Branded

There weren’t always Dragons in The Valley. No, Reva refused to give up on that hope: that once, long ago, her home and people had been free and ungoverned by their deathless eyes. That The Valley hadn’t always been doused in the stench of terror and obedience. It hadn’t always worked quietly and functioned in whispers. It hadn’t always been victim to the whim of those people, but they could hardly be called that.

No, Dragons were as far from human as you could get.

They were monsters who had flown from a place of darkness. Yes, they were humanoid, but anyone who had survived proximity to the creatures could identify the ethereal markers that separated them from humans. Powerful and towering bodies that even the greatest of men and women were incapable of replicating, hair that shone like scales, and most obvious of all, and yet the one to avoid at all costs, slitted eyes that held a flame so searing they could turn you to ashes in a blink.

Reva could recall the first time she had laid eyes on one, the memory branded into her mind and her skin. She had to have been young although she had never known what year she was truly born, and therefore didn’t know if she had been six, seven, or eight, or any surrounding age. The early years of her childhood were comprised solely of surviving the cobbled streets of The Valley. Alone.

That’s what she had been doing when the Dragon appeared atop the wall of the Divide: fighting over scraps with the other street urchins, and winning if her memory recalled correctly. She almost always did win, especially after that fateful day that had caused any sympathetic people who had once looked upon her with pity to avert their gazes in fear. It had made her an anomaly, ‘cursed’ they liked to hiss as she stalked by. All because she had survived, unscathed except for a gruesome burn that brandished the left side of her face, running through her eyebrow and slashing across her cheekbone.

She never normally would have risked scavenging so close to the Divide back then, but the days prior had been emptied of the sustenance needed to survive in the lower slums of the human district. She had been forced to venture upward, towards the great wall that cut The Valley’s city in half, and the Dragon’s main dominion beyond it. She had forgotten what prize had been so valuable to have fought for at the foot of the Divide, but she remembered the way the other children had backed away. She had thought they feared her. That something fierce in her own eyes had made them re-evaluate the necessity of their joint quest for food, but then she noticed the trajectory of their teary gazes, faces frozen in terror, and turned toward the wall.

Atop it stood a Dragon.

It had been female, from what Reva could tell, black hair long, slicked back, and shining many metallic shades under the scorching sun. Even atop the wall, Reva could tell she was far taller than human women, and strength radiated from her lean figure.

At some point the others had fled, leaving Reva as she had always been left, and she couldn’t get her limbs to find sense. To run even if that meant turning her back on a monster that could easily reduce her to ash, even if it could do it just as easily if she was retreating. But she had been paralysed from head to toe, eyes staring straight into the hellfire of the Dragons.

The stench of her urine had soaked the air, and the Dragon’s nostrils had sniffed subtly. At that moment, Reva could have sworn a slight expression of sadness had fluttered across its sharp features. But in the next instant, any thoughts of mirrored humanity had been crushed. The Dragon’s slitted green eyes had flared, and the side of Reva’s face melted. She couldn’t remember screaming, only the wave of utter agony that had pummelled her into darkness.

Night had fallen by the time she had awoken, face down in that alley’s gutter.

Alone. Branded. Cursed.

But Reva refused to let that moment define her forever.

***

“Cider.” Reva watched the door as the barkeep returned with her glass, she placed a copper on the bench and moved to a lone seat in the corner of the crowded tavern. Customers were pilling in through the wooden door and immediately crowding toward the flaming hearth, drenched from the rain outside.

A city nestled in the cracks of a valley had to work around the tempest that was seasonal rainfall. The Valley had been built to channel this water into three main streams. It was perhaps the most generous thing the Dragons gave the humans, the continuance of the stream's fresh water. Or maybe it gave them the greatest power, aside from the threat of sheer destruction, the power over their water supply.

But it had also made her realize what it meant to be a human born into a world of greater predators. They would always only be granted the water from their position downstream, never having power over their destinies. She had since grown tall enough to see the ornate turrets peeking over the wall of the divide, the ones that belonged to those who controlled their fates, and she knew that her only solution was to have enough money and information to work her way out of the human district in this valley.

Through her vigilant observations, Reva realised that only specific types of humans went beyond the divide. There were those men and women who she had only assumed sold their bodies and souls, always returning with less life behind their eyes, or sometimes not returning at all. Reva had watched those desperate enough to disappear into the streams in the middle of the night, but she never knew of their success upstream, or if they washed up like many others further down in The Valley’s belly. And then there were the traders. The men and woman who dared to act as liaisons for everyone else by venturing into the Dragon’s lair.

She was now nineteen, which she loosely estimated given her appearance and her studious tracking of the passing years. She had survived more than a decade as a leper of The Valley, and she had finally figured out the best course of action to rectify her situation, to get closer to that goal of freedom that those most hopeful in the human district were only innovative enough to realize.

Divide Tavern, aptly named, was in the full swing of happy hour. With most of the work done, the residents of the neighbourhood closest to the great wall came here, amongst them the allusive traders. They were who Reva had come to see. Because she was going to become one of them.

Currently, Reva sat amongst the shadows that had become her closest and most comforting friends in a corner of the tavern. The patrons had quieted for a few brief seconds and then resumed tensely, signalling her targets arrival.

There were classes within the trader groups, those who traded up the little supplies the human’s produced and then those who held a monopoly over the supplies coming from the Dragon’s side of the wall. The latter was the most successful, and Reva set her attention on them as they entered.

They held more scars and secrets than any other humans she had ever observed.

