Aethosphere Chronicles: Storm of Chains by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

questioning him?”
    “That should be fine, so long as you keep
the session brief, and understand that there might be some
confusion or memory loss on the prisoner’s part.”
    Memory loss , thought Drish as though
it were a silly notion, but then he found the past shrouded in a
hazy sort of fog. It hurt to try and look beyond it, but he forced
himself to anyway. Something buried behind the gossamer veil of his
addled memory had deeply affected him, and the emotional scar was
freshly made and throbbed like a burn. He searched, beyond the
pain, beyond the fog, and found an image of his father laying in
the snow and the mud. That despicable pirate Bar Bazzon was there
too, and so was that trollop-somehow-turned-lady, Abigail. They
were both standing over his father, and there was blood
everywhere.
    Arvis was dying , he realized.
    “My father,” muttered Drish, and he found
his voice strange to behold. It reminded him of Arvis’s handicapped
speech, and that sent a sudden pang of terror through him, thinking
that he would suffer a similar disability as his father.
    An officer in an imperial uniform appeared,
standing over him, and at once Drish recognized the humorless face
of Colonel Graye, the night commander from the administrative
compound. The sight of him, however, only further complicated his
muddled memories, and he began to wonder if the fragments he
remembered had just been from some dream? It seemed too incredulous
to think back on; the clandestine meeting with Dumount…no
Domaire , delving into a seedy tavern that turned out to be an
insurgent strong-hold, kidnapped by pirates from his townhouse, a
high-speed escape to a burned out factory where a ground-battle had
raged…and his father dead. All of this was so far outside of
anything that Drish had ever experienced that it was easier to
chalk it up to a concussion-induced fantasy than an actual reality. Maybe I slipped on the ice leaving the office…
    “He was dead by the time my men secured the
ruins,” said the officer, unremorseful. And just like that the
gilded scenario Drish had created to wash away the terrible truth
of events crumbled to dust. However, instead of finding
debilitating sadness, Drish found his heart vacant. There was
nothing inside of him left to toll the bells of sorrow, and the
orphaned son simply lay passively in his medical bed, with his brow
furrowed in what could have simply been construed as confusion. The
officer must have believed as such.
    “I’m sorry, it’s true, Mr. Larken,” he
offered more sympathetically.
    “Where am I?” Drish tried to sit up, to
which the nurse laid a gentle hand to his chest while the doctor
advised him not to move. So the noble rested his head back against
the soft pillow and scanned with his eyes. He was in a medical
ward, no doubt, but it didn’t look a thing like any hospital he’d
ever been in. For one, an entire wall had been carved directly from
gray granite, which was streaked with veins of pink; and another,
its oppose was constructed of plaster and posts, with a ceiling of
open beams. Combined with the windows—tall and narrow—it all spoke
towards a style of construction more ancient than not, and one
Drish remembered from his studies as being favored by the old
Oberarch kings of a hundred years prior to the ratification of the
Ascellan Kingdom.
    “In the safest place you could possibly be.”
Lt. Graye strolled to the window and parted the drapes to let the
outside world shine in. Snowcapped mountains came staring through
the leaded glass, with their summits lost above a sky of
wooly-gray. “You’re in Port Armageddon.”
    “Port Armageddon…” Drish’s face fell into an
open gawk. Though he couldn’t see the cliffs below; or the
airdocks, or the platform parade grounds welded to their faces; the
tiered buildings or the cloistered causeways that tied it all
together; the ancient aesthetic to the construction, and the damp
chill to the air confirmed the truth of the