1 Prisoners.

Stressed waves crashed with the dark grey hull of the ship; the stink of fish, rotten wood, urine, and sweat making out with the air inside its lower deck, where the only cell room was located. The thick clouds blocked all sunbeams from transversing the cracks on the swollen wood, and a screaming bell announced their near arrival at their unknown destination.

"Aaaagh…" he slowly opened his eyes, feeling his body numb and sore. The dry screaming of the bell punctured his ears like rusty nails.

"Hey, you woke up," a smokey voice spoke by his side, sitting with his hands tied on the beams behind, just like the other six prisoners in the room. "What's your name?"

"...William. William Amber," he raised his baggy eyes, looking at the mucky man of tangled-up beards.

William looked around. Everyone carried the same exhausted and filthy complexion, wearing the same worn-out rags of dirty yarn. Flies played around. The unresting tide making the ship bounce didn't help his turned stomach, but he hadn't anything to vomit. No one there had eaten a bite in the last two days.

"William Amber," spoke the prisoner of a shaved head and emerald eyes in front of him, a young man near his same age of 21 years old. "I saw you back on Sunia, right before these baffoons ambushed us. You killed three above that hill before they finally captured you, right?" he let out a tired grin. "Good job."

William didn't feel like speaking, his dried mouth not even allowing him to take ghost sips from his own saliva. But still, many things ran on his head, and the other prisoners seemed more aware than him about what was going on.

He had spent nearly all of his time aboard sleeping, and he could swear that some of them weren't there before. They moved them from ship to ship without further explanations.

"Puagh…" the bald prisoner of yellow teeth at the left of the one with green eyes vomited in a bucket, but the stench of the place was already too concentrated for their noses to notice. Puke spilled from his chin and fell on his neck. "...I just bloody hate life," he let himself rest on his back.

The bearded man next to William spoke. "The marshall assigned you to the scouting group of that morning, right? And you three," he talked to the men in front. "you must have been part of the loyalist troops that were supposed to attack us that same day. This is your goddamn fault, pigs. Had you left our outpost alone, none of us would be here, rotting in this sultry shithole."

The man at the right of the green-eyed lad, a blond with a bloodstained piece of cloth wrapped around one of his eyes chuckled, but it was in a rather deprecative and sarcastic manner.

"Just hear your words. You're the ones responsible for this civil war, you filthy insurgents. Innocents are dying. Just look at this kid," he signaled William with a head nod. "what does a young man with no benefit like him have anything to do with this? But of course, your feudal lords —or liberalists, as you like to sweeten that word— just recruit anyone left and right who can hold a spear or a bow," he dismissively spat on the humid floor. "bastards."

"Imbecile..." growled the bearded man. "Go and kiss the arses of your Mauric lords, you bastarded hog. I'm sure they'll save you from being their cannon fodder."

"Seems like we both already were, friendo," responded the patched man with mockery. "be glad we're not back there. I'd make sure your skull would be open already."

Their words triggered a fire on everyone else. Even the man at the left of William —a thin, skeletal man with freckles all over his dirty face— woke up, who had slept longer than William himself.

"Hey," the young man of green eyes raised his voice, but it had a more laidback tone. "No need to fight anymore at this point, people. We're all now prisoners far away from home and our causes, going to hell if I know where. Save your strength until our last meal. If they ever give us any..."

"Easy for you to say," responded the blond. "you only were a mercenary. Now I kind of feel glad you won't get paid. Heh..."

The lad ignored his insult, the bearded man and the blond trading ophidian looks before letting go and leaning back with pessimism. The young man was right; everyone there —even William— had the feeling they wouldn't see their homes or families again. It was over.

William mentally sighed. He almost forgot there was still a civil war ongoing in his homeland, Sunia. The king had been assassinated, and the loyalist nobles —supporters of the Mauric empire— were fighting the insurgents, led by the nobles who forged an alliance to make Sunia an independent kingdom.

He had been drafted one year ago when the local landlord recruited every abled male in his village for the insurgent cause. But the thing he expected the less happened seven days ago, near the supply outpost he had been assigned to.

Just as he and the rest of his platoon were mobilizing in those forests near the coast —and loyalist troops were about to ambush them— a third force struck them with superior numbers and a speed faster than lighting: a group of small vessels, all made of an unknown grey wood as if they were made of charcoal, instead of any known brown material.

Their soldiers looked even stranger: they all wore odd armors made of what looked like burnt insectoid exoskeletons and seashells covering their knees, chests, and shoulders. Their swords and spears used giant fangs for their blades and tips instead of metal.

There was no beast in Sunia large enough to have those teeth, and neither did those men of bulky bodies and tanned complexions look Sunian. Who were they? Where did they come from?

The bells on the first deck once again, making everyone hop on themselves with pained expressions. The blond of a missing eye cursed. "Shit. Do that once again and I swear my ears are gonna shoot bloodstreams.

"It seems like we're arriving somewhere," said the bearded man. "Anyone knows where to?"

"To hell… that's where we're going," responded the vomiting bald man. "Wait and see."

But the young man of green eyes straightened up and looked to the right, where the bow and aftcastle ended in a sunken, arched section. "Hey, isn't that some kind of window? Albert, check out if you can open it."

