𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃

chapter six - recollection of a lonely dungeon

"I..." Lucas was unsure of what to say. "In so sorry."

"Eh, it's fine. You can't miss something you never had," was answered.

You can't miss something you never had.

Because of that statement, it dawned on Lucas that his parents hadn't crossed his mind even once throughout this entire journey. His parents didn't die tragically when Lucas was still a baby. In fact, as far as Lucas' knowledge went, they were still alive and well in Rayborne - the City of Light, and closest in prosperity to the Capital. To be fair, he hadn't seen them since they sent him off to train as a soldier at sixteen, so his knowledge wasn't exactly reliable in that area. Besides, even before that, Lucas was as close to his parents emotionally as he now was to Link physically. Lucas knew his parents cared for him in a sense; they pushed him so far to lead a prosperous life in the military, after all. But besides that, their relationship with each other was the epitome of indifference.

You can't miss something you never had.

"So, how are you here? Who raised you and fed you and stuff?" Jalen asked.

"Well, a bunch of doctors and nurses dying because of what seemed to be a newborn Gifted reached the ears of the military in less than two hours. They got there, slapped some rhodium-scale cuffs on me, then they carted me away," Jaron said. "They figured my Gift could be useful and kept me."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The military let a Gifted into their ranks?" Lucas blurted out.

If that was the case, did that mean that Lucas was thrown out for nothing?

"Technically, yeah. But no one ever really liked me. I even got beat up a few times, but I was mostly left alone.

"Oh."

"Then... why are you here? Why did you get banished?" Jalen asked.

It was a reasonable question. If he was taken in by the military, that meant they didn't have much of a problem with his Gift. If that was the case, why was Jaron here now, wandering in the Lyrin Desert with two exiles?

Jaron chuckled. "You can blame Link for that."

Jaron had been with the military since be was a newborn baby. They fed, clothed, and trained him, but they didn't really raise him. They mostly experimented with exactly how his Gift affected different substances. For example, most cotton and wool grew spikes or became sharp that wouldn't protrude inwardly, so they at least knew wearing clothes wouldn't kill him on the spot. Weapons such as swords had their potential increased by tenfold, so the dullest butter knife became a deadly thing in Jaron's hands. The earth he stepped on hurt him and everyone else like broken shards of glass, but as long as he had shoes that wouldn't cause himself or other people harm, he would never have to make contact with it.

He was isolated from the other soldiers and treated with malice if he ever interacted with them. His training was overseen by none other than General Chamberland. Under Chamberland's guidance, Jaron was soon able to more or less manipulate how his weaponized clothes would take shape. However, when knowledge and discipline wasn't being beaten into him by the general, Jaron spent his time locked in a dungeon with restraints similar to the ones Lucas once had.

One day, when Jaron was about eight or nine, someone moved into the cell next door. It was a boy his age with sandy hair and a mind that never ran out of things to say. His name was Linkin. The soundless dungeon had become a lively space full of nonsensical ideas and playful banter. Jaron was no longer lonely.

Soon enough, Jaron discovered why Link was taken in. Just like Jaron, the military wanted to use Link for his Gift. His Gift was information-based, a type of Gift that the military actively looked out for. Knowledge was power after all, and the knowledge Linkin had access to was probably the most powerful of them all: Knowledge about the future. However, there was a certain condition that needed to be met in order to activate Link's Gift. To see into the future, Link needed to hit his head. The harder he hit his head, the further into the future he could see and the longer his visions were.

Link was locked away in the dungeon, and unlike Jaron, he was never allowed to ever step out into the sun. The door to his cell was only ever opened to let someone bash Link's head in. The soldiers often hit him too hard, causing him to go out cold for hours. When he woke up to share what he saw, sometimes he'd have difficulty making sense, or he had a vision irrelevant to the military. When that happened, Link would suffer another brutal assault as punishment or another attempt at getting a decent vision. The dungeon walls and bars always became a darker shade of red when that happened. As Link suffered, Jaron was powerless to do anything.

A day came when Linkin really couldn't take it. His words were more slurred than normal, he had no control over his own limbs, and there was a light missing from his eyes. Some prideful lieutenant's barks echoed off the bloody walls as one of her subordinates sent blow after blow after blow at Linkin's skull. The lieutenant came to the conclusion that Link was no longer useful to them and gave out the order for his banishment.

Jaron panicked. He shook the bars of his cell and screamed as Link's limp body was dragged away, leaving a trail of scarlet on the hay-covered cobblestone floor. Jaron continued make a ruckus until the sentries grew sick of it. However, when they opened up the cell to shut him up, he lunged his body at them, knocking them over. Before they had a chance to regain their footing, Jaron dashed acted the soldiers who had taken Link away.

The lieutenant stopped him in his tracks and asked if he had a death wish. To that, Jaron replied, "Yes." Yes, if it meant that all suffering and abuse he'd endured would come to an end. Yes, if it meant Jaron wouldn't be linked away in the dungeon of complete silence.

Yes, if it meant that he didn't have to live his life without Linkin.

"Chamberland came along at that point," Jaron said. "He didn't want to dispose of such a useful weapon, but he could tell that I wouldn't stand for being used by them for any longer. I guess he grew slightly attached to me after watching over me for seventeen years, so he ordered that I'd be banished, not executed. As he walked away, I think he muttered something about never using Gifteds ever again since they'd end up being useless soon enough. So, yeah. Here I am."

"That's... wow," was all Jalen managed to say.

Lucas had his head bowed the entire time, fiddling with the piece of cobalt and Jorvikian scales in his hands. The revelation of the military not only allowing Gifteds stay within the city walls, but also let them be a part of their ranks baffled Lucas. Sure, Jaron and Linkin's lives within the military sounded far from wonderful, but Lucas couldn't help but to wonder what life would have been like if he would have been allowed to stay.

Would he have been able to become the great soldier that Reid and his parents had hoped he'd become? Or would his status as a Gifted hold him back? And say he did manage to become great, would that mean that he could prove to Chamberland, the emperor, and all of society that Gifteds aren't actually savages? Would that be more effective than the idea Vaessen had? Would Lucas have to be one of the people trying to suppress her revolution? Since he wouldn't know her, he would have no problems with that, right?

With all these questions swarming around Lucas' head, he didn't notice a fourth colour tinting the Jorvikian scales in his hands. This entire time, there was mostly red for Lucas' strength-based power, a little blue to the left for Jalen's ability to summon a ghost trolley, and green to the left on the right for what Lucas deduced to be Jaron's Gift. However, hints of purple started appearing on the scales at the edge of Lucas' palm.

Jalen had been taking a peek at the scales and saw what Lucas didn't notice. "Jaron, you said that Linkin's Gift to see the future was a knowledge type, right?"

Jaron nodded. "Why do you ask?"

"Did Vaessen ever mention what colour knowledge Gifts were of Jorvikian scales?"

"Yeah. Purple."

Jalen snatched the scales and metal in Lucas' hand and started dashing ahead of the other two.

"Hey!" Lucas exclaimed.

"I think we can find out where Link is!" Jalen yelled back.

Jaron and Lucas shared a look for a split second before running after him.

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A/N

Haha tragic backstories go brrrr. The next chapter is gonna be the last chapter of this arc. So glad. I'm sick of trying to find synonyms for sand. (Edit: Added on some stuff to make Jaron's Gift make a bit more sense.) Anyways, I'm bad at outros...

Bye.