Chapter 36 #2
Their recognition starts as some passing mentions—said loudly enough that it’s clear the possible negative ramifications of speaking such aloud hasn’t occurred to them. More people begin to talk. And, just as the three of us have come to expect, it gets much worse from there.
Lunch is the first meal to completely stop being offered. We aren’t the only ones who had the idea of taking the shelf-stable foods and using them as rations. As soon as enough supplicants begin to do that, the inquisitors remove it entirely.
The whole point is to hurt us. No one has shown signs of the curse yet, and part of me thinks it’s beginning to worry them, given we overheard them say that one of us is cursed. The question of Who? must be looming larger than a yellow dragon for them.
Breakfast is the next to vanish. People begin to sleep later into the day. Unconsciousness makes the hunger more manageable. When people are awake, irritability is the default.
We’re well past when we thought the next challenge might reasonably be, and no one has any idea when this might end. And that makes it somehow even worse.
One night, we show up to the refectory at dinnertime and find it still locked. Everyone hovers uncertainly in the central atrium like ghosts. No one seems surprised in the slightest. We all stare with hollow gazes.
With a roar, Benj lunges for the door. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him do something that Cindel didn’t directly command. He grabs the handle with both hands, rattling it. His frustrated shouts echo off the ceiling between the ominous clanks of metal.
“You bastards, let us in! You can’t starve us. That isn’t the point of this place.” He roars and bites the chain on the door like an animal.
“Enough, Benj,” Cindel says, but she doesn’t move from where she’s standing with the two guys and two girls that surround her. Her nose is scrunched slightly with disgust, rather than concern, even as Benj is snarling. Snapping. Almost frothing at the mouth.
He keeps rattling the door. “I’ll break it down. I’ll do it!”
“Benj, I am going to leave you if you do not come.” Even half starved, she exudes an air of “better than.”
“We should leave, too,” Saipha murmurs. “This could get bad.”
I don’t disagree, but I’m rooted to the spot, grimly fascinated as Benj begins to beat his fists against the door until they leave smears of blood.
“Isola.” Lucan steps into my field of view. “Let’s go.”
“Benj, please.” Horowin steps forward to try his luck. But if Benj isn’t listening to Cindel, he’s certainly not listening to Horowin.
I nod at my friends, and we begin our retreat toward the residence hall, but a shout stops us in our tracks. “You three.”
Benj has turned his attention from the door. The others who have lingered with him have placed their focus on us as well. All the attention feels deadly.
“You have food.”
“What?” I furrow my brow.
“You have food. I can smell it on you,” he snarls.
“That’s enough.” Horowin tries to step in again, ever the good-natured peacekeeper. “You need to go to your room and rest. Wasting this energy is pointless.”
“They have food.” Benj points a bloody finger at us. “I know they do. They’re hoarding it. They’re the ones who took it all.”
“Maybe we should let him speak,” Cindel says in an almost singsong way. Her eyes find mine with a predatory glint. “If they have food, shouldn’t the rest of us know? It’s not very Mercy Knight—like to be hoarding resources as your comrades struggle.”
“Let’s go,” Lucan says again, giving Benj a withering look like his words are little more than the ravings of a madman and wildly inaccurate.
Saipha looks positively murderous toward Cindel. Obviously, her warning after the vicar’s lecture has done little.
“I’m going to find it. I’m going to take it. I’ll eat it—eat it all—eat you if I must!” Benj’s ravings echo off the ceiling.
“Benj.” Horowin doesn’t get another attempt at calming the man. The inquisitors approach, and Horowin readily backs away, making room as they encircle Benj. Horowin knows as well as the rest of us that nothing more can be done.
“Wait, no.” Cindel steps forward, but it’s far too late. “He was simply jesting. This isn’t that serious.”
The inquisitors ignore her.
Realization strikes Benj—of his circumstances, of what he said. He staggers back, but there’s nowhere to go. And the rest of us are powerless to help as the inquisitors close in.
“I didn’t… I wasn’t…”
The inquisitors grab him.
“Let me go!” he yells. “I wasn’t— I’m not cursed. I’m not!”
“Stop this!” Cindel shouts shrilly. “He’s just hungry. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.” Even though panic is rising in her voice, she doesn’t move. She knows if she did she’d be tying her fate to his—and Benj is now a lost cause.
They begin to drag him away. The rest of us are rooted in our horror. There’s nothing we can do. For the first time in my life, something other than a dragon has made me feel truly helpless—truly terrified.
Benj’s eyes dart around the room and find Cindel’s. They share a long look and, for a heartbeat, I think that they might have had something real between them. At least as real as any of Cindel’s emotions can be.
“Please don’t,” she whispers as a deathly silence overtakes him.
Benj is limp in their ironclad grips. Then a sound almost as horrifying as the bells begins to echo in the cavernous atrium:
Laughter.
Low and crazed. Then higher pitched. Faster. He roars bitter delirium with ferocity.
“Fine. Fine! You think I’m one of those beasts? You think I’m in league with the enemy?” His eyes swing to me again, but this time it’s me alone. “Or are you protecting your precious Valor Reborn? Is she afraid of me? You think I’m cursed? Are you afraid, Valor?”
“I don’t— I’m not—” I stumble over my words. Should I be stepping in? Should I try to stop this? I’m as helpless as the rest of you, I want to say when all their eyes turn to me. But I can’t say that as Valor Reborn, even if it’s true. Yet again, I’m trapped in a prison of the vicar’s making.
The inquisitors attempt to maneuver Benj through one of the many doors of the atrium, but he continues to resist. Without warning, Benj bites one of their arms.
“Kill me, then! Be done with it! Show mercy!”
They do.
A flash of silver. A dragon-curled dagger, laced with poison. And he falls, dead.