In those first few decades that I was imprisoned in the underground Roman prison, things went as normal for me as a prisoner as was possible. They tried to execute me twelve times in twelve different ways and failed. Any time anyone came into my cell for any reason I killed them, after a while they started to send more than just a single Legionnaire or two because I kept getting out of my cell. Food was sparse and stale or rotten, only the water was fresh. After forty years of my killing a handful of Legionnaires every day, whomever was in charge at the time was smart enough to have me chained up to the back wall of my cell.

When they did, it was the first time since the day he had brought me in that I saw that awful, strange Roman who had brought me in. He hadn't aged or changed even the tiniest bit in forty years, just as I hadn't. Twelve Legionnaires stood outside the door and bolted it once he was inside my cell to make sure that if I killed him I would not get out again. I fought him when he grabbed me, but because of the bad food that I had stopped eating, I was not nearly as strong as I had been when he'd brought me in. I was stronger than the humans, but this male I was no match for now. The chains were deep set into the stone back wall of my cell, and he forced my hands into them and shackled me. I was able to move well enough, but I could not get within five feet of the cell door.

I spent another ten years in such a condition, slowly weakening from lack of good food and light and fresh air until another General came into power and when learning of me and how long I had been there and that nothing could kill or really harm me, told those in his command that I should be put to use and kept a complete secret. I heard this from the first that came into my cell that over powered me, having to hit my head on the wall to stop me from fighting him before he used me.

The public had forgotten my existence already, and the Legionnaires that 'put me to use' never said anything to anyone else. I was beaten daily then, because I fought them but was too weak by then to really do much damage.

Sixty more years went by as such as I let my mind slip into a state of non-awareness, a detachment from the pain I felt in my body from these callous men shoving rotten and stale food down my throat to force meager nourishment into me so that they might abuse me further. I wished I could die and be rid of the misery that my life had become. The only relief I found was rarely, and only now that my mind has cleared of all haze and fog over this time do I know what, or rather who it was that provided this relief. Each day, as I slipped further away from any sort of physical feeling or mental awareness, I would vaguely hear my cell door open and close again, they never bothered bolting it anymore, though I remained chained to the wall, and I would hear as if through a fog, the sound of a cloth being rung out into a bowl. The sound alone would bring a flood of relief into my being.

My clothes, you see, had been ruined and torn away from me a long time before, and nothing had been provided for me since. This sense of relief was tied to the presence of the person they sent in, and the cold, wet cloth that was drawn over my bruised, abrased and sometimes bleeding flesh at first made me want to cry. When it first started and I was still aware of things, though I had forgotten after a time, was that the person they always sent in with this blissful cool fresh water was the very male who was responsible for me being locked in this cell and being put through this agony and torture and ruin.

I had expected the same of him that he had always given and what the other Legionnaires doled out; harsh treatment, rough, crude and condescending words, selfish thought of themselves and no care at all that I was a person. I turned out to be very wrong. This male I could no more predict than I could the weather or the color of the sky I could not see. The cloth was soft on my tender and sore skin, washing away the blood, dirt, grime and bodily fluids of others that I did not have the strength any longer to use the dirt of the floor to get off myself. The motions were slow, gentle in nature and seemed almost caring.

He never said anything, I do not even know if he ever looked at me really, my eyes after a measure of time became unfocused and blind in my increasingly catatonic state. In the beginning, I would beg that I be released and set free of the torture and ruin and shame I was being subjected to, or that he kill me. He never answered me, never said anything. At first to me it seemed to be cruel, the silence, and it would make me cry when I was alone again. But as time went on and even the nights were not left to me to recover, this was the only silence I received, and it became a blessing to me and in later years, it was the only solace I had, when this male came in to silently care for my wounds and clean me away of the day's filth.

* * *

Years went by as I became increasingly catatonic, unaware of what was happening around me. I remained chained to the wall, though I no longer fought the Legionnaires that came in and beat me, used me, and shoved rotting meat and bread down my throat. The only thing I seemed to be aware of was that presence that came over me daily; that quiet, soothing feeling of relief that would come over me that coincided with the silence that came when that strange male would come to wash me every evening when everyone had gone.

