Pilot [2]
The Ghostly Whispers
Ghosthelm
“Get up.”
That’s what the voice had said. No, that’s what the voice had commanded. Even as Pilot went in and out of consciousness, all he could remember was a shadow. A shadow, standing over him, with eyes red as burning coals.
Over and over, “get up.”
The sunlight had shimmered around the shadow, blocking anything and everything else from view, his vision blurred almost like he was under water. Pilot wasn’t sure how long it had been, but it felt like forever. There were moments when he woke, moments he remembered. But they were like memories of a dream, hazy and fractured, never clear. He remembered the sudden cold, the biting, gnawing cold that grazed his skin and gripped his bones.
And the sounds. The shouts of men, but the shouts weren’t just shouts, they were orders. Marching orders.
The whicker of and footfall of men and horses alike against stone and gravel, and the crunch and shift of snow underfoot and underhoof. The jolt of the caravan and rattle of wooden wheels against the snow and stone.
The smell of pine and horse was all that was to be smelt, but it told him that they must be somewhere in the Neverpeaks. But how? And why?
And how was it Pilot was so conscious enough to think so clearly, yet unable to wake up? In these dreamy states, all he could remember seeing was those coal-eyes staring down at him, riding beside the caravan, silent and ever watching. Those eyes got under his skin even more than the freezing cold ever could.
~ ~ ~
“Get up.” The voice was clearer now. More commanding. Somehow even scarier.
But when he came to, those coal eyes were gone, only to be replaced with green ones. Ones belonging to the mask of a Valkyrie. Behind the mask he was expressionless as he pulled Pilot from the caravan, shackles around his wrists and ankles.
“What…who are you…?” Pilot croaked, his throat and mouth cracked dry.
The Valkyrie, dressed in black and staring with sharp green eyes, ungracefully yanked him out by the feet and stumbling into the snow. The Valkyrie simply cracked his knuckles, and electricity jumped from each small plate on each knuckle, a silent warning of what was to come if Pilot even attempted to run. He shuffled forward, the shackles clacking against his boots and wrists as he did so. They’d dressed him in a tattered cloak brushing his ankles and simple brown gloves to fend off the cold from his hands.
But how…how was he walking, how was he even alive? Not only had his snapped his back, but he should’ve drowned…he should’ve died.
Where was he? What was it they called it? Hell?
No. Pilot doubted the devil would be so patient.
The Valkyrie walked him out from behind the caravan and out into a dirt courtyard, the ground hard and icy, making it only ever harder for him to walk. Oh, Leo, Bass. He pled Amor that they were both ok. For once, he hoped the two were still in the slums.
Pilot’s heart almost ceased to beat when he saw the lines of youths, all shackled and chained, gaunt and freezing, their heads bowed.
“Oh, Haine,” he whispered under his breath, stopping in his tracks. The Valkyrie shoved him along, a kiss of electricity zapping him awake and aware, so much grunted in pain.
“Get a fucking move on,” He grunted, pulling Pilot’s tattered hood up and over his head, motioning to a line of four teenagers at the very back of the gathering, all of them looking around his own age. Pilot righted himself, his breath ragged as he stood by a short, small, black haired teen with a pair of large glasses and almond shaped eyes.
There was a number of Valkyries, all of them patrolling either side of the line-ups, most of them fifteen people long, with about fifteen lines. At the very front a podium was raised, with two Valkyries standing either side and two standing on the ground below, the long gun barrels on their arms at the ready.
The short teen looked to Pilot, to the ground, and back up again and said, “H-hey, my name’s Katsuo. But, you can call me Kat. Everyone else does.”
“Ah, I’m Pilot,” He said with a weak half-smile.
Katsuo jerked his head, as his hands were shackled the same as the rest, to the blue-black haired, older and far taller boy next to him. A hood of his black cloak was pulled up, a black scarf wrapped around his mouth, soft rushes of fogged air flowing through the cloth, almost like smoke of a cigarette slipping through his lips.
“This Naoki, next to him is his blockhead brother, Icho.” The even taller, barrel chested and short-blonde-haired Icho squinted down at Katsuo, saying underneath his breath in a low voice, “I’m right here, you Haine damned kitty cat.”
Katsuo tiredly laughed, almost nervously at Icho’s glare. The two brothers looked to Pilot, almost like they were sizing him up.
“Nice to meet you,” Icho said politely, his face breaking out into a smile that much better suited him.
