The Desperation of Dying

In the low orange glow of the morning light a group of twenty huddled in the dark amongst the jora. Not quite in the center knelt a skinny boy, his dark gray eyes flickering from face to face. They were all dressed in rags, mismatched pieces of material thrown together. The dirt caking them made their alabaster skin seem human.

“These monthly matches where they pit us against each other, when they claim our inherent magic, if we have it, will be more likely to peak as we fight for our lives, is a lie,” he whispered with a sharp tone, watching his fellow prisoners and potential enemies process his words. “Every day we are fighting for our lives, for futures that will leave us in the dirt or see us executed once they’ve decided we’ve aged out. Join me, take back the lives they stole from us. We don’t have to die, and if we stay here death is all we’ll have, be it your own or somebody else’s.”

Everyone looked around at each other, the smallest recruit, a young lpaw barely old enough to leave her mother’s side cried out, “I don’t want to die.” Her tears barely gained a second look from those who’d been at the camp as long as the boy campaigning for a rebellion, even if she did remind him of his juh.

“You propose that the twenty of us,” the boy next him spoke up, “take on the twenty three Lusbei as well as the guards? We’ll all die.”

“You’re going to die anyway, but if we do this at least you’ll have tried to change that outcome.”

“You can’t change the future Sisu, even the Magi of old knew that,” one of the older kids spoke.

Before anyone could respond, one of the kids from the outskirts of the group hushed them all. Silently, they listened as a guard strolled pass singing a hymn.

“And what if this is fulfilling the future? What if we win? You could go back home and see your parents, your brother, Edek. All of you could see your families again. Is the prospect of that not worth the risk?”

“Even if we did win, we have no idea where we are! We’re definitely not as close to the Riggian outposts as we are to the Lusbei’s main territory. We go in the wrong direction and that’s it,” Edek responded, around him several kids nodded.

“You’re the one that’s always talking about the Magi Nakome, how he came from a camp just like this!”

“Nobody knows if that’s true or not though, it’s just a legend Sisu, something we tell ourselves -”

“Exactly, we tell ourselves that so we have hope of one day getting out, so let’s do it, let’s win.”

Instead of replying the group quietly disbanded, Edek leading a small bunch off in one direction.

Looking desperately at those still around him, Sisu took a deep breath, “So we all die? That’s it?”

“They’re scared Sisu, we’re all scared,” a girl with short silver hair responded. “We fight back and the chance of us all surviving are slim to none. They catch on to what we’re doing and that is it. No matter what, we die.”

There was no reply as the rest of the group followed the girl back to their sleeping quarters.

It wasn’t long before the guards were rounding them all up and corralling them to the large cleared out area.

“Fight,” a simple demand, toneless.

“Sey! I don’t want to,” a desperate plea.

“Fight,” this time the demand is accented with a swift kick to the back.

Sisu watched as the girl stumbled into the middle of the pit, an arena of sorts, with stumps from fallen trees. The girl looks around helplessly for a way out. With quick glances Sisu could see everyone running around with arrays of different agendas; run, escape, conquer.

The guards watched closely, each one keeping an eye on a select handful of lpaw and ketome. Sisu knew that the girl would sooner forget the village she’d been taken from as the horror of the next hour would sear into her memory. Glancing over, he saw the oldest kid, one who’d been brought here young and adapted like it was his birthright. This place, the entirety of it, was more than just a camp where you were forced to fight for your survival, but a camp of children fighting children, and everything around them, in hopes of invoking the magic dying out.

In the arena, Sisu watched the girl as she quickly climbed a tree. Only when she reached the top did she look down, taking in the chaos that would be her life.

Two girls were punching each other wherever they could land their blows - stomach, face, neck, arms. Two other kids, a boy and a girl, in any other circumstances, were playing chase. The oldest boy, the Lusbei with purple leaves threaded throughout his hair proclamating exactly what tribe he was born to, catches a girl by her own leaf ridden hair, trying to climb her own tree, and starts choking her. His dirty rough hands practically used their own twisted form of muscle memory in applying pressure to varying degrees, both to prolong her suffering and perhaps bring forth some magic. With the young girl’s life slipping from between his fingers, like the countless others before her, he throws his head back as he cries out for a magic he would never have.

Up in the tree the girl cries harder than she had before during the impromptu gathering hours earlier. They were all going to die.

On the ground, Sisu charged, his feet barely touching the dirt beneath him as he tackles the Lusbei ketome to the ground, taking his head in his hands as he haphazardly starts bashing his skull against the dead girls lifeless body as if to show him exactly what he had done. The boy stopped fighting quickly, accepting his fate and passing on his backwards blessing - “May magic grant you it’s glory.”

Around them everyone stopped watching as the previous gofei who’d been in the camp longer than any of them took esa last breath.