Chapter One
Elara's POV.
I drew another stroke on the white wall, the first after three thousand. It made a long, thin dent in the wall, and it was brown from the clay of my makeshift pen, a piece of a clay bowl.
3001 days.
The walls around me were riddled with the same brown thin dents, some already fading with time, some traversing across the thin cracks in the walls for air. Some were neatly arranged, some were written over the other to save space.
In total, 3001 dents.
I carefully dropped the bowl piece in my hand at the foot of the wall, so as not to break it into pieces. The piece of the bowl was less like a bowl and more like a chunk of clay, from years of overuse.
3001 days, 300 days a year..
I crawled my body to the middle of the room and sat there, holding my knees to my chest, and burying my head in the crevice it made;
My food will be here anytime now. I had to be ready; I had no idea which of the walls would be opened this time.
I started counting down the seconds, waiting for my food. Counting was the only way I kept my sanity, and I counted everything. The seconds, between each round, the seconds between each glow of the Glowstone, the footsteps of the guards outside.
A creak broke the silence, and one wall was opening.
57 seconds.
The wall snapped open, and a big foot stepped inside. It was the wrong wall, and that foot crushed my chump of clay under its weight. I stifled a scream, and I dared not raise my head. I had learned that early, and in the hardest way.
"Rise." His voice was gruff and curt.
At least not until I was told to.
I rose slowly, my feet shoulder-width apart, my arms at my side, and spread out at my shoulders, my head down.
Then the hands came. As usual.
It was rough and ruthless and touched every part of my body with no abandon. The thin linen I had grown into was barely reaching my thighs and was too thin to offer any real covering. The threads were bare, and I could see the way the threads were sewn, a light force, and the fabric would snap.
He was working on my thighs now, and I could feel his bare skin. His hand was cold and rough; his palm was basically a cluster of calloused skin, and it felt scratchy and disgusting. But it was better than the hand that came yesterday. I would take scratchy over sweaty.
He was at my feet now, his fingers in all the spaces between my toes, turning them around like they were nuts and my toes were bolts.
He removed his hands and moved away, his feet slightly apart.., clad in boots that were caked with dried mud.
He was done searching.
The next part was my least favourite part.
"Did you morph recently?" He asked, his rough voice loud enough to put my ears in danger of bleeding.
"No!" I said with all my might.
But it still sounded like a whisper.
"Smack!"
His hand was on my face in less than a second, cold, rough and calloused, with enough force to throw my head in the other direction, so fast it made my neck twinge.
I forced my head back into place, and bowed again, counting as I did so; ...115, 116, .... I could feel my cheeks turning hot, and despite my instincts, my arms were by my side, bringing them to my face would mean more seconds, and I was sure this one would leave a scar, but that was a worry for later.
I had two more to go.
"Did you morph recently?!!" I don't know how he managed it, but his voice was louder than before, and at any moment now a warm liquid will flow from my ears.
"No!" I yelled, but it was still a whisper.
Another Slap.
"Did you morph recently?!" He asked again, and I was convinced he had a superpower.
"No." I tore my vocal cords apart to say that, but it was still....
Another Slap.
Warm fluid flooded my mouth, trapped by my lip, warm and earthy. I kept my head down, and my arms by my side.
It was over.
His feet shifted a bit, his toes pointing backwards and then back to me, and then a tray fell to the ground, spilling half of the contents of the bowls to the ground.
"Eat."
And then his feet turned around. I heard a bit more shuffling, but he was out the door, and the wall was back to normal, white with strokes of brown.
I brought my arms down slowly, welcoming the familiar ache, and I crouched down to the food set before me, bread and broth.
The broth had spilt all over the tray, and some splashed all over the floor, leaving only a handful left in the bowl.
I stared at the tray as a small smile tugged at my lips, I had been given a present. At the farthest right corner of the tray, there was a small piece that had chipped off the bowl when he threw it down.
I glanced at the wall that had just closed; the chunk of clay had been crushed to sand. I was somewhat sad to see it go as it had been my longest companion.
"I lost one and gained one," I said and picked up the new piece. It was small, way smaller than the original size of the old piece, but it would do.
169 seconds.
The search and question had taken 169 seconds.
They say numbers don't lie, and I have learned the reason why. It's because numbers never change; they are constant, no matter what.
600 seconds between each round.
56,700 seconds between each glow of the Glowstone.
Ten footsteps of the guards on each round.
Four is the number of walls my world has reduced to.
Three is the number of mouthfuls of bread I get each day.
Two is the number of times I tried to die
One is the bed
Zero is the way out.
I cleaned the last bit of broth with bread and popped it into my mouth, and chewed with expectation..
The scariest part was coming next.
A book was coming, the final attack on my sanity.
In the next sixty seconds.