spoke again.  “Be careful throwing that word around out here.  You don’t have the right to judge any of us.  Do you consider yourself a criminal?”

“No,” Atherton responded quickly.

“And yet you were exiled.”

“Yes, but that’s only because I was trying to feed my baby brother and sister.”

“And Quintessa was trying to get medical attention for her dying son,” Draven said.

“The b******s at the gate wouldn’t let me through.  They let my son die, right in front of them, and claimed there wasn’t enough time for the Healer to see him,” Quintessa said.  “So when I went back, I recreated the circumstances around my first exile.  I figured the easiest lie has an element of truth.”

Draven spoke again, “Quintessa did what she had to do, as well.  Hadrian killed a man who was trying to rape his wife.  She’s out here as well.  She decided she couldn’t live without him and essentially exiled herself.  Do you see how this works?  Once we’re out here, we’re all in it together.  We don’t judge each other for what we may have done in the past.  It doesn’t matter what our lives were like in Xantom.  It doesn’t matter if we were Hunters, Smiths, Healers, or former King’s Guard.  There’s only one rule, and we all follow it:  Look out for each other.”

“There are members of the King’s Guard out here?  Who?” Atherton looked around, hoping to spot him.

“You’re talking to him.”

He turned to look back at Draven.  “You?”

He smiled.  “In another life.”

“The current Xanthus?  Eight?”

“Seven.”

Atherton opened his mouth to question it, to learn more, but he remembered the words Draven had just told him.  It doesn’t matter what he did to get exiled.  We’re all in this together.  Instead he asked, “So I’m one of you now?”

“If you want to be.  If you’re truly uncomfortable being around us, we won’t make you stay, but we would love for you to join us.  As long as you follow the one rule, you are welcome here.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank us.  Now… do you want something to eat?”

Immediately, his mouth began watering at the prospect of food.  They have food… they have enough food for me to eat something without worrying about whether there will be enough for Saxon and Sephora, or enough for me to survive until tomorrow.  Atherton didn’t have to speak.  Draven gave him a knowing smile, wrapped his arm around his shoulders, and gestured towards a seat next to the fire.

Only a few minutes later, Atherton was sitting comfortably, happily devouring the food they had given him.  Whatever he was eating was something he had never tasted before.

“What is this?” he asked.  “It’s delicious.”

“It’s a Swimmer.  We find them in the drywater pools at the bottom of the Cliffs,” Draven said, “but you have to be careful when you’re getting them out.  Bareland Beasts like to eat them too.  We’ve lost a lot of people that way.”

“Are there any Swimmers in the lake?”

“None that we’ve seen.”

Atherton ate and listened to everyone tell their stories.  It was a surreal experience, sitting here, eating food and laughing.  I haven’t done anything like this since I was a little kid.  And they accepted me into the group so quickly.  It was only this morning that I was doomed to die alone in the Barelands.  For now, he had hope.

Finally he turned to Draven and asked the question that had been nagging at him.  “How did I end up here?  How far are we from where you found me?”

“Well, I knocked you out,” Quintessa said.  “Sorry about that, by the way.  We just didn’t want to scare you and have you start stabbing us on accident.  You did have your knife out…”

He instinctively reached up and felt the wound on the back of his head.  “You could have just said something to me.”

“You didn’t even know there were people alive out here.  How would you have reacted if we suddenly started talking to you?”

“I probably would have thought you were trying to take me back to the city…”

“Exactly.  So after Quintessa knocked you out, you were carried,” Draven said, “by him.”  He pointed across the room to a massive, clean-shaven man in the corner.  He wore no Beast pelt, instead sitting shirtless in the cold cave, eating quietly.  He had three long scars oriented diagonally across his face.  They looked deep.

“His name is Dragomir.  He fought a Bareland Beast with nothing but his hands when he was first exiled… and he won.  We found him half-dead at the edge of a drywater pool, but the Beast looked a whole lot worse.  We brought him in and fixed him up as best as we could, but he can no longer speak.  The Beast clawed out his tongue.”  Dragomir seemed not to pay attention to the conversation, instead continuing eating, staring into the darkness of the cave.

“That’s horrible,” Atherton said.

“Or he’s lucky to be alive,” a mysterious female voice said from behind him, “like you.”  The owner of the voice sat down directly beside Atherton.  She seemed to be around the same age as Atherton.  “My name’s Meridian.”

“I’m Atherton.”

“I know.  I’ve been listening the whole time.”

Draven cleared his throat.  “Atherton, this is my daughter.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand.  She looked at it and merely smirked.

“We’ll see about that,” she said.  He looked away, uncomfortable, and she started to laugh.  “We’re going to have to work on your sense of humor.”

“It’s hard to find humor in things when there isn’t anything to laugh about.”

“There is if you look for it.”  She smirked at him, waiting for a response.  When she didn’t get one, she rolled her eyes and disappeared as quickly as she had arrived.

“You’ll have to excuse her,” Draven said, “she has her own way of doing things.”

Atherton finished eating his second Swimming and tossed the bones into the pile that had been started by the others.

“What did you think?” Draven asked.

“That was the best meal I’ve ever had.  I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Draven said with a smile, “Just follow the one rule.”

The phrase made Atherton’s brain trace the conversation back to the first time Draven had said it and something occurred to him.  He turned to Quintessa.

“What did you have to tell the King?”

Her face fell.  The other people seated around the fire got quiet.  For a moment, the only sound was the crackling of the flames.  Everyone turned to Draven to see how he would answer.  He took a deep breath.

“You shouldn’t have to worry about this so soon.  You’re young, and you just survived an ordeal.  You should be able to rest and just enjoy the fact that you’re alive.  The feeling won’t last forever.”

“Tell me,” he pressed.  “I need to know or I won’t be able to enjoy it either way.”

Draven sighed.  “All of our lives are in jeopardy.  Not just ours, but the people in Xantom and the Outskirts as well.  And we’re running out of time.”

“Why?”  Nobody answered him.  “Somebody tell me why.  I think I have the right to know if I’m about to die.”

“It’s best if we show you,” Draven said.

“So show me.”

“We’ll go tomorrow.  You need to rest.  But as soon as we wake, everything you thought you knew is going to change.”