The trees rattled, the wind breezing through the coniferous pines that scattered around the lone dirt road passing through the bare, weed-filled ground; the warm rays of the sun passing over the steep, rocky terrain of the mountains, the dark shadows engendered upon the path passing onto the two sisters as well.

Shirin wheezed. The strings covering led to a small cotton seat tied to her back, Rie sleeping as she clutched onto her older sister’s shoulders; her remaining leg swinging about somewhat as her older sister trudged on, two small sacks on an equally small wheelbarrow she pushed forward.

A month had passed since the escape. Wei and Tooru’d left without her and her sister, which squared all the same to her; she pulled out a sword, some supplies and a cart which had degraded to becoming the wheelbarrow she pushed along. A few carving tools and wooden planks lay in the corner of the brown cart, stuffed to the brim with sacks of food.

“Rise and shine, Rie… Rise and shine.”

The snoring behind her back continued. Shirin groaned, before slowly pushing her sister back into a more stable position and moving onwards.

“Rie.” She repeated softly. “I need to change out the bandage soon.”

Rie’s eyes remained closed. Shirin sighed; turning the cart towards the left before putting down the rickety vehicle, sitting down on the dirt before untying the binds holding the small cushion her sister was on to her back. A small dust cloud emerged as Rie hacked out the puffs of grey that had gotten into her mouth and stared at Shirin.

“Sis…”

“...you… doing okay?”

“It’s… it’s still really painful…” She muttered, reaching to touch the stump that had previously been connected to a leg. Instinctively Shirin slapped her hand away.

Shirin narrowed her eyes, holding her hand up to Rie. “Don’t do that.”

“Yeah… sorry…”

“It’s fine. You’ll learn.” She muttered. “Let’s get that changed.”

Precarious. Her hands moved gently and slowly while unwrapping the bandages surrounding the stump that had previously connected to Rie’s right leg, the smell of blood emerging from the rounding wound. Rie gulped, wobbling yet remaining otherwise silent, keeping a shaken, but straight face throughout the process.

Shirin applied another round of ointment before pulling out a small surgical knife, looking across her sister’s leg before lightly piercing a vein and squeezing the contents of a container into it ever so slowly; immediately then covering it with a smaller bandage. Re-wrapping the amputated area she smiled at her sister.

“Nice. You know, you survived a helluva lot?” She paused, hugging Rie for a moment. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you…” Rie’s voice trailed off, her expression unchanging, before showing just the slightest hint of sadness.

“No need to thank me.” Shirin stood up, and turned around to the blueing sky. The brighter shade of blue occupying the atmosphere above filled with clouds ever so close, and a small grey trail leading to the top. “A village… unmarked? We’ll see…”

Pulling out a long stick from the cart, pointed at one end with a round dish covering the other, she stumbled back to Rie. “This,” She said, while flicking out a few of the small trapdoors on the dish, “is what you’re going to be using from now on, Rie. When we meet those people I want you to be walking on your own two feet. Show them what you’re made of.”

Light gazed out of the trapdoors, the beams forming a small flash directly above the dish. The small Kan that Shirin had pulled from the smouldering wreck of the prison’s rooms, with the othala on the side scratched off, had become fully operational.

“Let’s get this on you, Rie. Sit up, would ya?”

Rie peered into her older sister’s eyes, her figure blurry as she trembled. Biting her lip, she suddenly nodded her head just once.

“Alright. That’s my girl…”

The dish end of the Kan facing towards Rie’s amputated leg, Shirin moved it towards the bandages wrapping around the leg, the lights transfixing themselves around the wound before the stick fixed itself underneath the wound. Despite not being in direct contact Rie raised her left thigh and the Kan lifted up as well.

“That’s the spirit! You’ll get the hang of it in no time.” She remarked, grinning, her stained yellow teeth showing. “C’mon. You can hold onto me while we get to the next village.”

Shirin extended a hand to her sister; who in turn extended her hand but for a moment.

Left hanging, Shirin watched as her bruised, dirted sister stood up on her own two feet. Her eyes widened for a brief moment, before she puffed up, hands on her waists as Rie slowly and shakily supported herself up, hands balancing outwards as she wobbled from side to side.

“I… I can do it.” Rie smiled. “I can do it, sis.”

“You… little.. rascal…” Shirin’s smiled. Even with a massive burn on the left side of her face the expression she gave her little sister shone brilliantly. Rie, however, seemed to be looking precisely at that part of her face.

“Sis…”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“It’s got to hurt.” She pointed at the red lines and bumps on Shirin’s left cheek, followed by the pock-mark hodge-podge of wounds below it that trailed all the way to her left ear. “You gave me all the bandages.”

“Nah. It’s completely fine.”

“It was an explosion…”

“I, am, fine.” Shirin patted Rie on the shoulders, before pointing towards the smokestack. “Let’s go.”

Uninspiring. The best word to describe the village that greeted her eyes would be ‘uninspiring’. A large stone complex with three wells out front and a flattened plaza in the middle collapsed onto itself, the little bits of grass growing out of the shattered roof and stone and pebbles everywhere. Stone homes surrounded the complex, some still displaying the flag of Old Kura, the blue and yellow colours swaying about in the breeze.

“An old rest point?” She muttered to herself. The flag still flying on a bent brown flagpole tore in places, with obvious holes in the fabric.

“Aye. We love ourselves some of those wells they gave us back in the day.” A balding man with wrinkles all over his face walked over, his skin a pale peach but his years a round seen in humans. “Don’t tell the fuckers, aye? Can’t stand the Hiryu bastards showing up and using the wells every single time they’re on campaign.”

Shirin snickered. “How many years are you pushing, old man?”

“Enough to have seen the last oil lamps, the revolution, the occupation, the ideologues.” He paused, before pointing to the building. “You recognised it?”

