by Tom Hansen
None of that mattered right now, she just needed to work in securing an exit and to make it out of here. They needed to escape, they needed to run and hide. Then, they could tear this place apart stone by stone looking for their sister.
Ynya lowered the brilliance of her hair down to just a few strands on each side. Each one still gave plenty of light, but she had burned through a lot of power in a tiny amount of time. She didn’t know what was beyond the door and didn’t know how much more energy she would need to help them escape.
“Synol, did you see everything when they brought us in?”
“Yes, we are on the north end of the compound. I think the third or fourth building over from the north-east corner.”
“Good.”
“Ynya, your ear is bleeding.”
“I don’t care, we need to get out of here.”
Ynya came to the door and grabbed the handle. She put her good ear to the door to listen for any sounds.
Synol wasn’t right behind her.
“Synol?”
Synol hadn’t come with her. “We’re leaving without Finny and Meki?”
A mixture of guilt and anger flashed through her mind. “We’ll have to come back for them.”
“But we’re already here. If we leave now, the soldiers will know and they’ll double up all the guards. We’ll never get back in again, Ynya.” Her voice cracked. “I know you want to burn down the place, but our mission, our responsibility, is to our family. We can do whatever you want to this place once we accomplish that, but for now, we need to find our sisters and get them to safety.”
Ynya’s anger flared, devoid of the guilt now. She whirled on her sister, crossing the two paces between them in less than a heartbeat. Her resolve peaked, she was furious and needed to take it out on someone.
Ynya grabbed her sister’s upper arms. She didn’t mean to hurt her, but her fingers dug into them.
“One of them is dead, Synol. You heard the Warden, one of them is dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes we do! You heard him! They didn’t find a use for her and disposed of her!”
Synol ground her teeth. “I don’t care what he said. I’m not leaving this place until we find one of our sisters and verify the other’s safety. He was probably lying. He wanted to get a reaction out of us. Do you think the Frost Queen would hunt down all four of us just to have us killed during testing? That bastard was trying to break us, just like this room is designed to do. I know they’re both alive and I will not stop until I get them to safety.”
Ynya fell to her knees, releasing her sister’s arms.
Emotion welled up inside of her, a grief so deep she had no idea where it came from. The idea that one of her sisters was dead was too much to bear. Too much to handle.
No.
She pushed her emotions down deep. She had to bury them. If she allowed the grief to take over, to consume her, she would fall victim to it and she knew she wasn’t climbing out of that. Should wouldn’t allow herself to be a victim of her own depression. She would rise above and do what was needed.
“What are you going to do?”
Synol sighed. “We’re going to get tested. Once we’re back in the Pit, we’ll do what we can to find them. If they were both here, then someone else in that pen would have seen them. I refuse to believe that one of them is dead, and until I see her corpse for myself. I won’t believe anything out of the Warden’s mouth.”
Synol put out her hand, which Ynya took. “Come, sister. Let us get back to what we need to do in order to find our sisters.”
Ynya struggled with what to say, with what to do. She wanted to fight. It was what drove her, it was how she reacted to unknown and uncomfortable situations – fire and fervor, with maybe a large bit of sass.
But Synol was right. This was an entirely different situation. They were trapped in the most complicated prison system they had ever heard of, and getting out would require subtlety.
While there would be a time for fighting, that was not now. At least one of their sisters was still here and acting out might cause undo harm to her.
Ynya wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she did something to jeopardize her sister’s safety.
Ynya frowned. She hated to admit she was wrong, so she would just not say anything for now. She grabbed Synol and shoved her farther back into the cage.
“What?”
“It’s better this way. That way you don’t get in trouble, either. It’s better if I’m the only one that is punished for my actions, rather than both of us. Whatever they do to me, I want you to promise that you will stay the course and find our sisters.”
Ynya heated up the bars again, pulling against them with all her strength to bend them back to their original shape.
Finally, she had them back roughly to where they should be and Synol was safely back in her cage.
Ynya then opened the door and yelled at the top of her lungs, “You can’t contain me! I’m fire incarnate!”
Chapter Fourteen
They stitched up her ear after they captured, beat, and stabbed her once again with the silver daggers.
She was then visited by the Warden to put in her new bronze earring.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. I had high hopes for you, but I never thought you would try to escape. Though I am a bit disappointed that you hadn’t tried to take your sister with you.”
Ynya spat at him, but missed. “I tried, but she refused to come, heated up her bars and everything but she said it wasn’t worth it.”
He smiled back with that crooked cocky smile of his. “She’s a smart one. You would do well to follow her lead, but if I’m going to be perfectly honest, I don’t mind you trying to break out. The occasional breakout attempt reminds the other prisoners that they’re here for as long as we need them.”
