Chapter 5: Those beneath

Zaki was the youngest of six. Although he was the youngest, he was by no means the weakest nor the least intelligent. In fact it was quite different to that, him being the youngest meant that the methods he learnt by had gone through the trials of the five before him, and he was exposed to the finest forms of these methods of education. Of course, he didn’t learn entirely alone, Aisha and Asma were both taught alongside him. These three children were but a fortnight apart in age and so any differences in their levels of strength was purely due to their own skill and understanding, or their passion to learn. From the day they learnt to walk, they were taught to run; whilst they became fluent in English, they also grew fluent in Arabic; when they learnt to write they were taught many skills of the pen, when they learnt to jump, they were placed with the older boys to train their muscles and agility. These children learnt at an incredible pace and the skills and abilities they learnt and achieved were those which would be incredibly difficult for anyone else their age.

The six could be split into two groups: those who were younger, and those who were older. The younger of the six were brought up in the underground and the school, they had never known any other way of living. For the older group however, their scars ran deep; they had lost their family, they had lost their homes, they had lost everything they had known to the flames. Everything other than the very thing those flames sought to destroy.

For in that land beneath the school, there strived a community of those who had been targeted by the flames. Yet those people who had the thing the flames sought to destroy, they would be the ones to be saved from the flames.