Sefu the Immortal once lodged his makeshift spear under the edge of a rhinoceros gargoyle's skull-face. The athlete jolted his wrist and squelched that mask clean off— high against the blinding Sun. He wore that horned trophy over his face until the day he died: one hour and twenty-four minutes later.
* * *
Fifty-three years on, there were still fans of Sefu Asiyekufa in the Encampment. No-name, some slave or other with a bum knee, was one of them. Surely that's why he started hobbling across that burning desert rock.
He and every other fanatic who worshipped Asiyekufa would at least get the satisfaction of leaving their harsh crater the same way their idol did:
No-name stopped his scalding march along the rim and stepped into the wide shadow of the high Barracks. He turned and looked down at thousands of himself— brothers, friends, and enemies— the same, from every country in the world. They scurried across the deep working grounds at the base, black specks like gnats. No-name snapped his dark face back to the fat gargoyles perched along the outer walls, before that seductive hypnosis could hurl his body down the great steps. The beasts dared him to.
'Throwing knives,' shrapnel which No-name had tried to balance. That was his gimmick, the trick that would leave him No-name the Immortal; No-name Asiyekufa. He started his slow march, watching his breathing. When a Superior would command him, it was like his own breath wanted to strangle him. Traitor. Every time.
He walked. The Superiors, with their great gargoyles, were lazy and efficient. Whether they killed him then or later, it ended the same; why waste the mile?
They'd wait.
For him and his 'throwing knives.'
No-name's carcass wouldn't be moved until two weeks later, when a wagon caught on it and splintered its axle.
On the working grounds three thousand feet below cracked earth, Faraji and his son encircled a tall wooden drum with five other slaves. He was straining his eyes to look far up the slope of stone benches, the dance of heat-warped air laughing in his face.
"...Baba!" Fortus whined, tugging at his father's skinny shoulder. "Hurry! Do you want to end up like him?!"
The middle-aged man blinked his jaundiced eyes a few times and raised his dusty, calloused hand to grate sweat off his wrinkled forehead. Faraji was shaved bald, and his skin was still dark and full, at least in the parts where sweat cut across the red dust on his cheeks. Darker than it should have been. The Mchangan sun was strong enough to even scorch the locals to a crisp, and the foreign slaves died with half the skin they came in with.
"I'm worried about Hamisi, mwana," Faraji croaked as he finished loosening the straps he'd only been holding for decoration. "I told that young fool not to go. Ehh yaani, I told him." He mumbled in that way a few more times.
"Faraji!" one of the others snapped. He had been kneading his thick, wiry black beard in his hands, like he wanted to rub out the white parts. "Hebu, help us!"
The man crouched low to the ground with the five others and gripped the bottom of the wooden drum. The cylinders came from witch doctors in the capital, Fortus heard. But then, he'd heard just about anything about everything. They must've, though, he always told himself. Nothing that fine was made anywhere else.
Each drum was six feet tall, bigger than the teenager by a mile, and of a much lighter brown than he was. Their flat tops featured grand radial tapestries, with repeated cycles of circular patterns extending to the edge, and geometric masks jutting out from their fronts. Each's face was different, with skin of diagonal patterns, or hatch-marked diamonds for blush, ibex horns sprouting from where thought should sit, monkeys lounging on the forehead, and all manner of strangeness. The faces were the same, too: closed slits for eyes, two mirrored bows for eyebrows, and always making some annoying expression like a big-lipped smile or inflated cheeks and puckered 'O'.
As the men strained to lift the fetish, Fortus directed them, yanking up bigger rocks so it could rest easily. With a collective grunt, the drum slammed into its place, dug half a foot into the ground. As soon as it left his fingers, Faraji whipped around and turned his back to it. A habit from Old Bhekizitha Ngubane. The faces scared the elder; he called them Amadlozi Amabi, 'evil ancestors.' Sometimes, the once toffee-skinned man would wail and cry, begging his Faraji to make sure he never became one when he died. Fortus used to look away, too.