Naoki’s raw sapphire eyes just softened, and gave him a small nod by his way of greeting. Their eyes, strangely enough, were the only way you could tell that the two were related at all.
There was only one other person left in their small line, and she stood a few paces away from the rest, either by choice and happenstance Pilot couldn’t tell. She was wrapped in the same black cloak Naoki was, the one that most of the prisoners here were shivering inside.
“Who’s she?” Pilot asked breathily so, white fog slipped from his mouth, twisting into an almost disfigured finger pointed to the strange girl.
“Viola, I think. We all were marched together, but her name was all I managed to catch,” Katsuo said, looking unsure as anything.
“Viola…what a strange name,” Pilot whispered to himself. Peering closer he noticed ringlets of violet hair spilling out from the hood of her cloak, almost shining in the clouded mountain sun.
“Heh, says you, Pilot,” Naoki scoffed with small crooked grin. With cracked lips and dried eyes, Pilot found the strength/humor to narrow his eyes in a challenging reply. Pilot was cut off from asking more questions when a woman’s voice sounded over the low whistle of the wind over the pines. A mountain face and an odd looking, black building entrance stood behind the dais promising shelter yet warning that perhaps braving the snowy scape and the frostbite would perhaps be the better option.
Amor and Haine, carved out of black marble stood either side of the entrance locked with a sealed door, the symbol of the MUNC sitting within a cog at the doors center. Curiously, the frost didn’t even seem to have touched either of the guardian statuettes.
A woman of curled, chestnut hair and quiet green eyes that were somehow colder than the snow around them stood at the center of the dais. She stared down at somehow at each and every one of them. Inspecting. Judging. Quizzing. Contemplating their worth.
“My name is Victoria Creed. You may know me, it matters not. I am the leader of the Military of the United Nations Core, or more commonly known as MUNC. Despite what you might have heard, we are no private army to be bought and sold. Our only agenda, all that we have ever sought to do is defend our kind from the nightmares we’ve grown beside. There’s a simple truth you all need to know, if you’re to understand the opportunity you’ve been given. The simple truth, is that monsters are real. They live in both the hearts of men and in flesh, both just as dangerous as the other. We fight the monsters of flesh, so that others may not become one at heart. Recently, there has been the surfacing of a new threat, a creature known as the Monolith. Because of this, we require new recruits. And each one of you have found yourself without a place in the world. So, I offer you a deal. Take this opportunity…this second chance. This will be your place in the world. Fight for something worth fighting for. Fight for us.
From the ashes.”
The last three words she spoke so soft, that Pilot had to hold his breath and strain his ears to hear. There was a moment of absolute silence. The moment felt as though it stretched on for an eternity.
There was no choice.
There was no deal.
No opportunity.
This was it. Fight for them or…or what else was there? No where to run, they were deep inside the Neverpeak ranges. He had to find Bass and Leo, and figure out what that creature was, the creature that looked like a little girl, the stranger in the blue mask and how he’d survived the fall, and he’d healed. Maybe it’d been a hallucination caused by the sedatives.
Pilot and Katsuo looked to each other, helpless. Then, a single voice from somewhere in the crowd called out, “From the ashes!”
A mumbling broke out, then a few voices half-heartedly said the same, before Creed saluted them, and the gathering called as one, “FROM THE ASHES!” And they all saluted the same.
Pilot felt himself shout those same words and salute the same as the rest, but it wasn’t the cold that made him shiver at that moment.
Line by line, the young prisoners were led into the mountain building. And one by one, their shackles were unlocked, quickly forming a pile of black, frost-lined metal shackles. Quick as he could, Pilot combed over what little he knew of the MUNC. According to the mouths of the City Above and the City Below, they were a completely different military corporation to that of the Imperial branches, these branches only consisting of; the Marksmen, Slum Guards, Aeronauts, Sea Watchmen and the Sidhes, the mutated capitol guards.
The Military of the United Nations were just that, the combined peoples of The Hinterlands, The Southern Sprawl, The Pyre of Gods, Kingdom of Terraghar, The Ashryn Province, Storm Cradle and her Sky forts and even Winters Reach of the sister land, Dordathion. They were the force to stand between the Empire and the unknown, to keep the monsters at bay that no other force in the New World could. But what monsters they were keeping at bay, just what they were protecting the world from had been called into question in recent years. But this creature…the Monolith, what in the Forgotten World could it be?
