Krypton.
Before the Fall.
“Where oh where could he possibly be?” Kara Zor-El exclaimed, radiating amusement as she had supposedly lost the baby who had been left in her charge, the teen childminding for her Aunt and Uncle. To say that she had originally been reluctant would be an understatement, robbed of a night out with her friends to care for a pooping infant, but she had to admit that little Kal-El was not entirely without his charms.
An uncontrolled fit of giggling gave away the babies position, but being as Kara wasn’t a killjoy, she allowed him to remain hidden, the girl tapping her chin and pacing about her cousins room as the glow of fanciful stars danced across the ceiling. “I just don’t know what to do,” she explained in mock exasperation, “where will I find him?”
He was, in fact, in the middle of the room, which was abundantly clear to anyone who wasn’t themselves an infant, little Kal ‘hidden’ beneath his own blankie. A second series of barely stifled giggles confirmed it, the shape of a baby bobbing up and down beneath the soft fabric.
Regardless of how forcibly she had fought against the very notion of babysitting, Kara had to confess her joy, the tickled blonde leaning over the small mound that was her disguised cousin.
“I can’t possibly find him,” she insisted, lacing her tone with an air of defeat, “my little Kal is lost forever!”
And suddenly, at the height of her ‘concern’, he was revealed!!
Giggling wildly, the baby pushed away his own blankie for the big surprise, demonstrating just how shocking it all was with a dramatic waving his little hands, the dark haired cherub grinning up at his ‘relieved’ cousin, his arms upraised.
“There you are!!” Kara grinned, taking the hint and scooping the delighted infant up into her arms, holding him close for comfort, “I thought I had lost you!!”
Kal shook his head, a long series of burbles and coos escaping from his small body as he spouted wisdom in what appeared to be his own approximation of language, waving his tiny hands about once more as he explained how he had remained ‘out of sight’.
Kara nodded along in understanding, looking appropriately impressed as she carried her cousin about the room, plucking his favourite cuddle toy from his crib and bringing it to his thankful grasp. “Well, I think you are very clever.”
The baby smiled, a coo of delight accompanying his glee, before he gurgled once more and leaned forwards, tiny little arms grasping his cousin. More noises were to follow, contented little murmurs followed by happy coos.
Momentarily, Kara was taken aback, before she matched his smile with her own and hugged the small baby in close, rocking him gently from one side to the other.
“I love you too, Kal” she kissed him on the forehead, softly and with meaning, “I love you too.”
**********
Now...
When Kara awoke, it was to the sound of hellish industry, and it was then that she realised how cruel the dream had been. The air was so hot her skin prickled, difficult to breath as she fought the involuntary need to gag, the Last Daughter of Krypton reminded each time that she opened her eyes just how far she had fallen beneath the mountain`, far from the eyes of her fathers.
There was a shape before her, blurry and yet familiar, a face just beyond the reach of recognition, concern etched deep into youthful features, urgency in her tone. Kara blinked, trying to bring the other young women into focus, swallowing a mouthful of dirt and grimacing.
Suddenly she was filled with alarm, clarity striking like thunder as she felt the rock against her shoulders, the granite beneath her back, the sound of pick axe and toil deafening as the world snapped back into stark focus. Kara had collapsed, overwhelmed with fatigue, and her friend was desperate to rouse her.
“Kara!” Arisa insisted, grasping the blonde by one shoulder and tipping precious droplets of water past the girls parched lips, looking between the Kryptonian and some unseen threat. “Kara, you have to get up, they’re coming Kara,” the orange skinned youth’s tone turned from kind to insistent, “Get Up!!”
The teenager groaned, a deep, mournful cry as she blinked several times, her back protesting with an awful creak as she rolled over. Kara’s abused frame demanded that she remain fallen, and yet she willed it into renewed motion, months of abuse compounding to work against her. She was not alone, Arisa helping her to standing, arms encircling her fellow slave until she was stable, the other youth shoving a pick axe into Kara’s numb hands before returning to her own labours.
Not a moment too soon as the Kryptonian looked about, surrounded on all sides within the cramped carven, light swaying dimly from the lanterns overhead, casting shadows of the oppressed across the granite walls, a duo of Overseers marching past. They grunted to one another in what sounded like a bastardisation of several languages, harsh tones and sharp notes passing between them as they marched imperiously, the line of chained humanity to either side drawing away from whips and lashes.
At the sight of them, Kara’s own back twitched involuntarily, the lacerations that scared her shoulders days, weeks and even months old flaring in renewed pain at the mere sight of those weapons. She kept her head down as they shouldered through the tight confines, mindful of their constant attention, their endless fascination for the last Daughter of Krypton, the eyes of Vartox waiting for her to capitulate.
They moved on, a guttural bout of laughter heralding their departure and, all down the tunnel exhausted bodies slumped. Kara was amongst them, almost falling to her knees, one hand braced against the unyielding wall in a vain effort to remain standing.
“Easy Kara,” Arisa consoled, a spirited smile appearing, the equally young woman urging her friend to sit. “Take a minute; the mountain will still be here. We’re sure as hell not making it move.”