The men took a moment to pass around a wineskin and pick at their tattered, dirt-caked tunics, trying to steal some airflow.
Each man took a breath and a half before someone called, "Haya, come! The sun is on its way down, and it is just a short walk to the station. One left and we can take it!" Everyone spoke that way during the day. Like it annoyed them you had two legs, like it annoyed them to pump their heart.
The group walked sixty feet over to their final spot, and Faraji called out Mchangan to the pair arriving with the next drum cart. Just as soon as the planting team lifted the idol out of its wagon, the transporters started rushing it back towards the steps of the crater's slope. Their last load, too.
While someone reattached the head of their pick, Faraji spun his again and again.
"Don't worry, Baba," Fortus assured, taking his father's hand. "I'm sure Hamisi made it. In fact, by this point, Hamisi's probably all the way to the capital, sticking Mkubwa's head on a pike." He said it like he meant it.
Faraji glowered and smacked Fortus upside the head. "Don't mock him."
The boy boiled up some defense and let it die in his throat, "...He's a mjinga for trying to leave," he scoffed. "He could barely even walk anymore." Fortus took his hand back.
"Maybe we're wajinga for staying," the man sighed. But he was practical.
"Everyone thinks they're Sefu."
"Sefu Asiyekufa," Faraji corrected.
"That man got lucky before you were even born. Now we still die over it." Fortus was picking at his scabs. His voice wasn't biting anymore; it was small and stupid.
"...Yes," Faraji said in a breath. He put his hand on Fortus' head like the top of a cane and wobbled it around. "Come."
The men encircled a six-foot ring that was as second-nature to them as blinking and lifted their pickaxes. "Haya, Moja!" Faraji started, and all the rest answered "Mbili!" and brought their pickaxes down together.
It was almost sacred, the way all at once they forced the ground to give up a perfect circle. "Moja!" and they lifted. "Mbili," and so on.
"Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!"
And the veiny rocks of the earth became soil and sand.
"Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!"
Dust started to spray into their eyes.
Fortus coughed as he swung.
"Moja!" "Mbili!" "Moja!" "Mbili!" "Mbili! Moja!" "Mbili?" "Moja!" "Mbi–" "Tatu!"
"Mbi–Nne..?" A man dropped his pickaxe. "Faraji, what are you doing?!" The one-legged man looked ready to kill him.
Faraji was holding his pickaxe down close to the ground, and watched steadily through his eyebrows the scene past the amputee. A Superior, in his rich green embroidered dashiki and kufi, was skittering towards them. He had his crystalline Scindreux blade drawn, sparkling like sunset water and crafted of a radiant translucent green, dancing on each of its geometric facets. But what warned and called his name was something else: The blinding ray of white light sliding down the curve of the Superior's great plate-sized golden medallion, the eight-spoked split-sun of Shujaa Mkubwa's empire.
"...Watch the rhythm," Faraji mumbled, and nodded towards the Superior. They turned to look, then snapped their heads back down. "We were almost singing it."
On the crushed stone ballast of the rack railway tracks atop the lowest of the stone benches, a Shink rang as Old Bhekizitha Ngubane pulled an iron bolt out of place. A thunk as it hit the dark gravel. A tink as little Atiena locked in her crowbar, and a grunt, as she pried the support off.
Shink,
Thunk-tink. "Eeeh…"
Shink,
Thunk-tink. "Eeeh…"
Old Man Bhek found himself whipping the bolts into the air exaggeratedly, bobbing his caramel head on an imagined wire, up and down, in and out.
Shink,
Thunk-tink. "Eeeh…"
The wild-haired septuagenarian started humming a little, popping 'B's in his shriveled lips and wet gums until he caught. With his next strike, he broke out:
"Ba-ha-ri… ngiy-
…a-khu-le-ka!"
