Eote - Chapter 15

Loki and Rykar had been shown to a fenced off area before being pushed through the gates and greeted by holes in the ground. The area in front of them looked just like a bee hive, holes dotted the dirt floor at irregular intervals with some having been covered by lid made from leaves and vines which were woven together.

The group of guards which accompanied them remained silent from start to finish, giving the boys an eerie feeling as they walked while sandwiched between them. At first, they had thought as though they were being treated like any other prisoner, however after thinking, the entire reception, bonus punishment and the surplus amount of security served to demonstrate the fear and uncertainty which was directed towards the boys despite them only being children in the presence of grown men.

Due to the guidance of the guards, the twins were pried apart and lead to holes at separate ends of the Isolation field as they began to hear faint sounds of weeping spilling out from the lidded holes. Nervousness caused their steps to slow as they tensed up, yet a jab in the back forced them to keep up the pace as before being brutally shoved on their sides.

Loki and Rykar were simultaneously pushed over the edge and fell over three metres down into their individual pits. “What the f*ck, you could have just said to jump in you b*stard” Rykar cursed furiously as he got to his feed and looked around the narrow hole only to find a bucket which emanated a rancid stench of excrement.

His face scrunched up in anger and disgust, he kicked the bucket towards the edge of the hole and jumped to his feet before aiming to jump and grasp at the edge. Despite his repeated attempts, he only ended up with his fingernails full of dirt as he clawed at the lose walls. Resigning himself, he sat on the ground just like Loki currently was in his pit across the grounds.

“Trust me kid, don’t drink it all at once.” A low voice came from above their heads, each with a similar message as a skin bag was thrown down to them from the entrances. Unbinding the openings of the bags, the twins found that they were filled with water. This was all well and good at first but then they remembered that they were supposed to be stuck in the isolation holes for three days but there was only just over a days-worth of water in the bags they had been given.

Without time to voice out their complaints, Light entering the pits rapidly grew sparse. Looking up, a woven lid could be seen being drawn over before slamming shut, throwing dust into the air and causing the boys to break out into coughing fits.

The silence was stifling. While they were outside, they were able to vaguely hear the sounds coming from the surrounding pits however that was completely different once inside. The mats formed a much tighter barrier and the dirt was completely insulated. The sounds from within the pits had no chance of making out from on layer of matting while also penetrating the layer of matting from another hole. This made it so that there was a slight chance of hearing things from the outside, but once inside the isolation was complete.

Down in their respective pits, the occasional crumbling sound could be heard as loose dirt trickled from the walls. Other than this, the only thing producing any sound besides their thoughts was their own thundering heartbeats.

This drew on their memories from back when they entered the void, the first time they entered the withered tree in the forest, yet it was also drastically different. At that time, they were able to find a sense of peace within nothingness as they lost perception of both the material and immaterial. However here in this space, with all their senses intact, they simply felt trapped, confined and restricted.

Waking up a while later, Rykar could already hear his stomach growling as he clenched his abs in an attempt to stifle the feeling of emptiness. Thinking back to his last meal of soup and bread, he once again had to tightly clench as he gritted his teeth, temper flaring as he thought back to the smiling faces of Anna and Chris.

Time went by as slowly as could be. Within the pits there was no way of keeping track of what was going on and the worst thing was, the twins had no idea of how long a ‘day’ was in the first place. Their mother had told them that in stories, days are counted by the skies lighting up before going dark but how was this meant to be measured here? How was their mother even able to count how old they were if the days going by weren’t apparent? Loki had long since realised the flawed logic in this but had refrained from asking after his mother avoided answering. However, it was now that these questions were popping up one by one within Rykar’s mind.

Loki simply passed the time by laying flat on the ground motionlessly. Using up as little energy as possible and trying to spend as much time asleep as he could. This may seem simple, but it worked wonders, the time spent in the pit was still excruciating yet there had been so many more stressful occasions that it wasn’t much of a strain on his mind. Breaking his stance, he would occasionally take a sip or water or adjust his position slightly before sliding back into silence as though melding into the ground.

Things were countless times more intolerable to Rykar. By now, he had to eat around four times the amount as Loki just to feel satisfied. With the way things were going, to stay in the pit for three days basically equated to twelve for him and the strain on his body was equally high.

Unknowingly to the occupants of the pits, an entire day had finally passed. As a guard walked around the pits, occasionally pausing to listen to what was going on within, he found nothing abnormal. Passing by Loki, there wasn’t even a peep that was to be said. Moving on, he swept slowly to the other side of the field, checking the other pits as he went by and received a variety of feedback. From Shouting to crying, nothing was out of the norm.

As he arrived outside Rykar’s pit, he heard low murmuring as though someone was whispering towards him. Obviously from within the pit, the sound would have been much more enhanced, to the point of a low shout perhaps. Curiosity took over the young guard as he god down to his knees and positioned his ear just softly on its surface in order to increase the clarity.