With knees turning to rubber, the Kryptonian did as she was bid, dropping to a seat as manacles clanked about her wrists. She closed her eyes, Kara fighting just to stay awake, her body weary in a way she had never thought possible, her very soul crying out for relief. She had lost track of time long ago, the days impossible to count so far from the sun, but the scars that she now carried were testament to its passage. Her muscles had become whipcord and lean, the palms of her hands calloused, the soles of her feet hard as endless labour had driven the puppy fat from her. She was stronger now than she had ever been before, and yet never had she been so powerless.
With eyes filled with shame Kara turned to look at her friend, the young woman who had saved her life in those first few weeks, “You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”
The pixie blonde was nonplussed, shrugging her shoulders as it wasn’t all that, the tips of her elfin ears peeking out from the top of her dirty mop of curls.
“My quota...”
“Taken care of,” a deep, baritone voice interrupted, rumbling from deep within a furnace.
Wrex cut an imposing sight, some eight feet tall and arguably as wide, hunched forwards with spines protruding from his back, skin as thick and rigid as they very rock they cut. His face, filled with too many teeth and forehead built like a slab was the picture of nightmares, the image of a monster that would hide beneath Kara’s bed. One that hid his humanity.
He jutted his head sideways, indicating her cart, filled to overflowing.
Kara’s eyes widened, the teenager opening her mouth in protest only for Wrex to cut her off, even as his own cart remained dangerously empty by comparison. “Ain’t no thing,” he shook his head, his lips finding it hard to form Kryptonian syllables, “ain’t no lash that can more than tickle me.”
“Wrex,” Kara made to stand, ashamed of the terror that she had once held the giant in, “you didn’t need to.”
“Ain’t no matter of need kid,” the giant rumbled, the alien sounding as old as the mountain itself, it’s walls as much a part of him now as his own flesh. “Ain’t no matter of reward.”
“Besides, we’re not blind Kara,” Arisa chirped back up, swinging for the wall and prying loose a chunk of precious minerals. “Those assholes are watching you closer than any of us, waiting for you to break, Vartox wants his Kryptonian,” Arisa swung again and, after Kara shivered at the implication, the elfin blonde looked as though she were about to speak further. She warred with some manner of revelation and yet, once again, she chose to keep it to herself.
“And that’s not happening,” she promised instead , “not on my watch.”
**********
Cattle was what they had been reduced to, when not being forced through the punishing regime of labour or gathered together in mass to huddle in their own filth, thousands of those who found themselves interred within the confines of the mountain were shovelled through the hall to dine on gruel. They sat in great, uneven lines, bound together by misery, their bowls filled with meats and juices that were best left unidentified, their hearts as leaden as their fatigued spirits.
Kara was unsurprised to find herself sat between Arisa and Wrex, the last ‘Princess’ of Krypton between the Ogre and the Elf. She owed them her life, between them she had been protected, and still they hovered close in case she should suddenly crumble, a candle on the verge of dying out. Grateful did not begin to express her appreciation and yet...
She looked to Wrex’s bowl that sat empty, the crude pottery having not seen a spot of food today. Punishment, the guards had said with far too much amusement, for not filling his quota. The old man beneath the mountain had been correct, their whips against his rigid flesh would have been of little consequence, but there was more than one way to rob a soul of their dignity.
Kara’s hesitancy was only momentary, the young blonde tipping her own bowl and emptying the majority of its contents into her friends, regardless of how quickly he made to protest.
She cut him off, “It’s not a matter of need.”
Wrex made to open his mouth and yet, after a moment’s thought and, with his own gruff resolve dissolving in the face of Arisa’s amused smirk, resided to accepting the gesture. This wasn’t to say he was going to allow the matter to settle, not without a parting grumble, one that rumbled from deep within his torso, “kids. I ain’t listening later to no complaining about being hungry.”
“Then you shouldn’t do it so often,” Arisa chirped, “it’s a wonder you don’t wake up the whole mountain at night, with the rumbling and the grumbling from deep down below.”
Wrex grunted, seemingly un amused, “respect your elders.”
“I will,” Arisa’s smile was joined by a swift wink, “if I ever meet one.”
“Age is relative,” Wrex grumbled, “it’s in our bones.”
Kara was only half listening; sat between squabbling parents as she teased what remained of her grool with her spoon, creating a shape that was only half familiar, tugging at her subconscious. She looked up, taking in the packed confines of her surroundings, thousands of labourers each bemoaning their own fates, hope driven from their bodies long ago, a conveyor belt of misery that only ended with one exit.
No-one was looking up; no-one had the will left to do so.
“How long,” she asked suddenly, interrupting her friends squabbles, “how long have you been here?”
“Too long by half,” Arisa ventured, her own bowl already empty, “and not half as long as our Warden is going to like.”
Kara became perplexed, the tip of her spoon still forming patterns in her grool.
“I’m not dying here,” Arisa asserted.
The teenager nodded slowly, the elfin woman beside her a vivid contrast to the despair all around her, Kara looking to her bowl, some manner of imagery refusing to come into focus, “Do you really believe that?”
