Finally, we were in the Leike’s village, so close to this death castle. My heart, which had a galloping rhythm as its standard beat, pounded when I felt this was about to end.
This place was a sloppy copy of Lumen’s Village, the creator could be accused of plagiarism. But a mixture of smells, sometimes horse shit or tobacco and roast beef reminded me where I was. The streets were made of raw stone, in a semicircle structure around the castle, like Lumen. The main street also held the city's commerce, where they sold everything, including products not seen in Lumen, such as smoke, cold cuts, animal skin (real skin) and alcohol. On second thought, this place was not like Lumen, not at all. The Leikians looked like normal people. Some even smiled, others didn’t look so happy. They wore clothes like the prisms’ but made of real leather and fur. We could see bird feathers in the hair of the tidiest women on the street. Dakota almost handed us over to the guards when she screamed recognizing some prisms who were kidnapped on a Red Moon night, long ago at Lumen. Mrs. Ceiba Strax, wife of Solanum Strax (the mountain man) walked quietly, carrying a can of milk on her shoulders. Mr. Chamino, kidnapped one of the first times, was trading in the tobacco shop with a bag of coffee. Even little Ulf, carried on the last luau, ran curiously down the main street. They were alive, now living in another kingdom, none seemed to be suffering. One thing I noticed about them, they all had fiery glances in their eyes, like the Leikians.
As Dakota recognized the missing ones of Lumen, I saw the shadows that ran down the stone walls, I got goosebumps.
I knew Leike looked a lot more like the first dimension than it did on Lumen. Now I saw similarities in people’s behavior, except that there weren’t many children in that sea of adults. Little Ulf seemed to be one of the only to get in here. Everyone was looking at him curiously. “Normal” people, others not so normal, were walking around.
The death castle was grand, even larger than the one of Lumen. Also made of cold stone, it had many windows overlooking the village, all lit by candles in pyramid-shaped chandeliers (supposed to be beautiful, to me it looked haunted). There were five main towers, the largest in the center with a rounded big window. The castle was surrounded by iron railings. At the base was a huge wood door, surrounded by guardians armed with shields and swords, which made our defense looks like a paring knife used to peel an orange. We walked from one alley to another through the streets around the market, our eyes alerted to any sign of danger. We could not be seen there. In a dark gap between one house and other, we peeked for the best path to get to the castle when I heard a voice.
“Hey.”
I looked around, no one was there. I heard it again. Dakota looked away as if hearing nothing. I saw a few feet from us in the middle of the moving street, a sinister girl staring at me. She passed by the crowd that diverted away from her without noticing. She was a pale girl, brown hair tied in a bun, in a long dress made of pieces of dead animals. Hanging from it were legs and guts of all kinds of animals - dog, wild boar, cat, duck, rats. I could feel the raw flesh as if it were within a foot of me, ruffling the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Dakota, what is that?”
“What?”
“There, that woman with raw meat dress!”
“What? I do not see anything! Are you crazy?”
The weird girl dropped a human leg across the floor and made a signal for me to follow her. Even though Dakota thought I was crazy, I pulled her by the clothes and we followed the girl discreetly through the shadows. She led us to the back of the castle, a secluded spot with a thick field that held a large slaughterhouse which exhaled the same scent of the girl, the smell of suffering. Pigs, horses, and cows were all crammed into stalls where they could not even move, it looked like an area of torture. In the background was a large tank, with seahorses that made a sound as if asking for help, my stomach was twisting by seeing that scene. It was a huge slaughterhouse where all the animals were confined for supply, milk, leather, dung or meat, all for the consumption of the Leikians. The place was filled with the sound of frightened animals, amid the screams of those who were quartered for consumption. I felt sick, vomited the nothingness in my stomach. When I returned to look for the girl, she was gone.
We could not stay there. It was easy to see why it was an isolated area of the village. We continued our way around, by corners outlining the walls until we saw a prison also made of stone and slime. The stench there was even worse than in the slaughterhouse, it was the smell of Leikians confined without a bath, a thousand times worse than dung. There was a building a few floors high, some iron aged windows and many arms flapping out of the bars. From inside came a mixture of weeping, moans of pain and screams forming a full-bodied hum that resembled a beehive. No wonder the name of the place was Hell.
We decided to get out of there as quickly and discreetly as possible. The goal was to find an entrance to the castle, but we saw a boy. A little younger than us, tied by ropes on a pole, someone tied him there and just left. His face was soaked by tears, asking to be released. He saw us hiding in the hay and started to beg for help. It was just a boy, his face was terrified, he would surely be thrown into that Hell with men far worse than a boy. Dakota made me wait in an alley, while she went there and untied him without anyone noticing. Our cape has been very useful, covering our faces and hair, making us common to the eyes of any Leikian.
The boy thanked her with a malicious smile like who deserved to be tied there, I didn’t like it. We followed his steps. He massaged his fists as he walked through the crowd. Dakota in her innocence still believed we had done a good deed for an innocent. I was no longer so sure. The boy reminded me that we were in Leike, not in Lumen.
At the first block in his freedom, he stole a lady's purse from the tent that sold leather and then a beautiful dark cloak, that was exposed near the street. The owner of the tent shouted. Guards nearby recognized the boy who had been strapped to the pole. He even tried to escape but was caught just around the corner. The guards threw him to the ground and kicked and punched him. It was one after the other, making him scream for help until he passed out. No one interfered. They hit him so hard that the boy had fainted and was thrown near the stone wall of a house where a wagon with other guards picked him up like a coffee bag. Dakota had never seen anything like it, she was stunned. In Lumen, this never happened. I was scared too, but not like her. I've seen fake people and fights in the movies, even in real life, but never a few steps from me. My red-haired friend was disappointed, we felt like idiots who helped someone who didn't deserve it. The scene of the boy had stolen our attention, we didn’t even notice when two men got close to us from behind, they saw we were the ones who had let that thief go.
Dakota was slammed in the head, falling unconscious beside me by a man trying to take her bow. The other pinned me to the stone wall between the two houses.
“What do we have here? A bow and arrow, we can make some money in the market.”
“Who's that, I've never smelled this before! It is a mixture of hybridus and prism. This is the big luck!!!” one of them threatened, snuffling my neck.
The man stank of sour breath.
“This one is a prism, it stinks like all the others who come with jackals,” scorned the other while playing with Dakota's bow.
“I think we'll have fun with this one here, Zoid ... HAHAHAHAA.”