Emptiness

Chapter 06

Darkness…

Pain beyond words…

Unbearable loneliness…

Threatening silence…

A bare minimum of food to keep him alive…

The foul smell that filled the cubicle he was in...

A box in the corner to use for excretion…

His hands ached as the chains around it weighed him day and night.

His legs bruised with his constant struggle against the chains…

Shouts and yells during the daytime…

Cries and whimpers during the nighttime…

His back ached with the recent lashes he had gotten as punishment.

His eyes had long dried from constantly crying that he could not cry anymore…

His throat hurt with how much he had screamed.

His shoulder was broken...

He was sure that his ribs were too.

His back was burning…

It felt as if someone had lit a fire in his blood as his entire body was aching…

He didn’t know if he would ever recover from the latest beatings he had gotten.

The small space around him was getting to him.

The walls were pressing on him day by day, making his body to not grow despite him suffering from malnutrition.

The cubicle was just a few meters above his head, and if he extended his hands wider, there would only be a few inches between his hand and the walls of the cubicle.

A small place where he was kept inside…

A place on the ground where he had kept clean so that when the guard throws the food inside on the floor, without even giving a plate or something, he can eat the food at the very least cleanly.

He wished there was something sharp so that he could end this miserable life filled with nothing but pain and sorrow.

He doesn’t remember anything about his life except for a few words and how to speak. He felt as if he was caught from somewhere and was being held as a prisoner here.

He didn’t know the age or his name.

He was referred as sixteen….

Sixteen what?

Sixteenth prisoner or just some random number?

He didn’t know.

Sixteen didn’t know….

All he was ordered was to keep quiet and not try to escape from here.

It was not possible to escape here, no matter what. All he could do was struggle against the chains and shout for help, which would earn the guard’s attention and would land him in trouble as his back would be whipped with lashes countless times.

He had done that already.

Sixteen had rebelled for a while until the guard got fed up with him and pulled the chains tight on him, restricting his blood flow, leaving him in pain, and refusing to give him any food.

After the painful week of staying like that, barely holding his life, the chains around him loosened. Sixteen knew how to keep quiet after that.

He could have given in to the darkness and would have embraced the peaceful death, but he didn’t. He always wished for something sharp in the cubicle so he could commit suicide, but sixteen knew deep down that the fire to live one day was ever burning.

That was why he had stopped rebelling, just like the prisoners or people that had gotten kidnapped beside the cubicles near him had also gone silent. Not because they don’t have the will to fight or anything. It was because they all had the will to survive.

Sixteen didn’t know where he was or what country he was in.

The knowledge of words he had, despite him being a child, made him wonder whether he came from a rich family or something.

Sixteen felt deep sorrow at the thought of family and parents. How desperate his mother and father must be, trying to find him.

Sixteen wanted to escape from here and go back to his family.

He had kept quiet, and yet he was beaten today. Granted, his back felt numb after the number of beatings he had gotten today. He was used to it.

Sixteen doesn’t know his age or where he came from.

He can guess that he was of seven or eight years old.

Sixteen wished for some miracle every day despite knowing it was next to impossible.

He always kept quite unlike the prisoners and slept late as there was nothing to do in the morning too.

He stayed late at night, pretending to sleep so that he could hear the guards speak about things during their night shift.

He learned that there was a master to them and that no one knew where this prison was, making him to understand how none would come to rescue them, as this place was being kept secret with the use of Egav.

Sixteen’s worry grew as the days went by with the same pain and torture.

His blood will be taken repeatedly, and pieces of his skin were torn for what Sixteen thought was for some kind of experiment.

Sometimes, something would be given to him mixed with food, which he identified with the smell and taste of it, not that he had any other choice. If he wanted to survive, he had to eat despite his food containing something in it.

And then, sometimes, he will be put under some spell for a longer time and forced to obey, as the guards say.

Sixteen wasn’t a prisoner. He was kidnapped from his home, and who knows for how many months had gone with him being in this cubicle.

No, it wasn’t how many months since he had been here scared him. It was how many years he would stay in this small cubicle that scared him the most.

He cannot take this any longer.

As more and more days went by, he was slowly giving in to the ever-present desire just to die and leave this miserable life.

No….

He cannot…

Sixteen cannot die here like this.

Even if he were to die tomorrow, he wanted to see how the outside world was at least one time before he died.

Sixteen doesn’t want the people who had kidnapped him from his home to win over him like this.

Sixteen didn’t commit any crime.

They were the ones who were wrong.

He wasn’t wrong.

Sixteen wasn’t wrong...

He was not.

He will live…

Sixteen will survive this and will definitely see the outside world before he dies.

Sixteen would escape this hell hole if it were the last thing he had to do before dying.

Sixteen will see the wonderful world outside…

Sixteen will……

.

Iri woke up with a sudden gasp, feeling the terror of walls closing around him and darkness surrounding him.

No….

No…

Not again.

Never again…

He will not succumb to this.

He was not sixteen…

He was not.

He was not sixteen anymore.

He was Iri.

Iri Horns….

