APPLE WITCH (girlxgirlxgirl)

3: Seiran

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⚠️ censored swearing, mentioned death, kidnapping and being captured, abuse, drugs ⚠️

Melora had expected to be inside the towers at this point.

Her own room. A small one, one of the highest rooms of the fortress. You have to walk a lot of stairs to get there. Past all the cold stone corridors with no furniture or decor. Past all the other rooms, dormitories. The witches that are lucky enough to live in big rooms together, bond together, have fun together, sleep together. Melora, who is unlucky, cramped up in her single cell room. One bed, one stool, one table. Nothing else, nothing at all. No carpet or blankets or curtains, in case she'd try anything funny. Just one bed, one stool, one table and those stupid stone walls, floor and ceiling. A window she has too, a hole in the wall covered by wood that she opens sometimes, but it's too small. Not big enough to fit through, barely big enough to see through.

Melora would've expected herself to be there. At the towers. Inside her room. Her one person cell.

It's been two weeks already. Who is lucky enough to escape from the towers for a whole two weeks? That's crazy. She's lucky she got this far, hiding amongst the humans and constantly running away from hunters. Predators. Staff from the towers, soldiers of the emperor. They got more desperate every day, more soldiers showed up to each festival she went to, each one with a better skill than the last. But with her luck she managed to escape every time, act normal and disappear into the crowd before it was too late. Never even show her face. This time she was finally caught.

But it's not her room that she wakes up to. Not the same bed, stool and table. Not the same trail of light leading from the window, or the same freezing feeling from the cold. Because she had no blankets. No pillow. Just one, very thin mattress. The best they could do. Now it's even worse. She wakes up on the cold stone floor, almost as if they had removed her bed too. As punishment, for running away. But it's not a punishment, it's not her room, she hasn't been caught. Not by the right people. She's actually further away from being caught by the tower now than she was before. Because Melora wakes up to a dungeon cell.

The sound of metal scraping against rock faintly echoes down the hallway. A very thin trail of light shines from somewhere, a window, a very small opening in the wall. It's wet, on the floor and on the walls. It smells too, so Melora guesses that the stone is molding. Somehow. She is leaning against the wall, head still feeling heavy and dizzy from the lingering poison. It smells like iron and puke, maybe a bit like blood too. She opens her eyes a bit more. The cell is small, nothing but stone around her, and rusty iron bars keeping her from the hallway of the dungeon. There are more people around her, in the other cells. She can't see them, she can hear them. Hear the rustling of their chains and their small groans of pain, grunts of anger, sniffles of cold. It's a terrible dungeon. Somehow worse than the tower could ever be. Melora would rather be in the tower. Maybe.

The witch moves her arm. It hurts a bit, but not too much. She is not injured, not even scratched. Her clothes are still the same, not a single piece of dirt on them either. Her hair isn't ruffled up. She has been treated gently, they haven't felt the need to hurt her or treat her harshly. What do they want with her? Melora feels a chill run down her spine. What has she gotten herself into? Is what the teacher said true? That there are way more people out there that could use her, way more people that are way worse than them. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps she has made a huge mistake by escaping, because even if it was a prison, it was still safe. A place of safety, depending on the definition.

Melora looks around herself. No chains are holding her down. Why do the other criminals have chains but she doesn't? Don't they know what she can do? Admittedly there is little she can do here, where the stone material is far from anything she could call life. Her powers are low if any, her magic is unfamiliar to her even on a good field. So why would it be strong enough here, where she can't see anything of true value? They have judged her well. They know her weaknesses enough to trust her without chains. Melora would rather have the chains. Maybe. At least then she would know that they don't know. Like the tower. They could be ignorant, but sadly they aren't.