While Maruka fought with his troops up on the battlements that night, he couldn’t help his cheery disposition. Even though so much rested on his shoulders--being so involved with running the fortress-- and there was so much chaos around him, he felt like he could float. The sound of the terrified screaming of his soldiers didn’t weigh heavily upon him tonight—neither did the grinding of axes on swords nor his responsibility of having to keep his recruits alive. He felt like he didn’t have to hang his head because his heart was so heavy as he normally did; he felt like the shackles that were keeping him bound to his duties and to the dryad had been removed.
He unleashed a dampened arrow with pin-point precision into the fiery heart of a doppelganger with a smile on his face. One of the recruits who was hunkered down next to him behind the parapet commented, “You seem cheerful.”
Maruka didn’t reply; he didn’t even hear her. He was caught up in something that only he could see.
Crystalline bubbles were floating up from the dead earth surrounding the fortress; they buoyed upward and upward until they eventually popped. Maruka stared at them with an almost drunken smile. Following the bubbles, water began surging up from the earth, and sea-vegetation popped into existence after it. Maruka could hear seals barking in his ears; he could feel water caressing his cheeks.
“Sir, get down!” The recruit hunkered down next to him grabbed his calf, dragging him down next to her just as a shadowy arrow flew past his head.
Maruka was breathing heavily.
What happened? Was that all my imagination?
He ran a hand through his hair.
Am I infatuated with the fairy? Is that where this imagination has stemmed from?
He slammed his back against the slab of iron.
No. It’s the art. I can’t stop thinking about it.
Maruka regained his bearings. Although he was still cheerful, he kept his imagination under control. He stayed with the recruits for many more hours—fending off the doppelgangers--and then he returned to his quarters to attempt to rest as different concriptants took over his shift.
He sat on the edge of his bed—hunched over with his hands hanging off his knees. He could imagine the sea gently waving under a clear sky and a cool wind.
His hands tingled excitedly when he thought of continuing to paint the room; his wrists twitched.
I can’t stop thinking of it! I must return to the sea! Not the painted sea, but the real sea!
“
Maruka
…” A sing-song voice called.
Maruka looked around in the shadowy corners of his room until he saw the silhouette of a woman in one of them. “Lollia…?”
“What have you been up to?” The dryad queried from the darkness.
Maruka couldn’t help the electric fear that ran up his spine at her voice. “G-gathering information like you asked. I-I didn’t learn much of interest yet. Just that Pollyanna seems to have gained her powers from one of Eory’s ancestors.”
The dryad, Lollia, crossed her wooden arms with a disparaging expression. “I know. I heard. I also heard you telling him that you didn’t like being my slave.”
Maruka’s eyes darted downward worriedly. “Y-you were there? How?”
Lollia emerged from the shadows and sat down next to him. She reached into his ear and pulled out an ant the size of her thumb. “I planted one of my spies on you. He told me everything.”
Maruka couldn’t hide his look of revulsion at something so big living in his ear. In a moment, he managed to recover. “I-I shouldn’t have said t-that, but I was trying to bond with him. H-he told me he was a prisoner once, too. We had that in common…”
Lollia’s blue eyes narrowed with cold anger. In a voice colder than her eyes, she asked him, “And what is wrong with being a prisoner?”
Maruka was too frightened to look her in the eyes. His stomach swam.
Words spilled hastily from his mouth. “Y-you know I hate being a prisoner. Y-you know I hate being a slave. Why should I-I hide my true feelings from you if you know them already?”
“Because that is what being a slave is truly about!” Lollia shrieked. Maruka finally looked at her face just as it contorted into a brutish and almost impossibly ugly tangle of roots and bark. “Your surface emotions become your true emotions, and suddenly you love being a slave and can’t imagine being anything else! I used to have that with my former master! Do you think I like feeling these ugly, deep, unencumbered emotions?”
Another shiver ran up his spine and resulted in an involuntary muscle spasm.
Maruka inevitably thought back to Eory and his own comfort in being a prisoner. Eory had told him that he had begun to miss his prison because the outside world had been so cruel to him. Maruka hadn’t told him, but he could relate to that predicament. Maruka couldn’t help but think back to a time when he had been completely under Lollia’s control and had no qualms about it.
The sea had been simple, eloquent and
safe
. The surface world was the opposite; complex, messy, and dangerous. Before, on the surface, he couldn’t last without someone to guide him—someone to be his friend—someone to make life simple by stripping his choices away and making them for him.
That person was Lollia.
“Ch-chains can be comforting…” Maruka found himself reluctantly agreeing.
Lollia laid her rough, wooden cheek on his shoulder and enclosed her twig-like arms around his shoulders. “Yes. That is why we must give this entire world chains.” Maruka felt the love, warmth, and safety that he used to feel when she hugged him. When he was in her arms, he felt certain that he would survive another hundred years.
“So you made progress with the fairy, then?” Lollia changed the subject as calmly as she could muster—trying to move past her anger with him. “And you are on the cusp of discovering the secret to Pollyanna’s immortality?”
