Eolh talked all night. He started with his first memories in the streets of Lowtown - and told her everything. He told her about life, before the gate from Cyre first opened. Before they conquered the Cauldron.

He told her about his old crew. And how they fought together.

How they died together, while he hid in the streets.

He kept talking, even when his body ached, and he started to shiver. He used the empty soup bowl to get water by holding it up to the tiny window in the corner of his cell, letting it fill with rain.

Then, Eolh tried to tell her about the human. A fledgling, uncovered in the darkest places in his world. Asleep, in a cocoon of ice. So strange. How the old, human tower glowed when it felt his presence.

Poire was nothing like the priests said he would be. He was naive. Desperate to find his people, no matter what Eolh told him. Always found himself running headlong into trouble.

And Eolh told her how, no matter what he did, he always kept trying.

“He saved us, Agraneia. Even me.”

And when he finished, the rain had cooled to a gentle drizzle. All the frogs had gone quiet. Nothing stirred.

There was a grunt from Agraneia’s cell. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s it?’ He’s a living human being, Agraneia”

“The gods are dead.”

“You’re the ones who worship your Emperor. How can you say that?”

A snort of derision from the other cell. “I’m done talking to a liar.”

He didn’t know why he was trying so hard with her. With a cyran, for that matter. Why did it matter if she believed him? He could find another way to escape without her help…

...but there was something wrong with her that he couldn’t leave alone. Something broken, in the most familiar way.

Eolh ground his beak in frustration. He pushed himself off the floor, wincing as the pain cut into his gut. It felt like one of his ribs was trying to pierce his flesh. He grabbed the bars, exhaling heavily as he pulled himself up, and shoved his beak through the gap.

“I know it doesn’t sound real. I know what I sound like. I never believed in them, either. I still don’t, not as gods. But they are real. And he’s something like I’ve never seen before.”

“What do you want, xeno?”

“Same as you. I want to get out of here.”

“Who says I want to get out of here?”

Eolh blinked.

The realization came in like the tide. Each new wave adding to his understanding.

So, that’s how it is.

It’s inside her. She hates herself.

He could still feel the scars of his own darkness. A black pit, that had taken root in his heart. Something that needed to be dug out.

This is going to hurt.

“You think you deserve this, don’t you?” Eolh said softly. “You think because you lived - because you killed them and they died - that you were always wrong. You’re guilty. You think all of this is your fault.”

“No.” She said, “I know it’s my fault.”

“You think you could have stopped it. You can’t stop thinking about all the ways you could have stopped it. What if you hadn’t pulled the trigger? What if you had been slower, or worse at your job? Why didn’t you try harder to let them go, right? It never stops.”

“Be quiet.”

“You can’t block it out, Agraniea. You can run from it. You can try to drown it out. But it’s always there. And it never stops.”

Something smashed against the far wall of the cell. Her bowl lay in fragments. He could hear her deep, labored breathing. Ready to lash out. Stuck. Frustrated.

Trapped.

But Eolh didn’t stop. He was too deep into his own darkness.

“I was there, too,” He said. “In the sewers, beneath the Cauldron. I walked down those dark tunnels, with only the eye of a machine to light my way. I went down there to die. Hells, behind me. Hells, before me. The only way to end it was to die. That’s what I thought. That’s what I knew.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He could feel the stones under his talons. Cold and slick, and untouched for ages. He could hear the sounds of the darkness, and the things that lived in the darkness, all around him. Hunting him.

How he had searched the place in his mind where he was supposed to care about his life - and found it empty. Absent.

“And then, I found her. A machine. A living person, inside a metal body, built by the gods themselves. She saved me, Agraneia.”

He swallowed. His mouth was dry from all this talking.

“Whatever happened to you,” Eolh said. And here, he almost stopped himself. Because he couldn’t believe what he was saying to a cyran. “I know how it feels.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

And he knew that feeling too, but he didn’t know what to tell her. Maybe there was nothing else to say.

He had been lost. Only luck, pure, impossible luck had saved him. What could he do?

She was trapped in her own mind. And he couldn’t see a way in to help her.

Eolh eased himself down to the floor, holding on to the bars for support. There was something digging into his lungs, and it was all he could do to breathe.

Gradually, as he lowered himself to the floor, and sat still, it became easier to fill his lungs. And the pain receded.

How am I supposed to get out of here on my own?

He ran through the possibilities, all the plans and escape attempts he had heard of before. But he was so exhausted. Too tired to sleep. How could he do this alone?

The rain was coming down in sheets, blown by a wind that he couldn’t feel. It rattled against the tin roof of the prison, and sprayed in through the window.

Agraneia broke the silence. “I see faces.”

Eolh didn’t know how to answer that.

“What, uh,” he said slowly, “What do they look like?”

