Comparably, it was also much worse than…
Abrial paled.
Much worse than her room at the house.
Her throat tightened. Her fists curled. A moment ago, the walls had seemed far enough. Now, they pressed in on her, sucking away her breath like they were slowly growing closer.
Breathe. This is not the house. This is the imperial palace. You aren’t trapped here…
Abrial’s eyes shot open. No, that wasn’t right. She was trapped here! This was basically a cell with a locked door, surrounded by guards. Comparably, that was even worse than being at the house! Almost.
Thinking of that, her heart quickly began pounding in her ears. She needed to calm down before she got racked with panic or something else. Swiftly, Abrial arranged herself in a meditative position and regulated her breathing.
Imagine a river flowing by. In that river, you are a steady stone. Your thoughts are flowing by, passing on from you…
From the outside, she sat there until the sun rose several degrees higher in the sky, looking perfectly tranquil and composed, like some monk who had been doing this for decades. On the inside, her mind was on fire, smokestacks sprouting up everywhere as she tried to douse them with steady breathing.
Breathe, Abrial. Breathe.
At last, her heart rate slowed enough that it wasn’t pounding in her ears anymore, and her chest loosened enough that it didn’t hurt. Abrial opened her eyes.
Straightaway, she stood up and began sprinting around the small room like a madwoman. She skidded at each corner and turned at the speed of light, racing forward then skidding and turning again, and again, like a dizzying top spinning so quickly it seemed to blur. If she was being reminded of confinement in the house by this place, you better believe she was going to whip out the same coping techniques: namely, in this case, exercising like a demon.
A sharp knock came on the door, followed by a grumpy, booming voice.
“Hey! You! What’s going on in there? Quiet down!”
“I’m allowed to exercise! Leave me alone!” Abrial hollered back, nearly crashing into the door.
“You—!” The door flung open furiously, and a large, burly guard with a flaming red face and flashing eyes was revealed to be standing behind it. “Who do you think you are, to talk to one of the Emperor’s interior palace guards like that? You’re a political prisoner, and a woman! You can’t — ???!”
He choked, seeing Abrial sprinting around the room as fast as a dragon hurtles through the clouds in legends.
“...You!!! You, what are you doing?! Stop running! No exercise allowed, I’m deciding it right now! It’s a new rule! You’d better stop, or you’ll regret it!”
Abrial stuck out her tongue and ran even faster, pumping her arms and legs as the adrenaline of exertion coursed through her veins, smashing those thoughts of the house away.
“I’m not a political prisoner, and if I want to run, I’ll run! Try and stop me if you care so much!”
“You—! Argh!” Enraged, the guard reached out to grab her arm as she passed by. But before he knew what was happening, the world turned upside-down and, wham! His back was slammed against the ground, and he was staring bulge-eyed up at the ceiling. Blood sprayed from his lips in a shocked cough.
“Haha!” Abrial gleefully granted him a knife hand to the side of the neck, and the guard was knocked completely out cold. She must have broken a few ribs at least — awesome! It seemed even the Emperor’s interior palace guards were pretty easy to beat, heh. Were his standards just that low? She scavenged his armor for a sword, then, finding one, she drew it and twirled it easily.
“Heavy and clunky, but it’ll do.”
Crashing, pounding footsteps hurried toward the open door. In front of it appeared one burly guard, and then another, and another. At least ten had come running just at the noise, without even a cry for help! Abrial grinned, sword gleaming in her hand. Great! More people to fight. A great opportunity to challenge herself to bring down one person per strike!
She crouched, lithe as a jaguar, poised to strike. Just the entertained look in her eye made some of the guards standing there gulp and shake in their boots. But the guard in front gruffly ordered,
“Stay where you are, guards! Don’t step into the room! She can’t hurt you.”
Ha! What does he think I am, a weak little kid? Does he think I can’t use a sword? What a silly man — !
As Abrial lunged forward and her body reached the doorframe, a familiar sensation shocked through her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. Her blood seemed to boil and sear in an instant, filled with painful sparks, and she was suddenly a rag doll again — how many times today did she have to be turned into a rag doll?! — and was flying backward into the room so hard that she hit the opposite wall with a painful crack and slid down it limply.
“Urgh…”
What an irritating, frustrating, humiliating start to her stay at the Emperor’s palace.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
----------------------------------------
After that, everyone was a thousand times more wary of this crazy young woman who was being kept in the political-prisoner-to-be-interrogated quarters of the Imperial Huo Palace. Dozens more guards were stationed there, with ten standing outside her door and twenty outside the window at all times, even though there was no way she could break the shocking spells enveloping the door and window. That unconscious guard’s body was dragged out while Abrial lay recovering from the shock, and he was promptly sent to the guard’s infirmary with five broken ribs.
Rumors about Abrial began to spread around the palace:
“Have you heard about that female political prisoner?”
“The crazy one who beat up a guard within an hour? Of course!”
“I heard she killed the guard! BAM, like that! No weapons!”
“Hmph! You all have only heard the mild rumors. I heard she’s a magician who drinks blood, and she slit the throats of ten guards and sucked their blood dry!”
“No way! That’s terrible! How exciting!”
