Phillipa II
She ran across the field with a big grin on her face as her mother chased her across the plane yelling all the terrible things she would do to her once she caught up with her. Life as a Cursed One on the run was not really all fun and games, in fact it was more of a hindrance to her and her kind when it came to having fun like this due to fear of being found out.
Days like this when her mother and her friends were not so tense, which was a good sign of them not being followed too closely by the Evangelists and Purists, she loved to have her own kind of fun.
"Phillipa, I swear to the gods I will kill you if I catch you!" Her mother yelled out in frustration as she once again outmaneuvered her mother who had earlier on cornered her.
"It seems like age has really affected you dear mother, do I suggest an early morning jugging to help your muscles?" She asked while laughing breathlessly as she stood a couple ways away from her mother who was giving her a death glare.
"Phillipa Aragula, if you do not come to me this minute I will smite you with a lightning so powerful your body will never be found." Her mother said in a deathly serious tone that didn't frighten her any bit. Her mother loved her too much to carry out her threats.
"Oh relax mother, I just wanted to see if I could outrun you should we be chased by the Purists or Evangelists."
"Oh, you better hope it's the Purists we are running from at least we will be killed on the spot unlike the Evangelists who will capture us and take us to their one of many Towers to slave away our days ." Her mother said as she caught her breath.
Sure they were joking with one another but that statement hammered home the reality of their situation, they only had these few moments of peace to enjoy because none of them knew what would happen the next day.
The loud banging of a spear on the gates of the cells was what woke her up the next morning. Phillipa awoke in a fright and hurriedly scrambled backwards and away from the gate of her cell as her body remembered what had happened the night before, the violation that had taken place to her body while she watched her mother's head stare into the sky with dead eyes and blood dripping out of the neck. Her mind went blank as her heart raced and her body shook from the panic of her assailants returning to her in order to dole out another round of pain to her. Her mother had always said better to be chased by a Purist than an Evangelist, one offered her death the other offered her a life time of pain; a moment like now when she was so afraid of the very next minute, she was hoping for the former and not the latter.
Phillipa couldn't calm her breathing not when her mind kept replaying the gruesome scenes of the night her camp had been raided and she had been violated. She could hear nothing through the headache that pounded her head with a vengeance, and she could see nothing until suddenly she was grabbed by three pairs of hand that struggled to maintain her very violent reaction to being grabbed.
She needed to get away from them, she needed to escape their hold of her and she was more than willing to do that even if it meant falling out of their hands, her fight or flight mode was snapped out of her by a smack on her face which sent her to the ground.
"You need to pull yourself together girl, you have work to do here and we expect a maximum productivity level from you by the time the work is over." She heard a man say as he stepped back from her to reveal where she was.
The cave was as dark as the Tower, but this time without cells that kept the Cursed Ones in different sections of the prison. She looked around in fear as she took in the fact that there were many people in the cave with chains to their hands and ankles with axes in their hands to dig for something; this meant that she was in a mine.
"Prep her up for work, I expect the very best work your feeble body has to offer." He said as they pulled her to a section of undug cave and proceeded to chain her limbs before putting an axe in her hands.
Phillipa looked at the axe and the wall of hard earth that she had been tasked with digging before she turned to look at the man that had been speaking all this while only to be whipped by a female guard. "Focus on your work girl, you are expected to have done a lot of work before we return to take you back to your cell." The guard said.
Phillipa looked back at the axe and then the wall with her back smarting from the ripping pain she felt before she took in a deep shaky breath and began to swing her axe to dig. The first strike rattled her arms to the bones, the second forced the axe out of her hands. Before she could get her bearings and pick up the axe, she felt the sting of a whip on her back that jolted her from the fatigue she had felt moments prior.
Her yell and shock of the pain was repeated as she was whipped one more time and then a second before a third. "Get your filthy Cursed ass off the ground and keep digging, if your part of the cave is hardly dented when I return in a couple of minutes, I will whip you again until you can no longer stand! Do you understand me girl?" The female Warder asked her before spitting at her in disgust.
Phillipa's entire body was vibrating at this point, the pain from both the words and the whips had rattled her senses so much that she could barely coordinate her body; but the threat from the guard had been too scary for her to remain on the ground lying on her back in pain and fear.
Phillipa stayed on the ground a few minutes longer before she slowly got to her knees and up to her feet. Her body shook and ached in pain, however in order to avoid another round of whipping she forced herself to pick up the axe. Sure she could simply remain on the ground, receive all the whipping and then die, but she feared the pain far more than she desired going to the afterlife to meet her mother.
Turning to the wall, she swung the axe once more completely ignoring the pain she felt right in her bones.