Seven-year-old Atiena whipped her round, dark face towards him. It was invaded with life and light as her sleepy, drooping eyes sprouted into big white globes with only a few stains in them.
"Thu-me-la… a-" he started shimmying his shoulders and kicking his darker legs out in a showy dance,
"…-man-zi a…-kho…"
The shifts were ending. People got ideas around those sunset hours. Green-cloaked Superiors started to emerge from their rock-hewn apartments nestled in the stone benches to come guide the slave migration back to their barely habitable Barracks.
Seven hundred Superiors and fifty gargoyles across seventy thousand slaves. One herding dog across two hundred sheep.
"...ngi-phe a…-man-" Bhekizitha's phlegmy song didn't falter, but his eyes left Atiena and caught a green man approaching. Minutes.
…dla…" Old Bhek forgot where he was planning to go from there. He was feeling for the dagger strapped to his pale stomach. His unburned waist was sunken beneath each of his visible ribs, following the same hunch as his ruined spine, sticking vertebrae nearly through his rough old skin.
The Superior was broad.
"Hm, mhm-mm," Atiena hummed.
Old Bhek whipped his face back towards her with savage eyes and a tense vein snaking down his forehead. His face was ever frozen in that gnarled squeeze, one eye always bigger, and his bottom lip chomping on the top, but Atiena could tell when it softened.
The girl giggled and went on in her mousy way, "Hmm, Ba-ha…ri." Bhekizitha made a face like he had seen god, and the child giggled with her tongue between her missing front teeth. She always did. "I like your song, Baba. Is it in your language?"
The Superior raised his hand to call Old Bhek forward. The elder clamped Atiena's shoulders and marched her down the temporary wooden ramp, fifty feet towards a crowd of drum-laborers on their way back. He brushed the crowbar out of her palm.
"What? Yes, Atiena. Yes, mwana. But…" he looked back twice, then a third time. On the last, he saw the Superior run towards a fight which had broken out. Bhek started rushing them down the ramp, bouncing with each step like they were still playing.
When they touched the working grounds, Bhekizitha could breathe, think.
He looked down, "...But the song doesn't like you, Atiena."
"What?!" she cried, yanking at the bonnet she wore over her slicked-back, bushy hair. "Baba, why?!" she whined, almost crying in that young way.
Old Bhek shrugged like there was nothing he could do. "Well, mtwana wami—
Faraji! Mwana!" The old man threw his hands up and smiled widely and gummily.
Faraji took the elder's hand and squeezed it tightly. He laid his palm on his heart and bowed his head a little bit, saying, "I am so glad to see you still among us, sheikh wangu."
"Bah!" he cried, shooing away his son.
Fortus and Atiena locked eyes as their fathers greeted, and he scrunched his nose at her. She stuck out her tongue and put a finger on her forehead.
With one hand still in Faraji's, Bhekizitha took Atiena's and started towards the Barracks. Old Man Bhek slowed those two down, hobbling under a hunch so extreme it built a sun visor out of his spine and kept his caramel face in enough shadow to only leave an army of age spots.
Fortus went over to Atiena's side and started hovering his finger above her eye. She whined and slapped him away, but Old Bhek never paid much attention to anything while he talked.
"Nothing in an afternoon is going to kill me that hasn't over the last fifty years, mwana. However— Fortus!" Bhekizitha slapped him on his ear. "Stop bothering the child, please, you are too old! Weeeh, this boy, Fara. —However, I have only just become old enough to have seen everything, mwana."
Faraji smiled, a handsome smile with strong teeth; it was unfair that they were yellow and caked. "Tell me, bwana, what have you learned?"
"A boy was born Blessed, Fara."
"Many are. Not us, bwana."
"Basi, fool!" Old Bhek slapped him, too. "Still blind, still a boy, Fara!
Yes, 'us,' mwana! He was born here in the Encampment!"