Oblivious to these rumors, Abrial sat meditating in her bare, confining room, like someone who had just decided all of a sudden to become a monk and seclude herself from the world. Every once in a while, a guard would half-nervously and half-roughly shout through the door,
“Prisoner! Are you still in there?”
To which Abrial’s eyes would shoot open and she would fling the small wooden table at the door with all her might in answer, causing the poor guard on the other side to shriek and run away, at least satisfied that she was still inside.
Around the time the sun was lowering from its highest point, a brisk knock came on the door. Directly after, there was a series of clicking sounds, and a tray of food was pushed through a steel flap in the door, which was quickly and frantically closed as soon as the tray was fully inside.
The food wasn’t anything special, but it wasn’t terrible: a bowl of noodles and scallions in watery soup, and a cup of lukewarm barley tea. Grumpily, Abrial thought that,compared to usual imperial food, this must basically be horse poop. But her stomach grumbled hungrily, so she ate it anyways.
Afterward, she picked up the plate and studied it for some time, her eyes sparkling with interest. Though the plate was plain white ceramic, around the edge there was a thin line of faded bronze. She held it up to the light and turned it, admiring the way that it flashed and glowed.
Ha, how pretty. It reminds me of…
Abrial blushed.
It reminded her of Finley’s soft honey hair, which she always carefully plaited into two braids each morning. Abrial had only just recently noticed that when she let it down at night, it flowed like rivers of amber over her round pillow. She had wanted to reach out and touch it so badly…
“Hey! Not the time for that. That’s silly!” Abrial scolded herself. Partially because she was in a tough situation and it really wasn’t the time to be poring over how lovely Finley’s hair was, and also partially because, where did that kind of thought even come from?! No way could she let herself think like that! If Finley found out…Abrial didn’t want to think about that. If she kept thinking like this, something might just slip someday, because whatever Abrial thought, she tended to say. So, she had to get ahold of her thoughts and shut them up…
Ah, that reminded her of another thing. If she couldn’t escape this room, then she needed to think of how to escape once she’d been let out of it. Or of a way to send a message back to camp, telling Finley not to come inside the capital.
Abrial meditated on this for hours, sitting still longer than she ever had in her entire life — longer than she had ever imagined she would in her entire life — but came up empty-handed. She didn’t know how to do any magic besides basic healing; she couldn’t perform natural magic, and shadow magic would wreck her body. So, she most definitely didn’t have the ability or knowledge to send a secret message out, and there were no special message-sending birds or something around that she could just grab and send away. No paper or ink to write with in the first place, either. Sigh. Abrial slumped against the wall, the constant frustration finally getting to her.
The sun was already beginning to set by now. Abrial, feeling more tired than she had since she could remember, watched it set with half-lidded eyes. Colors washed over her face, gleaming in her obsidian eyes like gems. Sitting there, she looked like some sort of goddess, peacefully resting and awash with gold and scarlet light.
Resolving woozily to find some kind of escape tomorrow after seeing the Emperor, Abrial drifted off to sleep.
----------------------------------------
Her dreams were disorganized and disorienting.
She dreamt that Finley was pressing her to the ground, her body digging into Abrial’s.
“Don’t move,” Finley ordered firmly. Abrial could barely bear the heat in her body, but she grabbed Finley’s shoulders.
“Listen, Finley — you can’t come to rescue me. The imperial capital is too well-guarded. I promise I’ll find a way to get out of here, okay? Just don’t come!”
“Don’t go anywhere,” Finley said sharply, as though Abrial hadn’t said anything at all. “Don’t move. We’ll come for you. Just stay alive.”
“No! You can’t! Don’t come! Stay at camp!”
A soft, warm sensation suddenly alighted on Abrial’s lips. Her eyes widened as a sweet taste filled her mouth, like honey mixed with lavender. Heat exploded across her face and stomach, overwhelming her.
The next moment, Finley was gone, and Abrial was alone in a dark, dank, moldy and tiny room. This was what a prison room should look like. She was sitting in some kind of chair, restrained with layer upon layer of chains, and her body hurt all over, burning in some places, stinging in others, and throbbing in yet others.
A low chuckle came from behind her, sending a feverish shiver down her spine. At once, a searing sensation so painful that her eyes overflowed with tears burned into that spot behind her right ear. Strings of lightning-like pain stabbed all over her body. She screamed, feeling torn apart at the seams, while the low chuckle turned into a roar of laughter. Then everything was scarlet, red as blood, and there was so much red everywhere that Abrial was swimming in it, she was splashing through it with her hands and sobbing, laughing and inhaling it like a rare, terrible wine, and —
Gasp!
Abrial gasped awake.
The thin blanket was clenched so tightly in her hands that it had begun to tear. Her hard bed was soaked in a pool of sweat.
For a moment, she sat there, gasping and wheezing, sweat pouring down her neck.
After some time, she shakily reached for the hair tie she had pulled off earlier. She brought it close, pressing it to her chest and rubbing the small golden bead over and over, feeling the grooves of the lotus on her skin.
Once she had calmed down enough to breathe properly, Abrial threw off the bedcovers and began to whirl around the room like a silent panther, punching and slicing, kicking and ducking. That was what she did until dawn: practiced fighting the air until sweat ran down her back in rivers and her whole body tingled from overexertion.