The group she intended to approach only consisted of eight members and had a token kingpin, Sloan Turner, a beefy man with dull eyes. But Reva had come to learn that she needed to persuade the right-hand of her worth. The young male was leaner and younger than Sloan, but Rust Thorpe tried too hard to hide his intelligence, his gaze always averted and hidden beneath a fringe of thick dark red hair. His body was always too tensed and attentive, and his fingers tapped in controlled rhythms whenever he was contemplating. He had become a point of survival for Reva, and therefore an obsession that she had puzzled over for the last year.

When he had walked in with his group tonight, he had been tense, but Reva had learned this meant they were to enter the Dragon’s city tomorrow. She also knew it was because they were missing a member, a female Reva had never learned the name of but had since provided the perfect opportunity for her to offer the traders her services as a replacement. She would be a trader.

Taking in a deep breath, Reva slicked back her midnight hair, straightened her best coat, and stalked toward Rust Thorpe.

She noticed the moment he picked up on her approach, he stilled for a split second, before turning his head and watching her from beneath his brows. The rest of the group only registered her when she stood in front of their table.

“We have no money for you vagrant.”

Reva switched her focus to Sloan Turner, who was eyeing her from his periphery. She watched his eyes roam across her face to her scar and his shoulders stiffen slightly.

She willed her voice to stay even, “I don’t want your money,” a brief pause in which she felt like the whole tavern had leaned in to listen, “I want to join you.”

Sloan’s harsh features twisted into a discomforting grin. “So, you do want our money. We aren’t interested in your services girl.” His grating voice threatened Reva’s resolve, but she persisted.

“I’d be of use to you.”

“What could you possibly offer us?” Thorpe’s eyes had been boring into her throughout the interaction, but his low question still startled her. She observed how the whole group seemed to quieten at his address, and even Sloan looked at him with deference.

She met his gaze unabashedly and ignored the thrilling sensation that she should run. His eyes were still shadowed, but she could recognize the shade of deep brown, even as they gave away nothing else.

She addressed the whole group. “I know you’re trading with one less member. You need a replacement. I can be that. I’ve faced a Dragon, just like all of you.” All eyes swivelled to her burn as if it had become magnetized by her words. Her branding was known in this part of the city, but that didn’t stop the surprise from wearing off for all those who looked at her. They knew where that burn had come from, and Reva hoped it would help her earn their respect in facing the Dragons, even if she emitted details, such as the fact that she had pissed herself that day.

Some of their faces were humoured, others annoyed, and some even looked scared. When Reva turned back to Thorne, he wasn’t watching her but the rest of the members in his trading group, as if gauging their reactions. His fingers began taping the damaged wooden table in a slow rhythm. And it was this that sent her spiralling.

“I will do anything. Be of use in any way you may need.” She restrained herself from leaning forward, “I’d be of use to you,” she repeated. But she watched as the group fixed their gazes on her scar, superstition overshadowing her words. She could feel the word ‘cursed’ running through their minds as if it was being screamed at her.

Thorpe continued to watch his comrades as she did. His fingers stilled. Hopelessness settled in her empty gut.

He turned to her, and his face was resolute and unreadable. She tried not to stoop so low as to plead, but she could feel her eyes doing exactly that. She felt as pathetic as she must have looked.

“It seems like we would be of more use to you than you would be to us.” With those damning words, Thorpe turned his attention back to his drink in obvious dismissal.

Sloan grinned more ferociously. His voice echoed throughout the quiet tavern, “We don’t touch the cursed. Leave.”

Reva’s heart increased its pace, her breathing heavy, and her feet stayed glued to the floor. She continued to stare at them all, Sloan’s brow furrowed, Thorpe still ignored her presence and the others started to grumble about having her near them.

“I said leave.”

But Reva couldn’t move. All that she had built upon her small shred of hope crumbled, because of how useless she was, and because of the grotesque scar marring her face. She felt like she had the day she had received it. Staring at that Dragon. Like she was on the edge of nothingness.

Sloan grunted at two of the meaner-looking members, and they didn’t hesitate to stand and grab her, one on each arm as they dragged her from that table. Thorpe didn’t look up once, condemning her to her fate.

No one helped her as she was dragged into the streets, either because she was cursed or because they didn’t want to go up against the traders. The female trader smirked viciously as they threw her down into the gutter roughly. Her male counterpart let out an amused grunt. And yet, Reva couldn’t feel anything but cold hopelessness freezing her limb for limb.

She was left there in the gutter. Alone. A sickening parallel to that day she had been branded.

The rain continued. The streams roaring. And soon that was all Reva could hear aside from the blood pounding in her ears.

The sound of it became a frequency she could not ignore. And she rose as if seduced by the music of it. The streets were now completely empty thanks to the rain pelting her, and no one witnessed her slow approach.

When she arrived the stream was raging, more so a small river rapid due to the night's rain.

Bruised and erratic. That’s what Reva was feeling. It echoed in unison with the icy blue in front of her. And it was with a hopeless heart that she realised she was facing her last resort.

She knew that it was likely suicide, and yet that is what it felt like to carry on another day with nothing on this side of the wall. Reva didn’t know why, but she could feel salvation on its other side. And the trader’s rejection had left her desperate.

She watched the stream, entranced, until dawn.

The golden light from the rising sun stretched over the top of The Valley’s cavernous cliffs and hit the top of the stone divide. It was time. Reva knew that just before the next stream three blocks away, the traders were preparing to cross the divide through the only official entry point to the Dragon’s domain. She had approximately an hour to cross.

If she even could. It was never confirmed that those who jumped into the streams had ever made their way upstream. But it was as if a string was tugging at her core, pulling her towards the water. Her brand was flaring, as if in anticipation of Reva entering the den that held the monsters that had given her the scar.

Reva didn’t so much as dip a toe in the water before plunging in.