"What is he, a little Muumba, baba?" Faraji talked seriously, but he looked over Old Bhek's short frame to catch Fortus' eyes in his, and held back a laugh as he smirked. "Maybe a small Ithunzi, with a baby gargoyle to match?"
A treacherous laugh burst out of Fortus' red face, and almost as soon as he lost that single hiccup, he drew it back in. Too late. Old Bhek started beating on his patchy balloon of coils like his matted head was a set of old drums, and the boy squeaked:
"Ah– Babu— Wait— I—"
"Fool! Fools, all of you! Sometimes I think you only know dirt and metal! Not you, Atiena," he said with a wink, and pinched the girl's cheek. "We trifle with a giant, Fara, you should have more…responsibility. You know better than that faithless boy, better than to mock."
Faraji nodded quietly and offered to carry the elder's wrench.
All thirty-three hundred drum-workers marched to the same station. Across its four triple-headed cogwheel steam locomotives and their collective eighty carts, it could take them all up at once and not even be too cramped. But people seemed to forget daily, and the chaos of rushing to board first was best avoided. As such, the quartet meandered, trying to preserve the day's only quiet ambiance over the shouting crowds.
Fortus always looked up when he wasn't looking down. The Encampment had no ceiling, and so through the dust, he could see the nightly balm of purple-orange skies as he waited to board.
In every other direction were rocky fifty-foot steps radiating from the crater, sixty on top of one another, stretching for thirty-five hundred feet all around until they arrived slowly back to ground level. Anywhere Fortus looked, dirt and rock, like moles living in the earth, three thousand feet interred.
This massive spiral into the crust was, unfortunately, one of the most impressive and unimaginable projects ever undertaken across the known ring of major continents called Ihlok Vartul; one of four such endeavors.
Fortus dropped his eyes to the repulsive red clay. Better than catching the attention of the Stone Ravens, circling in the crater. Even with enough dust that Fortus couldn't see the stairs until he was right in front of them, the smell of blood and weakness on the crater floor was tempting enough to drag those scavenging hawks three thousand feet below ground. He hated them. The sandy-scaled Ravens reminded him of one thing: the slaves really were bugs in an anthill, crawling desperately away from hungry birds.
A tall man coming back from across the working grounds shouted excitedly, "Hee jamani, ndugu zangu!" and threw his arms out with a charming white smile. Fortus snapped back to the present. "Family! Glad to see there's still five of us!"
He chuckled by himself and jogged to catch up with them.
"Samir!" Faraji greeted, taking his hand as he did Bhek's before yanking him in. "You preen too much to survive this long."
The strong man laughed and slammed his friend's shoulder. "I preen so much so I can survive this long," he joked. "The Superiors think I'm pretty, you know."
He was. Samir Ben-Ayyur had sunburned, mostly pale, Kaskazani skin, dark kohl around his light eyes, fine, long hair wrapped in a wide turban, full lips, a hard nose, and most striking of all: strong white teeth.
He was ritualistic in his grooming. Samir worked on his rest days to get oils, miswāk, and fresh clothing.
He was born outside, like Bhekizitha— in far off Kārum.
Fortus liked him; he smelled nice every day.
Faraji shook his head and laughed as he put a hand on Samir's back and started leading his family towards the station.
"Fara," the man started. "Fortus, Atiena, Mzee Bhekizitha.
Come, hear this also."
Samir began whispering, walking backwards towards the dimly lit platform, huddling his family around him.
"A Muumba was born, ndugu zangu. Blessed by Lord Mbombo, here in this camp." He smiled and darted his eyes wildly across their faces.
He frowned when nobody seemed much surprised.
"Baba…" Faraji started, like he was talking down a lion.
"Hawu!" Bhekizitha screamed, coughing up laughter in his raspy way. "Didn't I tell you?! You are the most insolent, irreverent, disrespectful, unruly, foolhardy—"
"Baba told us this tall tale already, Samir. The story is in poor taste."
