Beggar's Utopia -- Chapter Two

NB: Thanks for reading, and such and such. (Thank-you-critiques to all.)

This took next to forever, but that was for my laziness. I should have written this a lot earlier than I did. I enjoyed writing it, but I think I messed it up, and on reading, it seems a little... tacky/OTT. I tried to express all the emotions but do you think I did? And yes, I renamed this to Beggar's Utopia, because Dystopia just doesn't fit in the story. Sorry for the confusion.

...Thanks!

Chapter One -- Chapter Two

Pain punched into his lungs as he sucked in air, bruising his insides but regardless, the gasps were of gratitude. He twisted to the side, freeing his ribs from the tough earth pressing against him.

Cold and grubby, it ran a line of mud across Logan’s back as a hand pulled him through the grass, unrelenting against his stinging arm. Then suddenly it stopped, and his hand smashed into a puddle. The air was fresh; it tasted so sweet upon his tongue, and cherished within his lungs. Over and over, piles of water drenched his body, escaping his clothes. Someone, something, had dragged him out. In a moment of caution, he let his ears decide: his head shook a little, his eyes firmly closed. The air began to fuel him into an alerted state as he tried to place the figure. Feet were moving away, but it became difficult to distinguish them from the casual voice of the river. His ears were shook by the pounding in his chest, but otherwise, the night was suspiciously silent.

Scents of smoke and ash drifted under his nose. A flicker of fire appeared from the other side of his eyelids. They were going to cook him. That is to say that ‘they’ even ate. From somewhere in the sea of darkness, a few voices began to murmur in chorus. Their words made little sense—he had no intention to understand. He had no reason, no desire to want to.

Frozen. He could barely move, just scrape his icy fingers aside but refused to exhibit no trace of emotion. None at all. They would eat him alive. But he had to—Logan pushed a clot of ice down his veins, pressing his eyes even tighter. But the figures were too dark—everything was lost in the blackness.

Don’t beg again.

Shivering violently, Logan’s eyelids curved open. A black sky whistled into his eyes through a wind, chilled by the lack of stars. The glare of a moon, pale and waxing, drew his attention as he began to examine every mark on its crust—anything to escape. It was filled with disuse, so tired and weak and feeble with only a white skin to contain it.

The flames leapt—there was crackling. Behind his head he could feel the wood, burning, lashed by the sparks. Horrified, he slid his hand onto his chest, pressing in a vain attempt to steady it but the more he thought of it, the harder it pounded. Before long it crept to his lungs. Wide open, his eyesight devoured the colour of darkness as he twitched his fingers. He was too frightened to move, too frozen to fret. There he lay under a pitch sky, white like bone, and alone. The others would be dead by now. Even if somewhere, somehow, they had made it away from the onslaught, they would be cut off. They were gone.

His lungs were traitors. Alight was his throat as some water burst out from his mouth, forcing his head forward.

‘Grab him—he’s moving!’ The voice of a spluttering beast. But his will was rooting him in place—his clothes were heavy. Throwing his hands forward, Logan clung to a branch and suddenly sprang to an erect pinnacle, mind dazed. His legs scrambled back. Through the blur, Logan tried to define the mix of shapes but the delusion was too much.

His arms were almost torn from his body as two great creatures smashed him back onto the ground. Logan let out a squeal of pain as he his head smashed off the earth, and vision twisted from him. Casting across his chest two shivering arms, he kicked and yelled against the ground. A face came sprawling into Logan’s. It cried in a terrifying voice, words that shook his ears, words that he could not comprehend.

Then, the light of a heartless moon shifted onto the face. The features, a brown mop for a head and two sea eyes, were lit up like dawn.

Tears rooted themselves under his eyes, and relief passed through his breath.

‘You’re not—it’s—’

Logan threw his arms over Amaury, and the glowering flames, dancing on a bonfire, gave him an estranged sense of gratitude. They parted, and a hand helped him up.

‘I’m glad that you’re safe, but… who are you?’

He swallowed. ‘Me? Logan. You must remember… we spoke this morning.’

‘And before that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Looking across the scattered figures, he saw that he had been led under an elusion. To be betrayed by the obligation that he should find them all, branded him a victim, a victim trusting in hope; there were perhaps seven or eight others, a handful of their total number. The rest were dead. As if noting the drop of his eyes, Amaury sighed.

‘Well, then, I’m happy we dragged you out. The others… do you know where they are?’

