Elysian Fields

CHAPTER 2

The hardest part of living at times is knowing that you are stronger than your mind will allow you to believe. The first weeks in the amphitheater were the most difficult. Shoved into rooms the size of a large closet, Hades' potentials were stripped down to their undergarments and given an oversized tunic that was clearly one-size-fits-all. Isolation seemed to be the name of the game, along with a side of starvation and misery. If Kore cared to give any credit to the God of the Dead, the isolation made sense. She couldn't imagine attempting to make friends with anyone as a servant to the Lord of the Underworld. She wouldn't be surprised if the individual chosen was left to their own frequently, alone and afraid.

Trapped in the damp, dark room, Kore was convinced she smelled rot. It started in the corner of the room nearest to the puncture wound in the wall that the guards called her window to the outside world. Looking around this room was enough to make a person go crazy. Rot permeated the delicate fibres of gossamer, shredded and clinging to her weakening body. Mold clung to her hair and reminded her that she was decaying in the cramped space.

The size of a water closet, she was granted the luxury of a fodder slab and pillow hardly large enough for her to lay out on. Most nights, she found herself curled into a tight fist beneath the threadbare linen cloth they had the audacity to call a blanket. Opposite her sleeping space was a small pot used to relieve herself. Graciously, it was emptied after every use - the only true luxury provided in this isolated hell hole. Then, adjacent to both the privy and her bed, the puncture wound.

Enough sun filtered in to illuminate the drab conditions in which she was forced to dwell. At night, Moonlight and Wind tripped through the gap and danced across the dusty earth; moonlight and nightair working in tandem, kicking up tufts of dirt that tickled Kore's nose if she dared breathe too deeply. Her icy breath, puffs of silver in the glow of the moon, moved to mingle with the dust of the earth.

If Kore spent too much time thinking about where she was and what would ultimately come of her, she swore she could feel her lungs collapsing in on themselves, gasping for air that she desperately gulped in shallow breaths as sparks danced before her eyes. In those moments, when she felt a buzzing in her brain and a desperate need to claw her way out of her body that was both too small for her worries and too big for her withering spirit, she would pray for death to come. When death didn't come, she would pray to Athena for strength in this battle against mortality and Zeus for the power to keep moving forward, even when she wanted to curl up and refuse to move.

What came to be a comfort during the Reckoning period was a tight schedule. Shortly after sunlight would traipse in through the window, banishing moonlight, a man in deep cerulean would open the door and set a wooden vessel the size of her palm in the room. Each time, the small vessel held room temperature porridge with milk and a mug of stale coffee. Each morning, Kore finds herself hoping for a fresh, hot cup of coffee, only to be let down each time by a cup of oily, room temperature coffee. If her favorite guard was on duty, he would slip her a packet of sugar. Though she was grateful for the attempt at kindness, the sugar barely masked the rancid flavor that inevitably coated each and every taste bud.

When the sun was high in the sky, a new guard in deep cerulean would slide the door open, removing the vessels from the morning. In its place, she would find a plate of wilted, soggy vegetables and a single slice of stale, hard bread topped with a thin spread of butter and a sweating slice of cheese. Occasionally, some sort of pickled fish would make its way onto the plate, but it was a rare occurrence.

Finally, as the sun is beginning to set, the third and final man in cerulean of the day brings dinner: a single boiled egg and some water. When Kore asked on the first day why dinner was so small the man in cerulean informed her that hunger was better left to the hours of sleep, when hunger pangs could torment an individual less. Kore found it simultaneously endearing and condescending that any of these men thought the women they took were able to sleep at all.

After dinner, the moonlight returned and Kore curled up on her slab for the evening. Nobody would come. Nobody would interrupt her anxious thoughts and take away the pain of remembering and longing for who she was with her mother and Aydon in Elv.

The repetitive nature of the schedule in captivity came as a comfort, though she was not given answers to her questions often. Too much socialization probably rendered the isolation ineffective. Apart from the question about dinner, the only question she ever received an answer to was how long she would be held in isolation. The answer: until the Lord Hades is ready to weigh your soul. The man who gave her the answer was never seen again standing guard at her door and she worried that he was dead as a result of his kindness. It seemed just fitting for the God of the Dead to murder a man for his kindness.