However, there was one year that I came out of my catatonic state for a few months. The constant use and abuse I went through daily, the lack of care and the drugging, chained to a wall naked for the entertainment and use of the higher ranking had taken my sense of self. I knew nothing of what had begun, I don't think I even noticed when the abuse became more violent and mean spirited. I just know it happened. Through the haze of drug sedation and mindlessness that had become my days uncounted for about a hundred years, I began to feel strange. I was too drugged and careless to be able to figure out anything.

I remember speaking to that male who came each evening, but I know not anything that I said. The 'food' came a little more often afterwards however, and the chains on the wall were taken away so that I could lie down on the soft dirt floor of the cell I was kept in. I laid there between times of being force fed and used, beaten and, once more a few soldiers tried to kill me.

An indeterminable amount of time later, a great deal of pain shook me from my mindless catatonic state. Though I was still drugged daily and I knew not why I was in such pain, as I could not see very well through the haze, the pain cleared my mind just enough.

For three days I screamed, though no one came. No water, not even the rotted meat and stale bread was brought to me. All I had was this pain and pressure that had me screaming and writhing. I thought perhaps that I had been poisoned. This pain was similar to the pain of when I had been poisoned before. The dirt floor was soaked in I didn't know what. The longer no one came into my cell, the clearer my mind became. I slowly became aware of someone outside my cell door, keeping anyone and everyone away. My screams for release from this pain went unanswered.

Finally, in the deep of night of the third day of this agony and unto a clear mind,small screams that were not my own echoed in my cell. I was drenched in sweat, blood and bodily fluids of an unidentified sort, but in my weakened arms I held a very small little boy; the source of the new noise.

Finally the cell door opened and I looked up to see the male that had put me here in this cell a hundred years ago. He had not changed or aged a day from then. He held cloths and a basin of warm water as he used his foot to close the cell door. He cleaned my legs, the same sort of gentleness that had come daily to me in my mindlessness. I stared at him, holding my son close to me and not letting him touch my child. Even when he moved to clean the blood and mucus off the baby I would not, baring my teeth and backing away from him. The male sighed and held out a clean cloth to me. I looked at it for a moment before slowly reaching out to take it. I cleaned off my son, that male kneeling as he watched me. I knew nothing of how long ago or who it was that had gotten me pregnant, and to me it didn't matter.

As I cleaned him, my son opened eyes that were a milky shade of my own emerald. My child was blind. Why?? I did not know. And I truly did not care. Not the circumstances that he had been born in, nor the defection of his sight could make me think the less of this, my child.

It was the only thing I had really ever wanted in my life; to have a family of my own. Being hunted and being a higher being than that of the rest of the world had made that impossible. I had given up on having a husband or a family. If I was to rot the rest of my life in this cell, at least I now had one of the two things that I had wanted since I was a child.

I had not noticed the tears running down my face, or the fact that I was holding my son close, nor that that strange male was still there watching me cry in happiness over a child of rape. I looked up, flinching back a little bit with my son as the male stood up, picked up the soiled cloths and the pink tinted basin of water and leave the cell, bolting the lock behind him once again and leaving me alone with my son. There were a couple of dry and clean cloths left on the dirt floor, and I picked them up and wrapped my son in them to keep him warm.

Thankfully the baby would not go hungry, even if I did, and I fed him, leaning against one of the walls of the cell, where the both of us fell asleep, I cradling my son in my arms with the light of a single torch coming through the small opening in the cell door that allowed someone to look in.

Some time after I had fallen asleep, I vaguely heard the cell door open again. I woke to the feeling of something being gently taken out of my arms. I opened my eyes to see that male, fully dressed and with a torch in hand, lifting my son into his arms as he stood once more. He made the mistake of turning his back on me. I lurched to my feet with a weak snarl and lunged at him. I wasn't going to let my child be taken from me too, not when everything else had been.

