Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Refugees and Kings ❯ Like Waging War Against the Stars ( Chapter 1 )

Refugees and Kings

 

Chapter One: Like Waging War on the Stars

 

In which one young girl sets out to start another war.

 

Disclaimer: I do not own Escaflowne. The original characters, however, are all my ideas (with some naming help from my beta, thank you!). I'd be flattered if you sued, but please don't.

 

--------------------------------------------

 

It's all Fanelia's fault.

 

A new river had been created in the open country side of Freid, one made out of human bodies. They choked the roads when they walked and trampled the ground in massive circles when they camped. The guards complained constantly that there were too many of them. Too many of them to notice one single girl that pushed her way out of the massive line.

 

Alexandra staggered off the side of the road, choking on the dust that had been rising in the air around her for days. Unconcerned about the stains the trampled grass would leave on the tails of her jacket, she dropped to the ground to clutch at her boots and her aching feet underneath. The boots had once been of the highest quality, constructed by some of the finest artisans in Zaibach, but they had never been designed for this kind of work.

 

And Freid and Asturia are feeding like vultures on a fresh kill.

 

Trying to bite back a whimper, Alexandra eased off her shoes to inspect the damage. Two more blisters had burst. And if she didn't start moving again soon one of those blasted guards would be around to “help” her along. Tears burned threateningly in Alexandra's eyes as she replaced her boots and hobbled back to her feet.

 

Fanelia did this to me.

 

The girl slowly waded back into the stream of human bodies. A random violent shove to the shoulder banished her tears and made her grit her teeth. She had to hold her head high. She would bear this pain just like the-

 

Alexandra's head jerked around at the realization and she hastily surveyed the line of other refugees filing past her. She had lost the professor again.

 

“Professor?!” Alexandra once again rushed out of the ranks and plunged ahead as best she could while limping and stumbling through underbrush.

 

A sign of so much energy had become like a sin among her fellow refugees and she immediately attracted attention. Some people even shouted as she passed, throwing jibes and curses.

 

“Now, now. You'll only tarnish that pretty skin!”

 

“What's the matter? Eager to get there first to the slaughter?”

 

“Bloody apprentices.”

 

Alexandra ignored them, too focused on trying to find the professor to pay any attention to fools who had once been like dirt beneath her feet. Not more than a week ago they never would have dared speak to an apprentice in the laboratories that way.

 

An animalistic shriek was the first sign Alexandra had of the danger. Not far off the road on the slopes of the nearby ditch, a group of guards had formed a circle around their victim, laughing and jeering. Nuada was lunging this way and that in the circle, trying to break free and making noises that barely sounded human. The professor was a wisp of a woman, her skin stretched and rubbery with frail-looking bones protruding underneath. Normally the woman could move with the grace of a gentile lady. These curs had her stumbling about like an invalid. Alexandra went blind to everything else.

 

“Get away from her!” she screamed.

 

The guards looked up from their sport. One of them turned away from the professor and leered at Alexandra as she ran towards them. “Look here, boys. Like a chick trying to protect the nest.”

 

He was no different from anything else Alexandra had encountered in her new life on the road. For once, she forgot to think of the danger. “Can't you see she's sick?” Alexandra cried and foolishly pushed her way in between the men, trying to grasp hold of the professor's hand. “She doesn't know what she's saying!”

 

I'm helpless now but I swear I'll always remember each and every one of your faces.

 

“Off of me, Zaibach,” one guard snarled, shoving her aside. Alexandra fell with a sharp cry as her wrist twisted beneath her. This time she didn't bother getting up.

 

In a moment it all came flooding in front of her eyes as though she were back in the besieged city. Distantly Professor Nuada was shouting orders to follow close.... Others were screaming in the distance as the soldiers broke through the last few city gates.... And then the dagger edge flashing out of nowhere over her head..... She never imagined anything could hurt as much as the frayed edge of a severed nerve.

 

Alexandra stared at her shaking hands, wondering if they were really hers. She held them up for the professor to see and her lips mouthed silent questions. Are those really connected to me? What's going to happen to us now? When can we go home? But all that came out of Alexandra's mouth was a rasping, breathless laugh.

 

“What's wrong with her?” a younger guard demanded, unable to conceal the quaver in his voice.

 

“Can't you see she's sick?” Professor Nuada cackled in a mockery of Alexandra's earlier words. “Can't you see she's sick?! Sick, sick, sick!”

 

Apparently it had been enough to scare them off. Alexandra didn't hear the men leave. She was too busy trying to regain control of her breath. All she knew about the world outside her body was that the professor was somewhere nearby. For that she was grateful. It meant she didn't have to worry about the woman running off to provoke another group of guards.

