13: Sarah

 

Sarah

 

 

          She sipped slowly. Slowly but gratefully. The hot milk spread warmth throughout her entire body as it went down, rejuvenating her frozen limbs. Her fingers pressed tightly on the ceramic mug, greedily drinking in the heat. Flecks of snow still dangled from her messy hair. Her cheeks and tip of her nose were still rosy, but she was feeling more comfortable with every passing minute.

          "You two need anything else?" a passing soldier asked.

          "No, thank you," Sarah replied, smiling at the young man. He nodded and continued on. She shifted in the wooden bench and set her mug on the table. She and Ryan sat alone at one of four massive tables that were carved from incredibly large tree trunks. The trunks had been split down the middle and laid between five crossed wooden X's that were bolted to the stone below and spaced at ten foot intervals. The table surfaces had been sanded, polished, and stained to a glassy smooth finish. Each forty foot table had two benches running the length and candles were placed generously for lighting. Stone walls rose around them before disappearing into an ice-like ceiling that hardly looked natural. The uneven surface looked like an unpolished sapphire, rich in vibrant blue that stretched far beyond sight. Thick torches rest in sconces on the wall, jutting out at forty-five degree angles with cackling flames. At the head of the hall, perpendicular to the four long tables was one small one with three ornately carved wooden seats sitting vacantly.

          Only a few soldiers passed through the dining hall, but they had seen many more coming in to the Wolf's Den, the farthest northern outpost of the Auroran army. It had taken them almost four hours of walking to reach it, but Sarah was amazed at how much closer the mountains were than they had appeared. They reached a draw in small mountain and within it was the entrance into the outpost, a small stone doorway into the mountainside protected by a coil of concertina wire stretching the length of the draw. Beyond it were several foxholes with guards and two machine gun positions behind stacked sandbags.

          When they had entered into the mountain, she had covered her mouth to quiet her gasp. A long stone staircase led down to large cavernous opening. The entire floor was constructed of stone bricks, with a large flat parade ground made from a solitary slab in the center. Four pillars marked the corners, stretching up fifty feet into the gemlike ceiling. Each pillar was decorated with carvings of several different creatures. Between each pillar ran a wire and from each wire hung a rectangular banner. They were teal, bordered with black threading and black tassels that dangled from each corner. The center boasted a black upside-down paw print with white icicles hanging from the claws. Several hallways led off to other areas under the mountain, but they had been led directly to the dining hall which was across the parade ground stone.

          She and Ryan had been sitting at the table for almost half an hour now but they hadn't uttered more than a few words to each other. It was as if both had a lot they wanted to say, but couldn't find the words. To try to distract herself from the awkward silence, she took another sip from her milk.

          "This is probably the one and only time I'd ever take a picture of myself with my phone and put it on Facebook." Ryan said pensively.

          "What?" Sarah asked, laughing.

          "You know, like all those annoying girls do." He mimed taking a picture of himself and flattened his lips out, making a grotesque kissing face.

"Duck face picture of me in a mountain made out of sapphire. That'd be one hell of a shot. Too bad all my s**t's fried. Don't think I get Wi-Fi out here either."

          She giggled. "Probably not, no."

          "I'm still pretty sure I'm dead. Or I'm having the trippiest dream of my life. Someone probably slipped me acid. That has to be it."

          "Ryan, you're retarded."

          He shook his head. "I'm actually thinking on my feet. Being logical. You know what, you probably aren't even real. You're just dream Sarah because real Sarah would never say such hurtful things to me." He crossed his arms and forced a face of defiance. She smiled and was truly grateful he was trying to lighten the mood. It made her feel more at ease.

          "No but seriously," he continued, looking up. "That's incredible. This place is certainly beautiful. There's no denying that."

          "I won't even try to. It is incredible. A little too cold, though. Florida weather was just right."

          "It was hot all year around. The coldest it gets there is like fifty degrees twice a year."

          "Exactly," she nodded. "Just right."

          Another awkward silence fell between them. Sarah laid her head against her arm on the table, staring at the mug in her hands. She noticed all the little surface imperfections on the grey ceramic: the cracks, the chips, the rough texture. She rotated it continuously to occupy her hands. Even after her eyes had shut, the little ceramic mug continued to spin idly between her fingers.

          "Sarah? Sarah? Hey, wake up."

          "Hmm?" She shifted her head to the crook of her elbow without opening her eyes. A hand gently touched her shoulder and she groaned. Groggily she lifted her head, her neck sore and tight. She hoped she wouldn't have a strain from sleeping uncomfortably. The mug had gone cold, and she pushed it away lightly. Her hair was even messier than before, tangled and unkempt atop her head and across her face. "What's up?" she asked, stretching her neck to each side.

