A Court of Fanfictions: Azriel

Chapter 1

My head laid against the cold, wet stone of the prison cell. I drank it in against my skin. This was the only time I truly felt anything other than pain and...nothingness. There was no wind, no window for sunlight, no....anything in this prison. Just vast emptiness accompanied me.

I laid my cheek against the stone, trying my best to use it as an ice pack against the pain. My cheek had surely been bruised to say the least. I'd be unsurprised if it had been shattered. Perhaps since I was now High Fae, I wouldn't have to worry about broken bones.

But this soft, aching, inconsolable pain on my cheek...I guess it was immune to the powers of High Fae. Whatever powers Briallyn swore I possessed. I think at this point it was all that kept me alive, all that kept me to continuously be tortured and experimented on.

Her most common experiment, that she rarely participated in herself, was wings. In the war against Hybern, the Illyrian warriors had proven great strength for Prythian. Because of this, Briallyn wanted to practice magic and physically adding wings to those of us she experimented on. Based on my counts, there were twenty-one of us. She had tried wings on seven of us.

I was one of the lucky seven.

Although, she could never get it quite right. Or her workers couldn't. Whichever. I had no idea what Illyrian wings looked like, but I could tell by the constant heavy sighs, grunts, and annoying groans each time they poked and prodded me, it was not what she wanted.

Boots lazily slid across the hallway, scraping on the dark cobblestone. I shuddered. Was it my day already?

The boots stopped their noise in front of me.

Indeed, it was.

"Thirteen," his deep voice bellowed. The keys let out clanging noises as he shuffled through them to find my key. I grunted. "My name," I reminded him, "is Kortnee."

He chuckled darkly as he tossed the door open. "Thirteen," he corrected harshly, "Today's your day again. Let's go."

He let the last two words come out with such bite that I didn't put up a fight today. Usually, I sat in the corner and stared at the creature in front of me. He had grey, leathery skin and a long snout that pointed upwards with the nose of a pig. And two large white horns on either side of it, and two white fangs coming out of his mouth.

And after staring, he'd charge at me. And we would pummel for a minimum of ten minutes. I found that by the time I entered the experiment room, I could at least pass out sooner if he had beaten the shit out of me first. And I had nothing better to do than rile him up. He was my only real interaction. Him and number eleven in the cell beside me.

Sometimes, we would comfort each other. If soft cries ever escaped us, we would speak through the wall to each other about getting out of here. Of the beach or of mountains. She preferred the beach. I preferred the mountains. I didn't know her name, she had forgotten it. Which is partly why I corrected the guard every time he came to get me from my cell.

I was determined to have everyone know my name was Kortnee, and not Thirteen. It might be a minute detail, and it might be stupid to remember, but I would fight for every ounce of myself to remain. She and her guards and her pathetic workers would not take that away from me.

I stood and limped over to him, still healing my ankle from our twenty-minute ronde-vous from...three days ago? Three days ago? How was it my turn again already?

"No fighting today?" He cooed evilly. I shot him a glare, even from under my swollen left eye. He chuckled menacingly as he slammed the door shut behind me. "How's the wife, Frank?" I asked him randomly.