“I know that,” Arisa’s conviction brooked no argument, “a Lantern always finds the light.”
Kara looked up, a flash of surprise in her blue eyes. The moment passed, the revelation not so surprising.
“My Grandmother was a Green Lantern.”
“I know,” Arisa smirked, “she was short too.”
“Wrex?”
The behemoth didn’t answer.
“Wrex?” Kara placed a gentle hand upon the giants shoulder.
His answer was slow in coming and barely audible.
“Too long, Kara,” he smiled, one which belonged to man who had been long forgotten, “too long.”
**********
The heart of the mountain was beating, Kara could feel it in her bones.
The chasm was vast, monumental in scale, the very centre of their hellish prison spiralling throughout the granites core. Honeycombed to its very peak, barely within sight, dozens, hundreds of crossways and ledges, both artificial and natural, crisscrossed the abyss as perilous paths, leading into tunnels that dug deep into every inch of its marrow. Carved away inch by precious inch by thousands, millions of stolen lives over the centuries, the mountain was a blood drenched testament to the relentless grind of slavery, the echoes of their despair permeating the air.
Kara, like every other soul bound and chained beside her, passed through the heart of the mountain every day, shuttled from one location to another to fulfil a day of labour. Their destinations appeared random, but the results were just the same. The rich would get richer, and the poor would die faster.
“Keep your head up,” Arisa warned, her tone scarcely above a whisper as she marched in place behind the teen, the duo merely two links in an endless chain of bodies. “The day you look down, is the day you never look up again.”
Kara could believe it, looking about herself at those who were equally downtrodden, eyes boring into the dirt and empty to their souls. Depression was a mood that sank deep, and so few possessed the will to escape.
And yet, she had to wonder, some impulse scratching at her subconscious, if only...
The heart trembled.
Kara came to a slow halt, blinking in confusion, she could have sworn she felt a tingle.
“Oh no,” Arisa mumbled, looking to the walls as though they would suddenly attack her, “not now, not again.”
The crowds had stopped moving, even their overseers more concerned with their own murmurings, Kara looking about to find an endless sea of faces muttering in fear, panic bubbling just beneath the surface, waiting to stampede...
“Kara!” Arisa grabbed her friend by the bicep, squeezing for her attention, “we have to go; you have to come with me, now!”
“Go?” the young woman didn’t understand, rooted in uncertainty, “go where? What’s...”
The tremor became a groan, rushing upwards from the core, and then it became a scream, the mountain itself bellowing in torment. Kara knew then what was coming, her own heart screaming in panic alongside the mountains, her nightmares returning to life as a word flooded back into her memory, one that had found definition the day her world died.
Cataclysm.
“EARTHQUAKE!!” one of the overseers bellowed and all throughout the chasm men, women and children began wailing, packed in tight and threatened by their very surroundings. Chaos rippled throughout the masses like an infection just as the ground itself erupted!
The very granite heaved in a great ripple, one accompanied by a deafening roar, stone parting with mighty cracks as the very earth itself tore apart. People screamed as they tumbled, falling upon each other in a mass of humanity, desperate to escape the falling sky.
Kara and Arisa were separated by the upheaval, sent stumbling in opposite directions as dozens of bodies fell in between them, gantries high above being ripped from their moorings and falling amongst the masses. The Green Lantern fought to reach the Kryptonian, crying out the teen’s name, but slight of frame she was no match for the mass humanity that pressed up against her, the elfin young woman carried away by their tide.
Kara was left abandoned, no-one caring for her well being, her blue eyes wide as she lay on her torso, grasping tightly to her sanity as she witnessed such destruction again. She couldn’t get up, not as she faced her worst fears, history repeating itself in an endless loop. She screamed, although the sound was silent, broken glass stabbing into her dreams until she...
There was a sound, like a pin drop, singular and at odds with her surroundings. She shouldn’t have been able to hear it, not amongst such turmoil and yet, as if the world was stripped away and replaced only with the important, Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton, could hear weeping.
The child was there before her, some one hundred yards away, the infant alone and crying, lost inside the mountain. The crowds had parted and left her, scattered to leave her behind, a girl scarcely able to stand while the world ended.
Kara was paralysed, blue eyes still open wide, panic pinning her in place, her heart beating faster as her life became focused on one point. She heard some manner of whisper, a memory desperate to come out and then, as the ground trembled, she blinked...
Kara Zor-El was running, sprinting on bare feet even as she heard the echo of Arisa’s own cry, one calling for her to come back. The Last Daughter of Krypton was not listening, not even as fear threatened to consume her, debris plummeting to earth all around her as she made her mad dash, dodging left and then right as she scarcely evaded her own death.
The child was there waiting, trusting in the oncoming rush of an adult, little arms held up and tiny hands grasping, whimpering even as Kara swept her up into her arms. Embracing the abandoned infant tightly, she turned about just as she was knocked off her feet once again.
The ground heaved, churning in violence as fissures tore up the walls like great gashes, the very world remaking itself into a new image.
