Chapter 13: The price of difference
-Hey! -said a voice- It seems you have had a considerable nightmare eh?
Onix was panting and sweating due to the bad experience. "It was just a dream" repeated to himself again and again. What was unquestionable, was that that dark cell in which the warlock was, had revived ghosts from the past which he thought were forgotten. When he finally calmed down, the prisoner realized that just after waking up he had gotten up, so he could already move, but his body kept hurting a lot. Seeing as that position wasn't any good for him, he lied down and spoke between the dense darkness.
-Rezler.
-That's right, Onix. Now we share cell.
-Where were you before?
-I have been judged... well, that's if you can call that a judgement. You see, you have already been condemned without even calling you.
-Of course. I'm a warlock.
-Well, thing is... we both are condemned to death.
Onix did a skeptical gesture. He was going to say something, but Rezler seemed to guess his thoughts and interrupted him.
-Yes, the death penalty usually isn't imposed in humans... except for "treason to humanity" crimes. But this time, for the first time in history, a warlock and a human will be executed simultaneously, and in live broadcast for everyone as well. What a bunch of sick people.
-How could they judge you like that? It's inexplicable.
-Hah. It isn't friend, as long as you understand what's the rubbish all this people have in their mind. Not only have they taken into account my desertion from the army and my "collaboration with you"... listen, i'll finish telling you my story. The one i started yesterday in the tank...
-Yesterday? -said Onix, surprised- How much time has passed since our detention?
-Well, think that when they took us here, there were only some hours left to night. I slept in a retention cell that, if you ask me, i would consider a paradise compared with this hole we are in... and this morning was held that shameful ceremony they called judgement. I was taken here at noon and i found you snoring, so i also went to sleep. And, you must feel really tired, god, since having waken up and waited who knows how many hours for you to do anything, you have just awaken, and it should be night by now.
I was beaten up before sleeping here. -said the warlock- I thought they were going to kill me just there... in fact right now i don't know if i could walk propperly.
-I see, it must have been tough. Well, anyway, i will tell you something that may make you understand some things...
-As i told you, after the herer's village massacre my major promised i would pay for it... and of course i paid for it. To begin with, they took my weapons away and assigned me the lowest job existing in the army: the cleaning of the training centre installations of the north of Aklas. I was in charge of washing the floor, wash the clothes , clean the windows... during the time i was on that situation, i discovered angrily that all my workmates were there as punishment for "not carrying out their good soldier duties" and now they were trapped, with the uncertainty of being able to go back to their real vocation and be promoted gradually as any soldier would wish.
-I suppose that, even in that situation, running away from the army would be considered as treason, right?
-Exactly, day by day, my life was a hell. A monotonous and real hell in which i only enjoyed the complicity with my workmates in such a depressing situation. Those were times in which i missed specially my partner, my love of all life. I sent letters almost daily, telling about my actual life hellplessly and sadly, but still with a little spark of hope, the hope of being able to get out of there and enjoy the furlough which in those times, as maintenance staffer of the training centre, i had no rights to. I could say that, with those expectations i was lying to myself.
Rezler took a break, recalling with sadness, detail by detail, what he was going to tell.
Two months passed. My partner didn't asnwer a single letter, and didn't come visit me either as i asked weeks ago.
Every time i asked or tried to gain access to a telephone to the soldiers, it was constantly rejected, with a disdain and condemnation i still couldn't understand. Obviously, i got fed up, and one day i simply disappeared from there. It wasn't difficult to escape, even though i already knew what would happen in the future... but i couldn't care less. I only wanted to go visit my lover,the only thing i cared of was to know the reason of the indifference towards me, or if my letters never arrived.
The old hunter had to draw much strength to keep telling his story. Keeping his crying, he continued:
-It was a long travel by foot from the training centre, in which i had to go through the forest and most of the huge Aklas, until i finally reached my lover's house.
Rezler took a break at this point.
-And what happened? -Onix asked-
-He was hanged. My boyfriend was hanged on the center of his house's living room. It was icnredible, the corpse was still even warm... on his feet, there was a clumsily written note... "There's no place for fags in Aklas... nor for deserters". When i read it, i had the sudden feeling i should throw myself to the floor. Just after i did, a rain of bullets flew over me, shot by a machine gun. Actually, Onix, i couldn't tell you how the hell i did it, because my memories are blurry... all of that was horrible, horrible...
-Don't keep telling if you don't want to...
-No, absolutely not, i must tell you. Well, the thing is that i managed to catch the general, the same who informed about me on that incident of herer's village, and i stole his gun after a struggle. Seconds after that, i saw myself in front of the lifeless body completely riddled, and with an empty machine gun on my hands. I knew i had to get out of there, quickly, and never come back.
-How did you end up breeding raplos in Sachs?
-I had immense luck. Going out of my dead boyfriend's house, confused and rushed, i decided to run as much as i could to go away the more the better from that area of the city, like in a nightmare. I fell to the floor in a dead-end and banging my head, staying unconscious under the night's mantle. The next morning, a young raplo's lick awaked me up. To me, who had always loved those animals, that meeting was very pleasant and i started caressing the animal's neck. Then, someone who seemed his owner came from the other side of the street, a really old man who walked stumbling. When we met each other, he kindly said that it seemed Chopo liked me a lot. The man, called Gronx, went to the city to vaccinate the young raplos, of less than a year of life, and due to it's early age it was difficult to dominate and escaped easily from the weak old man. I, of course, offered to help that man out on his task, and we quickly got along until i finally begged that old man to let me work with him on his villa on Sachs.
-What were his thought on the idea?
-Oh, the man certainly delighted by that, and very relieved in a way; until then he had lived by his own taking care of his raplos, but he worried about his beloved animals' destiny when the old age would bring him the end of his life. Then, we worked together on the stables for almost ten marvelous years, and i started developing my liking for hunting thanks to the opportune land which surrounded us. My excelent aim, which once made me enter without a doubt in the infantry after the militar tests, even though i preferred inteligence tasks, now was good for a noble objective: eat and protect the stables. The old Gronx died twenty three years ago, and since then i lived alone there.