The hand that held the torch hit the side of my head and knocked me back against the wall, but I wasn't going to give up. I growled more fiercely and lunged once more. I made it out of the cell this time as he walked away with my son. He yelled one word in Latin and four guards came out of seemingly nowhere and grabbed me. I managed to kill two of them and break free of the other two, yelling now, for the first time in Latin since I had been captured, for my son to be returned to me.

More guards appeared from the barracks above ground and grabbed me as I screamed, begged and pleaded for my son to be given back. The male never even looked at me, never turned back to make eye contact with me as I cried and struggled against the guards, weak from neglect, drugs, abuse and child birth, unable to break free now as I cried and begged for my child. I struggled until I heard the door to the city above bang shut and be bolted. When it did, I fell to my knees, tears streaming down my face as I gave up and was dragged back to my cell and thrown to the floor. The chains were put on me once more, and I could no longer lie down. My head hung down, and when I was drugged again, I did not fight it.

There was nothing to fight for any longer. My brother was dead this past hundred years, and the rest of my family was in hiding, possibly dead, or captured as I was somewhere else. I would spend the rest of my life in this cell.

Things returned to their former form of normalcy the next day. I would be drugged, force fed, beaten and used with no thought to my well-being. To these men, I was no more than a beast, a freak of nature to do with as they pleased when they pleased. Weeks turned into months, which turned to years, and I slowly fell back into a catatonic state as I hung limp against the wall of my cell, my only solace once more being the evenings when I would be washed gently by that presence that had no face or voice, only that soothing gentility that, now, made me cry, even catatonic as I was.

* * *

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Time went by the same as it had since I had had my son taken from me the night he was born. I was used, beaten, and drugged to keep me complacent and weak. Then suddenly there was no one coming. In eighty five years, there had been someone, or multiple someones using me daily.

I had now been imprisoned for a hundred thirty-five years, and another new General had come into command of the Roman armies. Even now I do not know what his name was, I simply call him ‘The Roman’. He was a cruel male, and the things he did to me made me long for the abuse and use of former days.

For days, no one came to my cell, no drugs, no food, no water, not even that male who washed me came. A week passed by before the door opened and the chains were harshly taken off me and I was dragged from the cell that I had resigned myself into calling my home. I was taken above ground for the first time since I had been imprisoned, and the bright sunlight was painful for my eyes now only accustomed to torchlight. I was taken only a very short distance by the two Legionnaires that held me, into what looked like a stone house, but was really the General’s office. It was bright, the windows flooded in sunshine that hurt my eyes.

I was thrown to the floor of the office in front of the desk of the Roman.

“Go.” Said a voice I had never heard as I tried weakly to push myself up onto my elbows on the dirt floor. I heard the door close as my eyes slowly adjusted to the light, and I heard someone get up. The swish of a heavy roman cloak and the thump of those sandals told me that this male was coming around the big desk. A few seconds later I saw feet and the end of the blood red cloak.

The male knelt down and grabbed my chin harshly in his big hand, yanking my head up so he would see my sunken face in the light. I haven’t any idea what I looked like to him. He let go of me and called a name. A moment later the office door opened and a familiar scent washed over me. I looked up from the floor as the General stood once more and saw that male. He still had not aged a single day since my capture.

I tried to get up, a low growl on my lips, remembering how he had stolen my son from me a few years ago. I was surprised to find the General shoving me back down onto the floor with his foot. It was hard, his heel purposefully dug into my spine, and after everything I had been through, I was too weak even without drugs to fight him off.

“I don’t want this drugged anymore.” He spoke in Latin. “And no one is to touch it anymore either. It’s mine.”

For a moment I was relieved, I thought perhaps that I would be moved out of the prison and given good food and be brought back to health before being released finally. But nothing of the sort was said, and then the General said I was his, and the words sent a chill through my blood. He didn’t even refer to me as a person, but rather like I was a beast with no feelings or soul. The male who had stolen my son, there was a flash behind his eyes for a split moment that looked quite like rage, but was gone before I could identify it. He acquiesced to the General's orders and again when placed as guard to my cell. My care was placed in his hands as well, and I had a feeling that my state would decrease further now.

