Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter Sixteen: The Ship

Jasper's Point of View

Let's skip past the long journey to the coast, where Jasper stole or threatened every copper and bite of food on his way. It's all quite irrelevant, anyway, and agonisingly boring.

Jasper had never been to the coast before he joined the army. His father had operated a resistance in the middle of Kallias, connecting to both the North and South cells. They had been the ones that connected the operations in the more lawless territories of the Southern Kallias and those at the northern edge, under a strict, unforgiving regime. They had been the ones ferrying messages and smuggling weapons and people, breaking into prison wagons.

The Northern operation was based mostly on gathering information, situated in the heart of Medea's reign. They assassinated members of her court and spied on the politics of the empire.

The South were the ones who dealt with recruitment and even attacks. His father used to say that the North Rebellion were the liars, the Middle the thieves and the South the warriors.

Middle Kallias-or the Midlands was the largest state but had the least population. It was mostly made up of desert—indeed the desert he'd been in a couple of weeks ago had been deep in the Midlands—with a few pockets of savannah and grasslands where nomads had settled.

The South was somewhat near water, and the last area to fall to Medea. The Southern Seas were notoriously toxic, and the people were said to be similar. It was the place where most of the rebellion lived.

The North was the most liveable place in the Empire. There was no place that Jasper wanted to be less. Unlike the harsh Midlands of his birth, the North was strictly controlled and made up mostly of the Empress' followers, the ones either cowardly or so naïve that they believed her propaganda. He reminded himself he was one of the former.

Gazing at the streets of the city of Cobalt, he could understand why so many clamoured to live here. Not lawless and dangerous like the South, or harsh and brutal like the Midlands, the North seemed like a place to build a new life. Like a place where humanity could finally thrive. Businesses filled the streets, polished as anything in this country could be. Guards and sentries lining the roads made it seem as though they were safe, protected.

A gilded cage. 

At least he wouldn't have to stay here very long. Stow away on a ship, and then he would sail to the South, where he might escape the Empress' notice. It seemed pointless, really, going all this way north only to end up sailing in the other direction, but it would be faster this way.

All his life, when he'd been poor, starving and on the run, Jasper had wanted to live at the coast. To find a place that was not wracked by the poverty he saw everyday. Now that he was there, he realised that he had been lucky to live in the Midlands. Until, that is, everything changed and he was shipped off to the North to join Medea's army.

By now of course, he was used to the security. Once, he had been one of those men in their shining armour, surrounded by all the cages that he saw now, in the North. He would steer through all this.

It was so easy to forge his way past each piece of security. Too many times he had done this-he knew all the ways to get past all the defences.

Four hours-that was all it took to find a ship all the way to the southern state. He was lucky to have come today since so few wanted to go to that deadly land that the ships only went once a week. Jasper paid up front as he boarded the ship, trying to not look back at the shore behind him. There was no one following him, he told himself again and again.

Until he realised there was a deeper struggle inside his heart. Because even if he journeyed to the other end of the empire, he could never escape that day two years ago.

The day he had chosen his worthless life above the uncle that had become more like father, above his friends' and his aunt's memory.

His dead aunt, who was not so dead after all.

Jasper desperately wanted to know the truth of why she had faked her death. Of why she had never returned to him and his father. He wanted to see her again, the only family that he had left.

But that was pointless. His aunt would hate him now. There would be no returning to the family that they had once had. It did not even matter why she had faked her death anyway. She would have her reasons, her good and noble reasons, and they would be far better than his reasons for abandoning his family.

Still, everything in him called and called for him to turn back, to search for his aunt, to unearth all the truths and lies that lay between them.

But Jasper had to keep going further and further, deep in the sea so unlike his fire, even if his heart belonged to the place that he was travelling further and further away from.

What do you think of the chapter and story so far? Are you following the different point of views okay?