 

The professor started pacing like a tigress in a cage despite the fact she stood on open ground. The woman's eyes gleamed the same way they had ever since Alexandra had regained consciousness, watching her until Alexandra was sure she would collapse beneath the weight of the woman's gaze. “Where were you?” Professor Nuada snapped.

 

Alexandra studied her warily. She had come to the conclusion days ago that although Professor Nuada's knowledge was perfectly intact, her reason had crumbled along with the walls of the Imperial Academy of Zaibach. Nuada had never been young, in her early forties at least, but the war had turned her hair shock-white and made her face sag with new wrinkles. She didn't even seem to notice that her big toe was sticking out of her ragged shoe, bruised and scraped beyond identification.

 

“I apologize,” Alexandra said flatly. “I didn't mean to get separated. But why do you keep picking fights with the guards?”

 

“Dornkirk himself assigned me to my position. I am an instructor of the third class at the Imperial Academy! I demand greater respect from those- those mongrels!” the professor shrieked to no one in particular, shaking her hands at the sky and collecting the blank stares from their fellow refugees. They knew, if Nuada didn't, that she should have been speaking in the past tense.

 

“Please Professor. You can't say things like that anymore. You can't let them know who we were,” the words burned Alexandra's lips, made her want to chew out her tongue and spit it out onto the ground, but she knew that keeping their identities secret had become a matter of life and death. The gash lining Alexandra's forearm, still puckered in stitches and discolored, was proof of this.

 

She had been lucky enough so far to only receive one of the many favors the Freidan military was handing out to people from the former Zaibach Empire. She saw people every day who were much worse. People who bore wounds of the mind like the professor or people who would likely be dead in a few days from physical ones. Once, Alexandra might have tried to help these others. Now she barely felt she had enough sympathy for herself.

 

Alexandra had been wounded on the first day of the fighting, during the civilians' desperate retreat behind the walls of the inner capital. It had become apparent to Alexandra a half a day later that the gash was infected but supplies had dwindled during the siege and there was hardly enough fuel to keep people warm, let alone heat water to clean it. Alexandra had watched the discoloration of the infection increase dispassionately, no longer caring whether it took her life or not. She slipped into fever on the second day. When she woke, she found herself among the vast lines of urban refugees being driven like cattle, eventually to be sold as serfs and peasants in the Freid country side.

 

Professor Nuada had been the one to tell her everything. The Imperial Academy destroyed. Emperor Dornkirk dead. Alexandra would never be able to serve in any of his laboratories. They were already five miles away from what remained of Zaibach's glorious capital with many more to go.

 

“Please,” Alexandra said, keeping her tone reasonable even though her hands were shaking with her fury. “You'll get yourself killed.”

 

And I still need you.

 

Professor Nuada rounded on her suddenly and Alexandra was barely able to keep herself from flinching. “You! Zaibach is our home. How can you disgrace it like this? Are you really so spineless a student?”

 

Somehow, Alexandra held the woman's gaze this time. “You know that isn't true.”

 

Please. I need you to teach me what you know. You are all I have left. You are my only chance to learn.

 

The professor snarled something incomprehensible and went back to pacing. Alexandra took this as a sign that it was safe to stand up and approach. She sighed inwardly as she was met with the now familiar ache inside her boots.

 

For now I still need you. But once I don't anymore, you are welcome to do whatever you want to yourself.

--------------------------------------------------

 

If someone had suggested to Alexandra a month ago that she, an imperial apprentice, would someday be lined up and looked over for sale like a farm animal, she would have been tempted to laugh or spit in that person's face for the insult. Now that same pride was all that kept her standing.

 

The guards gave them crumbling pieces of hardtack and occasionally there was some kind of broth, but there was barely enough for everyone. Alexandra's stomach gnawed at her insides and her head got lighter and lighter until the only thing holding her to the ground was the drills on the alchemy tables the professor had given her.

 

“Lead, saltpeter, quicksilver....” Alexandra trailed off, frowning. She couldn't remember the answers anymore. She wasn't sure if she'd ever need to remember these things anyways. For all she knew, she would never be anywhere near a laboratory ever again. The thought made her stomach hurt worse and this time not from hunger.

 

We have to stay as close to Zaibach lands as possible, the professor's instructions whispered in Alexandra's thoughts. It's all up to you now.

 

She could hear Lord Ganix moving down the lines, asking curt questions and every once and a while turning to the slave merchant to say he would buy that one. Some individuals he chose struggled and fought, but most trudged into the lord's town in a passive daze. Alexandra tried to block out the sounds, the faces of people she had known back in the capital, some of them desperately trying to stay together with their families.