Kara forced herself to stand back up, gulping down her own terror as all others succumbed to it, all that is, save one. After blinking several times she found Arisa, the Green Lantern having found a way to return and was screaming across the chasm, waving her arms franticly for Kara to join her. The blonde swallowed again, wondering if her mother had ever been so fearful, before the kissed the infant within her care on the cheek.
“Close your eyes, ok?” she beckoned, and the child nodded in understanding, hugging her savour all the tighter, “Rao will protect us.”
For a moment, Kara followed her own advice before, with a deep inhale, she began running. The time that was to pass seemed to be an eternity, placing one foot in front of the other in a single, mad dash towards uncertain salvation, Arisa urging her to go faster every step of the way, her own eyes wide with concern.
Then, just as her trials seemed over, the mountain reached out to claim her.
With a bellow of indignation, the earth shuddered and split wide open, a pit opening up before her running feet and threatening to consume her. Kara leapt; her heart had stopped beating, the Last Daughter of Krypton taking to the air with an infant within her grasp. She felt suspended, for a moment, leaping across the abyss, time slowing down as she defied the primordial laws of physics...
And then gravity took over, bringing the Kryptonian back towards a landing and, just as she felt that she wasn’t going to make it, Arisa reached out to grab hold!
Kara’s daring leap scarcely made the distance, the young woman almost losing her footing and tumbling back into the abyss had the Green Lantern not been there to pull her to safety.
“You idiot!” Arisa scolded, dragging her friend into the next passage even as the mountain continued heaving.
“I had to try,” Kara mumbled, still holding the infant to her.
“You’re still an idiot,” Arisa persisted, hustling her friend along, “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
**********
There was to be no time given over to mourning, not as the dead remained underfoot, left where they had fallen, a grotesque reminder of the tragedy that had unfolded. The heart of the mountain had been filled to bursting, mere hours after the earth itself had been remade, and the callousness of their treatment sickened Kara to her core.
She stood beside Arisa, their shoulders pressed together tightly, surrounded on all sides with no room to manoeuvre, the child she had rescued still clutched in her arms. The child was now sleeping, having not opened her eyes, and so she was spared the sight of their Overseer, Vartox, announcing judgement from up high.
The balcony had been purpose built, perhaps decades ago, meant to evoke a sense of Lordship and yet it remained a pale imitation, a distorted shadow of Governship. Dictatorship instead.
Vartox saw himself as no less than a King.
He stood with his entourage around him, those who were the favoured few, bedecked in ‘titles’ and ‘honours’, crude trophies and adornments, already cruel men rewarded for further cruelty. None of them compared to their Lord Beneath the Mountain, the crested, bold headed Vartox, eyes pressed too close together and musculature packed like steal. Every inch of his physique was bedecked today, clothed in mementoes and stolen trinkets, each of them precious to their previous owners and now reduced to his gaudy panoply.
Kara seethed upon spying one in particular, bound by a tether and draped about the man’s neck, the last remnant she possessed of her destroyed home. A single bracelet, one forged for her slender wrist, a yellow stone embedded at its core, the mirror of her mothers. For a moment Vartox could see her, and amusement played across his lips.
“Do you see it,” Arisa whispered, nudging her friend in the ribs, “the bastards even wearing it, like it would do any good.”
Kara was momentarily confused before all became clear, a glitter of emerald catching her attention. Upon one of his hands Vartox wore a ring, one that should belong to a Green Lantern.
“Just one chance Kara, that’s all I need,” Arisa continued, her resolve unbreakable, “just one moment and the green tide will fall upon this mountain like hell itself. When I get my hands back on my ring, there isn’t a single place in the entire Universe the light won’t find him.”
Kara nodded in understanding, finding her own course set...
“IS THIS HOW YOU REPAY ME!?” Vartox bellowed, snapping the young woman from her new fixation, her blue eyes meeting the black of her captor. He swept his arms across the entire masses, withering beneath his rage.
“After all I have provided? Safety, shelter, food, work, all of these things I have delivered,” the Lord of the Mountain berated, his ire stocked and his version of reality hideously distorted. “BETRAYAL!?!”
The masses whimpered and murmured in confusion, the remains of their loved ones still pinned underfoot, uncertain of how they had wronged. Kara’s own confusion proved to be fleeting, her heart filling with lead as Vartox’s retainers parted and a bound prisoner was brought forth, the beaten and bloody form of Wrex dropped to his knees before his master.
“While the rest of you sought safety this... malcontent, this murderer turned upon his own Guards!!” Vartox spat, one hand held out as his executioners axe was shoved into his palm. Kara made to surge forwards, her lips opening to shout, to surrender herself there and then to save the old man under the mountain, to give Vartox whatever he wanted.
Arisa was there to stop her, almost wrestling the Kryptonian into silence, “Not now,” the Green Lantern hissed, “not ever.”
“Three dead at his hands,” Vartox snarled, Kara forced to watch on, her eyes wide and unblinking as the axe was raised high, “and I will brook no descent.”
Time passed slowly, impossibly so, and words passed in silence between the Lord and Old Man, Kara unable to hear what her friend said, his last words lost amongst the wailing of an entrapped crowd.
Kara’s blue eyes were burning, her vision turning red...
To Be Continued...
