Chapter One
The boy woke up screaming, muscles tightening under a pain he couldn't even begin to describe. A brief respite let him open his eyes, he saw a woman sitting in front of him. She was wearing well made embroidered clothing. She had a grave smile on her face and small streaks of gray in her hair. Her face tickled memories he couldn't quite reach. There was a sadness in her eyes, a grief that tore at his heart.
He wanted to ask her what was wrong.
He opened his mouth to make a sound of comfort, he himself was not sure what, only to find that nothing flowed passed his lips.
Before he even finished his attempt at comforting the woman, she pointed her finger at him, and pain coursed through his body like lightning, his muscles rapidly twitching, flexing for all their worth. He flopped around on the floor like a fish, the pain searing all thoughts from his mind. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally had an opportunity to catch his breath. Tears pooled on the floor next to his face and he could feel himself drooling, a pungent odor pierced his nostrils notifying him that he had lost control of his bladder.
He opened his mouth once more and tried to convey something to the grief-stricken woman, a single question. One simple word, why?
She smiled at him a pained expression upon her face, her gaze hardening as she stretched her finger, pointing the dreaded digit in his direction. In a desperate attempt to dodge the boy tried to jump to the side only to hit an invisible barrier. The pain hit him once more taking away any control he had of his body and he blacked out.
It took him a while to wake up. To his relief the woman was nowhere to be seen, he struggled to sit up, aching muscles refusing to cooperate. It didn't take him long to notice that he had barely any room to move. His cell, comprised of strange invisible walls. wasn't even large enough to let him lie down. He looked around, seeing others like him lying in crunched together forms or sitting in similar cages. Four girls across from him with three boys to his left, all sitting there terrified, teary-eyed. Some had ripped clothing, others had fancier clothing at some point. The fear had degraded them all to the same feral foundation. A panicked child, a helpless situation.
He tried to ask them what was going on, yet as soon as he tried to convey the question, he was forced to swallow it. Once again the words could not cross the threshold of his lips. He glanced over at the boy closest to him, barely a foot away. The boy had dirty hay coloured hair and high-quality clothes, there were tears in his eyes as he looked at him. The blond boy pointed to his throat and shook his head. He pointed to his own throat and nodded his understanding then they both sat back against their wall. Eventually, all the children woke up, yet the room was shrouded in an eery blanket of silence. The forced silence was a dreadful pressure on the mind, accentuating the boy's lack of memory and understanding of the situation. No matter the desperate grasps he made towards his mind to remember something, anything. He was given nothing.
The door to the boys' right opened and he saw the lady enter again. All the children scurried away into the corner furthest away from the evil old hag, as he had decided to call her. He, however, refused to back away, he did his utmost to glare the evil hag to death. Not that there was any merit to his attempt at courage, the hag only returned another of her sad smiles. It did, however, have the unwanted effect of making the hag head his way. She stepped right into his cage, slowly raised her arm and stretched her finger. The boy tried to jump at her only to be smashed into the wall behind him. The back of his head crashed into the invisible barrier, his sight blacking out for the slightest moment till the pain coursed through his veins. Muscles tightened and his eyes felt like they would pop out as he struggled on the floor, clawing at the concrete, desperately trying to dig his way out. Fingernails tearing at the attempt, that small token of pain eclipsed by the magical lightning coursing through his body. The torment lasted seconds, minutes, perhaps more, until the world faded out and he lost his consciousness.
He woke up to the near exact same sight as before. This time, however, the other children were lying in their own magical cages, passed out. They slowly woke up one by one, and as soon as the last girl opened her eyes the door opened again and the witch entered. Once again the children shied away, once again he refused to. He noticed one particular girl with dark hair reacting similarly to him, glaring at the woman and refusing to back down.
Even he himself could not have told anyone why he refused to back away. Once again, the hag entered his cage and once again he tried to attack her. Once again he failed and the pain flared through his body until he passed out. The pattern repeated itself multiple times until at one point they all woke up and the witch did not enter. He supposed even the hag needed her sleep. He could really use some himself. He tried to move, yet his burning muscles betrayed his desperate attempts. He managed to roll over, collapsing onto the floor in a slightly more comfortable position than his last.
He looked at the boy next to him and their eyes met. Struggling to lift his arm he eventually managed to point at the boy and shrugged, then lifted an eyebrow. The blond, presumably noble, boy understood the gesture and started painstakingly signing with his hands. It took them a few minutes to get it figured out, various gestures were coupled to words they knew, then redone when they realized the other didn't understand. It took them a while to manage something concrete. A name, Klostum. The boy thought it peculiar that he did not know the words the boy meant to convey yet he still managed to somehow reach an understanding.
Klostum pointed at him and shrugged and raised his eyebrow, the boy answered with a shrug for he could not remember his own name, he could not remember anything other than the dreadful cage they found themselves trapped in. Klostum stared at him and frowned, tapping his chin. He raised his finger in delight and made a sign with three fingers at the boy. The thumb, index and middle fingers were raised and the others were curled into his palm. The boy stared at Klostum, not understanding what he was trying to tell him. Klostum pointed at him and made the symbol again. To confirm, the boy made the symbol for the third time and pointed at himself. Klostum nodded in excitement.
The name Three? Why should he take the name Three? After giving it some thought he shrugged, it was a name just as any other, it was an improvement upon being nameless.
Three stared at Klostum for a while longer before nodding, Klostum grinned and they sat together for a few more minutes, slowly but surely creating their own sign-language. He noticed that around the room the others were doing the same with their neighbors, once in a while everyone would glance around and copy gestures from the others that they understood. Soon enough all of them gave into exhaustion, despite the time they spent unconscious, and fell asleep, dreading what they expected the next day to bring.
'There is always the hope the hag will die in her sleep.' Three thought wistfully, for it was a dream that even he thought unlikely. Yet it was a hope to cling to, however small.
Morning came and the hag had yet to show her face. Three figured that she was just the type to sleep in, he was strangely sure of this fact. Making eye contact with the others, they decided to resume their previous effort of making their own sign language. A few hours later, the hag entered the room once more and her torturous spell was aimed at the girl across from him. Seeing the spell hit the others before it made its way to him was somehow worse than feeling it himself, he felt connected to the others, seeing them spasming on the floor left a seed of anger growing in the pit of his stomach.
He glared at the hag as she went from girl to girl, pointing her finger at them, and that was when he noticed something. Any fluid that left the girls, be it blood, tears, or something else, was absorbed into the runic markings that laid the foundation for the invisible barrier that surrounded them. Did they get their energy from whatever exuded from their bodies? Or did it simply absorb anything it could? It left him thinking before his thoughts were interrupted by Klostum collapsing to the torture. He glared at the hag before she did the same to him.
hree started noticing more and more peculiarities about the runic markings and he shared them with the rest of the group. Everyone did their utmost to notice new things about the markings, understanding them might give them a chance to break or disable them long enough to make their escape. No such luck, things got even worse after the first day because everyone started getting hungry, their captors did not bother feeding them.