(THOB) Chapter 156: Bavarest (Patreon)

Graphic content warning.

Darkness has never truly been a thing of worry here. Basically, it’s most often dark here. Most of us don’t like it, but time is enough to make anyone adapt to it. Still, it’s not like we have much of an option. Whether it’s dark or bright or generally colorless, it wouldn’t matter, this is the life we live. We would claim we didn’t choose it, that it chose us. But I’ll be honest, we chose it as much as it chose us. Every action we ever took has led us here; at least all the actions I ever took led me here.

It’s been a while since I’ve been here. At first, I’d had a lot of complaining to do. I was a horrible person but I can’t say I deserved this, even now I can’t say that I deserve this. But I’m here and no one gets out of here. Many have tried, but tried is all they’d ever done. There was only one way to get out of here and it wasn’t the way any one ever wanted to leave.

I stared ahead of me as I do every morning or, as it is on times as dark as it was right now, every time that felt like morning. Honestly, it could be morning to me as much as it could’ve been night to the next man. Regardless, I stared ahead of me. The man a few feet from me was hunched over his meal eating away like some rabid animal. He reminded me of a rabid dog I once saw as a kid, when my life was still peaceful and gentle; before I was introduced to a deadlier world that had helped forge my decisions.

To my side Gentri and another man whose name I’d never been capable of remembering were talking about something I didn’t understand. By my best guess it was something about the next food drop. It was actually funny because it hadn’t been up to thirty minutes since the last food drop. And I knew for a fact he’d had at least enough to feed three men. Still, I said nothing. Living here as long as I had wasn’t done by poking one’s nose in another person’s business, even if the other person happened to be a friend, not that I considered Gentri a friend. I could call him an ally, but a friend was a bit of a stretch. Considered, I had known the man two years now.

A mild ruckus to my other side drew my attention and I turned my head and strained my eyes to see. In the darkness I saw nothing. It wasn’t that it was too dark for sight, it was simply that not much could be seen at a certain distance. But I didn’t need to see to know what was happening. You spend enough time living the life I have and you get to recognize the sound of a beating anywhere, the grunts, the kicks, sometimes you can even feel the pleasure the oppressor takes in the simple action. It was the simple sound of the strong oppressing the weak; a common sound here.

“Frax.”

I turned my head away from the sound of beating along with my attention. Gentry is watching me. He has a look on his face, the one he always has when he intends on something stupid; something I would not accept happily. But he’s the closest thing I have to a friend here, so I usually go along with it, not that I have to. Recently, however, his ideas had made us an enemy I now wished we hadn’t made.

“Frax,” he called again in a loud whisper.

I sighed but if I remained silent he would simple continue to call, he was odd that way. “Yes, Gentri.”

Now that he knew he had my attention, he smiled. “This here is my new friend,” he said, gesturing to the man beside him. The man seemed a bit too old for this place and he was skinny, worse than most of us.

“And?” I inquired.

“And he knows places.”

I shook my head. “Everyone knows places Gentri.”

Gentri laughed quietly. “You didn’t ask what places he knows, Frax.”

I sighed again. Gentri was always like this. “What places does he know, Gentri.”

“Where they keep the food.”

“Why do I care where they keep the food, Gentri.”

Gentri shrugged. For the two years I’ve known Gentri he’s always been skinny but his shoulders have always been a shadow of the size he once was. He’d lost a lot of weight but it was obvious in a better time he’d been bigger with broader shoulders.

I sighed and waited a little longer, Gentri had a habit of dropping what was more important late. And he did.

“He also knows the way out.”

I ran a hand down my face. And there it was. Everyone always knew the way out. I couldn’t count how many people had known the way out and proved themselves wrong. I wasn’t going to be a collateral for someone who thought he knew the way out and… wait… my brows furrow in confusion.

“Then what was the talk about food for?” I asked.

Gentri shrugged. “Tiny hasn’t eaten today.”

I cocked an inquisitive brow. “Tiny?”

Gentri tilts his head towards his companion and confirms, “Tiny.”

The man looked old enough to be his father or even his father’s older brother. “I’m guessing that’s not his name,” I told him. “I’m guessing you named him.”

Gentri nodded. “He needed one.”

I shook my head and ignored this one of his many eccentricities. He had a plan and I was in the mood to prevent him from getting himself killed. By Truth, I couldn’t call him friend, but seeing as he was the closest thing I had to one here I couldn’t allow him die from someone else’s stupidity.

“What do we have, Gentri?” I asked, ignoring the consistent rising sound of the oppression on the other side of me. I grimace at a particular groan and fight the urge to look. Anyone with half a brain would’ve known not to be involved in what was happening.

“You know the guards?” Gentri asked.

I nodded. I knew the guards. They’ve always been known to be among the strongest Hallowed in the realm. Even outside I’d known of them. “What about them?”

“They usually change shifts after fifty clicks.”

I frowned at Gentri. “Fifty clicks?”

He shrugged. “Tiny counts with clicks.”

“And how does Tiny know when to start counting?”

Now Gentri frowned.