Before the Fall.
“Where oh where could he possibly be?” Kara Zor-El exclaimed, radiating amusement as she had supposedly lost the baby who had been left in her charge, the teen childminding for her Aunt and Uncle. To say that she had originally been reluctant would be an understatement, robbed of a night out with her friends to care for a pooping infant, but she had to admit that little Kal-El was not entirely without his charms.
An uncontrolled fit of giggling gave away the babies position, but being as Kara wasn’t a killjoy, she allowed him to remain hidden, the girl tapping her chin and pacing about her cousins room as the glow of fanciful stars danced across the ceiling. “I just don’t know what to do,” she explained in mock exasperation, “where will I find him?”
He was, in fact, in the middle of the room, which was abundantly clear to anyone who wasn’t themselves an infant, little Kal ‘hidden’ beneath his own blankie. A second series of barely stifled giggles confirmed it, the shape of a baby bobbing up and down beneath the soft fabric.
Regardless of how forcibly she had fought against the very notion of babysitting, Kara had to confess her joy, the tickled blonde leaning over the small mound that was her disguised cousin.
“I can’t possibly find him,” she insisted, lacing her tone with an air of defeat, “my little Kal is lost forever!”
And suddenly, at the height of her ‘concern’, he was revealed!!
Giggling wildly, the baby pushed away his own blankie for the big surprise, demonstrating just how shocking it all was with a dramatic waving his little hands, the dark haired cherub grinning up at his ‘relieved’ cousin, his arms upraised.
“There you are!!” Kara grinned, taking the hint and scooping the delighted infant up into her arms, holding him close for comfort, “I thought I had lost you!!”
Kal shook his head, a long series of burbles and coos escaping from his small body as he spouted wisdom in what appeared to be his own approximation of language, waving his tiny hands about once more as he explained how he had remained ‘out of sight’.
Kara nodded along in understanding, looking appropriately impressed as she carried her cousin about the room, plucking his favourite cuddle toy from his crib and bringing it to his thankful grasp. “Well, I think you are very clever.”
The baby smiled, a coo of delight accompanying his glee, before he gurgled once more and leaned forwards, tiny little arms grasping his cousin. More noises were to follow, contented little murmurs followed by happy coos.
Momentarily, Kara was taken aback, before she matched his smile with her own and hugged the small baby in close, rocking him gently from one side to the other.
“I love you too, Kal” she kissed him on the forehead, softly and with meaning, “I love you too.”
**********
Now...
When Kara awoke, it was to the sound of hellish industry, and it was then that she realised how cruel the dream had been. The air was so hot her skin prickled, difficult to breath as she fought the involuntary need to gag, the Last Daughter of Krypton reminded each time that she opened her eyes just how far she had fallen beneath the mountain`, far from the eyes of her fathers.
There was a shape before her, blurry and yet familiar, a face just beyond the reach of recognition, concern etched deep into youthful features, urgency in her tone. Kara blinked, trying to bring the other young women into focus, swallowing a mouthful of dirt and grimacing.
Suddenly she was filled with alarm, clarity striking like thunder as she felt the rock against her shoulders, the granite beneath her back, the sound of pick axe and toil deafening as the world snapped back into stark focus. Kara had collapsed, overwhelmed with fatigue, and her friend was desperate to rouse her.
“Kara!” Arisa insisted, grasping the blonde by one shoulder and tipping precious droplets of water past the girls parched lips, looking between the Kryptonian and some unseen threat. “Kara, you have to get up, they’re coming Kara,” the orange skinned youth’s tone turned from kind to insistent, “Get Up!!”
The teenager groaned, a deep, mournful cry as she blinked several times, her back protesting with an awful creak as she rolled over. Kara’s abused frame demanded that she remain fallen, and yet she willed it into renewed motion, months of abuse compounding to work against her. She was not alone, Arisa helping her to standing, arms encircling her fellow slave until she was stable, the other youth shoving a pick axe into Kara’s numb hands before returning to her own labours.
Not a moment too soon as the Kryptonian looked about, surrounded on all sides within the cramped carven, light swaying dimly from the lanterns overhead, casting shadows of the oppressed across the granite walls, a duo of Overseers marching past. They grunted to one another in what sounded like a bastardisation of several languages, harsh tones and sharp notes passing between them as they marched imperiously, the line of chained humanity to either side drawing away from whips and lashes.
At the sight of them, Kara’s own back twitched involuntarily, the lacerations that scared her shoulders days, weeks and even months old flaring in renewed pain at the mere sight of those weapons. She kept her head down as they shouldered through the tight confines, mindful of their constant attention, their endless fascination for the last Daughter of Krypton, the eyes of Vartox waiting for her to capitulate.
They moved on, a guttural bout of laughter heralding their departure and, all down the tunnel exhausted bodies slumped. Kara was amongst them, almost falling to her knees, one hand braced against the unyielding wall in a vain effort to remain standing.
“Easy Kara,” Arisa consoled, a spirited smile appearing, the equally young woman urging her friend to sit. “Take a minute; the mountain will still be here. We’re sure as hell not making it move.”
