Six months passed on the farm, and with every passing day SEB grew stronger and stronger. His mercenary gear was returned to him, though sadly his plasma sword and pistol, the family heirlooms passed on from Bez, had been lost in the forest clearing for good. Wearing his boots and jacket again was like reconnecting with old friends, except those old friends had changed – they had outgrown him during their time apart. It took some tough months of muscle building until they fit properly, but when they did it felt like he finally had something to rely on. With Bez and his precious plasma weapons gone, his mercenary gear was the only comfort – his only tie to his parents – he had left.
He and Karma never mentioned his sudden cardiac arrest again, and after months of good health that one-off scare seemed like a distant memory. When he was able to walk on his own, she gave him some simple tasks across the farm.
At first he just tended to the animals, cleaning their pens and providing their food and drink fresh from the pump. He grew quite fond of Karma’s Lesser Greymane – Marnie was its name – and took extra effort to feed and care for it whenever he could. Once he regained most of his strength, Karma put him to work on more strenuous jobs.
An entire winter season passed, this one colder than Seb had ever experienced. He and Karma spent their days gathering hay and foraging for supplies, but by far the most challenging and rewarding project was renovating the huge barn. The animals couldn’t survive out in the cold, so Karma entrusted him with replacing the old wooden planks and insulation on the barn’s roof. It took longer than they would have wished, and they lost a couple of good animals in the first few weeks of the freezing chill, but once the project was finished both of them enjoyed a relatively frost-free winter.
It was now spring on the Daybreak Farm, and Seb was back to his usual tasks of animal and tool maintenance. He had developed quite the knack for sharpening and refining the various tools and equipment around the farm, and even managed to create his very own plasma sword and pistol to replace his lost weapons … with Karma’s help, of course. She surprised him on his nineteenth birthday by acquiring the necessary parts. It had taken her multiple trips into the nearest town to gather the colourless crystals and durable metals, but she seemed to enjoy this weapon-making process as much as he did. When they were done, she seemed as proud of him for the finished weapons as if she had created them herself.
In fact, Seb was practising his technique with the new sword (his father had always recommended an hour of training a day) when he realised Karma was away once more on an errand. Perhaps she was foraging for supplies nearby, or maybe she had ventured into the closest town again, but all he knew was that he was alone on the farm for the first time since he returned to good physical shape.
She tends to be out for quite a while ... I don’t think I’ll get a better chance than this.
He glanced over to Karma’s shack, the forbidden fruit which had tempted him greatly for half a year.
She always ducks inside that shack whenever she thinks I’m not looking, completely disappearing from the face of the Continent. What’s she hiding in there?
After ensuring all the animals were well fed and groomed for the day, Seb followed the gravel path and passed the new and improved barn until he reached the front door of the shack, glancing over his shoulder every step of the way.
This feeble excuse for a hut looked even worse up close. The windows were smeared with muck that smelled at least a year old, maggots were crawling out of rotten holes in the wooden walls, and the front door hung so limply from its hinge that he was sure it would collapse any minute.
Marnie could sense that Seb was up to something – the Lesser Greymane tied near the shack whinnied and moaned, and he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to calm the beast down. Eventually, it submitted to some tasty berries and a neck rub. Hopefully that would be enough to bribe its silence.
It took no effort to push the door open; Seb had to react quickly to stop the door from crashing into the inner wall. He shimmied into the room, delicately shutting the door behind him, and turned to see the contents of this so-called prohibited realm.
There were no sources of light in the room – the candles couldn’t be lit without sacrificing secrecy, and the windows were too muddied to let any sort of natural light in – so all he had was the faint pinkish glow radiating from his chest. If needed, he could lift up his shirt to light the room even more.
Seb shivered at the thought of being a human lantern.
I’m going to have to get used to this new, unnatural ability.
Even though his vision in the dim light was limited, there was nothing out of the ordinary about this room at a cursory glance. There were various tools on shelves, a couple of poorly kept plants that were holding on within an inch of their lives, and some more of the peculiar artworks – the same style he recognised from his cabin.
The centrepiece of this room, however, was the bed. It was small, much tinier than what he would have expected for a woman of Karma’s size, and the blankets and pillows were dyed with a homemade purple colouring. Judging from its size and aesthetic, he supposed this would have been the sleeping place of a child, not a fully grown adult.
Is this the secret Karma’s trying so desperately to hide?
There was clearly no child staying on the farm, Seb knew that for certain, so what made this room so incriminating?
He had tried to pry some more information out of her over the past few weeks and months, but it was like talking to a wall – a colourful, grumpy wall. Occasionally she would let slip some stories of her life, such as how her father was no longer around to help manage the farm, but she would always go quiet again after a while. Between Karma going into town and making Seb do jobs around the farm, there really hadn’t been many opportunities to muster up conversation.
Come to think of it, was that why this bed was so small? She obviously didn’t want to move into her father’s old cabin, so she must have been occupying this room for quite some time. Had she been cooped up in this room, on this child-sized bed, for most of her life?
She must have been unbearably lonely before I came along … Save for the animals, of course.
Seb sat on the end of the bed, filled with more questions and frustration than ever. This shack had been on the back of his mind ever since he first heard about it. He was certain something important was hidden inside. Even though he knew Karma would be furious if she caught him snooping, he just had to uncover the mystery. If he was going to solve it, he would have to do it fast – the shack’s crotchety occupant would surely be back any minute now.
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Staring deeply into the dust-covered floorboards, he was at a loss. Now what? He had almost healed up to full strength and would surely be ushered away from the farm once Karma realised he was fully fit again. This mysterious shack was going to irk him for the rest of his days. It was just going to have to be yet another problem in his life he never solved.
