Location: a street controlled by the beggars league

Time: Morning, 15 October 1429

Strange that I hadn't a weird dream last night. I almost felt the red skinned man would come to my sleep and wreck some more havoc in my days, but now it seems that he is willing to do it without paying me a visit in my sleep. Maybe it's because I was barely in any sleep last night, having to sleep on the cold hard ground. I was the last one to wake up amongst everyone on the streets, and the girl was already telling me to start working. I reached into my bag, and there was only my dagger, book, and mirror in the hidden compartment. No money was left in there. I was not stupid enough to leave my money in my bag overnight. I took them out from my boots and back into the bag, the standard wallet for me during the night. The beggar girl looked at me in disappointment, either from the inability to guess where I kept my money to seeing how the money she received might have been treated.

When I was getting up to leave, she asked me where I was going. I told her I had things to do, and she seemed to want me to start my day off begging for money, something I obviously won't do. She asked if she could follow me in whatever I was doing, since she said she needed money aswell and wouldn't miss a chance to earn money, and I told her that I wasn't going to go work for money but rather to find food. She said she would follow me in doing that aswell, so I told her I changed my mind, and would rather take a stroll around the city. For some reason, she just wanted to go with me doing that too, so I then told her she won't find my money on me, and I walked off. However, after I walked for a hundred yards or so, I looked back, and I saw her stalking me, whatever her intentions. I then thought if I was to go to the prison, then maybe it wouldn't hurt having a beggar friend with me, so that people will think that we are actually beggars, and that might even save me in crucial situations. In the end, I agreed that she may accompany me, but I set her a condition that she had to keep herself a yard away from my bag.

I headed straight for the market square for tools. There were quite a various selection. In the end, I bought a grappling hook, 30 meters of rope, a hammer and a chisel. I thought if I could climb over the walls of the prison and chisel through the bars, maybe I could get Alathorn out of the prison. She questioned me how I could afford these tools and pay her off without paying consideration to my pouch, yet still joins the beggar league and sleeps on the streets. I simply replied with a mysterious smile, and carried on walking.

After a long trek, she started complaining, and asked me where we were actually going. I told her that I was going to burglar a house. But the prison was on a mountain remote to the capital, and three sides were fully surrounded by miles deep cliffs. By the time we reached the foot of the mountain, anyone would start to suspect where I was really going. The mountain was absolutely desolate, and showed no signs of human inhabitation whatsoever. Not a single pillar of smoke can be seen within the furtherest point of my sight. The path up the mountain was evidently untrodden. How do they even transport food up the mountain when the sharp stones would cut your feet through leather boots? Do they eat the prisoners up there? It made me admire the original constructors of the grand prison at the altitude it stood at. Naturally, she grew more and more suspicious as we walked more and more closer to our destination. When we finally reached the prison, she stopped and asked me where we were really going. I couldn't use that lie I used on the way here, this facility is obviously no mansion of some rich snobs open to burglary, for it was heavily fortified by guards atop crenalated walls. I could make her go back at this point. I know she would probably much rather go back to her beggar friends in the streets of the capital then helping a prisoner escape from the most secure prison in all of Celpeia. I could also make her follow me to the point where it would be too late for her to turn back and have no choice but to help me. But would my morals allow that? Would I really allow myself to trick her into something that will most definitely risk both of our lives?

After contemplating for a long hard minute, I told her the partial truth. I told her about my plans to rescue Alathorn, but I told her that I was a theif. I then took out a large stash of expensively flamboyant gemstones from my bag.