He paused, holding the earring apparatus. “In fact, it’s probably a good test for my soldiers to learn where we’re getting lax. Don’t worry, the soldiers that were supposed to be monitoring the chamber for movement have been punished and will not be making that mistake again, so I thank you for bringing attention to me the issues I had in my ranks.”
“I’ll be happy to show you more.”
He smiled, and shook the earring apparatus again in her face. “Oh, I don’t think you will. You see, the silver earrings we put in you are special, of course. They wouldn’t be able to void your magic otherwise, but they are cheap and plentiful enough that we can easily afford to put them into every prisoner. But some of you,” he tugged on his earlobe to punctuate the point, “get the bright idea to think for yourself. I understand and commend that to some extent, especially harming yourself to get your magic back. I have respect for that sort of dedication, I really do.”
He stopped monologuing to cough to the side. He sounded sick, with a deep rattle in his throat that made Ynya hope he would just fall over dead there in front of her.
He spat something yellow and slimy onto the ground before continuing. “But these bronze earrings are unique. You see,” he held the loop closer for her to see. “Like this, they are an open circuit of pure energy. The magic is trapped inside, unable to move, so it lays dormant. But once this is closed, the energy whirls round and round. As long as there is human flesh for it to contact and dump off the excess heat and magic, it will be a little warm to the touch but not unbearable. In fact,” He paused and cocked his head to the side, “I do think you might find the extra heat pleasant.
“But if you should attempt to pull this one out, it will put off a chain reaction so violent, that it will take off your hand, your arm, and there have been a few cases where half of the patient’s head came off with it.”
Ynya gulped. “A few?”
He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, like nine in ten patients. So you are welcome to take the chance, but I can guarantee that you will lose your hand and arm for sure. Past that, I don’t rightly know. I guess it matters how fast you pull it from your ear. But jus
t in case you thought you were going to get lucky, I leave you with one last thing.”
The Warden grabbed another unclosed loop from the table. “When I’m done here, I’ll be putting this loop into your sister’s ear. These two are very special, and highly dangerous, too. If one goes off, the other will detonate at the exact same moment.
“So you might feel lucky. You might feel like you are the one in ten who won’t lose her head, but do you feel like your sister will be able to pull it from her ear at the same time?”
Ynya was quiet while he fitted the new bronze earring. She would have to find another way around the magic inhibitors.
Everything hurt.
Ynya hadn’t understood what it truly meant for every part of her body to hurt, but now she was experiencing it.
The “testing,” as they called it, consisted of a series of injections into her arm that did one of two things.
Either it did nothing, and caused an immense amount of pain.
Or it did something, and caused even more pain.
After each injection, three scientists surrounded her and measured things like her temperature, eyes, ears, and tongue. They poked her skin with other needles, checking to see if something small injected would react to whatever was being tested.
Each test took roughly three hours. When the injection finally ran its course, and the same three scientists determined that her body was back to normal, the tests started again.
Each one was different, but somehow worse, than the last. One sprouted boils across her skin, another caused blindness, and another removed her ability to taste. One made her heat up so much she thought she was going to burn, which was the oddest feeling she had ever had because she was normally completely immune to fire.
The worst one was when they lit a small candle and burned her hair. It was only a part of a couple strands, and it was actually the least painful of all the tests, but it terrified her nonetheless. She’d always prided herself on her long, curly red hair, and the ability to light it up when she needed to.
Her hair was such an integral part of who she was, a unique, tangled, and fiery mass of red, that watching a part of her affected by fire for the first time in her life scared her to her toes.
Ynya couldn’t hold back the tears. She’d lost a part of herself, and for a while after that she worried that whatever they were doing to her would permanently alter who she was.
Her mind went down a path it had never gone before. What if I have to live the rest of my life without magic? She’d spent so long assuming it was such an integral part of who she was. Would I be the same without it?
Does magic define who you are, or only enhance? Who would I be if I didn’t have access to that heat?
I’d be like everyone else.
She calmed down later when they tried another concoction that chilled her entire body. They tried the flame test on her hair once again and it was immune to fire.
That gave her hope. At least she thought it was hope.
One test in particular got the scientists all in a tizzy as they tried to assess the results. All three of them spoke in a foreign language, so Ynya wasn’t able to understand exactly what they said. She did understand that they were abnormally agitated about something. They tried the same concoction on her three times in a row. Each time it gave her a pleasantly warm feeling through her body, almost like she was in a good mood.
It disconcerted Ynya – being strapped to a table and having a strange sense of peace come over her as three scientists buzzed about like bees on a spring flower.
At least this last one seemed to go by fast, because they repeated the test on her three times in a far shorter window than they normally did.
So rather than worry about what they tested her for, Ynya enjoyed the pleasant feelings, relishing them as the scientists continued to buzz about her. The world could just keep spinning around while she lay there, euphoric and alone.
