The Key To Mirah

I still relive the vibration of the alarm reverberating through the city walls, before the sun even had an opportunity to flicker on what was left of their freedom. Father always advised me I never had to fret about the attainment that was ahead of me, like the others, though I never really understood what he meant until that painstaking night, bolting out of bed, petrified of the commotions besieging us.

I can recite how Father held my hand and paraded me over to the central conduit on top of our Fortress, as he declared it, and glanced down to the city below us. “Savages,” He spat. “That’s the discrepancy between us and them. They’ll never be anything more than what they are now.” He left me there, blurred and disarranged, mortified as I observed all of the destitute civilians clamber aside from the Authority and their regime of unadulterated persecution upon their unsuspecting souls.

“The alarm is for us, an indication that we dominate their survival,” Father emphasized that fact every day since I could understand what colloquies were and how one could construct a narrative that only a puppet master could contend with. “Remember it well, because one day, this will be your kingdom to conduct, and it will be you those Savages will cower to.”

But then the unthinkable happened. The Savages ambushed the Authority, converting their weapons around on them, emptying the blood of what was once deemed aristocratic and eternal, dismembering every single one of them until there was nothing but fragmentary carcasses around them. They used their battered torsos as incitement to an agonizing inferno that obliterated the city of all life enveloping it.

A faction of them shifted their awareness to the gate, realizing it would be effortless to fracture the barricade that kept them and us apart. I cowered in Father’s chambers as I listened to their footsteps lurk closer to his door. And then I discovered him, eyes barbaric like a ruthless hurricane was unfurling inside him as he held his gun in his hands - the barrel still smoking from its concluding shot.

The Savage man simpered eerily at me as Father ascended out from the obscurities of the darkened room and blanketed me with his body, the force of ceaseless artillery reiterating through my insignificant, frail being. A liquid began to ooze in various spaces of Father’s flesh, immersing my nightgown with a tinge of crimson that burned into my psyche.

With a devastating blow, Father’s body collapsed to the floor, all his fortitude flown with the night’s roar. “Take this.” With one concluding declaration of his soul, Father uncurled his fist and I watched the existence he had left omit his eyes. All that was left of the existence that I once knew was a meager heart-shaped locket.

Putting the necklace around my neck, I warily slithered over to the window, discovering nothing but the carnage of the invasion. It was at that moment I discerned the distinction my Father had always aspired me to catch, the basis as to why the barrier existed, and why the Savages were as deranged as I was taught.

The night my father died, I vowed to put an end to the Savages once and for all.

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“Wake up, Briyah. It’s roll call.” I felt one of my comrades knock into my pillow, causing my head to roll off and slam into the dirt. “Whoops.”

A low growl emerged from my lips, but I bit back on the word I wanted to enunciate. Savage. Soundlessly, I dusted my face off and got myself ready to face my commanding officer. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Waiting until I was alone again, I roamed over to the makeshift sink and let some water cascade over my hands. I felt the chill of Father’s locket against my chest, and anger stewed inside me as if it was yesterday. The ambush. The fires. The stench of decaying carnality. Father’s blood. Twenty years later and I can still taste his blood as it fell upon my mouth.

“Briyah!” My commander bellowed for me, and hastily I barreled out of the tent. “What the hell took you so long? We’re in the middle of a war, or did you forget, outsider?”

Outsider. That’s what they designate me to be. Truth is, it’s them that are the outsiders. They’re the Savages, each and everyone one of them.

The night of the ambush, the Savages got the upper hand. Once they migrated beyond the barrier, they began to eradicate every other nation they could get their disheveled hands on. Our lives were no longer conserved by the Authority, but instead by their cold-blooded leader, Barthalo. Being an orphan though, it was easy to get drafted into their Order, and since they didn’t know who I really was, they raised me.

I never forgot what Father taught me. “If the Ancestors will for us to fall, learn well with what I will share. Blend into them. Consume their armies. Fade into their fallacy. And then they least expect it, feast on their flesh the way they did to ours.” I knew what I needed to do. I had to join their Order to reach Barthalo, but not just anyone is granted a spot on his Grand Order.

“Sir, no sir. I apologize for my tardiness, Sir. Permission to begin my duties, Sir.” I stood at attention, wanting to wipe that smug grin off his face.

Zahedan Kolb, the Commanding Officer of Nehli, was the most inadequate solider ever to be qualified but functioned as though he was Barthalo himself. “I have other plans for you, Ensign.” He motioned me to follow him to his tent, so I advanced behind him in impeccable conformity. “Sit.”