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By the time she heard the sound of a bell, her entire body was shaking, sweating and hot. Her breaths were sharp and fast which made her feel dizzy and a very strong head ache that made her feel like fainting at the spot and never getting up.
The other Cursed Ones all dropped their axes and sat down on the ground which she took as an indication to do likewise, after all they had been there longer than she was which meant they were perfect people to follow when she had no idea what to do next.
"Eat your food as fast as you can and then drink your water. At the sound of the bell you will all be taken back to your cages for your beauty sleep." The Chief Warden said as he walked around the cave with his hands behind his back and a very condescending look on his face.
At first, Phillipa wanted nothing more than to focus on the terrible food before her and stuff it down her gaping belly as fast as she could rather than look at the Chief Warden, however her curiosity got the better of her. She wanted to see the face behind the voice that spoke with such hatred and cruelty, she wanted a face she could picture whenever she was so angry with the world. Stuffing the tasteless dried bread into her mouth, she looked up at the man and saw the most angry man she had ever seen in her life, his rage and disgust towards them was too loud to see that she had to look away the moment their eyes met.
Taking a deep shaky breath while at the same time in fight or flight mode, worried that the man might come to her to unleash whatever sadistic plan he had within, she turned to the man by her side who was twice the age of her mother with gray hairs on his head and a grizzled look on his face. One look at him and she could deduce that he had been in the Tower for a pretty long time and had experienced every cruel thing the Evangelists could do to them.
"What exactly are we digging for?" She asked the man in a low voice, while trying her best to calm her nerves.
"Sulphur." He growled out in a voice that sounded like he had not used in a very long time. "Their genius Prince has a pretty grand idea of how to kill our kind without much effort. They called the weapon a gun." He said and resumed his eating.
"A gun?" She asked in confusion, what mysterious weapon would want to be invented to kill them faster and more efficiently than the way they were killed already? Just how much hate did the Crown Prince have for her kind that the already fast way of killing their kind was not satisfactory enough?
The sound of the bell was a snap reminder to her that the little time given to them to eat was now over; but she had barely eaten anything. In alarm she began to wolf down the horrible tasting bread like it was the tastiest thing in the world. She gulped the water that tasted like dirt at intervals to force the bread down her gut in a speed that surprised her only to receive a pain blinding whip that went around her back to her breast and neck.
Her shriek was cut off as she was whipped again. She rolled on the ground in pain and shock as she tried to escape the harshness of the whips that didn't stop not even when she stood up to run out of the cave. "Stop it please, I was just hungry!" She begged as she stood in the middle of the cage with three Evangelists approaching her with their spears pointed towards her.
"In this Tower girl, our word is the law." Her rapist said as he walked towards the guards, arms behind his back with a dark grin on his face. "If we say that you have five minutes to eat, you have five minutes to eat; no exceptions." He said as he walked towards her shaking body.
With him so close to her, staring her down with a look of superiority, memories of the rape began to cloud her vision and fill her with the fears of him redoing that to her in the midst of even more people. He would make her feel that vulnerability again, he would make her feel worthless and powerless in the presence of her kind to drive home the fact that being born with the ability to manipulate not just nature but the surrounding was a Curse indeed.
"I'm sorry I was just hungry." She whispered out to the man as she kept her eyes on the ground in order to keep her wits about her for the time being.
"Well, isn't that too bad?" Her rapist asked her as he nodded at the guards who approached her with smirks that promised her nothing but more pain.
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With a gasp, she woke up and raced to the end of the cell to lean her back against the wall until she got her bearings back. The cave had had enough light for everyone to see themselves and avoid any unwanted injuries unlike the cages which had little to no light within them; an intentional act, she suspected, to knock them off their bearings. The rumbling of her stomach was enough to make her jump in fright before she remembered that despite the amount she had been able to eat, it was not enough still, it couldn't be enough, not when they had beaten her till she puked. Shaking her head in a bid to chase the memory away, she heard the voice of her neighbour.
"You alright Phillipa? I saw the guards drag you in here while you were unconscious." She heard Henry ask in a low tired voice from the other end of the hallway.
Phillipa looked up in the general direction of his voice before she slowly crawled towards the gate of her cell and leaned against it to look at his exhausted face. "Well, I have never had it as good as this." She replied sarcastically as she pulled her knees up to her chest and rested both arms atop it. Her body pained her all over but there was no point dwelling on it, not when she never knew when the new dose of pain would be coming.
"I bet." He replied as he wrapped his hands around himself. "What I would give for a little bit of my Curse so that I could warm myself up or for the sweet kiss of death." He said as he looked away from her to face the inside of his cage. "This, is not life and is not a reason to remain alive."
