Chloe awoke disorientated and angry. She had no idea how she
had gotten from Mezzo's to where she was now but in all likelihood she was
either betrayed or stolen. Her frustrations were taken out on the room she was
in. Shards of amethyst became embedded in the yielding metal of her cell. The
stamping of her feet left a soft indent and then returned to its original form,
even the doors had the same quality. No matter what she did, no matter how
angry she got, the room she was in would not break, only bend. Her outbursts
garnered no reaction from anyone outside, in fact all she could hear were the
cries of men and women, tortured and desperate. There was only one place she
had feared in Auspar, the Asylum of the Aeon Priests. She shouted for
attention, for someone to recognise her nobility and birthright in a desperate
attempt to escape. She was met with the heavy footsteps of what sounded like
man, he grunted at her while he passed gruel through the slot in the bottom of the
door. She tried to reason with him, tried to get him to let her go but he
refused to talk to any madmen and refused to lose a possible cure to the King. He
told her his solemn duty was to create peace throughout the Steadfast and for that to happen in
Thaemor, the King needed to be cured.
She poked at the dish she had been served as his echoed footsteps
fell into silence. Whatever she had been
given was lukewarm and in a wooden bowl.
In frustration she transmuted it so she could see it shatter but a searing pain
flowed from the stump of her wrist to the hand she was holding the bowl. It did
not turn into amethyst as she had hoped but another crystal altogether. She
had heard stories told to her by her handmaiden when she was young, about her
family being able to do more than just a singular substance but they had to know
not only vein of the material they could initially transmute to, but also
variations of the same matter, metal for metal, ceramic for ceramic. A chain transmuted
into gold could also be changed into iron, or copper. The bowl now entirely
clear with a hint of yellow, was unrecognisable to her and therefore to her, an
impossibility. This fact only proved the bowl to be more mysterious as it
became unstable and then shattered onto the floor as she held it.
The transmutation had distracted her from the light
footsteps on the approach outside her cell. She needed to think fast. To her
surprise another bowl of gruel was given to her. She quickly blocked the
closing door and tried to argue her point. The only voice she heard was from
the cell next to hers, crying out that the food was poisoned and he was to be assassinated
when the candle was to be lit. The slot door rammed against her foot multiple
times before a pommel slammed into her foot. In anger she turned to the new
bowl and ready to throw it against the wall, noticed its contents was turning a
pale green. She thought that perhaps the madman next door was right and threw
it against the wall. The chink of metal on metal alerted her that there was
something more. She fished out a key from the puddle and opened her cell door.
In her mind she did not question what had just happened, the
fact that she was free was enough for her. The man in the next cell refused her
help, yelling at her to get away from his door. The opposite cell on the other
side was filled with silence. The hallway had no windows, only dripping candles
that cast a pitiful light. As she ventured down the passage the screams became
more varied and louder while the gates that should have barred her way were
already open. The last gate opened out into a small chamber big enough for two
doors and a desk. A guard was slumped face down in his bowl of gruel. She
checked if he was still alive, not because she was concerned, but because she
wanted to take his dagger and he had no keys to help her escape. She appraised
the blade, an in her opinion could be improved so she tested her ability. The
handle turned to emerald while the blade became diamond.
From here there were two doors both near duplicates, both leading to a similar
hallway. Unsure of where to go now she looked down at the open window, seeing
the sheer drop below her, but no city. Jumping out was not a possibility. She
turned back to the doors and looked down at them more carefully, opening the
wrong door at the end of either one could result in what she had seen at
Neave's. The handle on the right door was uncomfortable in her hand and she
didn't know why.
Perhaps it was the fact that she normally used the now
dismembered hand . She looked down at the brass handle, there was an almost indistinguishable
indent. The shape, although worn, was the symbol of her house. She didn't know whether
to trust her own eyes, she was, for all intents and purposes insane, and to her
this might actually be proof she was imagining things. She pressed onwards
through that corridor into another open room. This one however as noisy, five
guards and a thauman set around a table drinking and playing cards while a
painting on the wall sang some of the more smuttier tavern songs. She dared not
approach for the thauman's nose started to twitch, its eyebrows furrowed and
its lips curled inwards and she had only moved a few steps closer. There was no
way down, and no way out back the way she came, she had to cross this room
without getting caught. From one of the rooms adjacent she could smell
something familiar. The initial smell of freshly baked bread through the open
window was replaced with something from her childhood. This brought up uncomfortable
memories of her past, especially as she could now start to hear something or
someone singing a song that reminded her of home underneath that of the
painting.
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