Iri Horns….

He tried to breathe in normally, not giving in to the panic threatening to swallow him.

Another memory….

Another memory of the past.

He felt like puking.

This was more depressing than ever.

The memories of him being confined in a cubicle were coming back to him slowly. One by one, it was disturbing his days.

He wasn’t Sixteen…

He was Iri…

God!

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Just like Solum said….

The thought of Solum, his dearest friend, calmed him down somewhat.

God!

He was Iri!

He repeated the sentence for n times, and finally, his breathing pattern became normal.

It has been four years since Solum found him without any memories of his past.

Four years of freedom and happiness, yet, the darkness sometimes scared him even now.

Iri looked around the log cabin and found his fear leaving him when he looked at the light provided by candles and night flowers.

That was why night flowers were his favorite. They brought light into the darkness.

Iri had been blessed with memory loss of his past, and now they are returning back to him, making him go through the painful memories.

Iri didn’t want to upset his friends by sharing about his past as they were already worried sick about him, but he knew they suspected that he didn’t have a great childhood.

Solum would rage around as he would not tolerate that Iri suffered like that.

When the first time a memory came back in his sleep, Iri had convinced himself that it was a nightmare, but as days passed by, he understood that they were his past memories and that he was the one who the guards referred him by the number Sixteen.

After all, no nightmare would be about the same boy all the time. It was him, his emotions, and his feelings.

He would not get memories all the time but, sometimes, he would feel unbearable pain without any wound in his body, making his muscles ache when he got up from nightmares.

Sometimes the fear was so intense that he felt scared even after waking up.

Iri had been Sixteen, held captive somewhere even his memories could not answer him.

Iri thought if his memories came back, he would get to know about his parents and even where he came from, because during the time his friends leave Iri and go to their respective homes, he does get lonely.

But even his memories of the past didn’t help him.

His past self didn’t know anything about his origin as the constant mistreatment of him might have damaged his memories, or he had forgotten everything because of the many vials of concoctions they had given him.

Somehow he will never know about his origin or about his parents.

Iri looked at Solum peacefully sleeping beside him.

Solum…

Black hair…

Black eyes…

Nothing made Solum to stand out. That was what Solum thought.

He might be a lowlife to the society, but to Iri, he was an angel sent from above to save Iri and to give him a happy life.

Iri smiled a lot, laughed a lot compared to the miserable past self in his nightmares.

That was all thanks to Solum because he was the one who saved him.

Iri remembered well of the day Solum had saved him from death.

Iri had been lying on the forest ground, whimpering and shivering under the cold air.

He didn’t know what happened, who he was, or where he was at that time. All he knew was pain from the multiple wounds that were bleeding on his body that day.

Iri had felt like he was standing in front of the death’s door, lying on the forest ground, knowing that it was the end of him.

He wished he had known how he had gotten there or how he came to the middle of nowhere.

If he had miraculously escaped the place he had been held captive, then how did he get to the forest with that many wounds on his body?

If someone had saved him, then why did they leave him in the middle of nowhere?

Why leave him all alone like that?

No matter how much he tried to think about it, Iri never did find any sort of answer for that question.

It didn’t make sense…

Nothing made sense when it came to the question of how he got there.

But no matter how he got to the forest, Iri was really glad that he had been there that day because Solum had found him.

Solum was the one who had taught Iri, who didn’t have many memories about how to speak, how to walk properly.

Solum was the one who had healed him that day, staying with him for over a week until he regained some memories of how to speak and know what little knowledge he had about Vabeo.

Iri didn’t realize the risks Solum had taken to heal him that day as he didn’t have any idea of how the society worked. Solum had risked his life to treat Iri over the few weeks and stayed with him till he could survive for a few days on his own.

Solum was all he had….

Solum was the reason Iri was alive and living well.

Solum had taught him many things.

How to brush your teeth twice…

How to be hygienic and wash hands before eating…

To recognize many plants and their uses…

The nightflowers…

Vabeo.

Della.

Niten.

The light God, Mercos…

How to hunt for small animals….

How to pick a ripened fruit among many fruits on trees...

How to avoid venomous plants…

To save himself from predators.

How to lay traps around his tent...

How to make a fire.

How to stay hidden…

How to heal his cuts…

How to meditate...

How to keep his body healthy...

How to hunt and skin the animal before roasting it.

How to properly cook the meat before eating it.

To pick berries from the bushes…

Medicinal plants…

Herbs to enhance the taste of food…

How to speak…

How to walk…

Egav…

The tales and rumors Solum hears in his village.

How to enjoy the nature around them…

How to wash clothes and how to keep them dry…

Everything….

Solum had taught him things like a mother does, and for that, Iri loved Solum. No one can get a friend like Solum, who does a lot of things for Iri but never asks anything in return.

Iri….

Iri was the name Solum had given him.

It was the greatest gift to Iri….

Iri….

The name meant the world to him.

Solum had explained to him of how Iri meant light and how Iri was a light among the darkness of the world.

Tears had leaked through his eyes that day, trailing his cheeks, and he had hugged Solum when he named Iri.

