The Cruel King of Ashudhar | Completed

Chapter -3

Kirti, Present

I was put on cleaning duty with another girl. She refused to acknowledge my presence. Ashujans had deep-seated prejudices against humans. After being treated like shit for the past two weeks, the girl's ignorance didn't hurt as much. I saw her face harden when I couldn't keep up with her. Ashujans were much stronger than humans. They were like a more evolved version of us and a lot more meaner as well.

Women easily picked up the huge wooden buckets of water on both hands. The strongest of men on earth will have a hard time doing such tasks. I could hardly budge those metal buckets. I saw the irritation on the girl's face when I struggled to drag the buckets on the stone floor.

I shivered as a particularly cold gust of wind blew down the empty corridor. The blue outfit did nothing to give me warmth. Apparently these people here were immune to the low temperatures as well. My teeth chattered throughout the day until I went into the little shed and curled under the thin blanket. I had lost so much weight in the last two weeks, the tight dress now sat loosely on me.

The girl was fast as she scrubbed the floor with a brush. I tried to focus on the work but I couldn't. My brain kept dreaming about scenarios of how I could escape this place. I think Thika saw the want to escape in my eyes. She had warned me about the consequences. It was the only thing stopping me from trying something crazy.

I looked up from the floor hearing the guards talk to themselves. We were not supposed to look around. If I ever tried to take in my surroundings I had to make sure the guards were engaged in themselves. I looked at the end of the corridor that led to a bridge. Men and women walked around in expensive clothing on the other side of the bridge. I could hardly see them but I could tell they weren't slaves. From the couple of times Thika told me about the royal family, she said the people I saw weren't royal members. Royals lived in the central part of the palace and were in the north. The people I saw were Kaambh girls and the men were their clients, council members, high guards and merchants. I wondered what Zavi was doing. I needed to find a way to go to Zavi. He was the king, if I asked nicely I was sure he would help me.

"Hakth!" one of the guards yelled in Ahsubol butting my head with his wooden stick. I knew what the word meant, "Look down" or "heel". I have been catching up on Ashubol. Thika had been teaching me words and sentences. Given no one spoke human tongue I had to make sure to learn Ashubol quickly if I needed to make my way through the palace.

I rubbed away the pain and looked down to the floor again. The girl with me said something under her breath, the only word I could understand was 'trouble'. I wish these people understood I wasn't the trouble, I was the one in trouble.

My stomach growled with hunger at one point, not to mention the searing pain on my knee. We had been working on the floor for the last four hours, exhaustion was a tame expression to describe what I was feeling. We weren't allowed to leave until we finished our assigned work. The guards turned more violent since they weren't allowed to leave as well. I could hear them cursing me. I didn't know what the words meant but I understood the feelings behind them. They thought I was useless, slowing down the work. Our Auri, the woman in charge of the female slaves, hated me the most though. She assigned me the work that was the most difficult, work I won't be good at. Cleaning was alright, but the huge expanse of the corridor was no joke for two women when one of them was merely a human.

We were finally done by the time the sun was going down, lunch time was over way before. It was dinner time when I arrived at the kitchen quarters with bruised knees hardly able to walk. None of the girls wanted me to sit with them, even Thika found it uncomfortable if I sat beside her. I didn't blame her, she was doing more than enough for me. I took my plate and ate standing up, at a corner, away from prying eyes. The food was different from home, but hunger made everything taste good, even the bitter fruit they served with the bread loaf thing.

"I sneaked some sweet water for you," Thika said as I entered the shed after dinner. A smile spread across my face, who would have thought simple sweetened water would make me so happy. She took out a glass from under the bed and gave it to me.

"A bunker got evacuated, you can move your bed there." Thika informed me, as I sat on my bed on the floor as she sat beside me.

"Whose bunker?" I asked, frowning.

"Gomie's. She got selected for Kaambh quarters."

"She got selected to a whore house? Did she participate?" I asked, astonished.

"She has been trying to get in there for the last three years."

"That's absurd," I chuckled.

Thika bunched up my stuff and moved them to the bunker a few beds away. "The royal members of Hurim family and other high officials use Khaamb quarters for their sexual needs. Beautiful women stay at the Khaamb quarters, they are well-fed, well-kept, given beautiful clothes to wear. They also have their personal sleeping space."

"That explains it." I commented. As bad as whoring was in the human world, if it gave you so many facilities I could understand why so many would want to work there.

"But there is a catch, Kirti." Thika said while putting my stuff on the empty bunker bed. "Only half of the women make it alive." Thika whispered. "But we are not supposed to talk about it. I don't know what kind of obsecene sexual acts go on there but I have heard some really horrible stories."

"What do they do?" I asked, horrified but curious at the same time.

"Unimaginable things. You wouldn't want to go there. I don't know what Gomie was thinking. We all agree she was not right in her head." Thika dusted my bed for the last time before stepping away. "Have a good night, okay?" She turned around and walked back to her bed.

The more I learned about this world the more I lost hope of ever getting out of here. I tried to blend in, tried not to show rebellion but the probability of freedom was slowly slipping away.

It is amazing what we are capable of. I struggled with work. I cried myself to sleep most nights but I was starting to accept my plight. The only thing that kept me determined was the thought of my mother. She was with them...the shadows. The memory of her cries for mercy kept me awake at night. And I knew at least for her I had to try harder.

Survival in the palace meant getting more comfortable with this routine. I started to appreciate the bitter fruit they served during the dinner, it helped me sleep better. Days morphed into weeks and weeks into months. I was just another slave, no more human. The girls finally started accepting me but refused to get assigned with me. I was bad at work, I took the whole day to finish the simplest of tasks. My inhibitions were breaking down layer by layer, I found happiness in the most basic things, like warm bath water, or an extra loaf of bread, someone smiling at me between work.

There were times when I fantasized about stumbling into Zavi. Maybe he would help me rescue my mother. There were times when I avoided him like a plague, today I wanted nothing more than to see him for once.