"I am Vrynscyth, and I am here because there is a certain someone inside of this prison I'm trying to rescue. My crime partner Alathorn. Alathorn is a theif like me, and we stole from people who we shouldn't have, and in the end, he was captured and I escaped." I paused, and looked into her eyes for a moment. She didn't say anything. "You know now why I am here. See these gems I have? They are worth a lot of money, and they are all that I possess. You might turn back right now and forget about me ever existing, and that I won't mind. In fact, even if you do that, I'll still give you half of these gems for giving me a place to sleep and sticking alongside me, even if it's not for the right reason. You might grab all of these gems and run off. You might even go to one of the prison wardens and hand me in for a bounty or a reward on me that probably exists. I don't know how you feel right now, I don't even know your name, but if you would help me, then I will be ever so grateful to you. I will give all of them to you happily if you would help. Now then, what is it that you decide?"

She stared at me for a moment, jaws dropped and blank of words. Shocked by many things simultaneously. Eventually, she spoke with an oscillating voice.

"My name is Dannie. Dannie Davies. I have came along you all the way here, I can't just leave now. Besides, those gems are irresistible. Ok. I have decided, I will help you. Pray that we don't mess up."

She took the gems and shoved them into her bag. I expected her to run away, but she didn't. She gulped down all the water she had carried, and I could see her tension forming on her forehead as large drops of sweat.

We crouched down and traversed behind the trees till we were right under the batter. The guards at the front gate didn't seem to notice us when we snuck by to a side of the wall where we were out of his vision. The kilometers deep abyss was right next to us at the turning point of the walls, and one step could be fatal. I took out the rope from my back, tied a knot at half meter intervals, tied it onto the grappling hook, and then threw the grappling hook up onto the walls. I pulled on the rope to ensure that it hooked on a solid stone and was secure. I then climbed up, followed by Dannie.

Knot by knot, I pulled myself upwards. The sweat in my hands made the friction on the ropes less and less every single knot I go up. The vicious cycle would thus make my hands more and more slippery. In devastating fear of heights, we climbed three quarters of a way up the wall. I wouldn't look down, but I could easily guess the scenery. I could imagine if I fell, I might fall a hard fall from the wall to the ground fifteen meters down, or I might fall into the abyss miles below. One would result in cracked bones everywhere, the other will mean certain death for both Dannie and myself.

By the time we almost climbed to the top, the tension in the air was much more intense then the other time I and Alathorn crawled through a hole in the wall. It's not difficult to tell why, and my determination to find Alathorn wavered as I climbed the last few knots. When my hands were on the stone embrasure between two merlons, I felt more relieved then that time we pushed open the stone slab and saw the blue sky. With a swift jump I swirled myself atop the wall. I felt my hopes coming to me, and then I felt Dannie's hand on my shoulder.

Except, it wasn't Dannie's hands, it was a mail mitten.

I turned around, and I saw a fully mailed prison guard. His left arm already held Dannie choked by the neck in place, and now his right arm grapples my shoulders and flown me down. Both of us were immediately cuffed. The guard dragged us before another, I assumed more senior ranked guard. When he saw the symbol on my back, he immediately recognized who I was.

"Daring I say, Miss Valerie, to climb into Celpeia's most secure prison. Perhaps you have a friend you would like to see? Well, don't worry. Maybe you'll see him inside." He turned to the man who captured me. "Put her into the new cell."

They didn't waste another word before I found myself chained and dragged along the wall. I saw Dannie staring at me in a bizzare way as we were pulled like sleighs. I couldn't tell if it was fear, fury, pity, or a combination of that and emptiness. I tried to look away and avoid eye contact, but u could feel her gaze on me. That soon stopped when I was dragged away from Dannie, who I presume to be dragged to another prison cell, or else might get thrown down the walls if they don't want to feed her.

The guard escorting me allowed me to stand up and walk, I thought it was because it was too much effort to drag me. Out of overconfidence and boredom, or else a desire to scare me perhaps, he started talking about the security system of the prison.