I was picked up harshly by the male when the General took his foot off my spine and was no longer holding me down. I was no match to even try to get away, I couldn’t even really walk very well. The door closed behind us and I was on my way back to my cell.

“Can’t you just let me go?? I can disappear…Just get me out of the city..” My voice was barely audible from lack of use, and it took a great deal out of me to speak. But I wasted my breath as I stumbled along with this ever so strange Roman who was not a Roman. He ignored me.

I was brought back into the dark of the underground prison and back to where my cell was in the very back. He opened the door and I spoke again. “Just kill me then.. I know you can… That would be better than this living death..” There were tears in my near nonexistent voice now. I didn’t want to go back into that dark, dank cell.

The male turned me roughly around to face him, a strange expression on his face, almost like it pained him to see me, begging for death. But again it was gone before I could really identify it, and he shoved me into my cell and swung the door shut with a loud bang as I landed hard on the floor. I looked up at the door, hearing the muffled voices of orders being given. I was alone, and I would not be given a release from this torture and pain. I cried. I had lost absolutely everything; my family, my dignity, my strength, my son, I had become no more than a shell of a being who could not die. I dragged myself into a corner of my cell, where the dirt was softest, and curled up on the floor to pass out.

Several hours later, I didn’t hear the cell door open, or hear the tin plate being set down, or the ceramic pitcher with it. I didn’t hear the door close once more. I awoke, with a clear mind, to find a torch lit in my cell to give me light for once, and there was fresh fruit and water sitting on the floor near me. For me to eat. At my own pace. Bright colors. The bread was almost fresh. And I was afraid to eat it. The food I had been forced to eat up until then had been sick and full of the sedation drugs. I slowly moved towards the plate and pitcher. Everything smelled fresh, and the water was clean and clear in the light of the torch.

I tried to determine whether or not to eat it, I had never been given good food before in this place, why start now?? But then I remembered the General’s orders. No more drugs. The bread was soft when I picked it up. There were grapes and a small chunk of cheese along with the bread and water, not a speck of rotted meat anywhere. Taking one bite lead to another, and to another. It was heaven compared to the food I had been forced to eat before, it made me hungry but satisfied at the same time.

When it was all gone, I took what was left of the water into my softer corner, away from the chains I was not in, and sat in the corner. I fell asleep once more, afraid it was a one time thing.

I woke the next morning, surprised to have been bathed in the night. The pitcher of water was gone from my side, but there was a new plate and a new pitcher in my cell. On it was a bright red apple, bread and cheese, all fresh. I ate all of it.

This went on for days, and there was always something new and fresh for me to eat when the food came, always brought by that male himself, the one who was now in charge of me. No one came to beat me, drug me, use me, or force feed me. My spirits lifted a little bit as this went on for months as I healed from the bruises and injuries and broken bones of the Legionnaires.

These good things were for an ulterior motive however, as I found out. I was eating a bit of melon with my bread and cheese on this day, it was the midday meal. My cell door opened, no longer bolted due to a guard being there constantly that I could not match. While good food had revived my spirits a little, I was not strong.

In the torch lit doorway was the General. Never had any previous general come to my cell. I didn’t like this male. Less than I liked the ones who had beaten and used me. Behind him stood the male he had put in charge of me.

The Roman strode into my cell and knelt down, taking my slice of melon away and tossing it away into the dirt. Once again he grabbed my chin harshly and forced me to look at him.

“It’s making progress. Good. For now I want to assess it. Take it up to my office. Then leave and we are not to be disturbed.” The Roman stood and strode out of my cell, leaving my guard to come in and pull me to my feet to follow behind.

Assess?? I didn’t like this. I had a very bad feeling.

Left alone with the Roman in his office with the door bolted from the inside, I was made to stand before him, his grip on my arm was hard and bruising. He forced me to turn, like I was some piece of game to be inspected before roasting. I tried to pull out of his grip, croaking out that he was hurting me, and I was shoved into the stone wall of the office between two windows. I couldn’t yell. The next moment he was pressed up against me and pressing my back hard into the uneven stone wall.

“You say nothing. You are nothing. You are a toy, made for no more than my pleasure. To do with as I please.”

