She stunk. She smelled like a dying horse, which she was about to be if she didn’t eat soon. She’d been surviving off one meal a day for the past four days. Honestly, the world meal was too extravagant when describing the gruel that she had to force herself to eat. She’d slept most of the time. She didn’t know if that was because she was depressed, starved, bored, or a combination of all three. Probably a combination of all three. Not to mention her only company was in a cell across from her and the only thing he wanted to talk about was the very person she missed the most. His daughter Viri.
She expected to be making her way to the great pasture in the sky after Alicantas snapped her fingers, but instead, she was magically teleported to this shit hole that Anzel informed her was an underground prison housed under a large mountain. Fucking hooray. Her only way out of this crap bucket was Viri, and apparently, Anzel had a way to contact her, but it could only work while she was sleeping, and it apparently didn’t work if she was too exhausted to dream. He’s a real winner when it comes to Asai to be locked underground with. Well, it could be worse. Alicantas could’ve come down to enact whatever sick plan she had, but luckily, she was nowhere to be found yet. According to Anzel, Alicantas’ original plan was most likely to fuck with her memory and glamour her to tell Viri’s mother and everyone else that she died in some tragic accident in the forest. Gwinera knew about the Asai and where Viri was headed, and Alicantas couldn’t have any loose ends that could cause trouble for her. But, according to whispers they heard from the guards, Viri survived and was saved by another one of these damned siblings, so Alicantas is tied up with that whole situation now and putting those initial plans for her on hold. Maybe she’d forget she even existed and leave her down here to continue to rot.
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She was supposed to be heading home to start planning a wedding. Instead, she was in a dusty cell and her fiancé and family were probably losing their minds by now. She was supposed to be with Viri, making kissy faces whenever Xylas was around and not paying attention. Instead, they were both gone, one more permanently than the other. She couldn’t say the ‘d’ word yet. She still woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming about his body disintegrating into nothing and watching Viri shut down. Viri was still shut down because Anzel’s nighttime, one-way call with his stupid water magic hadn’t worked yet. She needed to be free. But more than anything, she needed to know that Viri was okay. She couldn’t do that if she couldn’t contact her. And she couldn’t continue to tell Anzel stories about her when it killed her to not know if she was even still alive. No matter how much his face lit up at the mention of her name.
The hour came when he suspected Viri would be asleep and he cast a puddle from the water bowl they gave them. That’s right – water bowl. Like they were fucking dogs. He spoke into the water and threw it onto the floor in Alyson’s cell so that she could try to contact Viri. She was supposed to stare into it like some creep until an image of Viri appeared.
She stared for about twenty minutes and was about to count the night as another failure until the water shimmered and an image of Viri in a silk nightgown came into view. Tears began falling down her face so quickly that she had to hurry and stop them from hitting the puddle out of fear that it might disrupt the connection. Anzel told her that she should be able to speak to Viri now that Viri had her full powers. She took a breath to steady herself. She was shaking so hard with relief that she might topple over. Viri stared at her with confusion at first. Anzel had warned her that only her eyes would show, which was even creepier than her staring into the water, but whatever. She saw recognition come across Viri’s face and her eyes filled with tears as she whispered, “Alyson?” Alyson caught her tears again as she smiled widely and whispered, “Hi Vi-vi.”