"This prison is guarded by us day and night, with a fully surround wall twenty meters tall, watched by the soldiers atop also. So don't even think about escaping, or you'll end up caught like you were trying to enter. Within that outside wall you climbed, there is a inner wall, and that inner wall is surrounded by a ring like the moat of a castle, except it has no water, is ten meters wide, twelve meters deep, and the bottom of the pit has gigantic pikes sticking out from the ground. There is only one drawbridge linking the prison and across, but that drawbridge is always up unless authorized to be lowered. The drawbridge connects into a gatehouse with three layers of doors, two of them opened from beneath with keys and one pulled up from within the gatehouse, and beyond it is a barbican. The prison within the walls itself, we sectioned them into zones with tall wooden fences. Within each zone, there are eight cells, four over ground, four underground. And each of these complex is watched by three soldiers with their half overground, half underground office in the middle, which was the link of all the cell doors. When I first started this work, my first job was staying in there and watching the prisoners. I felt quite like a prisoner myself." The guard explained as he escorted me into the fenced zone, and then underground before a cell. He took out a large number of keys.

"You know, us guards living so bad just makes us torture you more viciously. See those chains on the wall in there? Even when interrogating prisoners, we do it in their cells."

He opened the cell doors which had no bars but rather was a solid block of metal, thrown me onto the cold, damp stone ground face down. He took all the tools and my clothes I had away and he threw them into his office, and thrown me some prisoner rags before shutting the metal door tight and locking. Right before he left, he left me a heart warming goodbye in terms of wardens to prisoners.

"Alright birdie. Enjoy your new home. You should better fall in love with it, because you're not leaving it in this life."

After he left me in the cell, I heard him throwing the keys on a desk near where he put my stuff behind the wall with the chains attached. I laid on the ground for hours from the burns of being dragged and bruises from being thrown into a cell and landing on my face. I wondered what had happened to Alathorn and Dannie. It was a despairingly dire thought to think that they might both be executed and I should follow them. To realise that death is imminent and find that there isn't much you could does make me dolorous.

I was not the pessimistic thought, and I was driven by an urge to find ways of getting out and finding the other two. Eventually, I got up, and I examined the cell. There was nothing other than the chains for hand stuck in wall, an unremovable stone stool, a hay bale to sleep on, stone brick walls and floor, barred window and that metal door secured via heavy riveting. I tried a few unrealistic things, including sawing the bars with a straw of hay until I realised even if I cut the bar off the tiny window, I won't be able to get out. Using the chains on the wall to smack the stone wall obviously didn't work. Kicking repeatedly at the riveting of the metal door was very much futile. I was exhausted from all that effort, and I slept on the hay bale.
This
Eventhough it was day time, I saw yhwh again.

"Look at you Vrynscyth Valerie. Not in great conditions." He said to me in a calming voice.

"I'm very down on my lucks, it seems that when I follow your advices, things don't turn out well. Last time, I tried to obtain the three key attributes of a good advisor by getting artifacts the red man told me, and Alathorn was imprisoned."

"Well. The red man is a deceiver. You shouldn't listen to him. He has already caused you much greif. One's ability to protect, advice, and reflect their loved ones spawns from within the person, and no items can assist with that. I should tell you this: Alathorn is not locked up in this prison. He is actually trying to find you, and he knows that you're in here. He should come and try to find you soon."

I looked at him with rounded eyes filled with consolation. "He's not here? I'm glad that he is safe for now. However, if he tries to find me as I tried to find him, would he not be captured as I was?"

Yhwh nodded. "Yes. But the important thing for you, to help him, is not by worrying that he will come to this prison. My advice still stands. You need the abilities to be able to fight for him, give him wisdom, and to let him see. Only then can you help him. Vrynscyth, when you wake up, you should think about this, and try to train these attributes from within. You do have the potential."

"Should I in that case, not think about how to alert Alathorn to stay away then?"

"Think for it yourself. I will leave now."

"Thank you yhwh. You always give me so much wisdom."

Although that was what I had said, I  started to doubt him. I always had a feeling that following the advice I get in my dream would be helpful, but from what have been proved by real life, it seemed that it accomplished nothing but troubled, so now I cannot judge. Whilst it is true when I listen to the red man, things go bad, it is also true that nothing good came along after yhwh first appeared in my dreams. I should try not listening to the red man at all, and follow solely yhwh's advice to see if he has better influence over what happens.

