Finding Contentus

Chapter 111: Vainglorious Vengeance

★★★★★

Everything was all in vain. V ran, swore and screamed like a girl that had lost her mother for the first time. Not again, not again!

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Her own screams echoed inside her head. Screams of her childhood. "Mamma, don't leave me! Don't leave me!" The girl would cry, only to be locked in a pitch-black vault of vulnerability by Niccoli.

"Shut up and stay away from me you vile germ!" Niccoli shut the vault, crying in pain as she did so, leaving her child trapped inside the void of blackness. If V had one, vivid and visceral fear, it was the dark, the swallowing darkness.

For five days, V was stuck inside the pitch-black vault. She cried, she shrieked and screamed for her mother to save her from her living nightmare. The nauseating sensations of water made her realize something.

Her mother had thrown her daughter into the water, the valley of drowning death. V was drowning inside the vault, and she was still alive inside the vault.

She urinated, soiled herself and vomited in her imprisonment, sinking in her own vile mess, her own vile waste, her own vile toilet. That's what she was after all. V for Vile. That's what she would always be for the rest of her life. She should have died then.

She should have. But the fisherman didn't let her when he pulled the vault from the valley and unlocked it by force. The man was a mercenary and blacksmith as well.

"Breathe, child. I am Javulani for Jubilation. There's no need to be scared. You're safe now," he said, hushing her.

He was a sturdy warrior with a javelin as a weapon. He worked by a floating market in a humble stall where he sold fruits, vegetables and seafood. He also pounded the weapons he sold in his blacksmith shop that was a black brick building.

His hair was cut very short to the scalp and sweat clung to him. He had reddish-brown skin and wood-brown eyes.

He gave the child the best bath she had ever gotten, removing the horrid smell and smeared stains from her filthy body. He fed the child the best seafood she had ever gotten when she was on the verge of dying from illness, dehydration and diarrhea.

"Where is your mother, child?" His dulcet voice startled V who began to sob hysterically. Why wasn't he hitting her like everyone else? Why wasn't he cursing her like everyone else? Why wasn't he throwing urine, rocks and bricks at her like everyone else?

V tried to escape, to run into an alleyway, a trash site, and hide there, anywhere, feeling unsafe in his safe arms. "Mamma! Mamma!" She screamed.

Why did V love her mother so much even though Niccoli abused her? Even though Niccoli attempted to end her life numerous times? V didn't have the answer to these questions. She just knew that she loved her mother like the vastness of space.

Javulani gave her a pink flowery dress to wear. "Here, child. It used to belong to my... my daughter," he said with a sad look in his eyes. His voice broke as he said that.

Suddenly, V stopped struggling. Did she remind him of his daughter? Come to think of it, he did seem rather lonely.

"W-what happened to her? Was she thrown into the water like me?" V asked.

The brutal question seemed to startle him. It took him a few minutes to nod. "Pasela. That was her name. I found her and my wife, Zene, floating on the water. They were killed by..." He looked into her eyes then, about to add more, only to stop himself, deciding to spare the child the details.

But V saw through the veil. Her villainous father must have been involved somehow. He must have struck when Javulani was away, profiting from protecting others as a mercenary, only for the losses to outweigh the gains when he couldn't protect his own wife and daughter.