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Hold this image somewhere in your mind as you read this tale; it is important:
Whadgaf Jiris is standing at the entrance to the lair of the Auburn Order. She is drenched in blood from wingtip to toe, a layer of it thick like latex and dark red with a reflective sheen. Her shoulders go steady, up and down as she breathes deeply through her opened beak. Her eyes are open and stuck on nothing in particular; she is not seeing. She is finally free. And she wonders if it was worth the cost of so many lives. She’d killed so many of them, she had to if she wanted to free herself, they gave her no choice and she had warned them. No one takes a Hafjeran owner of high privilege very seriously when it comes to self defense, they generally outsource that to trained body guards. But Whadgaf Jiris has a very powerful secret that even she does not understand. She knows that she can kill a room full of people, that much is apparent, but the how’s and why’s are still to be determined. And she is stunned at her own efficiency during the thing, How did I do this?, she thinks to herself. The genteel bookkeeper turned killer. How did she get here?
One year RET ago…
The lair of the Auburn Order is impressive, that is undeniable. It’s position floating in the upper atmosphere of the planet Hafjeran is a feat in itself, but the castle is essentially a stone city that houses the two hundred or so members of the order comfortably with plenty of room to spare. The members of the order are descendents of an ancient line of Hafjeris with red wings who separated from greater Hafjeris society in hopes of correcting the wrongs of the world. Their castle is hidden high in the clouds and they covertly carry out plots around their world to destabilize a shadow government of wealthy owners.
The lair of the Auburn Order hovers above the general vicinity of the impressive city known as Jerial, home to the lauded Jiris family. One member of the Jiris family, the young woman know as Whadgaf, was abducted and stashed away at the castle; her family’s efforts to find her were desperate, yet fruitless. Whadgaf is the oldest of her parent’s children and has been groomed to succeed them. Her kidnapping by the order was unexpected and though many in the ruling owning class suspected the clandestine Auburn Order, they were unaware of the location of the order’s home base.
Whadgaf is a fighter and she gave her captors a hard time from the moment she laid foot at the castle steps in the hands of Frial, the man who had captured her and whisked her away in the blink of an eye from her balcony at the Jiris building. After the initial skirmish with the order that Whadgaf forced upon her arrival at the lair, she was placed under the close watch of Liuar, who was instructed to use the order’s brainwashing methods to sway the young owner to the order’s mission. It pained Liuar to torture Whadgaf, but he followed the orders of his leader, Marfgad.
Whadgaf was held in a room of the castle that had once belonged to an almost mythic member of the order. The woman Durfgar led secret missions with Auburn Order strike forces that destabilized the owning family of the city Garflag, that was named for the family that literally owned it. Durfgar covertly led her strike teams under the cover of darkness into the city and they would sabotage the food supply of the family and wreck their homes and modes of transportation. Because of Durfgar’s efforts, the Garflag family suffered substantial financial losses that forced them to sell much of their property in the city. Durfgar is a personal hero of Liuar who believes that her tactics could be successful on a wider scale. The leader of the order disagrees.
Whadgaf actually enjoyed Durfgar’s room very much and she was allowed to freely explore the books, journals, and other personal effects of Durfgar when she was left alone. Of course she was monitored when she was alone, and this was actually part of Liuar’s efforts to change Whadgaf’s mind. The choice of Durfgar’s room for Whadgaf was not arbitrary. The woman resembled Whadgaf, except for the deep auburn hue of Durfgar’s wings and her mature beak, and sometimes when Whadgaf would look at the portrait of the woman on the wall, she would forget that she was not looking into a mirror.
Whadgaf’s day while at the lair was comprised mostly of intensive history lessons designed by Marfgad to show Whadgaf the true scale of the inequalities that existed in Hafjeran society. Early on in her captivity, she would screech loudly to drown out the man or woman giving her information and eventually they would give up and lock Whadgaf in her room where she would slowly consider the books on the shelf before deciding what to read. One day, after screeching so loudly that the sound pierced the eardrums of her instructor and blood ran from the side of his head, Whadgaf sat with Durfgar’s first journal and got lost in the adventures of the woman who was a few years older than her when she started the journal. Whadgaf will never know this, but Liuar had swapped out Durfgar’s actual journals and replaced them with edited versions that made the details of the woman’s life resemble those of Whadgaf’s life. Whadgaf read Durfgar’s adventures with a sense of regret that she had lived so much of her life away from others and dedicated to becoming a future self that required her to repress her present self. Durfgar’s young life was full of adventure even though she was mostly confined to the lair and it’s heavenly grounds. Durfgar described the races that young members of the order organized before their formal training started. She was among the fastest in her age group and she detailed the intense rivalry she shared with a boy who bragged about his speed in flight. Whadgaf was especially impressed to learn that Durfgar along with a few friends, had actually flown the entire circumference of the planet Hafjeran and she had set foot on every habitable landmass of the planet. Whadgaf hardly knew the city of Jerial beyond the sights from her window despite the fact that she had lived everyday of her life there. It was also the city where every member of her family was born. Whadgaf had not really lived to that point in her life, just worked diligently towards the actions she would take in the future.
Liuar watched the monitors as Whadgaf became engrossed in the stories of Durfgar, and he felt a pang of sympathy as he watched his manipulation slowly begin its work. Liuar was well aware of Whadgaf’s regrets, her longing to fly free and proud, and he had made Durfgar the epitome of action and adventure. But to add this manipulation to the injury of being separated from her family and her home that was the setting of her entire life, felt cruel. Liuar can only follow orders, though, and he had a feeling that Marfgad would be very pleased with his results.
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