Page 114 of The Blackened Blade

I hear a small intake of breath and a slight shift in movement beyond the wall. And I realise I have my ear pressed against it. I guess being starved of any proper human contact or conversation for months will do that to a person.

I hear the rattling of keys and heavy footsteps at my door; it was probably the guards coming for another ‘testing’ session. They were becoming more and more frequent lately, each time pushing me that bit further.

They had also started bringing in strange looking beasts for me to fight, trying to push me harder and almost to the brink of death. But I was learning, and becoming faster and stronger.

But just as quickly as I grew, they halted it; shackling me with their metal cuffs and throwing me in here to heal at a snail's pace. They only ever allowed me to recover so much before another ‘test’ would take place. Never giving me enough time to properly heal and fight at my best.

But each ‘session’ would take more and more from me mentally. And I wonder just how long it will be until what's left finally shatters…

I’m pulled from my thoughts as the guard opens my door and calls me to move.

I pull myself up and make my way toward them when suddenly I hear banging from the wall next to me.Zrael.

He shouts as high as his broken voice will allow him, “No! L..eave her! T…ake me!”

The guard pushes me out and past Zrael’s door, ignoring the yelling as he continues to bang on his walls and shout as loud as his broken voice will take him.

Zrael’s voice slowly fades in the distance as I head down the dark corridor and toward one of the testing rooms, wondering what they have in store for me this time.

* * *

I wake up in my cell after another one of their ‘tests’. In the last session I had broken too many bones to stand without pain cutting through me, and had lost enough blood on my cell’s floor to fill a bucket.

They didn’t care too much for prisoner hygiene here, throwing only a dirty bucket of water in to clean up the drying blood and an old rag for me to ‘tidy up’.

Healing was a slow process with their shackles on me, and I wasn’t quite sure how long I had been unconscious for or when they had placed me back in here.

But if meals thrown on the floor were anything to go by, then three days had already passed while I was unconscious. The small buns they gave us had grown even harder, and green mould was starting to form. Not that they had ever really been ‘fresh’ to begin with.

I pull myself over toward the wall and to where I would hear Zrael best. It had become our little spot.

But there had been no humming since I woke up, and no songs.

It had taken me a while before I realised he wasn’t in his room. And then a day passed with no return, and then another and I quickly began to panic.

They usually don't hold us for testing for more than a day. What if they moved him somewhere else?

What if they had gotten annoyed with all his yelling and had decided to punish him?

What if one of their ‘tests’ were too much for him?

What if he's…gone.

Panic begins to spread through me, an ache building in my chest with the thought of losing him. My thoughts race to all the ‘what if’s’. Worry and fear were taking hold of me like a tightening vise.

Maybe it was because we shared a similar fate or a similar type of pain, but there was a connection formed between us; a bond that had slowly grown with each hummed note, each lyrical word and each gravelly broken sentence. To me he had become a balm to my battered soul, and a small glimmer of light in this otherwise dark nightmare of a prison.

A shuffling noise rings out in the empty hall outside, then a couple of grunts and a heavy bang against the wall in Zrael’s cell. It's followed by the sadistic laughter of a couple of the guards before they head back down the corridor.

I press myself flush against the wall separating me and Zrael, hoping and praying it's him.

I hear a small familiar broken groan and some laboured breaths.

“Zrael?” I hoped he was okay, that whatever they did wasn’t too bad. But who was I kidding? They didn’t exactly hold back here.

A sharp pain splits my chest, with a feeling of being completely helpless and useless consuming me.

I call his name louder, but there's only more low laboured breaths.

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