With his hands tied on the beam on his back, the bald man spread his legs and used his hurt and swollen toes to pull a small handle on a wooden square in the curved bow of the ship.

After a few tries, the tiny cover yielded, and white, foggy light entered the cell room. William didn't remember when was the last time he saw the daylight.

The filthy prisoners frowned and tightened their eyes like cockroaches being illuminated. They acclimated a few seconds later and straightened to look better: there was land a few hundred meters ahead, a black coast covered by giant boulders and irregular hill formations.

A grey sky extended to the end of the horizon, and two docked ships of the same color were already docked onshore.

"There's… there's land," said cowardly the skeletal man next to William. "M-maybe they'll let us go."

"You wish," replied the bearded prisoner. "What the hell is that place? Looks like nothing I've ever heard of. And who are these filthy pagans who took us here, by the way? what the hell do they want?"

William spoke his guesses. "Some pirates, perhaps. Maybe they want to sell us as slaves."

"Well…" the green-eyed young man stared at the whiteness of the window. "Grandpa used to tell me stories about a land where green plants didn't grow and people worked giant insects. Looking at the armors of these jesters… Yeah. We're going to... Reniram."

With the exception of William, who didn't know about the place, the prisoners traded concerned and surprised looks, as if they were sentient pigs about to be taken to a slaughterhouse. Contagious anxiety got mixed with the stench of the muggy air.

"...Reniram? Oh no," the skeletal man closed his eyes and breathed deep.

The bearded prisoner gulped the few salivae he had left. "You mean, that place where people worship skulls and sacrifice their children to demons? Where monsters come out at night to skin alive those who don't pay tribute? Divinity… help us."

"I fucking told you," cursed the vomiting bald man. "this is shit. We've been eaten, and we're about to get dumped."

The eye-patched blond angrily smacked the wood at his feet. The anorexic prisoner trembled next to William, who couldn't help but begin to feel nervous.

What were they talking about? He didn't remember hearing that name or anything about it before. But the green-eyed lad didn't look concerned to be there, besides the shared anxiety from their unknown fates at the hands of those supposed pirates.

"What? Don't tell me you believe in those boogeyman tales the Mauris invented about Reniram," he said. "I've heard things about this place. They once were conquered by them, like most of our western continent, you know? That's why they can speak our language. Thing is that… they expulsed them. They kicked the Mauris out of their land. They showed off the Mauric Empire is not the unstoppable force they appear to be. And that's why they are trying to hide everything about it back at home."

William looked at him. His words didn't sound like a loyalist, the civil faction that supported the Mauric Empire. Maybe he was just like him, a young commoner drafted to fight the war of those in power. Or a profit-motivated mercenary, like the other man, called him. Maybe both.

But his curiosity grew; his young fellow was the only one inside that stinky hovel that seemed to know something about that Reniram. He asked his mind.

"Reniram? What else do you know about it? Do you know who these... pirates are?"

"No," he responded. "all I've heard about this place are stories from my grandpa and some documents that I sto— I got in a special way, let's say. They say Reniram is rich in minerals and magic stones, that people breed giant crabs and live in canyon and cave cities, that they worship demonical spirits, that skeleton necromages used to dwell there… They say that it's been years since the island has been covered in clouds, or that's what I read. Strange. Isn't it?"

"Clouds?" inquired the patched blond. "And I was wondering why the weather sucks arse. Not like there's anything good about this place."

The green-eyed lad continued. "The documents put that Reniram is also divided by various factions: the nomads of the north, the mining farmers from the west, and you're not gonna believe it, but the east is inhabited by cats… cat people."

"Cat people?" the bearded man chuckled. "Bullcrap. You've got to be kidding."

"Oh, I'm not. They say they're like us, but with cat ears and tails. I gotta say I can't wait to see one of their women. Yeah. What a time to be captured, right?"

But none of them there had energy or mind for lusty thoughts or anything that wasn't fresh air and water, food, or better than that hole they were left to rot in.

"Meh… sounds like a bunch of bullcrap to me," coughed the vomiting man. "We'll have to see…"

"That's assuming these bastards don't kill us first," said the bearded man cynically.

"Shut up down there!" cried an accented voice from the deck above, hitting with a beam the metallic mesh at the end of the prisoner's aftcastle. He then spoke in a foreign language that none of the prisoners comprehended.

The bell ringed again. Before they realized it, the ship had already reached the shore. It approached the broken brick stone docks where the other vessels rested. Anchors plopped as they were released, and rumbling steps marched on the first deck.

The hatch on the room at their right separated by rusty beams spread. Two guards descended with cutlasses at hand.

"Well, I think it's time to get outta this stinkhole," said the shaved mercenary. "let's hope the gods are with us."

"Oh no…" the anorexic man next to William hesitated, looking with horror at the open window. "L-look at there… Oh no!"

Everyone stretched to see once again. Past the destroyed docks crammed with scrap and cargo and the black beach, there was a gallows in an elevated area. Some kind of forest made of twisted, spiky, and leafless trees a dozen meters ahead rested, extending left and right.

From the wide gallows, dead bodies hung through nooses and slowly swung forth and back with the cold coastal wind. Armed figures roamed the area, and the prisoners from the other ships were already being escorted there.

Metal swivels creaked. The guard covered in seashells and dark, insectoid armor released his key, and the cell room was open. Now It was their time...