At first she had frowned her face at how depressed Henry sounded before she found the reason, and the sight made her forget her own depression and pain. "Oh the gods, Henry! What in the seven hells happened to your ear?" She asked in panic and fear as she held the bars of the cage and looked at his shaking head and vibrating shoulders.
She felt tears roll down her cheeks for his sake and not even for hers. Someone had thought it was a grand idea to remove his ear for shit and giggles like some sadist! Oh her mother was right when she said better to be chased by Purists than Evangelists. She hadn't even spent a few moments in the Tower and already she wanted to leave either through escaping or through death! What this was was nothing but plain evil, it was beyond trying to cleanse the Continent of her kind, this was now about being as sadistic as possible towards them like they weren't even people.
"I uh… my Warder was not impressed with how slow I was to react to his orders, thought it was because I wasn't using my ears properly. Decided it would be for the best if I was not with some useless member." He said in a raspy voice as he sniffled in pain and bowed his head completely broken.
Seeing the guy that had just been all cheerful moments ago become so broken was very jarring to her and made her realize that what had just happened to him could happen to her at any moment in time. What jarred her even more however, was his quick shrugging off of his depression by simply shrugging his shoulders and turning to face her with a wry smile.
"How was your day, other than the beating of course, learn anything new?" He asked her as he dried his face and turned his missing ear away from her.
"How was my day? Dude you just lost an ear and was only a moment ago entertaining suicidal thoughts, but no that is now water under the bridge and you suddenly want to know about my day. " She asked in confusion while giving him a glare, angry that he didn't give much care about his own well being.
"Look, I have been in here for a year now and I have not had the luxury of thinking that my life is going to get any better. Losing an ear is painful and can be traumatic, but when you have been in here devoid of anybody to have a single conversation with, things like your personal suffering are things you would rather forget." He said as he released a sigh and looked up and down the bars of his cage. "You are new to this, so how are you doing? How are you adjusting to your new reality?"
Phillipa looked at him for a long time trying to understand his reasoning behind the atrocious statement, it was almost as if he were implying that his life and welfare didn't matter because he'd been in here for a year. Phillipa had to wonder whether she would be that resigned to her fate in a few years time; a little calculation told her that she might be even worse than Henry by then.
"I don't know." She said as she took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. "It feels like there is no end for this pain and torture, like at any given moment I could be whipped to unconsciousness again, or I could get raped or I could lose a limb just because." She said as she turned her eyes away from him missing ear. "Only the day before, I was with my mother and her friends with the Elders all just relaxing and having fun, now… I don't know. Still feels like nightmare to me." She finished as she wiped her tears before deciding to shift the focus from herself. "How were you taken?"
At her question, Henry's breath hitched and quivered which made her open her eyes to look at him in worry. Perhaps she had asked him a question that was too personal, a question he would rather no one ever asked him. Had she just made him remember a past that was too painful to recount?
"We were uh… we were at the market when we were attacked by bandits. They had weapons with them and were not afraid of using them to do bodily harm against others. I was scared and so was everyone else, however the moment they turned to an old man and smacked him to the ground because he claimed he had no money with him, my Curse unleashed itself on the bandits and snapped all their necks in one fell swoop." He said and paused his tale to take a deep breath in before looking back at her. "I went from a little boy who had gone to market with his father to a mass murdering Cursed One. The town that had been all scared and pissing their pants became powerful warriors all of a sudden and attacked me with weapons that they had had and refused to use to protect themselves against the bandits."
"My father grabbed me and ran as fast as he could away from the angry mob. A couple of months on the run later, the Evangelists caught up with us and captured both of us. My father was bound and placed on the ground to watch me get raped by five Evangelists, however in a fit of rage my father launched himself at the men and killed two of them in the process with his bare hands. Regardless of his rebellion, he was eventually put down by the Evangelists; then I was taken and brought here to live the rest of my days in the Tower."
As he narrated his tale, Phillipa couldn't help but feel so much sadness on his behalf. She who had not been able to cry for her sake was all of a sudden shedding tears for Henry. Life in the Continent for a Cursed One was not fair and the sad truth was that there was nothing she or anyone could do about it.
For many years the Cursed Ones had tried everything within their powers to free themselves from the clutches of the Uncursed, unfortunately they were all dead now which simply bolstered the Uncursed to go harder on the Cursed Ones who couldn't fight back out of fear. After only a couple of days in the Tower she could already tell that there was no end to this suffering, if there was no end, no salvation, then what was the point in fighting to live; why not just die when tomorrow was going to be the same as today?