Jere had never experienced hunger to this extent. His belly gnawed at him, begging for anything. He had always been a voracious eater and was being punished for it now. At times the pain became so intense he had to massage his belly or punch the wall. At first, he tried to distract himself by chewing the leather of one of the water pouches. He did this for at least a moon, before taking the leap to eating the leather itself once he finished the remaining water. He had had worse-tasting yak jerky before, though that was hardly a compliment.
After a day of particularly bad shitting, Jere decided to stick with chewing the pouch into a tough paste. It passed the time, but his hunger was omnipresent.
Despite these distractions, Jere pursued his objectives. It was hard to tell when day or night began, but it didn’t matter. Jere spent his time filing away at the iron bars. After some trial and error, Jere perfected his maneuvers to file the most iron without breaking his rope strands. Taking the time to rub sand into the rope on occasion helped build friction between it and the bars. Eventually, the rope would smooth and become useless, but it took far longer to do that than break the strands altogether. The monotony of the task was a burden, and the strain the filing took on his hands made him stop multiple times.
Other than his filings, Jere was left only with meditation. Hunger and the screams made this impossible at first. He found himself punching walls more than ever, frustrated by his lack of progress in all manners. His thoughts became entranced by memories of pork sausage and cured ham and flatbread and camel fat and lime-berries.
In a brief moment of lucidity, Jere ripped off the lower portion of his tunic and wrapped it around his head. It didn’t completely drown out the screams and the crying, but it was better than pressing his hands against his ears. At the rare times he became hyper-focused on his activity, Jere rarely forgot he was even sharing the cells with monsters.
With the dulled noises, Jere found himself meditating for longer and longer periods. Jere’s mind wandered for minutes, and those minutes became hours. He would focus on the rhythm of his breathing and the feeling of his blood pulsating between his fingers.
Jere tried to imagine places that could relax him. He recalled the white forests of the south that stretched beyond Port Algrid until they faded away into the Frey, that great frozen tundra that marked the southern border of Ostior. He imagined long days in the crows' nest, tasting the salty air of the Kolm Sea. When he was particularly desperate, he even imagined the blaze of the sun on his skin when he leaned against the outer walls of Ash.
Sometimes it helped pass the time. Sometimes the thoughts stuck with him until he slept, only to be awoken by another frightening image of Malefica. But more often than not the pangs of hunger interrupted his thoughts.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He craved the outside. If he ever escaped, he made a vow to never again have a roof over his head.
As the moons rolled on, Jere was often overcome with weakness. The task of filing his iron bars became more and more difficult. The very act of standing was tiresome. He made attempts to keep up his strength with his usual calisthenic routine of push-ups and wall sits, but it made his growing thirst unbearable. He eventually accepted that he had limited energy and he couldn’t afford to waste any of it.
Progress on the window stalled. The filings became sloppy. The prepared ropes were breaking more often than before.
Suddenly Jere found himself with only ten strands left. He had barely filed through half of the six bars.
Thoughts started to creep in again. "What's the point? Why keep going?"
Jere had no family. Everyone he ever loved abandoned him long before. The few Ashfolk he liked or tolerated were likely dead. He had nothing to live for. Where could he even go? He was a slave. He had no home, and he knew nothing of the Eivettä outside of Ash. Surely there would be something driving him more than the simple desire to live.
Perhaps this was how the gods offered mercy. By allowing Jere to die here.
"Penzer?" Jere yelled. There was no response, at least one that he could hear through the agitated screamers. Jere kept hoping for anything, even a clap would have sufficed. Just something to remind him that he wasn't alone.
But he was.
As Jere sat in the corner of his cell, he recalled the face of Boah. How haughty and self-assured he appeared. He was the reason Jere was in the cells. Boah was the one who condemned him. Boah was the reason why he couldn't leave. He was the source of all his misfortune, Jere had tried to make the most of his position, but Boah crushed him at every turn. He had made Jere into his plaything.
“'Perhaps you should keep your hands to yourself then, slave.'” Those were Boah’s final words to him.
If Jere ever got out of here, he would kill Boah. Make him suffer. Jere would crawl his way to Ash Manor if he had to and gouge out his eyes. If he caught Boah in the crowd making another long-winded speech, Jere would fight his way through and open his belly with a spear and twirl his intestines. He would hang him from the ancient temple with his jeweled necklaces for the entire town to see as he suffocated under his own weight in gold.
Suddenly, Jere wasn't so tired. He moved back to bars and began filing again.
This is how Jere would meditate from then on. After he finished sawing away iron, he would envision revenge. Jere thought of little else. If his hands ached, he would think of Boah. Soon his hands became calloused. When he felt weak and without energy, he would think of Boah. He then pushed through even the deepest of pains. When he struggled to sleep through the muffled screams, he lulled himself into a daze by the imagined sufferings of the Big Man for the Little People. Sleep no longer concerned him. It was a thought that carried him through the screaming and the pain and the hunger.