The very last to enter the complex, Pilot raised his slightly shaking wrists to the masked Valkyrie. The Valkyrie looked him directly in his silver-grey eyes, and paused for a moment before unlocking the shackles in their strange form of ceremony. Even as Pilot entered the cavern-hallway after Katsuo, he felt the green eyes sear into the back of his neck.
The black rock hallways were fitted with warm yellow lights, copper pipes snaking over the roof and walls, occasionally spitting out a hiss of steam. At almost every spot on the wall a Valkyrie was hitched with folded arms and ever-staring green eyes, examining every fresh conscript that hobbled past. Walking beside Katsuo, who continuously tugged at his cloak sides, Pilot pushed his tattered hood back and looked to the short boy who looked equally frozen and scared. Luckily enough, the floors themselves were warm, and the air itself sat at a comforting temperature, just warm enough.
“Are you ok?” Pilot asked, sincerely concerned the kid might implode by the way he shivered so.
“You really think that’s a relevant question anymore?” Katsuo replied with shaky sarcasm.
After a while of twisting through the hallways, their footsteps echoing through out, they emerged into a enigmatic cavern turned hall of copper and gold, pillars of plated copper reaching high to the distant roof of the cavern. The recruits mingled, speaking almost casually to each other, their voices echoing into one noise.
By a copper pillar, Naoki and Icho leant, Viola seeming to have disappeared into the crowd. Pilot exchanged a nod with Icho in his way of greeting.
“So…we’re you two from?” Icho, his Adams apple bopping up and down in an almost nervous manner.
Katsuo held himself awkwardly, glancing to Pilot as if asking for permission before he said, “A small island called Emora, just off Storm Cradle. My family and I lived in a fishing village before…well, before we had to leave.”
Naoki, his eyes betraying nothing narrowed at Pilot.
“The Capitol,” Pilot said simply, folding his arms.
Icho coughed a laugh, and put an arm around his brother’s shoulders, (despite Naoki’s glare) “We hail from the glorious Southern Sprawl, a small cliff-town by the name of Redlock.”
Naoki opened his mouth as if to say something, but was cut off when a familiar blonde-haired and scarred boy threw himself against Pilot, knocking him to the floor.
“Woah…Bass?” Pilot exclaimed, hugging the smiling fool.
The two got to their feet, Bass seeming to be out of breath.
“Oh thank Amor, you’re alright! We were climbing…you were right below us…we thought…next thing we know the damn broke…we thought you were dead…but then we saw you in the caravan,” Bass panted, his hands on his knees, looking to Pilot for some kind of answer. Pilot clenched and unclenched his gloved hands.
“I…I don’t know. All I remember is falling…and, the damn broke…I was washed away and almost drowned. But then…I woke up, and there was someone standing over me, with-with red eyes.” Pilot declined to mention the demonic little girl that had tried to kill him or the masked stranger that had tried to save him.
Bass looked to him with concern in his blue eyes, his symmetrical scars taut.
“Red eyes-?” He began, before Leo appeared, hugging Pilot from behind and picking him up, spinning him round.
“Leo!” Pilot grunted, undecided whether his friend was hugging him in relief or crushing him.
Leo set him down, saying, “Oh, if you were dead, I would’ve fucking killed you.”
“Nice to see you too.”
Pilot regained his breath and motioned to his new-found friends, “Leo, Bass, this is Katsuo, Naoki and his brother Icho.”
Instead of speaking words, they all elected to grunt in their way of greeting.
The six boys wandered around the hall, until they came across a metal bench and sat, where Leo and Bass both explained what exactly had happened for the last two days Pilot had been napping.
“So…what happened?” Pilot asked.
Leo took in a deep breath and exchanged a look with Bass.
“Well, after the dam broke, the Slum Guards swarmed the place. We didn’t have much of a choice, we had to high-tail back to the City Above. We headed for the apartment and almost got there, but they caught up with us. Not the Slum Guards but…Valkyries. They captured us and sent us up to the Skyport. Docked there was Valkyrie Airship, they had rounded up a bunch of street rats like us, and chained us up and registered our names and age.”
“Bass Adeline, age sixteen.”
“Leo Ermerhold, age seventeen.”
“Icho Khicogachi, age eighteen.”
“Naoki Khicogachi, age seventeen.”
“Err…Katsuo Amaroki, age sixteen.”
Bass tapped his fingers on the table.