“Sir, yes Sir.” I took my seat on the opposite side of the table where a frayed parchment was arranged. My skin scorched as I grasped what it portrayed: every nation that deteriorated beneath them. “Permission to speak, Sir?”

Commander Kolb brought his hand up and directed at a depiction of a nation I hadn’t discovered before. “This is your next placement.” He plucked an envelope from his belongings and handed it over to me. “The Grand Order is demanding me to send a group of Ensigns here, the Lost Village of Mirah.”

My eyes enlarged. Mirah. That’s where Father originated from before ruling over the Fortress. Long ago, Mirah was a village filled with vibrant creatures that waltzed with the Ancestors under a strawberry moon, until the Savages overran them. “That place is a wasteland. Why would he send us there?”

Slamming his fist on the table, he breathed deeply. “Don’t question our Lord.” He compiled himself and then smirked. “He’s looking for something, something that hasn’t been found anywhere else. A key.”

A key? What key would Barthalo be looking for in a deserted village that has no remnants of any living thing? “That’s interesting. What does this key look like?”

“It’s not important what it looks like. What matters is that it is found. It holds very important information that the late Edvin Alixer kept hidden away from us, information that we deserved to have since the first ambush of Mirah. It is the only way we will continue to rule over the Authoritarians.”

I choked back a tear. Father. “What happens if this key isn’t found?” I remember fondly a conversation Father and I had when I was seven, whispering to me about how the Savages will never reach our walls without the key. “What will come of the Authoritarians?”

“Don’t you know anything?” He shook his head and sighed, “I shouldn’t expect an outsider to know our legends. If that key isn’t found, then the Authoritarians will find their way back to the Mirah Ancestors they protected. It’s biological technology that could wipe out our entire colony if it falls into the wrong hands.”

Instinctively, my fingers found their way to Father’s locket dangling under my uniform. My safety, my protection. “How will we know what the key looks like? And who else is regrouping to Mirah with me?”

“We’re unsure and I’m still picking the team, but you’ve proven yourself to be quite the leader for an outsider, so that’s why I’m telling you first. You will be the Lead Ensign for Mirah.”

A promotion means one step closer to the Grand Order.

“Any other briefing you can give me, Sir? The more I know, the better my team can be prepared for what to expect.” There goes my hands fiddling at my locket again.

“The lost villagers of Mirah tended to encode their secrets into something sacred to them. Statues would be our best bet since the Mirah Ancestors were worshipped on their grounds and considered to be the most sacred to the Authoritarians of today.”

Around the Fortress, Father would boast about the hand-carved statues he brought from Mirah before the Savages could scavenge what was left of the city. He told me that as long as the statues remained untainted by Savage blood, we would always be connected to the Mirah Ancestors. “No matter what,” He’d pause, “We will always find our strength over the Savages because of our birthright as Mirans.”

Commander Kolb relieved me of our meeting and I headed back to my tent to gather my supplies as I saw fit for the mission. Part of me was eager to finally walk upon the earth of the Ancestors, but the vengeance in me saw the possibility of everything I worked for finally reaching its peak. If I found the key, I could end the reign of the Savages once and for all.

For a moment, Commander Kolb’s words replayed in my head: The lost villagers of Mirah tended to encode their secrets into something sacred to them.

Of course, one would assume that the most sacred possessions of Mirah would be the statues of the Ancestors, but knowing how conniving Father could be, I knew that he wouldn’t use something so obvious. No, the Miran’s were of higher intelligence and stealth than what the Savages could begin to fathom.

So where would I even begin to look? The village had already been stripped clean of anything valuable, and no one even spoke of Mirah since then either. If I were living in Mirah at the time of the attack, what would I have considered to be sacred enough to conceal my secrets inside?

Fidgeting with my locket, rubbing the casing against my thumb and my pointer finger, flashbacks of Father’s last night rampage through my mind. Everything hits me all at once again, transporting me back to that time and place as if I were watching the events unfold before me at that very second.

The man, who I knew now as Barthalo. The bullets digging into Father’s crippled body. The sound of them ripping through his bones. His last words as he left me the same locket Grandmother left to him in Mirah.

The locket was Father’s most prized possession, never far from his heart, but obscured from others' view. Now, it was mine to have and to hold in the security of my heart as well, unknowingly to others too.

My eyes widened with a wickedness I never knew could reside in my bones. I knew what Barthalo wanted to find, what all the Savages wanted to find.

The locket was the key.

And the key was mine.