Bachué:
The most desperate thing about being locked in a cell is that you don't know when you're going to get out. Time passes slower. The days seem to last forever. Was it Monday? Tuesday? Wednesday? It was so hard to tell. I lost count after the second day.
What confinement does allow you is to think. Since your only company are thoughts. The secret memories and voices that echo in your head.
Why was I going through that ordeal?
"I'm doing this for my sister... I'm doing it for my sister," I kept repeating to myself.
For days the only thing I heard was a drip that seemed to come from the depths of the cell corridor, until one day I heard the humming of a song.
"Veny?" I asked the air. "Veny? Is that you?"
Unanswered.
I was worried about the bard. Since we were captured I hadn't had a chance to talk to him.
I closed my eyes and prayed for he was okay. I would never forgive myself for him being harmed because of me.
How much longer was I supposed to be locked up there? I was waiting for the count's guards to arrive at some point to announce that Duke Soto had already arrived, but that moment never came.
Duke Soto was my only hope of getting out of that situation alive. If he didn't help me, Count Ortaez would sentence me to death.
Oh no…
I needed to talk to someone, anyone.
"Should I summon the queen?" I asked myself.
I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. I had already summoned her once, possibly I could do it again.
Think of her… imagine her in front of you.
FUSH! A gust of wind caressed my face.
I opened my eyes and I was no longer in the cell. No, I was in the middle of a cold wasteland, surrounded by small lagoons.
I looked down, I was walking on the waters of one of those lagoons.
"It's not possible…"
At the bottom of the water, I swear I could see human figures trying to reach the surface.
I swallowed hard, the image seemed terrifying.
I looked around. There was nothing to be seen beyond the horizon, only a thick mist. Where was I? Had I already gone crazy from the confinement?
"Hello?" I asked the wind.
Unanswered.
I walked in no particular direction until I managed to see a human silhouette through the mist. Was someone there with me? It seemed to be the silhouette of a woman, dressed in a long and elegant dress.
"Queen Catherine?" I asked.
The queen turned and looked me in the eye, her gaze was cold and serene. As if she wasn't impressed that I was there.
"I see that you were finally able to enter…," she told me.
"Enter?"
"When I'm not in the world of the living, I hang around here."
"What is this place?" I asked looking around me.
"I do not know. I think it's some kind of afterlife."
"I mean… have you met the Supreme?"
"No. No Supreme, no Saints, nothing. Just loneliness."
I swallowed hard.
"I was prowling here before I met you," the queen continued. "I don't know how long I was here before I left, but it felt like years. I think… that time passes differently here than in the world of the living."
I looked down. The queen and I were on the surface of a lagoon, standing above the water.
At the bottom of the lagoon, I saw the same human figures, with their arms extended upwards, trying to reach the surface. There were children, women, men, the elderly, light-skinned, dark-skinned, tall, small, fat, slender, ugly, beautiful. All the diversity that only humans can have.
"Who are these?" I asked.
"I don't know... my theory is that they are trapped souls."
I looked into the eyes of several of those souls, they all looked desperate as if imploring the cessation of eternal suffering.
"They can't go out?" I asked as I bent down to put my hand in the water.
"I wouldn't do that," the Queen warned me, grabbing my arm. "We don't know anything about this place. We don't know what could happen."
Suddenly our bodies disintegrated into dozens of scarlet butterflies.
And in the blink of an eye, we were both inside that dank and smelly cell. I found myself sitting on the dirty floor again, with my back against the metal bars, just as I was in my position before going to that place of trapped souls.
"Are we back?" I asked looking at my hands.
"It seems so," the Queen replied.
I heard a faint whisper coming from behind. I turned around and looked straight ahead.
Was what I was seeing real? There was a young man locked in the opposite cell, thin, pale skin, with black hair. He had shabby, dirty clothes. It was clear that he was a poor person. Perhaps a peasant. He was staring at the ground. He didn't blink. At what moment did he enter the cells? I was the only prisoner in that place. At what point had the guards brought someone else?
"Hello?" I saluted.
The young man looked up and I could see black eyes, empty as a well without water.
I already knew that lost look. It was the look of a dead man.
"You died here…," I muttered.
The young man nodded slowly.
"I think I died from an infection. Waiting for the earl's verdict."
"I'm so sorry," I said.
He nodded without any emotion on his face.
"Enough, dark-skin," the Queen ordered.
"Excuse me, Your Majesty, but what is it that bothers you?"
"That thing you're doing is weird."
"What thing?"
"Talk to a dead man."
"That is the same thing I do with you."
"Enough already, dark-skin."
"I don't understand why you mind my talking to the dead," I replied quickly, in a protesting tone, "since you're dead too, don't you remember?"
"I'm warning you, dark-skin... stop it."
"Or what?"
"Stop!" The Queen screamed and banged on the metal fence.
The blow was so strong that it echoed throughout the dungeons.
My mouth open, had the queen had contact with the material world?
"You just…," I stammered.
Queen Catherine saw her hands. She couldn't believe it either.
"Can spirits touch things?" I asked. "You couldn't do that before. How did you do it? "
"I don't know…," Her Majesty replied, clearly confused.
The queen tried to touch the metal gate again, but her hand went through the bars. As if she was air.
"Will I be able to do it again?" she wondered.
What if I had been the reason? There was still a lot I didn't know about my powers. Perhaps... I could make the spirits have contact with the material world. That could change everything.
BRUUUUM… I heard the rusty main door of the dungeons open. The guards returned.
I looked at the cell in front of me and that pale young man was no longer there.
Two of the count's guards came to the door of my cell.
"Bachué Quispe," one of them said, inserting the keys, "Duke Soto has arrived."
And so, my life was about to be saved or damned.