Forged in Flame

Chapter 3

In the morning, I take a few minutes to watch the boy sleep. He's beat to hell, face bruised, body battered. He looks a few years older than me, face that of a young man rather than a boy. Lank black hair brushes his shoulders, his nose still straight despite all of the beatings he's received. Not especially handsome but interesting to look at.

Guards come down the hall, bearing a large pot of the slimy gruel they call breakfast. With the consistency of runny porridge and taste of burnt, rotten eggs, choking it down is a daily struggle.

"Eat up, princess," the guard sneers, pouring the ladle full of gruel onto my cell floor. He flicks the empty ladle towards me, splattering specks of the food across my face. I keep my expression impassive, eyes down.

He laughs, moving on. Once he's out of sight, I reach over and start eating off of the floor with my fingers. The prisoner across from me, a grimy old man with a beard down to his stomach, grins at me with rotted brown teeth.

The boy groans, rolling onto his back and sitting up slowly, in obvious pain. I watch him out of the corner of my eye but he doesn't even glance at me. He's clearly smarter than I am.

"You want a real man, sweetheart, look over here," the old man says, making a filthy gesture. He then says something so vulgar that I don't know where to look. Just hearing the words out of his mouth makes me feel dirty and uncomfortable, and I've dealt with a lot since I've been here.

"Shut your mouth," the boy says, quietly but intensely.

The old man and I both gape in shock. I thought last night was a fluke. I've been here for over a year and he'd never spoken a word before last night.

"What did you say to me, you Kalisian trash?" the only man growls, beard swaying as he clambers to his feet.

"You heard me."The boy doesn't raise his voice, doesn't even look at him. He just keeps eating his food slowly.

"I'll kill you for talking to me like that!" The man shrieks, shaking his bars. Out of all the prisoners to pick a fight with, he has to go for the one who screams at the wall and pulls out his own hair. This should end well.

The boy just shrugs, still not looking at him. I'm just sitting here, watching this with an expression of shock on my face.

Because I'm looking, I see the exact second the old man snaps. A vein pulses in his forehead and his face turns red. He starts screaming incoherently, ripping hunks out of his beard and slamming his head into the bars. I can't look away. He's going to hurt himself. I have a feeling that sanity is something this man was never fortunate enough to know.

A pair of guards come jogging down the hall so I turn away quickly, trying to look like I'm minding my own business.

"What's going on?" one of them demands. He reaches through and grabs the man by his throat, stopping him from bashing his head more. "Quiet, or I'll throw you in the pit."

My stomach twists. The pit. A dark, wet, freezing hole in the lowest levels of the prison. You're forced to sit in several inches of icy water, then they cover the top so you're left in complete darkness, wondering how long before you run out of air. I'd only been put in once but I had no plans of ever going back.

"He started it," the man whimpers, sounding like a small child. He points to the boy, hand shaking.

The guard pushes him back, watching as he falls down roughly. Their attention shifts to the boy, who's still just sitting there calmly, eating away at his gruel.

"You starting shit, boy?" A guard demands, pulling the keys off his belt to unlock the cell door. "I'm talking to you!"

They know the boy never talks, that it's pointless to expect an answer. I've seen this before. They like any excuse to beat on one of the silent prisoners, myself included. I've heard the guards talking about a betting system they have going, for what will finally get us to speak, to beg them to stop.