With knees turning to rubber, the Kryptonian did as she was bid, dropping to a seat as manacles clanked about her wrists. She closed her eyes, Kara fighting just to stay awake, her body weary in a way she had never thought possible, her very soul crying out for relief. She had lost track of time long ago, the days impossible to count so far from the sun, but the scars that she now carried were testament to its passage. Her muscles had become whipcord and lean, the palms of her hands calloused, the soles of her feet hard as endless labour had driven the puppy fat from her. She was stronger now than she had ever been before, and yet never had she been so powerless.
With eyes filled with shame Kara turned to look at her friend, the young woman who had saved her life in those first few weeks, “You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”
The pixie blonde was nonplussed, shrugging her shoulders as it wasn’t all that, the tips of her elfin ears peeking out from the top of her dirty mop of curls.
“My quota...”
“Taken care of,” a deep, baritone voice interrupted, rumbling from deep within a furnace.
Wrex cut an imposing sight, some eight feet tall and arguably as wide, hunched forwards with spines protruding from his back, skin as thick and rigid as they very rock they cut. His face, filled with too many teeth and forehead built like a slab was the picture of nightmares, the image of a monster that would hide beneath Kara’s bed. One that hid his humanity.
He jutted his head sideways, indicating her cart, filled to overflowing.
Kara’s eyes widened, the teenager opening her mouth in protest only for Wrex to cut her off, even as his own cart remained dangerously empty by comparison. “Ain’t no thing,” he shook his head, his lips finding it hard to form Kryptonian syllables, “ain’t no lash that can more than tickle me.”
“Wrex,” Kara made to stand, ashamed of the terror that she had once held the giant in, “you didn’t need to.”
“Ain’t no matter of need kid,” the giant rumbled, the alien sounding as old as the mountain itself, it’s walls as much a part of him now as his own flesh. “Ain’t no matter of reward.”
“Besides, we’re not blind Kara,” Arisa chirped back up, swinging for the wall and prying loose a chunk of precious minerals. “Those assholes are watching you closer than any of us, waiting for you to break, Vartox wants his Kryptonian,” Arisa swung again and, after Kara shivered at the implication, the elfin blonde looked as though she were about to speak further. She warred with some manner of revelation and yet, once again, she chose to keep it to herself.
“And that’s not happening,” she promised instead , “not on my watch.”
**********
Cattle was what they had been reduced to, when not being forced through the punishing regime of labour or gathered together in mass to huddle in their own filth, thousands of those who found themselves interred within the confines of the mountain were shovelled through the hall to dine on gruel. They sat in great, uneven lines, bound together by misery, their bowls filled with meats and juices that were best left unidentified, their hearts as leaden as their fatigued spirits.
Kara was unsurprised to find herself sat between Arisa and Wrex, the last ‘Princess’ of Krypton between the Ogre and the Elf. She owed them her life, between them she had been protected, and still they hovered close in case she should suddenly crumble, a candle on the verge of dying out. Grateful did not begin to express her appreciation and yet...
She looked to Wrex’s bowl that sat empty, the crude pottery having not seen a spot of food today. Punishment, the guards had said with far too much amusement, for not filling his quota. The old man beneath the mountain had been correct, their whips against his rigid flesh would have been of little consequence, but there was more than one way to rob a soul of their dignity.
Kara’s hesitancy was only momentary, the young blonde tipping her own bowl and emptying the majority of its contents into her friends, regardless of how quickly he made to protest.
She cut him off, “It’s not a matter of need.”
Wrex made to open his mouth and yet, after a moment’s thought and, with his own gruff resolve dissolving in the face of Arisa’s amused smirk, resided to accepting the gesture. This wasn’t to say he was going to allow the matter to settle, not without a parting grumble, one that rumbled from deep within his torso, “kids. I ain’t listening later to no complaining about being hungry.”
“Then you shouldn’t do it so often,” Arisa chirped, “it’s a wonder you don’t wake up the whole mountain at night, with the rumbling and the grumbling from deep down below.”
Wrex grunted, seemingly un amused, “respect your elders.”
“I will,” Arisa’s smile was joined by a swift wink, “if I ever meet one.”
“Age is relative,” Wrex grumbled, “it’s in our bones.”
Kara was only half listening; sat between squabbling parents as she teased what remained of her grool with her spoon, creating a shape that was only half familiar, tugging at her subconscious. She looked up, taking in the packed confines of her surroundings, thousands of labourers each bemoaning their own fates, hope driven from their bodies long ago, a conveyor belt of misery that only ended with one exit.
No-one was looking up; no-one had the will left to do so.
“How long,” she asked suddenly, interrupting her friends squabbles, “how long have you been here?”
“Too long by half,” Arisa ventured, her own bowl already empty, “and not half as long as our Warden is going to like.”
Kara became perplexed, the tip of her spoon still forming patterns in her grool.
“I’m not dying here,” Arisa asserted.
The teenager nodded slowly, the elfin woman beside her a vivid contrast to the despair all around her, Kara looking to her bowl, some manner of imagery refusing to come into focus, “Do you really believe that?”