Suddenly fearing the uncertain and lonesome future, Maruka found himself leaning into the woman’s hard, but familiar, embrace. “I just need a little more time with the f-fairy. I think it will be easy to g-get him to tell me about Pollyanna’s invulnerability. But… Why do you even need to know the secret of Pollyanna’s immortality? You’re already so powerful. S-surely you can find a way to rule without her.”
“Having an immortal soldier on my side could only make shackling Yharos easier, wouldn’t you say? While it is true that I am more powerful than most, I can’t say I’m invulnerable like she is. And the fairy… Arrozan magic can be terrifying. His ancestor, Fjorn, collapsed into lazy greediness and gave up on his dream of enslaving the world, but he could have done it if he had had more determination. I have also…” Lollia began, but her voice got caught in her throat before she could continue.
“Y-you have a-also?” Maruka prompted.
Lollia was eerily quiet for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the Arrozans and Pollyanna are
mine
.”
Maruka found himself being pushed down by her immovable hands. His heart was beating against his chest in chill horror, but his face was blank and accepting. He turned his head to the side with a dead look in his eyes.
“As well as your bad-mouthing me to the fairy—telling him that I have been unkind and hurtful to you…” Lollia murmured as she pinned him beneath her. “I heard you
flirting
with him. Why should you do such a thing?”
The pain that shot through him woke his body from its petrified slumber.
He jolted upright--shoving her off and scurrying toward the door.
He remembered that the price of slavery—the price of safety which he treasured so much—also came with brutal torture and being at the whims of someone unstable and cruel.
The Dryad snapped her fingers.
The golden collar made of magic formed around his neck and yanked him backwards where he had been a few paces before.
“If you want to o-own him and the old woman, Pollyanna, so much, why don’t you pose as a recruit and manipulate them yourself?”
Maruka whimpered. “Just let m-me go!”
Maruka grunted as he pulled at the collar which burned his fingers as he tried to tear it off.
“Who was your friend when nobody else was?” Lollia reminded him accusingly. “Who do you owe your life of intelligence to? Who was there for you when you were abused and
taken advantage of
?”
“
You’ve
abused and taken advantage of me!” Maruka cried. “I-I want to be a seal again and forget t-this horrible nightmare of a life!”
“I have done no such thing! You never once complained before! You were all too happy to accept my love and gifts when it was convenient! But now that I have something to ask of you, you refuse me!” Lollia snapped. “What is it you would like from me? What would it take for me to make you a happy slave again?”
Maruka’s tugged at the collar a few more times to no avail. He spun around and looked at her hard face, covered, as it was, in bands of dark red shadows smothering her face.
Knowing she would never let him go, and remembering how, indeed, she had been so very kind to him when no one else had been, he sniffled and hung his head—feeling the familiar weight returning to his heart. He felt the will to fight leaving him; the comfort of complacency set in. “B-bring me the live f-fish I used to eat when I was a seal. That’s all I want. And please… Love me only when I wish to be loved.”
Lollia, who had been standing, sat down. She crossed her scaly and twisted legs with a dour expression. In a moment, she smiled accommodatingly. “You shall have it.”
Maruka was stunned that she should be kind enough to respect his wishes and his wants. She snapped her fingers again and the golden collar left his neck.
“You know why I can’t pose as a recruit here and ask the Arrozan and Pollyanna how she came to be invulnerable. I am unable to make pleasantries and lies as well as you are.” Lollia came close to him so that there was only a suffocating inch of air between them.
“Besides, this is a good way of reaffirming your loyalty to me, wouldn’t you say?”
The room was filled with dead air as Lollia appraised Maruka’s face. For a long time, he thought she was going to kill him.
Her hands shot outward.
Maruka jumped and a fearful gasp escaped his lips.
She clapped her rough hands to his cheeks and looked upon him like he was a shiny treasure. Her face was crazed with passion. “Tell me you haven’t forgotten our destiny? Do you think the Antlers appear to anyone? Do you think they would be called legends if they didn’t
make
the people they come across into legends! Do you think they would bond people together just for the sake of it? No! We were meant to do something grand together!” Lollia aggrandized passionately. “We are the only ones who can dig the rot out of this cruel and corrupt world! It is not just the people who are sick… It is the very soil! When a baby takes its first steps, the blackened grass has already infected them! We will figure out a way to make everything happy—including Yhaos itself-- I promise you! Now you must promise
me
not to turn your back on me! You must promise to help me fix this world as you once did before!”
Maruka could say nothing. All he could do was pray that she wouldn’t change her addled mind and decide to kill him.
Lollia reminded him of how the world was; flippant and unpredictable. One moment she was threatening to kill him, the next she was telling him that he was the most important person in the world.
“I’ll help y-you.” He attempted to appease her.
“Good. And you can flirt with the fairy all you want if it gets him to trust you.” Lollia said jubilantly.
Maruka wondered how the same thing that had made her to angry before didn't bother her at all now. Perhaps it never did in the first place, and she was only playing with him.