Chapter Thirty-One #2
“Here we are…” He fits the strange cuffs over my limp wrists, latching them shut with a firm clicking sound. The smooth stone is frigid against my skin, cold enough to induce frostbite. Otherwise, I feel no different.
Yet.
“They look lovely on you, Rhya. Just lovely. Don’t you agree?”
I glare up at him, teeth clenched.
“Ah. Well. I’m sure you’ll soon forget they’re even there.” He smirks, like he’s party to a joke I do not understand. “Now that you’re properly outfitted, I’d love to see if some of the rumors I’ve heard about wind weavers are true. Namely…that you are quite opposed to confinement.”
My throat closes up.
No.
No.
No.
Not that.
Anything but that.
“I have crafted a new cage, made especially for you. I did not think I would have a chance to use it so soon. But now…” His lifeless smile sends a chill straight down to the fabric of my soul. “I think we should see how you fare inside it.”
Without warning, I am lifted from the sand by two soldiers—one gripping my wrists, the other my ankles.
My body is so weak, I can hardly even struggle as they carry me to the edge of a deep pit.
My maegic is distant, the storms inside me dissipated to an intangible wisp.
My mind feels muddled by more than panic, my thoughts fraying into tatters.
Is this the effect of the cuffs? Are they already working to poison my senses against me?
“It used to be a well before the water dried up,” Efnysien says conversationally. “It goes quite far down. But don’t worry about the arachnidae or sandwyverns. They will not be able to claw their way in, no matter how they try. The walls are fully lined with iron, you see.”
I choke back a sob of pure terror as the men begin to swing me out over the edge of the pit like you’d heave a bale of hay or a heavy bag of flour, gaining momentum with each oscillation.
“I think we’ll start with a month. That should give you some time to settle in before I check on you.”
“Fuck you,” I hiss.
He smiles placidly. “Two months.”
Melité giggles somewhere out of sight.
“Go. To. Hell.”
“Oh, all right. If you insist.” His smile widens, but his red eyes are utterly void. “Let’s make it three.”
At his nod, they release me. I scream as I plummet. The fall lasts forever. When I land at the bottom, I feel my wrist snap. The pain of it pales in comparison to the crossbow bolts, which tear my flesh as they jar loose, widening my wounds.
Breathless, I gape up at the faraway sky.
It reminds me of being at the bottom of the beacon back in Hylios. Staring up that endless obelisk toward a remote circle of light.
“Welcome to Dymmeria, Rhya.” Efnysien’s voice floats down to me. “We are so very happy to have you with us.”
With that, the light disappears as an iron hatch slams shut.
I lie in the utter darkness. There is no light. No sound. No air. I am at the very depths of the earth.
I will die down here, I think, mind fracturing into pure panic. I will desiccate and decay.
I will never be found.
I will fade away into nothing.
As though I never existed.
“Let me out!” I scream to no one, voice cracking like glass. “Let me out of here!”
But he does not.
And there is no answer from the endless dark.
At first, I hold on.
To hope.
To memory.
I push through the pain that persists even as I work the bolts from my flesh.
Through the torment that remains even after my snapped wrist stitches itself back together.
Through the clawing panic that never wanes, a constant reminder of my confinement.
Through the muddling haze of the obsidian cuffs that make me question my own sanity.
I try to remember life before.
I try to keep the good things close.
Pretend you are in the clouds, Soren whispers in my opaque mind. Feel the wind on your face, in your hair.
You are not here. You are flying free.
Breathe, skylark. Just breathe.
I want to weep, but I have no moisture left in my body for tears. It dried up long ago, sucked out of me by the desert heat that, even down here, seems to wick every bit of water from the earth. Dehydration is a distant state; my very bones feel dry as tinder.
I am given only enough food and water to survive, delivered by guards who never show their faces or speak to me.
There is no rhyme or reason to their schedule I can discern.
Occasionally, they will toss down a moldy bit of bread, so hard I can scarcely gnaw through it.
Other days, the hatch opens and a bucketful of water is dumped unceremoniously down the shaft.
I slurp it from puddles off the floor before it runs into the drain in the corner where I relieve myself, tasting dirt and grime and blood with every desperate sip.
We’ll be out of here soon, a familiar deep voice promises, rumbling like water over a bed of stone. Back in Hylios. Back in the sunlight. Think of that, not this place.