“I know that,” Arisa’s conviction brooked no argument, “a Lantern always finds the light.”
Kara looked up, a flash of surprise in her blue eyes. The moment passed, the revelation not so surprising.
“My Grandmother was a Green Lantern.”
“I know,” Arisa smirked, “she was short too.”
“Wrex?”
The behemoth didn’t answer.
“Wrex?” Kara placed a gentle hand upon the giants shoulder.
His answer was slow in coming and barely audible.
“Too long, Kara,” he smiled, one which belonged to man who had been long forgotten, “too long.”
**********
The heart of the mountain was beating, Kara could feel it in her bones.
The chasm was vast, monumental in scale, the very centre of their hellish prison spiralling throughout the granites core. Honeycombed to its very peak, barely within sight, dozens, hundreds of crossways and ledges, both artificial and natural, crisscrossed the abyss as perilous paths, leading into tunnels that dug deep into every inch of its marrow. Carved away inch by precious inch by thousands, millions of stolen lives over the centuries, the mountain was a blood drenched testament to the relentless grind of slavery, the echoes of their despair permeating the air.
Kara, like every other soul bound and chained beside her, passed through the heart of the mountain every day, shuttled from one location to another to fulfil a day of labour. Their destinations appeared random, but the results were just the same. The rich would get richer, and the poor would die faster.
“Keep your head up,” Arisa warned, her tone scarcely above a whisper as she marched in place behind the teen, the duo merely two links in an endless chain of bodies. “The day you look down, is the day you never look up again.”
Kara could believe it, looking about herself at those who were equally downtrodden, eyes boring into the dirt and empty to their souls. Depression was a mood that sank deep, and so few possessed the will to escape.
And yet, she had to wonder, some impulse scratching at her subconscious, if only...
The heart trembled.
Kara came to a slow halt, blinking in confusion, she could have sworn she felt a tingle.
“Oh no,” Arisa mumbled, looking to the walls as though they would suddenly attack her, “not now, not again.”
The crowds had stopped moving, even their overseers more concerned with their own murmurings, Kara looking about to find an endless sea of faces muttering in fear, panic bubbling just beneath the surface, waiting to stampede...
“Kara!” Arisa grabbed her friend by the bicep, squeezing for her attention, “we have to go; you have to come with me, now!”
“Go?” the young woman didn’t understand, rooted in uncertainty, “go where? What’s...”
The tremor became a groan, rushing upwards from the core, and then it became a scream, the mountain itself bellowing in torment. Kara knew then what was coming, her own heart screaming in panic alongside the mountains, her nightmares returning to life as a word flooded back into her memory, one that had found definition the day her world died.
Cataclysm.
“EARTHQUAKE!!” one of the overseers bellowed and all throughout the chasm men, women and children began wailing, packed in tight and threatened by their very surroundings. Chaos rippled throughout the masses like an infection just as the ground itself erupted!
The very granite heaved in a great ripple, one accompanied by a deafening roar, stone parting with mighty cracks as the very earth itself tore apart. People screamed as they tumbled, falling upon each other in a mass of humanity, desperate to escape the falling sky.
Kara and Arisa were separated by the upheaval, sent stumbling in opposite directions as dozens of bodies fell in between them, gantries high above being ripped from their moorings and falling amongst the masses. The Green Lantern fought to reach the Kryptonian, crying out the teen’s name, but slight of frame she was no match for the mass humanity that pressed up against her, the elfin young woman carried away by their tide.
Kara was left abandoned, no-one caring for her well being, her blue eyes wide as she lay on her torso, grasping tightly to her sanity as she witnessed such destruction again. She couldn’t get up, not as she faced her worst fears, history repeating itself in an endless loop. She screamed, although the sound was silent, broken glass stabbing into her dreams until she...
There was a sound, like a pin drop, singular and at odds with her surroundings. She shouldn’t have been able to hear it, not amongst such turmoil and yet, as if the world was stripped away and replaced only with the important, Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton, could hear weeping.
The child was there before her, some one hundred yards away, the infant alone and crying, lost inside the mountain. The crowds had parted and left her, scattered to leave her behind, a girl scarcely able to stand while the world ended.
Kara was paralysed, blue eyes still open wide, panic pinning her in place, her heart beating faster as her life became focused on one point. She heard some manner of whisper, a memory desperate to come out and then, as the ground trembled, she blinked...
Kara Zor-El was running, sprinting on bare feet even as she heard the echo of Arisa’s own cry, one calling for her to come back. The Last Daughter of Krypton was not listening, not even as fear threatened to consume her, debris plummeting to earth all around her as she made her mad dash, dodging left and then right as she scarcely evaded her own death.
The child was there waiting, trusting in the oncoming rush of an adult, little arms held up and tiny hands grasping, whimpering even as Kara swept her up into her arms. Embracing the abandoned infant tightly, she turned about just as she was knocked off her feet once again.
The ground heaved, churning in violence as fissures tore up the walls like great gashes, the very world remaking itself into a new image.
