Refragmentz: Souls of Memory

Chapter 6- The Cell

The cell in the lower camp was small, cold, and smelled of old straw. There was only one window with iron bars, one wooden bench, and one bucket of water. Commander Hale had said that he did not have a second cell for Vexa, and I knew that was only half true. The other half was that we could not be separated, and he had seen that with his own eyes.

Vexa sat on the bench with her knees pulled up, and I sat on the floor on the other side of the cell. We did not talk for a long time. The only sound was the guards walking outside in the corridor.

A guard opened the small window of the door and pushed two bowls of soup inside. He did not say anything and walked away quickly, as if he was afraid to look at Vexa for too long.

I picked up my bowl and started eating. The soup was thin and the bread was hard, but I was hungry, so I did not complain. Vexa only stared at hers.

"Are you not going to eat?" I asked.

"Humans put poison in the food of prisoners," she said that with a suspicious look.

"If they wanted to kill us, they would not need poison. They already have the shackles." I pushed my own bowl toward her. "Here, you take mine and I will eat yours. If I die, you will know."

She looked at me for a long moment, as if I was crazy. Then she took my bowl and tasted the soup with the tip of the spoon. Her eyes widened a little.

"It is warm," she said quietly.

"That is what soup is supposed to be."

"In the demon capital, we eat raw meat most of the time." She took another spoon, and then another. I think she finished the whole bowl in less than a minute, and she pretended not to notice that I was smiling at her.

"So," Vexa said at last, "what is your plan, Chase?"

"I do not have one," I said honestly.

"You do not have a plan, and yet you surrendered to your enemy?"

"If I fought, many people would have died. I did not want that." I leaned my back against the wall. "Besides, I wanted to know how the Radiant Order treats prisoners."

"And what do you think?"

"I think it is better than how your army treats the dead."

She was quiet for a moment. I thought she was angry, but then she let out a short laugh, a very small one. I think it was the first time I heard her laugh. It did not sound like Selene's laugh at all, and yet something in my chest still tightened.

"You are strange," she said. "Most humans beg or curse when they are locked up."

"Most demons attack or run away when they are tied up," I said back. "You are strange too."

She looked down and played with the iron shackle on her wrist. "I cannot attack you, and I cannot run away. What else is there to do?"

I asked her about the Demon Lord. At first she did not want to answer, but after some time, she started to talk. She said that the Demon Lord's name was Zarath, and that he had ruled the northern lands for as long as she could remember. He had a Left Wing and a Right Wing, led by the two strongest commanders. She and Lyssara had been rivals since the first day they were chosen.

"The first day you were chosen?" I asked. "What about before that?"

"Before that?" She frowned, as if she had never been asked such a question. "I do not remember. My first memory is waking up in the demon capital when I was about seven years old. The Demon Lord said that I was a gift from the dark. That I was born from nothing."

I stopped breathing for a moment. Born from nothing... I did not know what that meant, but I knew that it was not a normal way to be born.

"And Lyssara?" I asked carefully.

"The same," Vexa said. "She also woke up with no memories. We were the only two like that. That is why the Demon Lord favored us both, and why she hated me. There could only be one favorite."

Both of them woke up with no memories. I said nothing to her, but my mind was spinning. I wanted to tell her about Selene and the gods, but I did not know how she would react. I did not want to scare her.

"Why do you ask these things?" Vexa said that as she looked at me suspiciously. "You keep staring at me as if I am someone else."

"Sorry," I said. "It is just that you remind me of someone."

"Your woman? The one you called Selene?"

"Yes." I did not try to hide it. "She was my wife. She died a long time ago."

Vexa did not say anything for a while. Then she said quietly, "I am sorry." She said it in a clumsy way, as if she had never said those words to anyone before. "But I am not her, Chase."

"I know," I said. "I know you are not."

"Chase," Vexa said after a while, in a lower voice. "What was it like, being a hero?"

I was surprised by the question. "How did you know that I was a hero?"

"You fight like one. And you speak like someone who has lost many things." She hugged her knees. "I have fought many knights, but none of them held back their swords the way you did. So I think you must have been someone important once."

I leaned my head against the cold wall and thought about it for a while. "It was tiring," I said at last. "People cheered when I won, but no one asked me whether I wanted to fight. I did it because someone had to. The only thing I really wanted was a small house, a quiet life, and her beside me."

"And did you get that?"

"For a little while," I said. "Then the world ended."

Vexa did not reply to that. She only looked at me with a strange expression, and for the first time, I felt that she was trying to understand me, instead of just trying to hate me.

The night grew deeper, and the guards outside changed their shift. I closed my eyes and tried to rest, but I could not sleep. I kept thinking about Lyssara's voice, and about the two warm flames that I had felt in my chest.

Then I heard a very faint sound from far away. It was a low horn, the kind that the demon army used to signal an attack.

Vexa raised her head at once. "That is the Right Wing's war horn."

The next moment, an explosion shook the whole camp, and the walls of the cell began to tremble...