student to enter.
No one spoke. They barely breathed.
A group of students with Zamal among them sat down. How
could they show so much slack? During their last exam, no less.
He stood there, keeping his senses on high alert, expecting anything.
When a deafening sound trumpeted, mauling Draken ears, he
plugged his ears with his hands, but that didn’t stop the piercing
sound from hurting his eardrums. Then he smelled it, the sweet
scent of a korilis flower. The psychotropic substance extracted from the pistil was also a powerful sleeping drug.
Before Draken knew it, he lost consciousness.
He woke as something solid connected with his stomach. He
opened his eyes and grabbed the object, a steel-toed boot, sending its black-clad owner to the floor.
His eyes swam as he jumped to his feet and tried to take in his
new surroundings: a grey room much smaller than the one he
was in before. No furniture or windows gave away where they
were. Or what time of day it was. Just nine lights on the ceiling
and a door to the left.
He gazed at the figure lying down. The curves on the body
betrayed her gender.
A noise behind his back distracted him from his lusting thoughts on the lying prey. He spun around.
Three broad-shouldered, thick figures surrounded him in a
semi-circle, holding wooden clubs.
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Tales from Sehnsucht Series
Three men and a woman.
Draken moved away from the woman, monitoring the other
three who followed him.
All three attacked in unison. The drug had slowed his reflexes
more than he thought when he decked the woman.
A bat struck a blow to his right knee, sending him down. Two
men grabbed him and forced him onto his stomach, injecting him
with something that knocked him out again.
When Draken came around, he lay naked on the floor. His
hands bound with a tight cutting rope in front of him. A blindfold
over his head gave him no chances to know where he was now
and who was with him.
A cold liquid wet his face and he instinctively licked it.
Blood.
Was it his own? He couldn’t tell. Dizziness messed with his
head. Was he still on drugs, or had they beat him so badly?
While he tried to get a grip on himself, the temperature of the
room dropped.
Draken shivered, but at least the reeling decreased.
Silence surrounded him. The only noise breaking it was his
breath. When he held it, he detected four distinct breathing patterns in the room. The same people he had met before, or
perhaps someone else. It didn’t matter. His task now was to withstand the pain, the humiliations, the cold, the insults, the
beating, and everything they could throw at him.
The scent of one of them unmistakably identified it as a female.
‘Your lack of stamina is disappointing. Rotima deserves
more,’ the woman said.
She wanted to get under his scales, but insulting his manhood
now was the worst mistake she could make. Zamal lusted after
him, and Rotima would be his wife after graduation. No doubt he
wouldn’t disappoint his bride with his performance.
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Keyla Damaer
Two hands grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him to a
wall.
‘Stand and stretch your arms above your head.’ Spit splattered
on his face as a man’s voice yelled the words.
Draken complied.
‘Your mate … what was her name? Ah yes, Zamal Dortal, she
confessed you didn’t impress her when she tried me,’ the same
man said.
Draken clenched his jaws but didn’t reply. Zamal’s sexual maturation had happened months before. Of course she had
mated with others before him. But after? It was possible if she
was a collector and not a student. Either way, her physical reactions to him hadn’t been fake. She craved him as much as he
did her.
They insisted on the same subject for a while, but he never
replied and kept his arms stretched above his head.
After a lifetime spent standing in the cold in the same position,
his limbs hurt. Every time he tried to move to ease the pain, they
hit him with a club and yelled at him to hold his position. An
uncertain number of ribs broke in the process, making the act of
breathing agony. But holding his breath didn’t help either.
The pummelling went on until he lost consciousness.
‘Ins’t it cold in here, soldier?’ the woman asked when he woke
up again from the torpor of the beating.
He sat leaning against the wall. His spread legs stretched ahead, his hands on his lap, still tied with the same cutting rope.
‘I’m definitely cold. Why don’t we light up a fire?’ she insisted, chuckling.
Draken stiffened. Of course, they wanted to play with his sensitivity to cold, but did they know about his fear of fire?
The men laughed.
With a blindfold, he couldn’t see the light, but the heat increased and the crackling noise deafened him.
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Tales from Sehnsucht Series
His body shook and fell down memory lane in a whirl of colours. An echo of laughter hung in the air, jokes told, company
enjoyed. He sat in a hover with his father, Podmon Kosset, his
three-years-old brother, his aunt, and his uncle—Podmon’s
brother. Excitement for his three-years-old brother’s acceptance
to the military school filled the air.
Outside, the daylight faded as they travelled through a dark
road lit only by the headlights of the hover-car.
The roar of the engine silenced the laughter as a powerful
sensation at Draken’s stomach took away his breath. G-force gripped him, but sturdy adult hands wrapped around him and his
brother.