Later, my guard, that male who first brought me to the prison, had to carry me back and bathe me. He was gentle, I was bruised and had small cuts from where I was hit. He cleaned away the Roman’s fluids from my legs, along with the blood that was my own. When he finished, he walked out, leaving the door open. I couldn’t move to get away. He came back, the fresh food, a pitcher of what smelled like ice cold water, and surprisingly a blanket in his arms. I lay on my side in my soft corner, just watching him as he set the plate with two pears, a slightly larger chunk of cheese, and slightly steaming bread, along with the pitcher of water, down on the floor in front of me before he shook out the blanket and covered me with it. He said nothing, as always, and left, closing the door behind him.

This was to become the norm for me. I was taken to the Roman’s office every afternoon, where he would whisper foul things into my ear while he abused and used me. Then I would be carried back to my cell, cleaned and fed. The good food and water and now the blanket were the price I paid for this new and worse torture. To know I was being kept well just to be abused.

* * *

For fifteen years I endured this new General. Daily whispers of my worthlessness washed away what little hope I had had until I was nothing but a husk. I still would scream in pain or beg to be killed, release was only in death now, but I gave up trying to fight back. I resigned to it, there was nothing I could do and no one who would help me, and so I simply let it happen.

Even when I stopped fighting back, the abuse didn’t stop, it only got more violent. And the words whispered became ever crueler.

I ate because if I didn’t I was beaten, I slept because if I didn’t I was in pain from the beatings. My insides hurt constantly, more than they had when I had been in a drugged stupor trying to deliver my lost son. I was ruined. I got weaker the longer I was in this circumstance, until my guard had to help me eat so I would not be abused for that. There was almost always that pained and enraged expression on his face, and I thought that it was because I was a nuisance. I wished he would just let me die, maybe if I didn’t eat long enough the Roman would beat me to death and I would be free.

Fifteen years went by in this manner.

There was one night that after being carried back to my cell, bathed and fed, I was lying there, staring into the torch lit wall with unfocused eyes. I heard something outside my cell door. It didn’t matter to me any longer what it might be. After what was and indeterminable amount of time, my cell door opened slowly and I shifted my eyes to look up at what I thought was my guard.

The familiar silhouette was not my guard, or any Roman for that matter. It was my eldest brother. The one who had not died when I was captured a hundred fifty years prior. I had been found. It was dead silent outside my cell now as I weakly lifted my head to look at him better as I spoke his name. I didn’t believe it was really him. He heard me, and came into the cell to kneel beside me, ripping off his cloak to wrap me in so that my bare, bruised and cut body was covered better.

“Gods! What have they done to you… Come on. We’re getting out of here now.”

He helped me stand, and it began to sink in that my guard was nowhere to be found, and that every other Legionnaire in the prison was lying dead on the floor. I was going to be free!

Suddenly I was more able to stand. I felt stronger. I followed beside my brother out of my cell and through the prison, stepping over several dead guards lying in pools of their own blood. I took a chord from one of them to tie my brother’s cloak around my waist and ripped up the one side so that my legs were free. At the above ground entrance to the prison I took the sword of one of the dead sentry guards. Looking at the blade I felt most of my strength flood into me. I was really going to be free. I looked at my brother.

“I’ll meet you at dawn outside the city. I have some unfinished business to take care of.” I spoke my home language, my tone was low, steady, and dark. My brother seemed to understand, and he nodded before disappearing in the dark.

And I was alone. The wind was cool and gentle on my pale face and rustled the leaves on the trees nearby. I closed my eyes and turned my face into it. It was a heavenly experience. It had been one hundred-fifty years since I had felt the wind on my face.

After a quiet moment, I opened my eyes and slunk down a filthy alley, a torch in one hand and my stolen sword in the other. I would have my revenge.

Any Legionnaire I found on patrol was gutted, decapitated, run through, slain unceremoniously where he stood and left lying on the street. As I passed, I told any and all people to leave the city and set fire to their homes, each and every one of them. Rome would remember me. I would raise it to the ground and destroy it. As it had destroyed me.

