The Dragons of Nova (Loom Saga #2)(70)
Florence gave him an encouraging smile at the pride he so clearly felt in his guild. It was heartwarming to see. Powell led them through a door and onto a narrow, raised walk.
Florence’s smile melted off her lips.
“This is one of the viewing areas we use to see how they’re progressing. There’s only so fast you can harvest organs. They re-grow, but you have to make sure they’re healthy and strong before you remove them, or they won’t work to make Chimera and they’ll be weak reagents.”
She walked over to one of the glass windows that tilted away from the catwalk, separating her from the honeycomb of rooms below. Florence stared, barely making sense of what she was seeing, let alone Powell’s words. A chill swept through her.
Somehow she had let herself believe the organ harvesting pits would have mimicked her experience with Cvareh when she became a Chimera. She remembered the Dragon, willingly at her side, dutiful and pleased to give her his blood.
This was nothing like that.
Dragons, mostly shades of blue and green, some red, were strapped to tables, bound with steel and leather and held prone. Some screamed and thrashed. Others stared listlessly, as though their very souls had been harvested.
Gold blood seeped from open wounds, left to face the air without so much as a bandage. A man’s stomach had been carved apart, the skin still peeled back and pinned carefully to keep his innards exposed as the organ slowly grew back. They don’t even want to have to cut back into him again, Florence realized. The Harvesters couldn’t be bothered to repeat their incisions, so they let him heal while vivisected, only to have the process repeated again, and again, and again.
Her palm fell on her own abdomen.
“How did they get here?” She realized she interrupted something that Powell was saying. But she hadn’t even heard him over the ringing in her ears. The hall was silent, yet somehow the screams of the countless Dragons before her were so, so very loud.
“The Dragon King supplies them.”
Florence took note of a mark on each of the Dragon’s cheeks, all the ones that weren’t red. A crown supported by a triangle like design. Was it the mark of an animal led to slaughter? What did that make them? What were the Fenthri to this Dragon King, who was willing to condemn his own to such a fate? Just so much livestock awaiting slaughter?
“How are they chosen?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you not know?” Florence tore her eyes away and in the process swayed slightly. Her head spun. “How do you not know what these men and women have done to deserve this… this level of cruelty?”
“Florence, do not think of them as creatures with emotions or will.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, trying to both stabilize and soothe her to no avail. “They are magic farms. Think of them as organs and parts. Their bodies just help keep them fresh.”
“No.” She stepped away, shaking her head. Her mind went to Cvareh, the sometimes comically clueless Dragon whom she had given her life as a Fenthri for to see across the world. The good man who had answered the call willingly to make the blood in her veins black and give her life anew. “They are not. They are just as you or me!”
Powell arched his eyebrows. “I would not expect Dragon sympathy from someone such as you.”
“What?”
“A self-proclaimed Revolver, dedicated to tools of death and destruction. One who clearly fights against Dragon systems. Coming from the Alchemists’ Guild… it’s not a stretch to imagine why you and your friends are here. We’ve heard the rumors.”
Florence glared at him. She hated the truth that was bleeding beneath her and she hated the truth that flew from his mouth. There was nothing but contrasts now in her heart and they were all being brought to a head.
“I don’t have all the answers,” she admitted, as much to herself as to him. “But this—” Florence motioned to the rooms below her, and the carvers who continued their work upon the helpless Dragons. “This is not right. This is no better than the mining practices you told me about yesterday.”
“No, the mines when depleted will not replenish. So long as the Dragons are forced nutrition and not over-harvested, they can remain for decades—a century, even.”
That only served to spark further outrage. “Four generations’ worth of carnage forced on a single person to endure.” Florence shook her head violently, as if she could rattle the images and truths out of her ears. “No, no. This isn’t right.” She pushed past Powell for the halls behind him.
“Florence—”
“This isn’t right!” She wanted to hear no more, see no more. There was no justification. All reason and logic betrayed what sense of morals and heart she had clung to. She wanted to believe in the good in people, but what good was there in this?
Loom survived because of the Dragons, if Powell was to be believed. They curbed Loom’s wasteful practices and lessened the tax on the earth. But a new tax emerged: blood. To make the gold that powered the world while the environment recovered, Dragons paid what Florence now saw was a terrible price.
The Dragon King may have been the catalyst for the Harvesters to uncover the problem of Loom’s rampant over-production. But the solutions had damaged Loom’s culture and ways of life, and required that he give his own people over to darkness and pain.