THE LONG MARCH

The day was dreary, there is no other way to describe it. I was marched along in a train of men, well not men in the traditional sense since I was the only human man, but it’s hardly a train of Dwarves if there is a man in it, not to mention the Gnomes. None of them made sense. If I had to guess, all the Dwarves were mute and the only people, ahem, Gnomes using a voice were the Gnomes.

They were definitely in charge. Harrying any stragglers and heckling me at every opportunity. The pace was relentless as if they were determined to be somewhere quickly, or, as I noticed the Gnomes' fearful glances back along our trail, we were running from something.

Whatever it was I didn’t care, because my world was narrow. It focussed entirely on my feet, one foot in front of the next, a jerk on the rope around my neck forced me to speed up. The dwarves were not short exactly, but stocky for sure. Bearded one and all, and they still displayed that vacant look as if they were there, but the lights weren’t on. Anything asked of them, they did without restraint and my initial thoughts that they were beguiled or bewitched gained traction when suddenly one of them keeled over mid-march and one of the Gnomish fellows did some mumbo jumbo stuff and suddenly the guy was back on his feet as if nothing had happened. They gave him a drink of water and he was back up to speed with the rest of us.

Towards the end of the day, my mind still getting blank responses from my internal interface, I noticed we were approaching what appeared to be a busy road in the distance. As soon as it came into view, the march intensified and I was forced to double-time to keep up. I was at this stage severely dehydrated and extremely grateful when we met the road where another caravan of Dwarves, Gnomes, and various carriages and beasts lingered.

It appeared as if the wagons and livestock had been waiting for us and another group coming from a different direction to arrive. The second group had about an equal number of members, but with them, they had two Scalar prisoners and a creature I recognized all too well. My recollection of being torn to shreds by those huge beetles had left an imprint of terror in my mind and seeing one, and an extra large one at that, being hustled along in the train left me wondering if these guys weren’t some kind of collectors. I had thought they were slavers when I saw the other two Scalar chained as I was, but the beetle creature put that theory at odds.

I was clumped with the two Scalar, locked in a wooden wagon with metal bars and the beetle was forced into another wagon similarly designed, hissing and spewing a noxious gas from its rectum that killed two of the Dwarves. The others didn’t react to their brethren’s deaths at all and simply trussed up their bodies in large sail type cloths and placed their corpses on the roof of our wagon. It was then that I got to smell the gas that killed them and the scent of almonds pervaded the area.

It was weird how so many things related back to Earth and yet didn’t. I would have sworn the toxin was arsenic, but no doubt it had a different name here. Also, how could a beetle imbibe such a substance to produce it from a rectal gland? From what I knew of these creatures, they were carnivorous. Making a meal of me had been their number one priority in that training Sim all those weeks ago. Had it been weeks? It felt like years. Literally light years, as I found myself captive in this alien world, with alien beings treating me like a novelty, a spectacle to be gawked at, taunted and treated like some form of beast myself.

What was clear is that they really didn’t care who or what I was, and seemed intent only on keeping me alive, however barely. I had to cling to that hope, and the hope that somehow my abilities would continue to restore themselves and the mysterious AI intelligence within me would gain full acclimation in due course. Then I could do something about it.

I tried to talk to the Scalar males who were locked up with me, to whisper comfort to them, create rapport, make some sort of connection. They were hardly chatty. Not surprising really. One had a broken jaw and could do little else but moan from time to time when the jostling wagon caused him pain. The motion of the strange beasts pulling the cart jerked it around unevenly and he often woke blabbering from a nightmare.

The other fellow remained sullen and shook his head vigorously every time I tried to get him to say something, his eyes avoiding mine. They both seemed resigned to their fate and showed no fight or willingness for freedom.

The road we took would hardly be called a road on Earth. This backwoods track jostled us about like popcorn kernels popping in a pot. The beasts pulled us in resigned fortitude. Each with three horns like a triceratops, but more bovine in appearance and demeanour.

It left little room for rest, relaxation or monitoring my internals. At best, each day was a struggle to stand, remain balanced and not crack my head while I held onto the bars. My two fellow prisoners did likewise. When feeding time came, it was a mad scramble for whatever was squeezed through the bars. Sometimes it fell on the floor. It didn’t stop me from gulping my share and ensuring the guy with the broken jaw had his share, which he slurped down sullenly, not showing any form of gratefulness or gratitude. I simply shrugged. Perhaps it was their culture.

On the sixth day of my captivity we had another incident. Some type of huge bird-lizard creatures found the stench of the corpses on the roof too good to resist and landed atop, squawking as they tore the sails off the dead Dwarves and began feasting. Of course their squawking alarmed the beasts of burden that pulled the wagon and so they lumbered off the road, going hell for leather to anywhere that was away from the birds. At the first wrench from the road I managed to retain my balance but as things got way out of hand, I ended up entangled with my two fellows as we were shaken, not stirred for several kilometres. A morbid line of stoic dwarves cantered after us, while blowing some kind of horn that must have been a call to subdue the oxen-like beasts.

Eventually one of the Gnomes, riding another creature, more like a lizard, and super quick in short furious bursts managed to catch up. He fired off a spell and the cattle beasts calmed and slowed. Then he fireballed the hell out of the squawking carrion birds and managed to singe us in the process. Unfortunate really for the fellow who refused to talk to me, who, by some stroke of misfortune happened to be atop of our jumble of limbs and torsos when the fireballs exploded atop the roof.

Two things happened that changed the course of the trip for me. The first was a full meal for the first time in days. The carrion birds were bigger than ostriches and fed the entire company with room to spare. We were thrown the leftovers, but it was way more than I could eat, and while it was stringy, and burnt in some places, it tasted wonderful and helped me regain some much needed nutrition. Similarly my cell mates enjoyed the large portions and I even managed to get their names, but little else. Both Javinda and Dhruvam were injured now so with two injured compatriots whimpering and moaning while they slept, I had even less time to sleep. I was getting to the part where I considered strangling them in their sleep just so I could rest properly.

I eventually fell asleep on the seventh day. The road had flattened out and my exhaustion finally won out. A dead sleep, the kind that blanked out everything happening in the real world. It was what I desperately needed and the nightmare I endured from a past best left forgotten brought a stream of emotions that helped me regain some of my abilities. The torment of past failings a driving force to be better, to embrace my failures and ensure that I didn’t make those same mistakes again. The nightmare led me through events that forced me to leave my homeland after the political shift and turmoil. Those events that I had carried like a siamese twin, running from that pain, but never able to leave it behind.

The burden of conflicting guilt and remorse driving me to new heights to leave the past behind and find solace in whatever challenges could null the pain of my failure, and yet after my time with Avihs, I felt whole again and more human. Getting in touch with my feelings had never really been a priority to me before, but perhaps they should have been.