Then the light rushed back into Samir's eyes, and he looked into Faraji's with utmost severity. "Akhi, I knew the mother… I had met her child during worship. She covered his eyes with a cloth, said he was blind."
Fortus sighed and dropped his face into his hand. There was always an angel visiting in the night, a god speaking to someone in their dreams. And every day they woke up in the Barracks.
Faraji stopped altogether and halted his family along with him. He stared at his Samir with his mouth open. He was ready to cry.
"Fara…the mother said he could even make the rocks on her bracelet spin. He was already three."
That made the tears fall.
The man smiled and split his beard from end to end with laughter. He grabbed Samir's shoulders and shook him like they'd finally conceived.
Fortus saw his father's faith, beautiful and stupid.
"You're serious?!" Faraji screamed, louder than he meant to. That haunting reverberative echo of the crater boomed it to every slave from there to Kāpura. He rushed back to a whisper, "Where's the mother now? If she has more children, maybe—"
Samir swallowed and pursed his lips, looking up at Faraji through his eyebrows. He cleared his throat and shot a glance at Atiena.
Faraji followed, and his eyes went wide. Then they crinkled under furrowed brows as the sides of his mouth pulled into a frown. He almost looked like an infant, just as he decides he is going to sob until he can't. He turned his head to one side, away from the rest.
"Atiena!" he called from over his shoulder. "Are you excited for my story?" He turned to face her, wiping his cheeks.
"Bwana, your stories make no sense," she teased, laughing with her tongue between her teeth.
Rotting hands make no work, and so the slaves were allowed to use the twenty-four cogwheeled locomotives around the base. It was an ostensibly generous repose, a break to recuperate, and they were already built for debris hauling and transport anyway. Even cups of water and plates of warm, hearty ugali cornmeal were cycled onto tables to pick at as the slaves boarded.
Each set of four tracks went up a mud brick slope at a six percent grade, climbing as straight as possible for twelve miles to cut across the benches. Three hundred and fifty feet further along the bench's circumference, the next train takes off from its station. The first still climbs on its track above the second's head, grinding atop mud brick viaducts of ironwood beams and double-reinforced trusswork for another five hundred feet in twenty seconds. Then the second becomes finally free to stomp on the third's head, and so on.
Sand and pebbles fell in plumes of dust from those viaducts every time a train blew past, stained on their underbellies by caked soot.
The rack railways of those six stations only ever curved as the shape necessitated, in wide, gentle turns. Sixteen miles an hour, and thirty-five minutes up the layered stone helix to the top, room enough to unstack into a pinwheel of iron tracks two-thirds of the way up. Thawing to a smooth three percent, the wheel's blades orbited the crater unobstructed along the top third, as much machine as rock.
There were forty-five slaves in that sixteen-foot cart, leaning on its shorter walls as the train climbed up the benches with grating chuga-chugas. Fortus turned away from the triple-headed locomotives dragging the cargo. He hated watching the smoke cake onto those trusses above him. He watched instead the packed faces of his people, pivoting on one foot and shimmying his shoulders until he could fully turn around. Most of it was a bamboo forest of dark skin, sweat, and blood, but he could always see the faces. They never saw him, anything. They hung onto each other and swung, chewed on their lips, and stared into Fortus' eyes. And they never saw him, anything. The sand caked onto the wall from yesterday scraped against his calf.
16x8x4 carts, 512 cubic feet of debris each, 10,240 a train, 40,960 a station, at a time.
16x8x4 carts, 120 slaves each, 2,400 slaves a train, 9,600 a station, at a time.
Numbers. Cargo.
Mbombo would never bless us.
He would never save, or heal, or soothe the people drilling over his head.
Fortus knew it then more than anything. That rickety, screeching ride was life for the last fourteen years. He had earned it, he was sure.
Further up the track, some slaves were gathering spilled deliveries for the apartments, broken wine bottles, and furs. Samir saw them first.