She wondered how Synol fared through all the tests. Ynya would never forget that steely gaze Synol gave her when she refused to come out of her cage. Synol was right at that moment, Ynya had to admit that.
Smoke, not fire.
The euphoric moment wore off and everything returned to normal. The buzzing stopped and the overall pains and aches of her last few abuses came back with a vengeance.
They released her, but not before sending her back to the old woman to inscribe her with more ordinals up the inside of her arm and onto her shoulder.
Ynya was now one of them, branded for life.
Chapter Fifteen
“Ynya!” Synol limped toward her sister as soon as she entered the Pit. It was early morning again. Ynya realized had no sense of time during the testing. Did I lose a whole day? Two?
“Synol, are you okay?”
Synol frowned at her leg. “It’s nothing. It’ll heal eventually.”
Ynya wanted to press further, but Synol pulled her shirt sleeve up to show the edge of her ordinals. They only came halfway up her upper arm.
Ynya frowned, feeling like she was the oddball once again in the family. She pulled back her shirt over her shoulder to show the edge of the numbers.
Synol gasped, then grabbed her sister in a massive bear hug. “It’s okay, little sister. We will find our family and figure out how to get out of here, and then we will all go back to Marsfjord and rebuild the whole place. If we have to, I will pick up the entire town and move it out to the middle of the ocean where we won’t be bothered ever again by the Frost Queen or her armies.”
Ynya wanted to cry, she knew this was the time to do so, but there was something inside her that refused. A hardness growing slowly over time that refused to succumb.
Yes, she’d been terrified when they burned her hair, but that was a very personal, very intimate part of her that hadn’t been breached until now. It was akin to learning that your mother and father were not infallible, that they made mistakes too. It was like learning about a woman’s mooncycle. Something fundamental about her life had changed in that moment, that could never be taken back.
She had faced the realities of not ever having magic again and survived.
But this hardness was just that. A hardness against all the atrocities she’d experienced up to this point. There was no point crying because the Frost Queen was a ruthless bitch who tortured children to create her armies. There was no point in worrying about any of that because it was just life around here.
Worrying was wasted energy. What Ynya needed was focused effort.
She couldn’t control what the Frost Queen and her minions did, but she could control what she did, and any time wasted worrying about them, or feeling sorry for herself or her sister was time not working on a solution to their problems.
Ynya pulled away, grabbing Synol by the arms. “We need a plan.”
Synol stopped, her mouth open slightly as her eyes searched Ynya’s for what she meant.
“I mean it. We keep feeling sorry for ourselves, or keep feeling like life is horrible, but we aren’t any closer to escaping this place.”
Synol pursed her lips. “I…agree, actually. It’s what I’ve been saying since we got here, we need to observe—”
“No, not observe, we need to test, we need to test again.” She grabbed the earring from her ear, holding it out. “I assume he told you about what this does?”
Synol’s face lost what little color it had, but she nodded. “You know he could have lied about the exploding part?”
Ynya shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if he’s telling the truth or not. Our reality is that we don’t have magic, so that is how we plan. Take him down without magic.
“It also means that we have him on the defensive right now. You observe, but I’m going to keep testing for weak spots. I’m done being told what to do. If we keep pushing them, eventually they are going to make a mistake, and we already know that they are so complacent that they leave prisoners alone in cages that can easily be escaped from by simple fire mages.
&
nbsp; “Above all, I just want to move forward with the plan to find our sisters. This has gone on long enough.”
Synol released Ynya finally. “I’m with you, but we need to be careful and not show everything we have right out of the gate. If we discover a weak point, we need to keep it to ourselves. Exposing that one with the cages means we can’t use that anymore, you understand?”
Ynya nodded. “I do. I will do my best to find the weak points but not expose them.”
“So, where do you think we should start?” Synol asked, looking around the Pit.
Ynya chuckled.
“What?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Synol put her hands on her hips. Well, one of us needs to be in charge.”
Ynya took Synol’s hand. “I think it should be you. You have the more level head. I have plenty of spitfire, but what we need right now is a cooler temperament.”
Synol nodded. “Fine, but you are in charge of the next big predicament we come to.”
“Deal.”
Synol looked around. “I think we need to find Joanne and that boy again and see if we can start making friends in this place.”
Chapter Sixteen
The girls were not able to find Joanne after looking through The Pit, but they did find Tyrain huddled in a corner of the northern fence. He didn’t look up when they approached him, but he had a look in his eye that told Ynya he had just gone through something horrible.
“Tyrain, are you okay?”
When he didn’t respond to her voice, she knelt down, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Tyrain?”
He jumped, like he hadn’t know they were there. His eyes went wide, with a wild look to them. He retreated back toward the wall, cowering from her touch.
Synol asked Ynya to move so she could get to the boy.
“Tyrain.” Synol knelt down an arm’s distance away. “Did they take you Tyrain?”