‘They… elude me. I’d hoped…’

Amaury released him. ‘Don’t,’ he growled. ‘That’s what put us here, in this forest. “Hope” gave us reason to believe that not all the city was the heart of swine. And look at us now.’ He led Logan further into the camp. ‘Now,’ he said at last, ‘sit by the fire and put these dark thoughts behind you. And here—’ He undid his cloak and threw it across Logan.

‘Thank you.’ Logan walked over to the fire, raising the cloak a little higher in a sort of undefined embarrassment. They blamed him. It was too clear—one of them must have seen him. The memory burrowed deeper into his mind, Logan pressing it aside. The fire was a great eruption already. Embracing the heat, he sat next to it, daring not to even look at the silhouettes around him. They would be sombre in their actions and frail also. Borne to their skin would be a chill, like ice, empty of blood except their eyes—they would be blackened beneath their slit eyes, half open. He sat against the warring flames like a lone spectacle, and it seemed to his oppressed guilt that they had come for him, and just him, to devote him to Hell for his sins.

They let off a crackling glow of oranges and reds, like a burning sunset. With all the colours dancing in front of him, he might have thought he should be hot, but at that moment a shiver was creeping along his spine. Time had gone so quickly—as had the distance behind him. He wondered whether it would be safe to light a fire so promptly, but then he realised he had no reason for care. Let them come. Defenceless as he may have seemed, he was ready for them. The rusty blade may no longer have been sheathed to his side, but it left a mark for vengeance. Hatred stewed inside him, but he barely knew why.

Their lives were gone. Names were something else; now that he thought about it, he didn’t even remember the man in the water, as he tripped over Logan, or those who were cut down behind. Also there were the villagers, who though to a different matter of conscience, he had a twinge of penitence for. Like the exiles, they just had a purpose to achieve, and just because they clashed, crumbled before bloodlust hands.

Now they were just lost creatures. Names washing down the riverbed. In a few years, they would be gone from existence as mud piled atop their bones, crushed even as they lay dead, betrayed by the unrelenting night.

Hugging the warmth, he leant forward into the cloak and felt the smell of ash in his nostrils, thriving upon the solitude.

#

Logan must have slept that night, but his dream escaped him before he had risen. Either that, or perhaps all he dreamt was in fact the melting sword—that was all he remembered, at least. Night should have beheld tales of horror to his sleeping spirit, but Logan left that to the day as the sun beat upon him, before vanishing behind the clouds. It was of a stranded sensation that assailed him to walk forward, as he always did.

Only this time, he did not know where he was going. In a blind suffuse of emotions, he surrendered. He surrendered to the city, and to her great arms and people and beggars, but above all, to himself. The tear was gone from his eyes, and thus he moved around upon the crunching brambles, struck down by defeat like lightning in the heavens, but as the victim in which it hit.

There was now just the chase, the chase to the sun and the horizon. Sometimes, his allured gaze could not comprehend who followed who.

And dawn unravelled, before the chase entered its forever continuum.

He woke in a pose by a wealth of smoking planks. The drizzle was a new tone of grey, but not a novelty. The cape was wrapped about him still, noting the familiar sensation of dampness and murk. Pressing a few scattered rays through the clouds, an orb of fire had risen behind the treetops. It made the dullness an even grimmer site, and had it not been for an occasional twitch of the eye or fingers, he might have presumed the rest of the bodies around him to be mere corpses in a graveyard. Standing, Logan rose from the crypt.

Black smoke, rising from his front, construed the wood in a manner of tire and neglect. In apathy, he stepped away from the grass with a quiet sigh. His breath was heavy in a wealth of exhaustion. The day was not right.

For autumn, the leaves were too few, and those that still balanced upon the twigs were a pale green—not even a burnt colour. Riddled by a scatter of shadows and mist, it seemed to Logan that the day was crisped in night fold yet. But all was silent. Dead to slumber.

Suddenly, leaned forward and coughed—or sneezed. The aftermath left a weak twitch in his throat and an echo in the trees. Birds flapped away as the noise met them. He picked his way through the clearing, and examined it. Surrounding him he heard the stream still flowing, splashing against the low wind. Taking the cape from his back, he draped it across Amaury, who leant with his head a log, and the mist for a blanket. A childlike guilt beset him again; why he should go warm through the night, his friends slept like animals.

Had he ever leant to religion, his primary inclination would have been to stay, stay and relight the fire, or aid any wounds with a kindly promise or prayer, then to draw his sword as a forever guard in his grasp. But, it was not so. He was getting older, weaker. In a few years time, he might still have been chasing sunsets, alone or together. There was no reason to linger; he was going to die anyway. He supposed, in consideration, that reason was to be discounted.

