No One

Chapter Five

Survival was the key to getting out, she had to survive the years offered to her, the sting of the whip was not something she was going to miss or want to feel again, to avoid it, she had to find new ways of surviving, inside the mines they had chosen to be her prison. The man had stuck by her, she had not told the guards what she had seen, out of fear of getting killed by him or the guards. Chances are they knew who he was, they feared him and therefore left him alone. She had never seen him either whipped or beaten, she had never seen him injured or fatigued but instead she watched him brush it off like such things just did not happen to him. She was curious about him, yet knew better than to ask, hoping that if she stuck by him, others would leave her be, she would not be the young thing abused in there, stuck in hiding while mining for gems she just could not seem to find. 

Resisting the urge to ask him as he stood watch over her, she kept mining, swinging her pickaxe at the stone, hoping for just a glimpse of a stone, something she could trade for extra food, something she could sit and eat without a care in the world, knowing nobody was going to look at her, no one cared enough to judge her eating habits, they were all slim and starving, desperate for a crust of bread and a drink of water. She was looking forward to her meal, hoping to earn a decent one, while fighting the urge to turn around and question the man who kept such a close eye on her.

If she did not need his help, she would have questioned him, hoping this time, alone without any prying eyes or keen listeners, he would answer her questions, but she did not dare ask, in case she lost her only ally in a place she needed to survive in. She took a break and a breath, examining the silver coin he had given her, one that had not entered her thoughts since he had given it to her, she had been too hungry to think about it. She looked at it, letting it sit in her hand, it was a little cold but not unbearable like the chill but there was something else about it, she could not figure out what, but it intrigued her.

She put it back in her pocket and sighed as she got back to work, filling the mine with the stench of sweat. It was tiresome work, prison rags became sweat rags and she had little doubt that she would not be strong by the end of her sentence, strong enough to swing a pickaxe without complaint, strong enough to kill with a passionate vengeance. The feeling of hatred never went away, it burnt brightly like a roaring flame. She hated the ones who harmed her family, who butchered them like dogs and her plans had not changed, she was still keen to get them back, even as they gloated about their grubby murder and went on to commit more. She only heard that from them through word of mouth, their words and their mouth, they gloated over wine and meats, laughing about how they screamed, cried, tried to fight or did not fight. Some accepted the end, others knew it would come but her family had no idea they would be targets.

The sound of the pickaxe on rock was deafeningly loud yet she kept going, hoping the four years would pass quickly and she would leave a free woman, able to start her revenge. She wanted to start with the monsters who butchered her family, working her way up to those who ordered and guided the hand of the crime committed. Nobody was going to get away with it, she was not going to allow such things, she would look weak if she did.

She wanted to hunt down those who killed her family, to strangle them with her bare hands, digging into their flesh as she listened to them screaming in agonising pain. She wanted them to feel the pain she felt when she saw them ransacking her home, while the bodies were still warm, joking and laughing about how her baby sister was so sweet, she had no clue what was going on. The poor girl, she did not deserve that, no doubt her mother, father or siblings would have tried to shield her from them... all in vain, a pointless exercise for they still died, leaving her to avenge them.

"You wished to know about me," the man commented out of the blue.

"I asked, you would not say."

"I do not like crowds, the risk of someone hearing. I had the chance to kill the guard, I chose not to."

"What did you do to them?".

"What I did allows me to feel energised, alive but it is a temporary thing, like yours, my energy can burn out, quickly."

"But how do you do it? Why do you do it? I do not understand."

"To know these answers, you must prove yourself trustworthy."

"I am," she pleaded with an annoyed, tearful look on her face.

"Let us discuss this some other time, perhaps."

"But I–"

"Another time."

She could not help but feel like she was in a game of cat and mouse, she the mouse and he the large cat toying with her, dangling what she wanted in front of her, only to take it away from her as soon as she asked for it. She was already sick of the game, yet her inquisitive mind did not want to give up, she knew the man was going to tell her, if he deemed her trustworthy, which he apparently did not, yet. Taking a guess, she guessed he wanted her name, something she did not want to say to him, she did not wish to give away to anyone, let alone a man whose name she did not know either.