“You ever seen a dead body?”

“Oh.”

“Their eyes are stuck open. I see them everywhere. When I’m falling asleep. When I’m in the jungle. People I’ve killed. It wasn’t always like this. Back when I first came here, I could kill. I was good at it. The first few times it felt… good. They were happy with me. Proud of me.”

“What changed?”

“I was on a hill. It was raining, like it was tonight. They didn’t see me. They were sitting in the crook of a tree. Three of them, sitting together. Two of them were young, younger than me, I think. I don’t know, I don’t speak Lassertane. They didn’t have time to fight back. They just watched me, watched me killing them.”

“Are they here now?

A pause. “Yes.”

“Do they talk to you?”

“Dead things don’t talk.”

Of course, they don’t, he thought. My mistake.

They spent the rest of the night in silence. Eolh drifted in and out of sleep, trying to find a painless way to sit up, with his back shoved in the corner of the bars and the wall. A glimpse of light as the small sun began to burn away the clouds.

He heard the scrape of the prison door. Eolh’s eyes shot open, and a trickle of dread ran down his spine. He’s back. He’s going to hit me. He was already cringing, trying to steel himself as he tried to move away from the bars.

But no, it was just the change of the guard. A cyran came in, wearing his military uniform, carrying trays full of bowls in his hands. He dropped them haphazardly on the ground, sloshing their rotten liquid in front of the cells. The guard seemed not to notice the shattered pottery on the floor.

Eolh grabbed his, and finished the soup before the guard left the block. Then, he eyed Agraneia’s. And when her hand slipped through the bars, and pushed the bowl over, he almost gave in to his hunger.

No.

He pushed it back.

“You should eat,” Eolh said.

She said nothing.

“Eating helps. It keeps you grounded. Makes you feel better,” he said, pushing her bowl back.

“I don’t want to feel better.”

I know how you feel, cyran, Eolh thought, as he folded himself back into the corner, and drifted off to sleep. I know exactly how you feel.

But when he woke up, the bowl was empty.

They didn’t talk much after that. The guards brought in a couple of drunk soldiers, who were singing and shouting the whole way in. Eolh didn’t want them to overhear their conversation, so he stayed silent most of the day, just trying to sleep. To heal. But when night came, and the rains followed, he tried again.

“Agraneia. Are you there?”

“Hm.”

“He’s not what you’d expect.”

“Who?”

“The human.”

She grunted, and he could almost picture her rolling her eyes. Just like he had, any time he’d heard the priests who sometimes wandered Lowtown, shouting about sinners and gods.

“No, listen to me. He’s like us. In a lot of ways, he’s just like us. Willful. Naive. Foolish, at times.”

“Doesn’t sound like a god to me.”

“I’ve seen him do it. Perform miracles. There’s no other word for it.”

Eolh put out his hand, the one that was nothing more than a stump, showing it to her.

“Look at it this. It got shot off by some damn machine. I should be dead, but he healed me. With a drop of liquid, he sealed up the wound like it was nothing.”

Agraneia grunted her disbelief.

“You heard about the city, didn’t you?”

“What city?”

“The Cauldron. The capital city of Gaiam. He saved it, the whole city. He brought up this - I don’t know - this shield made of light.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Gods damn it. How have you not heard of it? There were millions of us living there!”

“The Empire’s a big place.”

“It was just like they said he would. The Savior. They talked about him, and I never believed it, but he saved us all. I watched him put his hand to the tower and bring it to life.”

“Okay.”

Eolh looked down at his hand. At his stump.

Neither of them said anything for a long while.

Eolh shook his head. What am I doing? Why am I wasting time on this? If she doesn’t want to believe me, then fine. He pulled himself to standing, using the bars to ease his way up. Started walking around the room, looking for something. Anything.

Cracked flecks of stone, too brittle for anything else. He might be able to slide one of them into the door’s lock, but the only time it opened is when they came to beat him.

Maybe...

“Agraneia, you got anything over there in your cell?”

“Like what?”

“Something sharp. Or metal. Anything.

“So you can get out of here?”

“No,” he snapped, “So I can sit here and feel bad for myself for the rest of my miserable life.”

There was a shuffle over on her side of the room. And then, silence.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

No answer.

“I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m not good at this kind of thing.”

A snort. A laugh?

And then, something dropped just inside his cell. Cold, and hard, and metal. A knife?

Eolh’s beak fell open.

Are you kidding me?

“This whole time!?” he shouted. His voice echoed over the stones.

Down the prison block, someone shouted drunkenly, “Shut up! Some of us are trying to sleep here!”

Eolh clapped his beak shut. Took in a deep breath. And lowered his voice to a quiet whisper, as soft as the rain. “This whole time, you had the gods damned key?”