“Used to be a scholar at a magic school. I’d know.” She remarked, with Rie holding onto her back.

“Anyone coming with you?” He leaned over, looking behind the two sisters, before pulling out a bat from his back. “Sorry about this, but we got a load of soldiers two weeks ago. Better safe than sorry.”

“You really think the Avisen would send a woman who lost half of her face blowing up a prison and an Akari?” Shirin sneered, shrugging. “Not very old, then?”

“Ah, you’re a feisty one I see,” The old man smirked, keeping the bat up. He stared over at Rie, who let go of Shirin’s shoulder and stood on her own feet. “It your slave, or are you one of those… ‘liberties’?”

“‘Liberties’?”

“That’s what an old Solha from Senai told me they are. ‘Liberties’. Or is it ‘Liberals’? I don’t know…” His raspy voice trailed off. “Regardless, your answer?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Oh… with the church, are you? It’s been a while…”

“Hell no I’m not with the church. Fuck ‘em.”

“So you are a liberruh… I’ll stick to ‘Liberties’. You’re a liberty. Sounds better. I’ll change it if a pedantic comes to this place again…” Furrowing his brows the old man grinned, his disorganised teeth showing. He put the bat down. “What do you want, you?”

“We need food, for a start. You’ve got to have some meat, preserved shit tastes awful… and you gotta tell me about the world down there. Been hiding around for weeks.”

“We don’t have much meat up here. Can’t tell you much about I’sho or Yokura, nobody except the Xiojinkan have passed by for months now.” He paused. “Before we even begin talking me helping you out, what’s in it for us?”

Shirin turned to the cart, before stopping and turning right back around. “No coins, I assume.”

“Those things have been useless since they introduced the jagged edges. Can’t file them off anymore.”

“Right… how about this?”

She picked up one of the Kans, and a spear. “Looks good to you?”

The old man’s eyes widened. “Blimey, girlie, you actually blew up a prison?”

“You didn’t believe before.”

“Nae, haven’t seen that many women fighters since Sekyo took over all those years ago. At least, not one outside the village. You’re the first for quite a while.” He paused. “They still talking about all of that ‘women must stay in the house’ nonsense, of course.”

“I got branded for it.” Shirin chuckled.

He scratched his head for a moment. “Never figured why they wanted to make it so hard for us to farm… come on over. You’re not staying, are you? Wouldn’t be able to hold you anyways, the inn’s been dead for years now.”

The three proceeded past the ruins and closer to the blocky stone houses packed into the thin strip of flat land; a tall smokestack emerging from an open fireplace some distance to the side of the collapsed building. The houses all featured interlocking stone blocks with no visible cementation, the rooves also made of rock and open windows. Only two bucked the largely small nature of the structures; one long stone building behind the former rest stop and a temple in the centre of the nucleated settlement.

“That,” he said, pointing at the cuboid-like building, “was our old inn. Not enough people to run it anymore…”

“How many?”

“We’ve scarcely two dozen people around here. We all agreed back in the day, our sons and daughters go to Yokura and form a community there. No future here…” He smiled. Shirin narrowed her eyes slightly as he watched on. “Ah, ya didn’t expect that answer did ya?”

Shirin didn’t respond.

"Don't worry too much. It was aftah the massacre."

She looked back at Rie, who slowly trudged on one step at a time as she stuck the stick that replaced her foot into the ground, before uprooting it, again and again.

“Right. I assume you haven’t heard of the laws, then?”

“Laws?”

“This is all I can tell you about the outside world, so listen up.” He paused, turning around to look at Rie as well. “It- she wanna listen?”

“Rie! Come over.” Shirin shouted over.

Rie frantically nodded before hopping over, throwing up small piles of pebbles and rock in her blurry wake. Within seconds she was at Shirin’s side.

“Right, what is it?”

“So - I’m just guessin’ - you know the rebels? The ones led from Renai?”

“Yeah.”

“So, I’m spitballing, but they caused a helluva stir down over in Otisk. Right outside the border, maybe. I’m not sure. But whatever it was, it made that moron Sekyo and his deputy Kon decide to pass new ‘laws’. The, ‘Laws to protect the chastity and grandeur of the Five Colonies’.”

Shirin kicked up a small mound of dust. “Oh, I don’t like the sound of this already.”

“Basically, there’s like - I dunno, like five big laws, but they all say this shit. Get this, they want us all to stop ‘participating in idolatry’, eh? All men must immediately register themselves for ‘service’, and-”

“-the woman must submit herself to the service of their spouse, or find one; their position is that of eternal servitude?” She groaned.

“Wow, you think that highly of them? They gave us a piece a parchment about it, left it in the inn.”

As they approached the building, the shadow cast over them slowly fading as the sun emerged over the village; Shirin’s expression had soured immensely.

“And laws about Rie?”

He groused. “You mean, that Akari ...sister of yours? The fifth one.”

“Oh... shit, don’t tell me…”

“‘The great truth that the Akari is proclaimed by god to be in servitude to the Elven and Human races’…” His voice trailed off. “Sorry to tell you that.” A distinct lack of interest came on the second remark.

“Well, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck… there aren’t even free Akari anymore?”

“My guess is that somebody be buying them at an auction after they get scooped up.” He stopped, staring back at Rie, her eyes wide and her collapsed on the ground. “Gimme a sec, lemme get you this…”

As the old man vanished behind the doors of the old inn Shirin began pacing around. Her mind wandered.

“But where to, where… of course, Senai, but how without getting caught crossing the Hunda River…”

She looked back at Rie.

“Wait. That’s it.”

Marching towards Rie she stood tall in front of her before remarking:

“Okay, new plan. Let’s get in contact with the rebels. We’re getting out of Kura.”