The northerner always spent the whole ride looking out. He nudged Bhekizitha, and the old man lifted his hands off Atiena's shoulders and shoved his palms so hard against her ears it hurt. Then the four train whistles.
The hisses sprayed out into a mournful wail, burning steam screaming.
Screaming.
Fortus shut his eyes as hard as he could and buried his face in his chest. He swore he wouldn't cover his ears. The four rang again, rushing up the slopes and echoing in a metallic choir. That steel cry pressed on his young chest like an adult's boot, until it cracked his ribs and dirtied his heart. He shook, sniffled, and trembled as every drop of running sweat ran a razor past his eyes. Samir put his hands on Fortus' shoulders and kneaded, mumbling prayers over his head.
When Fortus was seven and working the tracks, Sehrish chatted with him, a friend of her son Tariq.
He remembered the joke.
She said girls chased Tariq like ravens, and Fortus laughed. He wasn't looking. He pried off an iron tie, a bolt rolled down, and Tariq slipped.
Fifty feet, and broke his back.
Sehrish yelled his name, ran to the edge, and saw her young son ripped. After that, Fortus couldn't remember: not the Superiors, not the crowd. He remembered Sehrish, snot and tears running down her face and filling her mouth, folded over herself, rocking that little girl behind her eyes back and forth, screaming like the Ravens.
Screaming.
The train whistles rang again, the slaves jumped out of the way before it hit, and Fortus crushed his ears in his palms.
Bhekizitha hobbled out of the ground-level station, colorless air and foreign coolness. Stars, then, no haze. He conducted his familial train around to the back of the Barracks, to one of hundreds of entrances, exits, alleys, and holes left over from the uneven construction. Only the closest entrances to the station were fully opened— just enough to herd slaves through a few wide doorways. Creative thinking a mile from the walls was to be avoided. The official channels took half the night, and too much weight collapses haphazard towers.
"Slave!" a Superior barked. Bhek turned to face him, and Fortus dropped his gaze immediately. The soldier's eyes were wild, excited. "Do you think yourself greater a designer than Shujaa Mkubwa?! Why are you out of line?!" He spit as he talked, and Old Bhek stuck a hand into his shirt, scratching an itch where his dagger was tied.
As it dropped to the ground, Bhekizitha kicked up sand and threw up his hands, yelling, "Superior!" in Mchangan.
Samir and Faraji's eyes landed on the dagger. The darker man immediately threw up violent coughs, keeling over and rubbing sand out of his eyes. He curled into a gargling ball and flipped the dagger up against his wrist.
"You will not speak your sick language on civilized land, slave." The Superior spun his sword in his hand as he stalked towards the toffe-skinned man, speckled with cocoa spots.
"Civilized? My apologies. I had mistaken the giant dirt hole in the ground for a mess." Muscle and tension wriggled up his emaciated old body, and though his eyes were paralyzed in one and the other half shut, he felt electricity pound in his heart. He smiled, almost laughed. His good eye grew wild, excited.
Atiena.
Passion died in him altogether, and he looked towards Faraji, making his way inch by inch towards the edge of the crater.
"You!" the Superior hissed. Faraji froze just before the edge. "What are you doing?! What are you hiding?!" The deep glow of his verdant sword still bathed Bhekezitha.
Faraji looked at the old man, his wild hair whiter than when they met. He swallowed and responded, "Mi…" He sucked in a breath and started tapping his foot to a made-up rhythm and clicking his tongue: "Mi–mi, ni wa jiwe! Mi–mi, ni was ardhi!" he looked up at the green-garbed man and laughed to himself, like he was disappointed, but not surprised. He looked Fortus in the eye and winked. After a breath, "...None shall touch me! Mbombo vomited — the world as well as I!"
The Superior rushed the man with a roar, and Samir yanked Atiena and forced her into the Barracks. Faraji flinched wildly, like an explosion before his face, but all the while stayed focused, staring down each step of the Superior.