After a time, no amount of memories can warm my heart. My damaged body has healed itself as much as possible, but there is no cure for my ravaged soul.
A friend once expressed to me her wish for death. I can no longer recall her name, but I can conjure her face when I focus intently. Her red hair, blazing in the dark.
Do not wish for death, I told her. Not ever. No matter what. Life is the most precious gift we are ever given. To squander it would be a waste. To stop living in the face of loss…it does a disservice to those who are no longer here with us.
What a hypocrite I was.
What a naive little fool.
Death would be a mercy, compared to this.
But Efnysien does not know mercy.
He comes to me eventually, as promised.
Three months, he said?
It feels like three lifetimes.
“Oh, dear,” he calls down to me, voice taunting. “I must say, you’re not looking so well.” He sniffs audibly. “You’re not smelling much better. You must endeavor to take better care of yourself moving forward.”
“Please,” I croak, clawing at the iron walls, singeing the skin off my fingertips. “Please, let me out.”
“So hasty to fly, aren’t you? No, little bird. I think another few months down here is exactly what you need.”
“No! No, wait! Please, don’t—”
The hatch slams shut with finality, plunging my world into darkness.
After that first visit, he comes irregularly, his appearances as unpredictable as the water deliveries. Sometimes Melité is there with him, her vicious laugh striking at my heart like a viper’s fangs. Mostly, though, he is alone.
He speaks to me at length during these interludes.
“How many months has it been now, little bird? Eight already? Time does fly when you’re enjoying yourself, does it not?”
Eight months?
It cannot be eight months.
Not that long.
Surely not…
But my grip on time grows as thin as the flesh that covers my bones. The cuffs cloud everything into incomprehension.
“Does it bother you that they never attempted a rescue?” he asks the visit after that. “Never even tried, your valiant kings. They simply moved on with their lives, leaving you here to rot.”
No.
No, that is not true.
They care for me.
They would never leave me.
They…
I think very hard, trying to pull their names into my mind, and choke out a sob when I cannot quite manage it. My memories are growing threadbare. Gossamer as cobwebs. The longer I spend down here, the more I feel myself unraveling. It is like that time I was lost in the portals.
Oblivion, someone called it.
I can see his face when I press my fingers to my temples and reach deep inside. Blue eyes, dark hair. A smile that could stop my heart in its tracks. I rock back and forth, trying to hold it. Trying to hold him. But he, like the rest, slips away.
The next visit is worse.
“I heard the juiciest news from the north. It seems one of your kings had a rather explosive incident at his court. Catastrophic, if the rumors are accurate. I wonder what set him off…”
Kings.
Two kings.
Two men.
A man of heat and flame.
A man of sea and starlight.
A distant toll rings in my head, there and gone in an instant. Flattened quickly by depression and despair.
Eventually, I do not even clamber to my feet when the hatch opens. Not for water, nor for the visits from my captor, which seem to grow rarer and rarer as weeks stretch into months, and months into years.
“My, my, little bird. Has it been three years already that we’ve been together? It seems so much longer than that. I feel we’ve been in each other’s lives forever. I can hardly remember a time before you came to be with me.” He pauses. “What about you, little bird? How is your memory these days?”
Memory.
A fleeting thing.
Far out of focus.
Like the flap of a butterfly’s wing on a distant wind.
Like the clasp of a warm hand on a cheek.
Like the feel of two lips brushing secret skin.
“Can you remember your life before you came here?” he asks. “Can you remember my name?”
I cannot.
But that does not matter. What is a name?
“Can you remember your own?”
Rhya.
Rhya.
My name is Rhya.
Wind weaver.
Light bringer.
Sky sylph.
I sing it over and over, clinging to that one piece of myself. That final piece. The only one that remains as everything else is stripped away.
“My name is Rhya,” I whisper to the dark when the hatch closes again and he goes away. My voice is hoarse from disuse, scratchy as the legs of the arachnidae who sometimes try to dig their way up through my refuse drain.
Rhya.
Rhya.
My name was Rhya.
Wasn’t it?
I hold on to that one detail for as long as I can. But I cannot hold on forever. And so my name, too, becomes a memory.
I become a memory.
Alone, at the bottom of the world, with only my madness for company…
I fade into the dark.