“There were two ships that were docked in the bay. One for the conscription recruits, and other for the Commander leading the operation, and his squadron. We were about to leave before…before they hauled you in. The man, th-the man with the red eyes led in an escort of someone on a stretcher. I managed to inch closer through the crowd, and…it was you, unconscious. Funny thing was, they put you on the other airship. We launched and landed at port in the ranges, and marched from there to the entrance to Ghosthelm. But…the whole time you’ve had this, special treatment, you rode in the caravan, the whole time the scary guy with red eyes rode right beside…if he wasn’t riding people down.”
“What?” Pilot breathed.
Naoki shifted uncomfortably beside Leo, saying, “There was a small group. Probably the oldest of the conscripts, they’re been whispering amongst themselves ever since they got on the airship. When we were marching, when the Valkyries were getting real snappy, this little group ended up pushing a Valkyrie off his horse. I don’t think they meant to kill him, but that pissed off the Red eyed guy real good, they tried to run, tried to make it, but he rode them down like they were feral dogs.”
“By the Forgotten World…” Pilot hissed under his breath, and buried his head in his hands.
~ ~ ~
They were assembled into groups, Pilot’s group consisting of Katsuo, Naoki, Icho and Viola. The conscripts were all led out of the hall and through glass hallways that showed off the breath-taking view of the Neverpeaks, and an orange sunrise that bled over the horizon in a water brush-stroke against the fading blue. From there they entered the barracks. A building on the lower cleft, sheltered by the shorter mountain beside Ghosthelm. In the dormitory the group was led into a small wooden hall of three rooms with wooden-white-silken sliding doors.
The young man named Takashi that had guided them here motioned to the one room to the left.
“Pilot, Amaroki, you’re in here.”
Icho and Naoki were put in the room directly across the hall from them, and Viola by herself, in the room beside the brothers. The whole time the group was together, she hadn’t spoken a word, and had run off to her room the second she could.
Their room was simple enough, but extravagant for a military bunk. There was a bunk to the right wall, a table for four chairs at the left wall by the door and a small bathroom of the worlds smallest shower, toilet and washbasin and mirror.
“Hmm, what’s this?” Katsuo wondered.
Strangely enough, on the table was both their belongings. Katsuo had a blue pack filled with his few things, and Pilot had a rucksack of his. Hesitantly, Pilot rustled through his things. There were a handful of clothes, his comics and a package wrapped in yellowed paper and tied with brown cotton string.
“Huh…” Pilot whispered to himself, unwrapping the package. Inside…there was a photo and a necklace.
Pilot’s hands trembled so much he almost dropped the photo. It was of him and his uncle. His uncle that had disappeared into the shadows six years ago. His uncle that had raised him from birth. It was of them at a fair in the capitol, Pilot sitting on his shoulders with a mouthful of cotton candy. The necklace…was a dog tag with a tiny tear-drop blue crystal. On the back of the photo it said, ‘For you, from your mother. Stay safe. – C’
In all honesty, Pilot couldn’t remember his uncles name or his face, only his voice, stern but kindly. Squinting his eyes in the orange light from the window, he read the tag as,
‘SUBJECT: #305
CODENAME: THE MIDNIGHT CROW
GENISIS HOST: ELISE LA’MOUR
With an ache in his heart as much as his bones, Pilot put the dog tag around his neck.
~ ~ ~
Not so long after, they were all called to an amphitheater in the barracks. Victoria was at the center stage once again, with an arrangement of four strangers dressed in official MUNC attire behind her. Kat (as he insisted Pilot call him) had totaled that around 400 recruits had been conscripted. The seats were divided into sections of a hundred, Pilot and Kat sat up the back, Pilot kicking his feet up on the seat in front of him, (much to the displeasure of the guy sitting in that particular seat.)
Creed explained that the 400 of them were divided into the four sections, a hundred recruits in each unit, within each unit were squadrons of five. The four behind Creed she introduced as the unit leaders, Aryn Rulter of unit one, Yelena Smith of unit two, Farlan Crest of unit three... and Ace Veltine of unit four. Pilot’s unit.
Pilot felt the same cold he’d felt outside form inside his stomach. The rest of him felt hollow and his palms began to sweat. The man with the red eyes. It was him. As his name echoed in the chamber, Pilot’s grey met the Veltine’s crimson eyes.
Pilot almost understood now. Creed was the face, most likely the cunning of the MUNC. But Veltine was the cloak and daggers.
The slaver and her whip.
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