He came, lunged, and swiped, and Faraji dropped to a crouch. The athlete rolled to his right and stabbed Old Bhek's dagger into the Superior's stomach, jumping up to shove him off the ledge.
Faraji fell back and tried to wrestle his breathing to the ground, staring over that high cliff and running a bloody hand over his shaved head. Fortus ran to lift his father, yanking him into his arms as soon as he stood.
"Baba!" Fortus scolded, eyes burning hot. "You always—"
"I know, I know," Faraji hushed, pulling him closer and kissing the boy's head. "We're safe, mwana, I promise."
Bhekizitha looked over the cliffside and stared down. The man was ripped about in two, except for a few stubborn joints he could see. His pulsing crystal blade was buried in the rock down to the hilt, cut through like it was hot butter. No substance in Ihlok cut like Scindreux.
Old Bhek laughed scornfully and mustered dry spit to bury him with. "The idiot is killed, Fara."
Faraji nodded once, and again for himself. Again for Fortus. He pursed his lips with resolve.
"Good," he said, right to his son. "Leave the blade," the same way. "We don't need a reason to be followed."
Samir re-emerged, handing Atiena off to the old man. "Won't you stay for the implosion, Mzee Bhekizitha?"
"Bah!" he cried, waving him away like a pest. "Those demons." He turned up his nose and hurried in with Atiena.
Faraji went with them, tapping his friend's shoulder, and beckoned Fortus.
"I'll stay with Samir, baba," the boy blurted, staring at the edge. "Can— Can I stay with you, Amu?" A bright smile brushed aside Faraji's wiry, dark beard, and he looked at Samir as if to ask how he had drugged him. The man shrugged, and Faraji laughed.
"Sure, Fortus. Come back as soon as he finishes."
Fortus went closer to the edge and sat next to Samir.
"You any good with 'demons'?" Samir dared.
Fortus swallowed. "No…"
"Me neither!" he laughed. "Holy beings, in those drums."
The northerner started brushing any and every small pebble, stick, and especially insect out of his small area, then knelt in it. He breathed into his folded hands and waited for his command. Fortus watched.
Then, like gossiping schoolgirls, the drums started whispering to each other, and their voices drifted like storm winds up the slopes. Samir started droning prayers and unwrapping his turban slowly and methodically. His shoulder-length hair fell with a shine and blew over his back.
Four hundred and eighty-five drums, twelve concentric rings rippling out upon the working grounds. They radiated like art from the center of the crater, the outermost being seven hundred and twenty feet wide, the inner just sixty, with a lone soldier at the center. Their chuckling gossip started to build into the choking laughter of hyenas and vindictive birds.
Fortus turned away a little bit, facing Samir more.
The laughter built until bolts tore free from their sockets. Climbers fell from the Barracks staircases. The home of Mbombo shook.
The drums' masks started to seep a rich, blood red, dark, and still brighter than the sun. The rounded lips poured that red glow like water jugs, the eyes cried it, the radial patterns spun it, until crimson pooled into circles of thirty feet all around the drums. That thin scarlet film's light bled softly up the steps and onto Samir's face. Wind like soaring dragons rushed with it, and Samir's clothes flapped with so much fervor, his hair whipped with so much life, that it seemed he might die of ecstasy, his tears blown away before he could cry them. He hummed with their dissonant song.
Fortus struggled to stand without blowing away and kicked his legs forward one at a time, using all his strength, as he marched towards the edge. The layered discordance of the crater's hellish echo and the scornful laughter of the hyenas crept like long gray fingers through Fortus' hair, down his back, and around his heart.
Fortus leaned with all his effort and saw the Superior. His dark jaw hung cracked apart, more than meat, and less than a man. Fortus met his eyes and traced the brain matter in the pool behind his head.
The laughter grew until it conquered the sky; the red, until the line between the boy's finger and the sand was gone.
Fortus crushed his ears in his palms and ran inside.
The crater sank ten feet. Samir rocked until the last smoke plume faded.