          "Sleep well?" a slightly accented male voice said. Sarah looked up and saw the officer who had found them.

          "More or less, sir," she said, grimacing as she tried to relax the muscles below her jaw.

          Captain Richmond let out a light laugh. "Well I'm glad to hear it. A man of my word, I'm hear to answer any questions you have to the best of my ability. Though admittedly, this is all almost as much a shock to me as it is to you."

          Before anyone could say anything more, Arianna stepped into the hall and made her way between the tables to them.

          "Holy s**t," Ryan blurted. "You found Arianna, too!"

          With that, the captain let out a genuine laugh. Ryan turned to Sarah with a puzzled expression. She brushed strands of hair from her face and frowned.

          "I see we are starting from the very bottom then, aren't we?" Captain Richmond mused. "What did you tell them?"

          "Nothing," Arianna admitted, taking a seat across from Sarah. "There wasn't time. It was a - unique - situation."

          "What's going on?" Ryan's eyes shifted from the captain to Arianna.

          "Where to start?" he sighed to Arianna. "Alright, I'm Captain Richmond. company commander of B Company, second battalion, North Division, Army of Aurora. This,"  he gestured around them, "is the current duty station of B Company. We rotate every month, and this month my company had the misfortune to be at this hell hole."

          "Hell hole?" Sarah interrupted. "This place is beautiful."

          "What? You mean the pretty rocks up there? That's some kind of crystal isn't it, Keeper? I don't know, I'm not a geologist. Some people believe it's gemstone from deep below that's been pushed up over millennia, others say it's particles from Nox when the planets were forming."

          "Nox?" asked Ryan.

          "The large planet in the sky. It's called Nox, the Bringer of Night, because for a third of our year we are in its shadow and everything is dark. Here, the years aren't counted by revolutions around our star, Aion, but by Aurora's revolutions around Nox."

          Sarah stared at him inquiringly. "And Aurora is the planet we're on?"

          The officer nodded. "Technically a terrestrial satellite, but yes. You're on a moon of a gas giant, one with its own sustainable atmosphere and full of life. A secondary planet, so to speak."

          "So how long are you in the shadow?" Ryan asked.

          "Nearly a year as you're used to it. It takes eight-hundred-and-seventy-six days to complete a year here, and our days are about thirty hours long. You can imagine it was pretty frightening when the first Romans were suddenly cast into a shadow for that long. They thought seeing the light after all that time was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen, which is how this came to be known as Aurora."

          "Goddess of the Dawn," Arianna said with a small smile.

          Ryan's frown hadn't vanished. "I still don't understand."

          "You're here because of her," Richmond said, nodding to Arianna. "She saved all of you and brought you here."

          "But how?'

          The captain steepled his fingers. "Because she's a Keeper."

          Arianna nodded. "I'm one of three Gate Keepers. We are the only ones who can go between worlds without using the actual Gate."

          "A well guarded artifact older than the deepest rocks of this planet," Richmond added. "And the only means to travel from Aurora to Earth or vice versa, unless you've got a Keeper nearby. But it hasn't been used since the Roman Empire. Though the study of its power is how we manage to get our Gate Keepers, and without them I'd probably still be in Arkansas."

          "Arkansas?" Sarah and Ryan asked together.

          "Hell yeah. I'm from a small farming town there, and I hated it. As soon as I graduated, I enlisted in the Marine Corps to get the hell out. I was part of the initial assault force into Baghdad. Things got pretty fucked up there. You need authorization from Congress to scratch your a*s, and that kind of policy gets a lot of your buddies killed. You lose your taste for operating under the rules of engagement. So I did my time, got out and became a contractor for Black Water. That's how they found me. This was back in oh-eight, and I was doing well. I got a job offer to be an instructor for a corporation's close quarters combat course, so I said 'What the hell?' and took it. Little did I know what troops they had been referring to. After my interview, I got a call, they said I got the job, and my transportation to location was a Gate Keeper. They didn't even explain the job to me in depth until after I got here, though if they had I promise I would have walked out thinking it was a joke. But I like it here, better than Earth. I'm not constrained by the same rules. Warriors are expected to behave like warriors, not peace keepers. Plus, if I ever went back, everyone would think me some insane vet who suffers from severe PTSD with all his talk of going to another world. So here I am."

          "We recruit a lot of our leaders from Earth's militaries, mainly because our own soldiers know nothing about your style of combat or your weapon systems," Arianna explained. "We look for good soldiers that retired early or, in some cases, mercenaries who've shown exceptional skill."

          "What's wrong with your own military?" Sarah asked. Her head was spinning trying to process everything.

          "Nothing," Arianna responded. "But firearms and the tactics that revolve around them are all fairly new to us. Only a few years ago did we start outfitting our soldiers with guns of any sort."