“After the first shift,” Tiny supplied. His voice wasn’t gravelly, as would be expected from anyone in here. Before I could respond, something to my side caught his attention and Tiny frowned. “Isn’t anyone going to help that guy?”

Again, I consciously refused to look at the oppression now behind me.

“Leave it be,” Gentri replied, scratching his side. “You don’t want to be involved in that when it goes wrong.”

“If,” Tiny corrected.

Gentri shook his head. “When it goes bad. Because it will.”

It always does, I thought.

The man being beaten up behind me was a strange addition shoved in like every other two months ago. The hatred for him was quick when we learned of his heritage. There was no way any of the men in here would smile at a Merdendi spy. He was, in no simple words, our mutual enemy.

A month ago, however, picking on him became a death sentence. Gentri still had a bruise on his back as a reminder of this. The scar in his side he’d scratched not too long ago was a consequence of being too damned fool of himself for seeking revenge. His revenge had ended worse than the event he’d been seeking vengeance for. All I could say was that he was lucky he returned with his life. The man who’d gone with him hadn’t been so lucky.

Still, something about someone sticking up for the Merdendi spy was making him feel less like one. Actually, it wasn’t. It made the Merdendi seem scary.

I returned my attention to the guards high up. It’s always funny how people believe that if you stay in the darkness long enough your eyes would adjust. I am a Hallowed, technically the peak of what a human could be, and my time here has proven to me how wrong they are. I’d been here for more than two years and my eyesight in hadn’t gotten any better. I’d grown accustomed to seeing the way I saw, but to say my eyesight had somehow gotten better would be to lie. I noted things better now, certain shapes and sizes did not leave me confused, and I rarely ever imagined the images I saw. But anyone who looked upon me—upon anyone here—would know we did not see better, we simply knew better.

“They’re going to kill him.” Tiny’s voice broke me from my thoughts.

“They aren’t,” I sighed.

Gentri nodded simply. “They won’t have the time.”

“The wha—”

Tiny fell silent and I turned my attention to him. I saw his face and knew not much would be said for a while. The wide eyes. The gritted teeth. The tight jaw. The tremble in his hands so strong it could be noted even in the darkness. It was a herald of what was to come. So I braced myself. I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes. I did this every single time and it never changed. Often times when the feeling was gone I wondered if time had only made it stronger.

I watched Gentri frown, then turn on me with the anger of a thousand men. I moved to dodge but it was just as it had been in the beginning and I failed. Though lean, Gentri was a bigger man than I was, and it made him a terrifying foe. He was also quick on his feet. He took me by my neck with one hand then shoved me the the hard ground with the other. I struggled for words but nothing came. I would’ve begged, pleaded, and wept if only my throat would allow it. But fear had always been a strong opponent. And the look and hunger in his eyes was enough to terrify me; I had seen them enough times to know what was to follow. And I dreaded what was to follow.

Tiny watched us from behind him, his face morphing from fear to disgust as Gentri pinned me down on my face and pulled down what was left of my tattered trouser. Gentri was my ally, and the closest thing to a friend I had here, but sometimes people have no strength against their hunger. And sometimes they hungered for the wrong things.

I felt his hand, cold as the winter snow, against my bared ass and terror paralyzed me more. I knew what he was going to do next. He smacked me hard and I yelped in pain. He was rough about it, his grip on my neck insisted his dominance, and my mind shed tears that I knew my eyes could not. When he slipped his member inside me it was as painful and violent as the worst things any man could think of. There are different kinds of punishment that break a man. But a man who has never been through this would never understand why women fear men; why women demand death for any rapist.

I knew the need for that demand. I knew the pain this brought, physically and mentally. This was not the first. But no matter how many times I’ve gone through it there’s never any hope at the end. There was never any getting accustomed to it. The pain remained the same. The hurt remained the same. And so did the fear.

And then it all stopped.

Gentri was panting as if he’d run a thousand miles where he sat before me. Tiny laid lifeless on the floor behind him and I wondered if the man was dead. The shadows of fear still very present in my trembling body, I dared a glance behind me. Where the Merdendi had laid, a victim of cruelty, he remained. But no cruelty was visited upon him. Around him men laid unmoving, bleeding and broken, pain visited upon them without hesitation. And beside him a man stood. He was not much different from most warriors. His hair was long and black, his height average, and his beard overgrown. He’d come a month ago and stepped out of the chaos of the hierarchy, and with him he took the Merdendi.

He was not much different from any man who’d been in enough fight. But his eyes made him stand out. they were the worst kind of blue, odd and demanding. And they tended to look through a person rather than at them. The worst of it was how it often glowed in the dark. But oddest of him was the black scar that traveled up his left shoulder to end just beneath his jaw, a scar oddly clear even in this darkness. It concealed Gentri’s stupidity. It made him a walking terror. For no man should ever survive a stab in the jugular from a serrated blade. But he had. He’d survived it and killed the man responsible for it. And Gentri, for the sin of playing helper to his stabber had been carved up and left for dead.

I’d once heard the Merdendi call him Urden. And he made this place worse than what it already was. He made the fear of it worse than even its legends.

It made here truly Bavarest, the king’s pit.