The Sanctuary

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The days passed. My visits to the prisoner’s rooms were unspectacular, to say the least. Yet it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing on my mind when I went to sleep.

My routine was normal, in all senses. I would prepare his food, bring it over to him and watch him eat it. Most times, we were silent, not a single word spoken between the two of us. Other times, he would say a sentence or two. I would respond, shortly.

Yet I sat there with him, while he ate. Often, I sat there much longer than that. Hours it seemed. I blamed it on my bone dead tiredness. The trials were grueling.

The bow and arrow trial had me paired with Samson, who took me through the most demanding tests I had ever faced. I doubted even Reece with her spectacular swiftness with a bow and arrow could’ve kept up. It was sheer determination that kept me going through the paces.

I remembered Chary’s trial with a distinct painful reminder in my bones. She had smiled at me, her silver eyes sparkling with kindness. I had softened at the sight of them, my grip on my staff loosening.

With a cry that seemed to come straight from the depths of her soul, she had struck me nearly four times in succession, each blow cracking as they landed against my body, my staff rolling uselessly across the ground.

I could hear Edward’s guffaw in the crowd, as I lay on the dirt floor, gasping for breath, my body awakening past scars as it struggled to come to terms with the sudden onslaught of pain. I had pushed myself up only to see Chary bearing down on me again, a grotesque look on her face that seemed to contrast horribly with the kind expression she had first given me.

I was barely able to roll away as her staff clanged down on the ground where my body once had been. With the knowledge that I had barely a moment to make my move, I sprinted for my staff. She got there before me, somehow, her foot stomping down on my staff just as I reached down for it.

Giving me a rather sick smile, she whipped her staff around so quickly, I was seeing stars before I had registered what had happened. She had hit me over my head, and my skull was clanging.

A groan ripped out of me.

“She’s done for,” Edward gleefully said.

My fingers clenched as Chary walked over to my fallen body. “Had enough?” She asked, sweetly.

Goddamn that –

My hand shot out as her staff came down. My fingers closed on the staff, even as my body flinched at the pain that came from the strike, I refused to let it seep into my mind. I saw her eyes widen and her grip slacken for just a moment.

And that moment was all I needed.

I ripped the staff from her hands, and was on my feet. With a yell, I hit her on her sides, multiple times, and had the staff pointing between her eyes as she lay on the ground in bare moments.

Suffice to say, when I woke up hours later, realizing I had fainted from the pain and exhaustion, I found out I had passed.

The thoughts of the trials weighed on my mind as I continued on my prisoner caretaker duties. The trials were getting more challenging and difficult – I had never imagined them to be so grueling. My thoughts only seemed to calm down when I was sitting next to that Farsay. It seemed like the only moment in my day where I had any peace.

So today, when I went about with my routine of preparing the Farsay’s food and laying it down next to him, I had assumed it would be like any other day.

Except, it wasn’t. The Farsay gave me a strange look, a look that brightened his eyes and made him look alive in the dark, dank prison room.

“Not so tired today?” he asked. It seemed conversational, his tone.