          "Even now, it's mainly officers who carry them. Our company is the exception because of our station. Everyone carries a rifle at this outpost because the threats are a little more," he paused, "present. But we take whatever we can get. Semi-auto MP-fives, fully auto AKs, I believe we even managed to get two sniper rifles fairly recently off the black market in Dubai. But weapons are just part of it, the icing on the cake really. The majority of what we import is clothing, food, convenience items, things like that."

          "Aurora has prospered, but not in the way Earth has. Technology on the level you're used to is almost nonexistent here. For our cities, electricity is just a myth they hope to see one day. We have had engineers and architects working for several decades to improve our clean water systems and plumbing, as well as modeling a lot of the infrastructure off what we've observed in major cities on Earth." Arianna looked Sarah in the eyes. The blue of her irises seemed to shine with the intensity of the crystals above. "To many of Aurora's inhabitants, your world is a utopia."

          "It shouldn't be," Sarah replied solemnly. "Especially with what's going on there. I can't believe this. I have no way to tell my family that I'm okay, or to make sure they are."

          "Would you rather be dead?" Arianna asked, cocking an eyebrow.

          "No," Sarah said, instantly regretting her words. "That's not what I meant! Don't think I'm ungrateful! It's just-"

          "A lot to take in," Ryan finished.

          "Yeah. It really is." She looked down at the table, feeling almost sick. It was the same feeling she'd felt before the first day of high school or after the pregnancy scare she had kept secret a year ago. That mixture of dread and anxiety about an uncertain future. "What about Michael and Sabrina, where are they?"

          Richmond and Arianna exchanged glances. "We couldn't find them," Richmond admitted. "The ice over a tunnel into one of our old spider holes was broken and there were freshly burnt logs in the hearth, so it's reasonable to assume they used it. There was a fur rug outside the hole and a small splatter of blood next to it. Not gruesome enough handiwork for the hounds, so my guess is raiders."

          "Raiders? What the hell are they raiding? I didn't see anything out there but trees and ice," Ryan said.

          "They're men and women from beyond our borders, the southern  majority of the continent. They're an ever present threat along all of our coasts. Up here in the north, they particularly like to linger and take jabs at our military forces. Down below the Divide, a firearm is worth a lifetime of earnings or, in knowledgeable hands, power."

          Sarah looked from Arianna to Captain Richmond. "They don't have guns down south?"

          Arianna answered. "Only ones they've stolen off bodies, but even then, they're extremely rare. Rarer still is ammunition, though I'm sure almost the entire population believes they operate off magic, not bullets. That makes guns a very sought after commodity."

          "Warlords love the firearms, but even just traditional conveniences make good money in the South," Richmond added, brow furrowing. "Clothes, water bottles, pens, things you wouldn't give two thoughts about are treasures below the Divide. So stealing from us is very big business."

          "But what would they want with Michael and Sabrina?"

          "Ransom, probably. A lot of people would pay a good price for two so-called imperials, which is what they'll be assumed to be."

          "Unfortunately true," Arianna said. "Those in the wilds regard anyone who lives north of the Divide as a threat. The New Roman Empire isn't popular to those not a citizen. As if they're some kind of royalty. I'm sure you can imagine there's a lot of animosity there. The southerners are a savage rabble. No central leadership or even organization. The wealthy hold the power within the cities, small settlements usually stick to themselves or are the dwellings of cults, and there are several gangs that are more like small militias that are always constantly warring each other. Aurora only has one major inhabited continent. Upon the first opening of the Gate, Roman legions poured into Aurora, only to be left behind when the Gate closed. The Roman military was more heavily armed and experienced than the native Aurorans, and were able to crush what little resistance they faced. Most, however, wanted to join their ranks, and so the politicians and nobles that had come to see this 'New World' set up an oligarchic rule. Over the centuries, the Roman-led Aurorans spread until half the continent was under the rule of New Rome. It was at the Crassus River where it was decided to end the expansion. There simply wasn't enough man-power to practically move further. The river is at the narrowest region of the continent and connects the Cerulean Ocean on the east and the Pontus Ocean on the west. The river bed is saturated with angled wooden stakes to prevent ships from getting in and along the shore there is a thirty foot stone wall that runs from ocean to ocean with guards along the entirety of it at all times."

          "So many people have died trying to cross it that the river has earned the nickname among the soldiers as the River Styx."

          "But that's Greek mythology," Sarah protested.

          "It is," Richmond agreed. "Which are some of the most beloved stories here. You have to remember that the Romans brought with them a wealth of Greek influence and philosophy with them as well."

          Sarah met Richmond's eyes. "Roman influence is still present?"

          He met her gaze. "The Romans established another empire."