Such a meaningful name, for some reason, had evoked so many emotions in him that day.

At first, Solum had brought waste clothes to make a camp for Iri, but over the months, it had started having holes and became a pain to stay under during the rainy season.

Solum and Iri learned the lesson to not stay in caves as the bears and predators come inside often.

One day, they had been playing near a pond, Solum teaching him how to catch fish. There he met a boy with caramel hair and brown eyes, curious to find them.

Iri had hidden behind Solum and glared at the new person.

A year after Solum had rescued him and asked him to stay in the forest, they had met Mico.

Iri and Solum had not been very trusting towards Mico.

They had just made him leave from there when they first met Mico. Solum had been very protective of Iri at that time, refusing to let Mico come near him. Solum doesn’t like outsiders just as much as Iri did.

Mico was as stubborn as a bull.

He had kept coming back, bringing food, even treating Solum, who had got injured while saving Iri from a bear. They had all managed to escape that day and had become friends after that, even as Mico was the one who saved Solum that day when Solum had rushed in to distract the bear, asking Iri to run away.

What did Solum think? That Iri would run away without him?

Impossible.

Mico had saved them that day, and Iri could never hate a person who saved Solum.

Iri had been afraid, thinking Solum would grow close to Mico and forget about Iri.

He was jealous whenever they interacted, but as the days passed by, Mico became his friend as well. They both loved Iri just as much as Iri loved them both.

It was Solum and Mico who built the log cabin he was residing in.

They were the ones who separated this small cabin into two sections. One section where they could sit and eat, along with a small area to cook something, and another section was where he slept in the bed Solum made for him.

There was a small pond very nearby, and he used the water to clean himself and wash his clothes and utensils.

Solum had planted a lot of herbs around their home; most of them were medicinal herbs and some were spices and vegetable plants that Solum taught him how to use in cooking.

Mico had laced his Egav with the woods used to build this cabin which Solum doesn’t know about as he would fret about how much energy Mico was using. The roof was leak-proof, and it protected him from any kind of weather.

Solum pampered him to no end, and Mico was the one who taught him about the real world.

Solum had agreed with the decision of Mico to tell him about how the world worked.

They were the ones who told him about the classes in the society, how Egav separated people and how cruel the world can sometimes be.

Solum had explained how he belonged to a class called Horns and how the Horns people were hunted and feared for the powers they had so that Iri should remain safe and hidden till he could at least defend himself.

Iri had been upset and scared to hear that. He didn’t know that the world hunted him, but that was the time he was getting some of his memories in captive returned back to him in the form of nightmares.

No matter what, Iri was still a child who might be eleven or twelve years old. He didn’t have any control over his Egav as something in him stopped him from using Egav freely, a fear ingrained in him when he was Sixteen.

He was scared to go out of this forest at the same time, being here was sometimes very lonely, and the times Solum and Mico couldn’t come and visit him were unbearable to be waiting for them.

But he was safe and happy here, though.

Iri has good friends who bring things for him to make him comfortable.

Iri knew Solum worried about how little Iri had and always tried to bring him things even though he belonged to a lowlife class and could barely afford things for himself. Still, Solum always brought things for him despite that and tried to make Iri’s stay comfortable.

Iri didn’t see anything wrong with the bed he has now. It was better than the cold floor he used to sleep on as Sixteen.

Iri didn’t care about not having enough clothes as he had only trousers on and that too torn in places when he was confined.

Iri didn’t care that he only had one plate as he only ate his food on the floor years before.

He didn’t have anything when he was nothing but a number.

Now he was living a life full of luxury compared to the life he had when he was being held captive.

He wished Solum understood that.

Iri didn’t want Solum to buy things for him. What he had was more than enough.

Solum’s hand on his shoulder brought him back from his thoughts, making Iri to turn around and look at Solum’s worried face.

It seemed Solum had woken up somehow.

Mico had gone home four days before, and Solum would too usually, but this time, Solum had decided to stay for more than two weeks. Iri was really happy about that.

They had finished their dinner and had gone to sleep earlier, deciding to sleep by spreading the blanket on the floor as the bed was not made for two.

“Nightmare, Iri?”

Iri kept silent, not wanting to lie to Solum and, at the same time, not wanting to discuss the nightmares and his past memories with him.

Solum didn’t ask him anything anymore and just pulled him in a hug before making him lie down beside him.

Solum pulled a blanket over them before pulling Iri closer, making Iri to lie on his right hand and holding him close, all the while humming something.

Solum began to sing a lullaby, and Iri could feel sleep claiming him with how safe he felt within Solum’s arms.

Solum’s voice was melodic, and it always calmed Iri down. Iri was very lucky to have Solum as his friend.

But…

Solum was hiding things from Iri.

Mico was Iri’s friend just as much as Solum was, but Solum will always be special to Iri. Solum was everything for Iri.

If something happened to Solum or someone hurt him in any way, Iri would burn the entire Vabeo.

Iri gave into his sleep, not noticing the way his horns glowed in the darkness.