Harm and Harmony

-Chapter 54-

Day: 33

Days Left: 5447

Lives Saved: 0

"Mum, please... you've rewatched it a hundred times. You won't see anything new."

"She should be there. She's got to be!" Rhea Earl rewound the footage on the television screen and replayed the scene from the beginning, her eyes on the look-out for a young woman with golden blonde hair and freckles.

"Mum, please..." Rhea's son, Nathaniel, slowly lowered the remote in the old woman's hands. "The broadcast is in a few minutes. We'll see her-"

"But she wasn't there, Nathaniel. She wasn't at the food drop-off. She didn't get any food that we sent her."

"They edit everything. I'm sure she was there-"

"More likely that she's lying dead in a ditch," scoffed a voice.

Rhea and Nathaniel turned to face Albert Best retrieving food from the fridge in the kitchen area that merged with the lounge.

"We all saw what happened with her fight with that clay golem," Albert continued. "She probably fell off that cliff-"

"We only saw ten seconds of that fight," Nathaniel argued back. "As I said, they edit everything. They make it so it seems impossible to survive against those monsters. Corinna can win-"

"If it's that easy, then why didn't you volunteer instead of Corinna?" Albert stepped forward, his smug face near Nathaniel. "You let someone so young just save the lot of you, let her suffer. How could you live knowing-"

"If you're only here to cause more trouble, then go use one of the other kitchens!" Rhea snapped at her brother.

Albert was at first taken aback by his older sister's outburst, but his smile soon twisted upon noticing Nathaniel shaking. "We should have had you all evicted, you traitors!" He spat on the ground near Nathaniel's feet. "A lot of us lost our jobs because of what you people did-"

The door to the lounge opened and in trudged an exhausted Henry Best.

"Henry!" Albert temporarily forgot his malice and greeted his grandson with a hug. "How was work?"

Slumping into a chair at the kitchen table, Henry grumbled a response.

"Don't worry, kid. I'll reheat your dinner for you."

"Thanks, granddad." Henry slicked his brown hair back away from his eyes.

"Henry, please..." Rhea walked up to the table. "Is Corinna still alive?"

The young man gazed up at his great-aunt, scratching gently at his wrist. "The agreement was that if Corinna was to die or to escape The Eternal Abyss, everyone who was convicted of treason would be immediately executed."

Albert hid a smirk at this as he placed a bowl of leftovers in the microwave.

"Which means..." Henry continued. "Since you are alive, so is Corinna."

Rhea sighed in relief then a frown spread across her face again. "But alive doesn't necessarily mean safe or well-fed, does it? She could be starving- Henry did she manage to get anything at the food drop-off?"

Henry waved his right wrist where a magic spell bound him. "I can't tell you with this. I'm sorry, Rhea. The binding spell prevents me from divulging anything like that."

The old woman nodded, forcing a smile. "But she's alive. That's something." She turned to face the rest of the room, at the lounge area, her eyes almost watering. "Why are there so few people here!" Rhea looked around and saw only eight other people on the sofas waiting for the broadcast. "There were thirty people last time! Where are that Richard and Elena! Their daughter is imprisoned in a hell dimension, and they're not here to make sure she is okay."

"I'm sure they're watching in one of the other lounges, mum," Nathaniel assured her, but Rhea knew that wasn't true. As far as she was aware, Corinna's parents had not even acknowledged her disappearance as if they were pretending that a child of theirs had never been treacherous towards the Crown.

Rhea's eyes fell onto Bess Warren, who had kept quiet in the hopes that no one would notice her underneath several cushions. "Bess, you're not supposed to be watching this."

Squirming out of her hiding place, Bess pouted. "But I'm gonna be eighteen in a few months. What's the harm?"

"You don't want to see the broadcasts, sweetie." Rhea guided Bess out of the room who grumbled under her breath that she would watch it online later anyway.

Almost missing it, Rhea spotted Amelia Earl hiding behind a potted plant. "Amelia..."

The six-year-old remained hidden, closing her eyes with the logic that if she couldn't see Rhea, Rhea couldn't see her.

"Amelia..." Rhea coaxed her great-granddaughter out with a hug. "You should be in bed by now."

"I wanted to see Corinna," said Amelia, rubbing her tired eyes. "I won't go to sleep without seeing her."

"What about that lovely picture of her that you drew of her the other day-"

"No! I want the real one!" Amelia flopped onto the ground in defiance.

"You'll see her soon-" Rhea stopped herself, realising how 'soon' that would be. When Corinna is finally released, Amelia would be twenty-one. "Bess, please can you make sure that she gets to bed?"

Bess nodded and scooped up the six-year-old in her arms who was too sleepy to resist.

Rhea returned back to the lounge and sat down amongst the others, waiting for the broadcast to begin.

"I'm sure Corinna is fine," said Marjolaine Warren. "We thought that she was dead after seeing her and that werewolf creature fight, but we saw her alive afterwards-"

"Chimaera," Jonathan Warren corrected. "It's infamous for being one of the deadliest monsters in the region, drove out all of the other monsters."

"And we saw a clip of her alive. She survived facing that thing- the chimaera. And that gorilla monster and those imps and that clay golem."

Rhea nodded, glad that someone in the room was thinking positively. "I think she might have killed that vile thing, that chimaera. I haven't seen any footage of it since. The gorilla and clay golem too. She must have killed them."

Henry ate his reheated dinner at the table, listening in on his family's conversation. His hand stopped shovelling in food at the mention of The Chimaera. He almost laughed out loud, thinking how preposterous it was from their perspective that the 'vile thing' was the monster that Corinna had a crush on. But then again, none of them knew that all the monsters were actually humans. The footage of The Eternal Abyss was heavily edited for the general public. It was only to show prisoners suffering and monsters slaughtering them. 

As of late, The Chimaera had not displayed a single act of violence, mostly spending its time waiting to escape or to be with Corinna. They couldn't show any of that to the public; otherwise, it would suggest that prisoners could have fun and monsters possessed a sense of humanity. Part of Henry's job was to keep people fearful of being sent to The Eternal Abyss, yet some days his second-cousin made it look like a lovely holiday.

The broadcast began, and Henry smiled as his family cheered upon seeing Corinna on the screen.

"Is that really her?" asked Marjolaine, adjusting her glasses.

"Who else would be making bricks from scratch in The Eternal Abyss?" said Jonathan, writing down notes to later type up for his news blog.

"Why doesn't she just board the hole up with planks or something?" Nathaniel sighed. "She's wasting her time."

"I'm sure she knows what she's doing," replied Rhea, her hands clasped together in joy at seeing Corinna looking healthy, food nearby, and not a single scratch on her.

The room went into a thunderous clamour of yells and claps as they celebrated Corinna hitting another prisoner in the head with a shovel and retaking the food back.

Henry set aside his dinner, unable to eat anymore as he remembered Corinna sitting beside the body for hours. His family wouldn't be cheering if they knew what Corinna was truly going through.