… forgotten and abandoned, left rot in a cell like the worthless, unloved bastard I am. Why? It didn’t matter. I deserved this. Deserved the gray stones, cold bars, stale bread, and regular beatings and shoutings at. All dreams turned nightmares. All the rats and pain, emptiness of the stomach and hoarse throat. All hair dropped out, teeth too frail to eat, I deserved it all.

Bhalil didn’t laugh with me, no, he mocked me with every grin and cackle. The elf despised me, played me like the pitiable critter I am. There’s no Vera for me, of course there isn’t. How stupid I could have been to even consider it. This little pathetic me worthy of love and friendship? How foolish of me, naive, to even consider it as a possibility. No, these days, months I’ve been here under Eden is where I justly belong. To blame anyone but me, the city, Bhalil or the figure who pushed me, would have been absurd. This is all my own doing.

Huddled in a corner, anxious to the core of what was to come, I stared at the same crack on the stone as I always did, steps echoing throughout the dungeon. The time had come again, I knew it, as no prisoner had any strength to walk around on their own, the few that were still alive, and if they did, the shackles around our legs made sure not for long.

“You again,” I mumbled to myself after hearing the familiar heavy breathing coming from behind the bars. There were two torturers that rotated, the obese one with breathing problems being very officious and inventive.

Click went the lock and creaking like a burning pig the cell door opened. Kick here and a punch there, a rib broken or maybe it was already. After the tenth time the physical pain becomes irrelevant. Not satisfied with my unresponsiveness, the fat jailor brought something new with him usually, last time my left thumb bearing the brunt of his rage.

Grabbed by the throat and pulled as far as my chains allowed, the jailor growled with a grimace, his orcen tusks almost piercing my lower jaw. I could barely breathe from his grip and rotten breath. This time he didn’t have any tools with him, a change to the usual pattern as he really seemed to enjoy his equipment. His grottal laughter got louder and louder, and at last I saw his new plan. Saw it very well as his long, cracked and dirty fingernails were getting closer and closer to my eyes.

I tried to fight back, fear taking over and tears flowing free, every inch of me shaking violently. It was futile. As fast as the fear overtook me, it vanished. As the man’s nails scraped away my eyelid, it hit me -- I had nothing to be afraid of. If I died, well, that was it, something I decided to bring upon myself once before, and then again if I lived, what would I do with my sight anyways other than to stare at the same crevice every waking moment of my life. I couldn’t help but to laugh, laugh as my eyeball got ripped out, every part of me in immense agony. Laughed as the fat jailor stopped, laughed as he left defeated, laughed and laughed and laughed until I fell asleep, for truly in that moment I saw that it didn’t matter -- that nothing mattered at all. Absolutely nothing.

The anxiety before the beatings, the fear of what was to come during, all of those had disappeared and every time I laughed. There was something so absurd in all of it, the suffering and pain I had suffered in my own hands and now this. Perhaps it was that I stopped clinging to life, or that at last truly had nothing, but everything had changed.

Again the familiar footsteps echoed, this time with not as much gusto. Had the fat jailor lost his passion, I thought, but soon after a cavalcade of others could be heard walking in the dungeon. I tried to stand up to have a better look of what was going on down the corridor, but my arms failed to lift me up and I found myself coughing up copious amounts of blood once more. Dried and fresh blood had painted me from head to toe.

Behind the fat jailor came two guards wearing platemail suits and draped in a crimson tabard with a circular insignia on it, and after them, a stern looking elf. The elf wore and similarly crimson, velvety robe covered in symmetrical symbols creating the same insignia that the guards had and adorned a golden circlet over his gray hair and a plethora of other jewelry I barely saw with my one working eye. I watched him closely as he walked next to bars and spoke something to the others. After the jailor responded, the elf smiled and took a step backwards, took a deep purple sphere from his pocket and began moving his other hand in odd formations.

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“This should make things easier,” the elf said with a clear and calm tone. The elf said… and I understood! He smiled as soon as he saw a my curious expression. “Refreshing, I see. Now, I will ask you questions and if you lie or decieve me, I will kill you -- although that does not seem bother you. Yes?”

I nodded.

“Speak up child, I can understand you as you do me,” the elf said with a stern face.

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. I saw peculiar garments on a nobleman, I pressed him on the matter and what was revealed to me led me here. You are held captive on the accusation of being a foreign spy. That is not true now is, and if it were, you are from a far away continent forgotten to time. I doubt it, but have witnessed far more curious matters as well. So, child, should I ask who are you or what are you?”

“I have no idea what to answer,” I said honestly, “a human, maybe, from somewhere far, far away.”

The elf put his hands together in front of his face and fell silent for a while, staring me down with his hazy, gray eyes. “Accepted,” he said as he turned away, “take the child to Meister Sorenn and brand him.”

The elf began to walk away, but the jailor stopped him by yelling something unintelligible. The guards drew their blades, making the previously tall standing orcish jailor bend his back.

“As I thought,” the elf said and walked away.

Before I knew it, my shackles had been taken off and one of the guards hoisted me on his shoulders, making me puke blood all over him and, in the next few steps, faint and…

… and there she was, as beautiful as always, Vera. Beckoning for me to come back home, to hug her as hard as I could and feel her warmth embrace me. Oh how I ran to her, to those long brown locks and big brown eyes, to that dainty and delicate face, to those loving hands, couldn’t wait for her petite figure to press against mine. And then it hit me, an immense warmth surged throughout my body and weird words bounced around in the air… and a face, chiseled face of a blonde man with gleaming yellow eyes. Just for a second there was someone else, someone not Vera, a mirage. I shrugged it off and kept on hugging with all my might. Went for a kiss on Vera’s little lips and…

God it hurt! Opening my eye I saw a long metal rod getting pressed into my right pec, burning away flesh and leaving an awful smell in the air. The same guard that hoisted me onto his shoulders was the culprit, and the only other figure I saw in the seemingly small room was a pale elven man with bright red hair and eyes to match wearing what looked like identical robes to the elf I saw in the dungeon.

Around me were empty beds, a dozen or so, and a chandelier burning with fires that seemed to have minds of their own. Scarlet banners holding the same round insignia were the only things decorating otherwise sleek, marble-like walls. Looking closely at the insignia on the elf’s robes, it had as the circle two uneven strokes, other coming to an end at the top and the other at the bottom, and in the middle was a strange eye looking upwards. Before I had an chance to explore the eye any further, the red haired elf stuck his face in front of mine and said something, after which he shaked his head in frustration. He waved his hand in the air in a familiar manner and spoke in an effeminate voice: “Didn’t even ask you for a name! You do have have, right, where ever you came from.”

“Jay.”

“You can leave now, go, hush, be on your way,” the elf said to the guard, shooing him off. “Master made no sense whatsoever, not in the slightest! Typical. Regardless, Jay, I am apprentice Galel Ikash and you are a slave. Not really, no, but that is what I advice you to consider yourself as, for the time being anyways. A plaything more like, but where is the difference! And to this plaything I say -- welcome, I have been charged of putting you to use, for now.”