Kara forced herself to stand back up, gulping down her own terror as all others succumbed to it, all that is, save one. After blinking several times she found Arisa, the Green Lantern having found a way to return and was screaming across the chasm, waving her arms franticly for Kara to join her. The blonde swallowed again, wondering if her mother had ever been so fearful, before the kissed the infant within her care on the cheek.
“Close your eyes, ok?” she beckoned, and the child nodded in understanding, hugging her savour all the tighter, “Rao will protect us.”
For a moment, Kara followed her own advice before, with a deep inhale, she began running. The time that was to pass seemed to be an eternity, placing one foot in front of the other in a single, mad dash towards uncertain salvation, Arisa urging her to go faster every step of the way, her own eyes wide with concern.
Then, just as her trials seemed over, the mountain reached out to claim her.
With a bellow of indignation, the earth shuddered and split wide open, a pit opening up before her running feet and threatening to consume her. Kara leapt; her heart had stopped beating, the Last Daughter of Krypton taking to the air with an infant within her grasp. She felt suspended, for a moment, leaping across the abyss, time slowing down as she defied the primordial laws of physics...
And then gravity took over, bringing the Kryptonian back towards a landing and, just as she felt that she wasn’t going to make it, Arisa reached out to grab hold!
Kara’s daring leap scarcely made the distance, the young woman almost losing her footing and tumbling back into the abyss had the Green Lantern not been there to pull her to safety.
“You idiot!” Arisa scolded, dragging her friend into the next passage even as the mountain continued heaving.
“I had to try,” Kara mumbled, still holding the infant to her.
“You’re still an idiot,” Arisa persisted, hustling her friend along, “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
**********
There was to be no time given over to mourning, not as the dead remained underfoot, left where they had fallen, a grotesque reminder of the tragedy that had unfolded. The heart of the mountain had been filled to bursting, mere hours after the earth itself had been remade, and the callousness of their treatment sickened Kara to her core.
She stood beside Arisa, their shoulders pressed together tightly, surrounded on all sides with no room to manoeuvre, the child she had rescued still clutched in her arms. The child was now sleeping, having not opened her eyes, and so she was spared the sight of their Overseer, Vartox, announcing judgement from up high.
The balcony had been purpose built, perhaps decades ago, meant to evoke a sense of Lordship and yet it remained a pale imitation, a distorted shadow of Governship. Dictatorship instead.
Vartox saw himself as no less than a King.
He stood with his entourage around him, those who were the favoured few, bedecked in ‘titles’ and ‘honours’, crude trophies and adornments, already cruel men rewarded for further cruelty. None of them compared to their Lord Beneath the Mountain, the crested, bold headed Vartox, eyes pressed too close together and musculature packed like steal. Every inch of his physique was bedecked today, clothed in mementoes and stolen trinkets, each of them precious to their previous owners and now reduced to his gaudy panoply.
Kara seethed upon spying one in particular, bound by a tether and draped about the man’s neck, the last remnant she possessed of her destroyed home. A single bracelet, one forged for her slender wrist, a yellow stone embedded at its core, the mirror of her mothers. For a moment Vartox could see her, and amusement played across his lips.
“Do you see it,” Arisa whispered, nudging her friend in the ribs, “the bastards even wearing it, like it would do any good.”
Kara was momentarily confused before all became clear, a glitter of emerald catching her attention. Upon one of his hands Vartox wore a ring, one that should belong to a Green Lantern.
“Just one chance Kara, that’s all I need,” Arisa continued, her resolve unbreakable, “just one moment and the green tide will fall upon this mountain like hell itself. When I get my hands back on my ring, there isn’t a single place in the entire Universe the light won’t find him.”
Kara nodded in understanding, finding her own course set...
“IS THIS HOW YOU REPAY ME!?” Vartox bellowed, snapping the young woman from her new fixation, her blue eyes meeting the black of her captor. He swept his arms across the entire masses, withering beneath his rage.
“After all I have provided? Safety, shelter, food, work, all of these things I have delivered,” the Lord of the Mountain berated, his ire stocked and his version of reality hideously distorted. “BETRAYAL!?!”
The masses whimpered and murmured in confusion, the remains of their loved ones still pinned underfoot, uncertain of how they had wronged. Kara’s own confusion proved to be fleeting, her heart filling with lead as Vartox’s retainers parted and a bound prisoner was brought forth, the beaten and bloody form of Wrex dropped to his knees before his master.
“While the rest of you sought safety this... malcontent, this murderer turned upon his own Guards!!” Vartox spat, one hand held out as his executioners axe was shoved into his palm. Kara made to surge forwards, her lips opening to shout, to surrender herself there and then to save the old man under the mountain, to give Vartox whatever he wanted.
Arisa was there to stop her, almost wrestling the Kryptonian into silence, “Not now,” the Green Lantern hissed, “not ever.”
“Three dead at his hands,” Vartox snarled, Kara forced to watch on, her eyes wide and unblinking as the axe was raised high, “and I will brook no descent.”
Time passed slowly, impossibly so, and words passed in silence between the Lord and Old Man, Kara unable to hear what her friend said, his last words lost amongst the wailing of an entrapped crowd.
Kara’s blue eyes were burning, her vision turning red...
To Be Continued...