Draken squeezed his eyes shut. Gravity shifted and changed,
accompanied by the appalling screaming of his brother.
Sickening crunches reached his ears as the hover rolled several
times. The bumps tore him from the protective grasp. He flew
through the air to strike something hard.
When he came around, thick smoke filled the shattered cabin,
making him cough. The once familiar shapes looked like black
smudges.
Something wet and heavy pressed against his legs. The
comforting lights of the hover no longer worked, and the darkness swallowed the sense of merriment.
However, he spotted the flames’ reflection in a piece of metal.
The heat increased as the light pierced the darkness. The black
smears turned red, and the noxious smell of burning blood assaulted his nostrils. He tried to move, but he couldn’t untangle
himself from whatever weighed down his legs. Smouldering
flames licked at them.
Just when he thought he was doomed, powerful hands reached
through the shattered window for him. They pulled him into the
blessed cool air of the night.
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Keyla Damaer
Two bodies lay inside the hover. Draken recognised his aunt.
Her head turned at an impossible angle.
He screamed and screamed again until a bat smashed into his
side.
�
��Stop screaming, krolaface,’ a man’s voice barked into his ears.
Darkness wrapped him around. He dreamt again the recurring
nightmare of the night he lost most of his family in that hover
accident.
‘Are you afraid of fire, krolaface?’ the woman asked, waking
him up again.
Yes, I’m afraid, but I’ll never admit that, bathai.
He spat. Then something hard hit his head, sending him into
oblivion again.
He woke up to the foul odour of puke, blood, perspiration, and
excrement. Still blindfolded, he couldn’t see but perceived the
heat of the torch swinging in front of him. Never too close to
burn him, but enough to make him scream again. And again. And
again …
***
After being dismissed from the hospital, Draken didn’t return to
his barracks but went straight to the instructor’s office as ordered.
His left leg still needed healing, but he forced himself to walk
straight despite the pain. It didn’t matter. All he cared about was
his promotion. But would he get it? He had lost his self-control
during the exam. Fire had beaten him.
He didn’t meet a soul, reminding himself that most students
had already left the school premises, promoted or dismissed to
other jobs. He walked the empty corridors with a heavy heart.
The ghost of dismissal from command duty haunted him. His
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Tales from Sehnsucht Series
boots beat the time towards an inexorable doom.
The sparsely furnished room of the instructor sported a desk
and two chairs, one across from the other. The instructor sat in
his. Draken stood at attention and saluted. A black bag with his
name on it lay on the other chair. A simple message about the
results of the exam.
Fire beat me. He lost the battle. He would never be an officer,
dismissed from the school, but he could still be a soldier.
‘As you were,’ the instructor said.
He stood at ease.
reason, you are dismissed from active duty.’
Dismissed from active duty. The words played over and over
inside his head. They expelled him from the military,
condemning him, his family, and Rotima to live in dishonour and
poverty for the rest of their lives.
All because he feared fire.
Years and years of learning how to lead, wasted because of
fear, because he had never faced it before.
Being afraid doesn’t show cowardice. It’s what we do about it
that makes the difference.
His father’s words almost echoed the instructor’s. His eyes
gazed at him in silence, spacing from head to toes with a smirk
of disgust.
‘Here’s your discharge letter,’ he said, handing him a tablet.
Draken grabbed it and looked down at the text without seeing
it. ‘Yes, sir.’
The instructor stood and turned his back to him, watching outside.
‘I must admit I’m disappointed in you, citizen Draken Kosset.’
The word citizen cut through him like the sharpest of knives.
Only non-military personnel were addressed that way in the Halden.
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Keyla Damaer
Draken couldn’t believe they dismissed him like that. ‘Yes,
sir.’
‘Get out of my office!’
He clutched his bag to leave as if carrying the weight of the
entire Halden inside it.
On the way to the primary gate, Draken stopped by the training barracks.
Unexpectedly, Zamal left the premises at the same time,
meeting him in front of the communal fountain. Had she been
waiting for him?
She sported a brand new brown uniform. No pins shone on the
collar yet, but the clothes themselves explained she had passed
the exam.
She has, but I haven’t.
She eyed his bag, then looked up at him, amazed. ‘What will
you do?’
‘Get married as planned,’ he replied, tasting bile, but squared
his shoulders and stood tall.
Zamal nodded, gazing one last time at him before saying,
‘Goodbye, Draken.’ She turned on her heels and swayed her hips
as the last remnant of everything he had lost.
THE END
If you liked this story try with my first novel The Parallels.
It takes place in the same universe of The Halden Army
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