 

The girl kept her eyes carefully downcast until the lord's shadow fell over her. Lord Ganix regarded her with sharply angled face and jaw that looked like it had been beaten with a hammer repeatedly in his youth. The man wore a fine linen surcoat over light chain mail and he stood with his hands held behind his back in the military style as he examined her. His pepper gray hair stuck to his head in pasty clumps. Alexandra looked up into his broken face and knew immediately that she despised him.

 

“She's a pretty one, eh?” the slave merchant trailing behind said but Lord Ganix only gave him a cold glance.

 

“What trades do you know?” Ganix asked her abruptly, his bright eyes skeptical.

 

“None, my lord.”

 

“What? Not sewing, weaving?” Alexandra gave a small shake of her head and Lord Ganix snorted, “What kind of female are you? Don't tell me Zaibach was training their women to fight.”

 

“No, my lord.”

 

Ganix turned on the merchant, his face dark. “What is she doing among the skilled workers then? I already told you I don't need anymore unskilled labor. Perhaps I might find I don't have the time to look over the rest of your stock.....”

 

“No, no, Lord Ganix. I can assure that all the merchandise has been sorted correctly.” The merchant's apologetic smile disappeared when his gaze fell on Alexandra. “Quickly girl, tell Lord Ganix your skills.”

 

Alexandra had to struggle to find her voice. Stock? Merchandise? She might as well have been a pot or pan. “I can read and write.”

 

“Bah,” Ganix started to turn, losing interest. “What use is Zaibach reading and writing on my estate?”

 

“Including Zaibach, Asturian, and the new Fanelian scripts,” Alexandra continued on in a safe monotone as though Lord Ganix had not interrupted her.

 

“Fanelian?” Ganix's eyes narrowed sharply.

 

“I am also proficient in geometry, astronomy, and simple medicines.” Alexandra failed to mention that she also knew how to whip up an acid that would eat right through Ganix's armored boot.

 

“I'll take her.”

 

The merchant beamed. “Excellent, my lord. I'm sure we can agree on a fair price. Now, this next one-”

 

“Please m'lord,” Alexandra stepped forward out of line before her chance was gone and that blasted merchant decided to interfere. “Allow her to come with me,” she said, gesturing to the small circle where Nuada stood across the street. The professor was being kept with the group that wasn't expected to survive much longer, the ones the merchants weren't even bothering to try to sell.

 

For the moment, Ganix seemed willing to be indulgent. “She looks like a mad woman,” he remarked, following Alexandra's gaze. “Who is she?”

 

“My mother,” Alexandra said without blinking. The professor had had her practice delivering that line the night before until she could convince the rocks. “A-and my tutor. She knows much more than I do and-” Alexandra added hastily, just in case Lord Ganix was smarter than a rock.

 

“I'm sure I can find some use for the two of you.” Lord Ganix snapped his fingers at the servant trailing behind him, “You there, take these two to their new quarters.”

 

The servant bowed hastily to his lord then motioned for Alexandra and Nuada to follow him and quickly. He led them to a steep path that wound into the leafy hillside just outside of town. Alexandra studied her surroundings, trying to convince her numb mind that this was where she was going to live perhaps indefinitely. There were more trees and plants that Alexandra had ever seen during her time in the capital.

 

“Where are we going?” she asked.

 

“To Lord Ganix's manor. There, on top of that crest.”

 

“Strange what they're calling a manor these days. We might have been able to use it as stables for the Academy,” the professor said. Alexandra couldn't argue. To her the Freidan mansion looked as backwater as a country farm house and the town below it like something a child might construct out of mud and straw.

 

The servant eyed the two of them nervously, as though he hadn't realized who he had been escorting. Alexandra resisted the urge to laugh at the look on his face. Then the pounding of horse hooves distracted her from the view of the house above them. She turned to look down into the valley and the road leading into town.

 

“Keep your eyes down,” the servant hissed in warning, cuffing the back of the girl's head. Alexandra did as she was told, but only after she was satisfied with her observations.

 

The rider at the head of the formation was the only one not wearing a helmet. He was a young man, just out of boyhood really, with long hair darker even than Alexandra's own. Alexandra recognized the symbol on his surcoat as one she had seen on uniforms of some of the soldiers that had invaded the city. He radiated enthusiasm, just as any warrior returning victorious from war should have.

 

“That's the lord's son, Constantine Ganix,” the servant said.

 

Alexandra was reminded of a certain poison she had never had the chance to try before. Suddenly the consequences didn't seem to matter anymore.

---------------------------------------------------------------