Chapter Two

Year 2761, 11th Sun

Vicinity Three ( Demoor- the City of Spider's Web)

Years passed since the union between the mutant humans and the underground survivors. Life began to prosper once again, bringing reassurance to the steadily increasing population of humans. Until the year 2600, decades have passed without cataclysmic consequences.

A small blotch on the fabric of life, Vicinity Three. There was one major island surrounded by five smaller ones that created a natural border. The biggest of them the Duke ruled himself; the remaining five were given to three counts and two countesses who ruled them. Known as the five magicians, each one possessed mystical abilities that they used to govern their land in accordance with justice. One of them was the count who was responsible for the diminishing number of sea monster attacks, attributed to his ability to talk to animals. Another count succeeded in—

Aradag shut his history book with a growing lump in his throat. Honest to god, he did not feel his hands chuck it away into oblivion. It did not matter if the hardback was bruised, nor did it matter that he felt a connection to the great figures he saw described. He knew that these were but words on a page, words that could have been fabricated, or spun away from truth.

Above all, Aradag knew how easily people could deceive, having grown up without a father. In pain does he watch other kids from his window pass by him with parents and friends, and in pain does he look back at his mother who imprisoned him in his own home. Aradag knew in his heart that no child his age should feel this much pain, right? This longing for feelings he did not know.

Opening the window did little to help his stress fade. He tried to reach for another book, but stopped mid-action when his door opened.

His mother, a quaint lady with a permanent crease in her brow, entered his room without warning. He could only look at her as she rummaged through his wardrobe in search of something or the other, could not stop her from packing his things into a yellowed bag that he did not recognize. That was it. She was going to send him away. As Aradag frantically recalled every memory he had of the past month—or had it been a week?—he felt soft touches on his hands that beckoned him to look up into his mother's eyes.

"Aradag? Sweetie..."

The woman gazed into her son's tearful eyes. Jevelyn loved her son, she really did, but he had some strange mannerisms about him at times. He often broke plates and cups when taking them into his small fingers, sometimes tore out pages from his books without meaning to. So she had to keep a watchful eye on him, just in case, she convinced herself.

From a hole in the door, Jevelyn had witnessed him throw away his history book with a strange twist in his facial features. She chalked it up to anger, but at what, she could not see. Thinking of his reaction to the news she had to share made her nails dig into her curled fists.

"Aradag, do you... do you have a moment, sweetheart?" He shook his head, which Jevelyn took as her child on the verge of a meaningless tantrum. "I have something to tell you. Do you wanna hear it?" He blinked away tears. "You want to go to school, right? Well, the school superintendent stopped by the other day, he wants you to go to school, how does that sound?" Shocked silence, but Jevelyn was pulling her son's 'new' schoolbag onto her arm. "Come now, we're already late...!"

He watched his mother exit his room without so much as a look over her shoulder. She left him to his devices, Aradag realized. She did not even attempt to help him get dressed. Why should he believe that she was taking him to school and not going to throw him into the street to beg? Aradag's fists pulled apart his clothes as he clutched them, and he watched the rags fall to his feet as his dam finally broke.

It was therefore with embarrassment that Aradag remembered yesterday's tantrum. He sat alone in his new school's cafeteria, in a corner far away from the hushed whispers and intimidating grins. Bite after bite into his packed lunch, second by second passed with the hustle and bustle of his surroundings flying over his ears... until one of them came up to him.

"Hey, hey!" Aradag refused to look up. "Why're you sitting all alone? Come eat with us!"

Eat with who? Aradag itched to ask, but he scratched the idea away and, from underneath his shield of hair, eyed the taller boy before him. Gold on his arms, silver on his uniform. What would a boy of higher class be thinking, dragging a poor, filthy peasant to his own table?

Aradag made the mistake of smiling.

That smile alone had the richer boy pull him to his feet, drag him to his table and introduce him to his well-dressed friends by the moniker 'Aradrag'.

Humiliation at its finest, but poor Aradag could not escape his new prison simply by running away. He endured the loud jabs aimed his way with his insides, stirring up a new concoction of emotions.

He also endured the beatings he was given after school hours ended. He survived them all without difficulty as his curse gave him high pain tolerance, but his heart writhed in agony in his place.

Jevelyn gasped at that part. Having been listening to her son spit out the details of his first day of school, she was trying to think of responses to the questions she knew he would ask. The moment Aradag cut himself off to cough into his elbow was the moment she seized to redirect his rage, at least to protect the cutlery from his wrath.

"That all sounds awful, I know," she began, "but do know, sweetheart, that this treatment won't last forever. I was a student just like you, I got teased just like you, but once the girls were told off, they stopped—"

"These were not girls, Mother! Girls don't pull you away from your corner and make fun of your name in front of the teachers!"

Jevelyn struggled to take her eyes off her son's as he heaved. He did have a point. "Aradag—"

"They called me Aradrag! They pulled me out of the school and kicked me! Tell me, Mother, did the girls do that to you? Did they?"

With the intensity of Aradag's glare, Jevelyn could feel her resolve crumble and her tongue fail. Her son sagged in his chair, any remaining energy gone with the wind.

Both of them resumed their tense dinner without a word. Aradag pushed his empty plate away then shot up to run to his room, but before he could take a single step, Jevelyn's hand clamped around his shoulder. The boy struggled against his mother's vice-like grip to no avail. She forced him onto the couch with her mind whirring as it tried to think of something she could say.

She seated him, hand not leaving his shoulder, and sighed. "Aradag, do you know what your name means?"

The boy huffed while rolling his eyes. "No, and I don't care."

"I think you should, dear, it's the only tie you have to your..." she hesitated, face twisted as if her next words disgusted her. "... your father."

"My father?" Aradag scoffed. "I want nothing to do with him. He should be here, playing with me, reading me stories like I heard the others say at school. Why should I care if he doesn't care?"

In her mind, Jevelyn was cursing the heavens for giving her such a potty-mouthed child. "Listen, Aradag, your name... It does mean something, yeah? It was your father who named you and helped make you special. He knew something would happen in the future, and that the future will need you."

"Mother, that's a fairy tale! These things don't happen to kids like me. I wouldn't have such a weird and boring and stupid name if they do!" Though his mother's hand had backed away a while ago, Aradag found it impossible to lift his body off the couch. "And that father? He's a loony. Only loonies say things like that."

"Do not," Jevelyn hissed, "and I repeat, do not say such things about him!"

"Isn't it true though? Mother? You're just like him. If you believe him, you're just like hi—"

Smack.

He felt the throbbing before he registered the sting. His eyes widened with shock, filling up with tears that blinded him from what could have been a turning point in his life. For Jevelyn stiffened into a similar posture; the palm that slapped her son shook as her fingers locked themselves into the gesture. She tried and tried to move her hand away, to force words out of her mouth, but her body refused to escape its own imprisonment. If Aradag had looked at her before stomping to his room, he would have seen his mother shed tears for the first time since his birth.