I spent hours doing this. It was hot, and the streets became lit as if by daylight, a garish horror that was more satisfying than anything I had felt in all my life. The fires lit my way to the main gate of the city, and when I got there a figure barred my path.

I came to a slow stop perhaps fifteen feet away from him, the sword in my hand relaxed with the tip in the dirt. It was the General. He was standing there in the gateway without anything covering his chest. He was smiling at me. The very same smile that he had used when whispering in my ear all the times he used, beat and ruined me for the past fifteen years.

I didn’t move. I stared back at him, an expression of wary hate in my eyes and an immovable set to my face. I wasn’t going to back down. I was covered in dirt, soot, sweat and blood. I had superficial cuts on my arms and a couple on my legs. I could feel my muscles coiling to spring and I let go of the sword in my hands as I leapt forward with a yell. I would kill him with my bare hands. I wanted to feel the life’s breath drain out of him and see that smile fall from his face. I didn’t see the sword in his hand until I was upon him. My hands went to close around his throat and I instead screamed as the blade cut across my lower abdomen.

This wasn’t anything superficial. It was deep and it bled a great deal. I stumbled backwards several steps, hunching over and holding my stomach. I stared at him as he stepped slowly towards me in a circular motion, like a predator taking its time with its prey.

“So,” he said, sounding amused. “Who let you out? That bleeding heart that feeds you?” He chuckled, like he found this all highly amusing. I stood standing there, holding my wound and saying nothing. I watched his every move as he circled me.

“Are you going to just stand there panting like a whore or are you going to come at me already? I’m tired of you, you’ve outlived your value.”

I snarled at him then. I was sick and tired of hearing him tell me how worthless I was and that the only thing I was good for was to be used and tossed aside.

I bent down and picked up the sword in the dirt at my feet, adrenaline keeping the pain of my wound from hurting very much. I looked down at it, covered in blood, grit and dirt, the metal shining with the light of the many spreading fires behind me. Anger the likes of which I had never known in my life welled up inside me as I heard the fires blazing behind me. My grip tightened on the sword handle and I slowly lifted my face to look at the Roman. He was no more than a cruel, pitiful human.

He laughed at me, and my anger sparked heavy. I was against him, my stolen sword through his gut almost before I knew it, and certainly before he did. A dark, thoroughly satisfied smirk spread across my face at the look of surprise on his now slightly wrinkled face.

“You are the one who is worthless.” I said to him in a low, dark voice before I yanked the sword up, cutting through the bottom of his rib cage so that he was slit from navel all the way up through his heart. I pulled the sword slowly from his body as his blood got on my hands, arms and my brother’s cloak that I was wearing.

Letting him drop, I looked down at him, dying at my feet. I stepped over him and stopped walking just outside the gate, looking back at the chaos and destruction that I had wrought. Rome would remember me. I walked away, limping only slightly, as the pain from my wound was now kicking in.

In the dark, smoke filled light of dawn, I met my brother by the ridge where he had a horse waiting for me. I told him nothing of my wound or how I’d gotten it and said nothing as I swung painfully up into the saddle of my horse. The magnificent black stallion, my brother said, was given to him when the fires started by the prison for him to get out of the city.

I listened to him speak, describing the male in a tattered cloak, having an odd sort of accent, and not seeming to care that the entire city was going up in flames. I found this odd as my brother swung up into his horse beside me.

Something clicked in my head and I looked around as my brother started off at a trot, away from the carnage that I had created. I heard a snorting sound and looked up to the top of the ridge. Sitting on a horse, wrapped in a tattered brown cloak, was that same un-aging male that had been my caretaker.

I stared up at him, knowing that it would be useless to try and kill him, but also not entirely wanting to. I knew that the horse I sat on was his while he stared back down at me. He gave a single nod in acknowledgment, before turning his horse and riding away from the edge of the ridge. I watched him go, even after he’d disappeared, as there was something highly familiar, but my brother calling my name broke my train of thought. I kicked the male’s horse, and set off to catch up to my brother who waited for me a little way ahead.

We set off together finally, and I didn’t look back at the city that had destroyed everything for me. I was free, and I would never go back.