There was some company about the floor. They were not asleep or not entirely at least; the ice was thick in the dew, like tiny trickles of snow. Some lay in complete silence, blowing battered air upon the grass or with eyes slid open, facing the veils of white above. How close they were to the night before; bodies they were upon the ground, blankly appealing to the sun as they grew pale. Logan was conscious to the noise in his boots, but wondered how it was possible with such frail dignity remaining. The more he thought, the further he paced towards the water, crunching his eyes tighter, biting his lips and casting tears aside in proportion.

The river stretched like a great many ribbons below him. He could now see it with lustful eyes. His future lay only on the other side of the dale. Presenting an inner smile, he saw how much is future depended on the next few steps; once crossed, he may look back with a slight satisfaction before the journey ends, but if the current takes him, his clutch shall fly. In a matter, such possibility that he might enjoy the fields beyond, open country and a sunset never entered his mind. Because there was no such joy. Not anymore.

Behind him, the haze was like a phantom, a glowering soul scorning the exiles.

‘Shut up,’ Logan growled. It did not; it kept whistling, judging. His sword was gone, his feet ached, and the liquid within him was slow and icy. Ah well, he thought, gazing down at the river.

‘Have you decided where you’re going, yet? Never were any good at making decisions, you. But then again, I think you’re thinking the same as I am: you’ll just make the wrong one.’

Not bothered enough to turn, Logan kept his stare long and solemn upon the passing water. He recognised the low pitch, having heard no other for many long hours.

‘Perhaps you think well, but I’ve decided that I have nothing to decide.’

Sufficiently aroused, Amaury rose, a great shadow enveloping Logan. ‘Ah well, then, let us hear it. But I think I know what you’re thinking once again.’

‘My explanation is my own. I bid you farewell.’ Logan’s sign passed between his words, drumming the tone to a murmur. ‘I am off to chase the sunsets alone—it’s up to you now.’

‘Chase the sunsets,’ Amaury echoed, as if suddenly recalling from identical thoughts. ‘And why?’

‘Why not?’

‘Why so? I know you blame yourself for what—’

‘Oh, you know, do you?’ Logan felt the steam cradling within his gut. ‘You know about as much as you saw, and I’ll be damned if you saw anything in that night fold.’ He would be damned either way. By a manner of progression, he span round, staring his eyes deep into Amaury’s. ‘A few hours ago you barely knew my name. You took me for dead.’

‘It was me, you understand, who threw you into that river last night.’ Amaury coughed, pointing to it. ‘I didn’t know who you were—but then I saw your face; I saw your history, your life. I knew were you weren’t: the cold-blooded creatures that chased us here. Names are just words, assigned through legal systems and people. But you’re story I read with a glance to your face. You fear, hate, but can do nothing about it. You met those yesterday. But am thinking of how you oppress your morals, twisting uncertainty into guilt. Guilt that you have eluded the punishment that ought to be upon you, that you have escape the wrath of the city folk, the rich, your betters.’ He spat the last few words, gladly forcing Logan’s eyes away.

Suddenly, everything Amaury had said made sense. Not least because at that moment he saw—he saw that the old truth remained. Beggars then, beggars now, but above all, they understood one another. They really were just branches on a tree.

But there was something that could not go untouched. He was glad for the company, delaying his departure by a few precious minutes. Amaury kept focused upon Logan, who could feel the intensity drilling down into his head.

‘Tell me, Amaury, what were those villagers to you?’

‘Well, savages. Wildmen. Why? Are you going to tell me that they were really exceptionally nice people?’

Logan shook his head, and rubbed his temples. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘but they all were devoted to a common cause, like us. It just so happens that they should clash with our own, and so we fight them, and so we kill their families for the protection of our own. Why did we even go back there if when we conflict, lives are taken? We went their under the misguidance that we might light their hearts or wake them to reality, our reality, that there could be peace. But the irony is that to do so we killed innocents as we paved to the courtyard. What were we expecting? A welcoming, hearty reunion?’

‘Listen to—’

‘Sooner or later, we will be cut down, the ice we clutch us or illness should devote us to the grave. Either way, it’s pointless our carrying on; nobody wants us here.’

‘We do, old chap!’

I don’t.

‘Goodbye.’

Not sure who had really said it, Logan clambered down the bank and steadied; the river smashed onto his legs, choking them.

A voice came hurdling after him, as he crossed to the other side. ‘Is that it? You failed us, Logan! And you promised! Where is your oath now? Eternal hellfire awaits—that is your sunset; hell!’

Logan felt the beating in his heart fade. The noise of an icy river fought beyond it—there was nothing left.

Drawing his fists to his eyes, he let slip his legs. The river carried him away.