That’s odd, he thought. While scanning his eyes along the layer of dust on the floor, he noticed a patch of flooring that was much cleaner than the others, as if Karma had dusted only this specific portion of ground. That seemed unlikely, all things considered – the rest of the shack was a complete mess, after all.
Standing up from the bed, Seb approached the patch of ground with an apprehensive curiosity. He knelt down to inspect it. Sure enough, he spotted a plank of wood unlike the others – this one had a small hole in its side, large enough for a few fingers to slip through. How could he resist?
Taking care not to make a sound, he slid the plank up and out of its socket, leaving a well-defined rectangular slit in the ground. From there, he could reach underneath the other floorboards, and with an almighty heave he lifted the entire row of four planks up into the air.
A secret trapdoor!
He swung the trapdoor round on its hinge, resting it tentatively on the ground. Now there was a perfectly square gap in the floor, with a set of stone stairs leading underground.
There’s no point backing out now.
With one last soothing intake of breath, calming a heart which no longer beat, he stepped down into the dark depths.
The deeper he went, the warmer the air became. Any worries he had about the pitch black darkness soon subsided when the pink glow under his shirt illuminated his path.
Okay, maybe being a human lantern is more useful than I thought.
He took the steps one by one, pausing each time to rest his arm on the wall to keep his balance. The last thing he wanted was to set off an inhumane Karma Daybreak boobytrap.
After a decent trek down into the depths, Seb came across a sturdy stone door. This one was far more polished and well-kept than anything in the shack above. A door so grand could only ever conceal something important behind it, right? Stranger still, this room beyond the door came with its own light source, its glare outlining the bulk of the door like a ray of afternoon sunshine about to dwindle on the horizon. There was a very shiny brass handle affixed to its front that was desperate to be turned. So he obliged.
There were numerous rows of shelves in this room, about twenty long stretches of stone and glass that reached the back wall a good fifty feet away. All of the shelves were packed to the brim with small glass boxes, each one illuminating the room with a glorious crimson glow that overpowered the pink aura from his chest.
Inside each of the boxes was a red butterfly, each one identical to the last. Some fluttered about frantically, bashing hopelessly against the glassy confines of its prison, whilst others stood proudly on their perch, boasting their regal red wings to Seb as he shimmied past. The butterflies mostly zipped around in their cells without purpose, but would occasionally rest against a yellow smear against the glass and feast upon it.
What’s Karma doing with all of these butterflies? Maybe she’s cultivating them? Breeding them as a hobby, perhaps?
There were large vats of what appeared to be a yellowed nectar near the end of each row – the same yellow nectar that was smeared against the walls of the glass cells. These butterflies were well-fed and regularly maintained.
Seb cast his mind back to the day he wished to forget, when he nearly lost his life on the border between the desert and forest. As he exhaled his dying breath, he quite vividly remembered seeing a red butterfly soaring overhead, right before hell broke loose. Was that the same creature as these, or just a coincidence? There was no way to be sure … but all he knew for certain was that he’d seen enough.
He turned back towards the doorway, ready to sprint up the stairs and cover his tracks in the shack as best he could. If Karma spotted him now he’d have a lot of explaining to do. That was a confrontation he wasn’t willing to suffer just yet.
Unfortunately, it was a confrontation he was just going to have to deal with.
There in the doorway, arms crossed, stood Karma. Her eyebrows were furrowed and furious, and her lip was curled up into an animalistic snarl. Seb had never seen her so irate before.
“One rule,” she seethed. “I had one rule while ya stayed here.”
Seb sulked in silence, terrified and ashamed of himself.
“Out. Now.”
He nodded solemnly, and shuffled past her up the stairs.
Bursting out of the shack’s front door, he was met with the low afternoon light once more. Karma followed not long after, slamming the door with a thunderous crash.
“Look, Karma, I can explain–”
“No, ya can’t.” She cut him off, venom in her words and seeped into her face. “This cannot be explained.”
“But … just what was that?” he pleaded. “Why was that your big secret? Why are you getting so worked up about some soddin’ butterflies?”
Karma looked down at the ground, biting her lip, before locking eyes with him.
“Tomorrow mornin’. Pack your stuff and leave by sunrise. That’s final.”
Seb opened his mouth to argue, but he couldn’t find the words. They stood in complete silence – even the animals quietened in the aura of Karma’s wrath. Eventually, he stormed away with a huff and a puff back into his cabin, rattling the door behind him.
He stayed in his room the whole night, unable to catch even a wink of sleep, and when the familiar morning light crept into the room his whole body inflated with dread.
This is it. Time to leave this safe haven and venture out into the deadly unknowns once more.
Except this time I’m truly alone.
He gathered as much food as he could hold for the journey ahead, and collected his homemade plasma weapons as he left the cabin. He didn’t have much on him at all, only a few rations to eat and a water pouch to drink from, but he would have to find a way to survive with the scraps.
Karma didn’t so much as even glance in his direction as he left; her attention was firmly affixed to the animals they had spent the last two seasons caring for. Seb didn’t care either way. Perhaps it was for the best he didn’t face her one final time.
He thought about heading towards the Desert of Amia, the place he so desperately wanted to call home, but the painful memories wouldn’t let his legs walk that way. There was nothing left for him there. The only other option, therefore, was the Noble Forest to the north, a place Seb had only ever dared visit when Bez was leading the way on a job. Perhaps a fresh start was what he needed. It would be an unfamiliar challenge with lots of new dangers, but at least he could leave the horrors of the past few months behind him.
He had made his decision. Taking one last look at the farm he had once cared for, he stepped away from the gravel path and onto the earthy soil. As he eked closer towards the distant trees, the sand beneath his feet thinned and muddied, until the sandstone valley and its neighbouring desert were nothing but memories.