“he he he ha he ha.” The guards blood ran cold as he heard the intense laughter echoing within the pit. As the sound struck the mat and passed through to his ear, it was as though a demon was whispering directly into his soul, the anger, hatred and pure crazed emotions were almost tangible. Cold sweat made its way to the surface of his skin as his hair stood up on end. Tripping over himself once, he made his way to his feet and ran to the other end of the field where he then continued to only make half a round each time, clearly avoiding going over to Rykar’s half.

As soon as his shift was over, he left without saying a word to the net guard on duty, raising a slight suspicion yet it was disregarded as the new face began to make her rounds.

Three metres below the ground, Rykar had all but lost his semblance of a human being. Before entering the field, it was obvious that he had recovered physically much more than Loki had due to their malnourished upbringing. This had totally been flipped on its head.

There were only a few hours left before they would be brought out and thrown into the workers society, yet he was currently knelt down on the ground with a crazed smile plastered on his face. He laughed hoarsely through his dried throat as he shovelled mud into his mouth through cracked and bloodied fingers.

It hadn’t taken long for the hunger pains to get the better of him as he was thrown into the pit. Within hours, he couldn’t take the pain any more and drank all the water at once in an attempt to thwart it. This was successful for another few hours but after which, there was nothing he could do but curl into a ball and talk to himself to try and distract himself.

Stories he had heard from his mother flowed from his mouth, recited word for word as he dug deep into his memories while trying to escape reality. Eventually, he awoke from his stupor with his fingers in his mouth, gnawed at until they were bloodied and frayed. A few of his finger nails had already been swallowed without him even realising.

Desperation reaching, he squeezed out the last of the droplets within the water skin before savagely tearing into it with his teeth, swallowing the leather bit by bit as though it was a delicacy. This staved the hunger once again, but he knew it wouldn’t last.

The final dregs of his rational flew out the window a few hours later. As the previous guard had knelt down to listen at the entrance to the pit, Rykar had been laughing wildly while repeatedly smashing his fists into the ground while his knuckles had long since been exposed to the bone. Wrists swollen from the repeated impact, he had bruises all over as his red and grey eyes shone like spotlights in the dark.

As his fists rained down, blood was mashed into the ground. The dense and dried out dirt floor was softened by the warm thick liquid before being beaten into a muddy, bloody pulp. Like a machine, Rykar pummelled his own blood into mud before using his torn-up fingers to stuff the mixture down his throat before repeating the process.

For hours on end he had repeated and repeated. His mind was far from focused on this task as it became second nature, the pain from his wounds had long since stopped being registered.

Faces flicked through his mind rapidly and with amazing detail as his perfect recall worked overtime.

Mother

Father

Chris

Villagers

Anna

Chris

Guards

‘Sir’

All these people were replayed through his head as his hatred intensified. Rather than casting them aside, he constantly confronted them as his blood boiled. The blazing anger only served to accelerate his heart rate, causing more blood to pump through his body before spurting from the wounds all over his hands. This was all once again returned to his body as he swallowed all that was drained from him.

“Rykar Rykar wake up!” Voices began to travel towards Rykar, but he was still within a trance-like state, pummelling the ground before shoving whatever paste was formed into his mouth. “Rykar, snap the fuck out of it!”

Finally, he was woken up as his arms wouldn’t respond. On instinct, he lashed out. Channelling all his pent-up anger, he swung out wildly towards his sides, yet weakness still overtook him due to blood loss. It was already a miracle that he was still conscious at all.

As the disruption finally broke him out of his repetitive cycle, he finally blacked out as he slumped into the arms of his brother.

Tears in his eyes, Loki was in a miserable state as his famished body cradled his brother. Throughout the three days of isolation, he felt distant. Many of his emotions had long since been locked away, even the death of Bolt was something he no longer felt any sadness for as he lay in the darkness.

This all smashed apart when he was taken to his brothers pit in order to collect him before reporting to their dorm. Finding his brothers mental stare destroyed, his bloody hands, the mess all over the ground

The anger that he had been neglecting then broke forth like a raging tide. All the anger that Rykar had been accumulating over the three days seemed to condense into one moment as Loki’s eyes went cold.

The guards that had been about to pull the boys from the pit all froze in place before slowly edging away from the brothers.

Rykar lay bloodied and unconscious in Loki’s arms, completely disarmed yet his crazed expression and blood-stained smile was still sculpted to his face like a demon mask. In contrary to this, Loki’s face was completely tranquil, yet his eyes looked lifeless as he stared up towards the entrance of the pit at the guards who had taken shifts to confine them.

His grey face and dull lifeless eyes looked at them all one by one, committing their faces to memory as tears of blood streaked down his face, dripping onto his brother’s forehead one by one.