The next moment, I felt the red man trying to enter my dream, so I pushed him with my will, and would not allow his entry.

"What's this, Vrynscyth, why do you not let me in?"

"Go away! If I let you in, bad things will happen again."

"No. You are mistaken. I am the one who always made what you wanted happen, yhwh is the one who makes the troubles! You shouldn't think I'm bad just because in ugly!"

I started considering his words, and in an instant, he had flown into my dream, and wrecked havoc in there. He laughed at me. Saying that I have so much doubts. I then pinched myself really hard, and I tried laboriously to wake up, that I did.

I don't know how many hours I have slept, but the sky started to dim. I sat in the cell for sometime, thinking about the words of the dream people. It was similar to a meditational mindset I was in when I was thinking. Initially, I thought that even if I had told Alathorn to keep away, he will still come rescue me, so alerting him is futile. Besides, there's no way I could get a message out to him, and a warning wouldn't be what I want to tell him anyway. But over time, as my thoughts started to drift, I started to let my mind blank. From that calmality I have gained from just sitting, I felt I could think things through clearer.

The metal door was suddenly yanked open. I saw the prison warden who sent me in. He had a bowl of some disgusting looking porridge repulsive enough for prisoners to hate their lives. I didn't mind the food though, I hadn't ate since this morning, and I gladly gulped down all of it the moment the bowl left his hand. He didn't even leave, he watched me speed through the food.

"You must like that food a lot." He said after watching me eat.

"And you must be really bored in this prison, watching prisoners all the time."

"Well... You shouldn't worry about me. Your trouble will arrive in a minute. They said you're related to some deep political things, and they're getting a torture master her to pry some information from you. That food just ensures you don't die whilst you get tortured. He'll come in a moment. I'll be back and give you another one of those porridge things tomorrow morning."

This prison guard seemed very nice to prisoners. That's perhaps not a good thing for him, but I feel lucky. I thanked him for the information and the food, and I went back to sitting. Within fifteen minutes, the torture master arrived, and was shown to my cell by the prison guard. The guard locked my hands into the iron cuffs chained to the wall, and he left, leaving the entrance to the cell wide open. The torture master however seemed to have brought a variety of bizzare looking  tools that I don't even want to know what they did, but might know in a minute.

"Do you what's going to happen in a moment?"

"No. Not a clue." That I said was the truth.

"You are associated with Prince Alathorn in planning a rebellion. He is very important to us and we want to know where he is. If you know, you'd better say now and save yourself the pain of going through what I'm about to do. I'm quite skilled in my craft, so I'm quite sure you'll spit it out in the end anyways. So tell me, where is Alathorn?"

Knowing that they don't know the location of Alathorn made me thrilled, because that meant Alathorn is probably fine right now like yhwh said in my dream. Although not having this information is very much alike having it and not willing to say it.

"I don't know."

The torture master grinned. Grinning when you're about to torture someone for information is almost the  professional standard in his job.

"That's what they all say before what I do, which is the reason why people like me can get work quite easily. You should know I have a moral guideline even when I do this. What's your age?"

"16."

"Well that's too bad. I don't torture kids below sixteen for ethical reasons, but sadly, you don't fall within the category of people who I don't torture."

He turned around and fiddled with his collection, and when he turned back, I saw him with two five inches long metal pin.

"Do you know where this goes?"

"No."

"Why are you so calm? Is it because my voice is calming?"

"No."

"Hmm... Fine. Well I'll tell you how this works. Surely you know of what happened Golgotha? Similar to that, this is meant to go into your hand, except in more... Horizontal direction."

The pin was blunt and the tip was slightly rusted. I don't even understand what he meant, so I know it will be painful. But anyhow, that is the purpose.

Seeing fear clouding my expressions, he took out more of his gadgets. I saw him taking out a block of wooden plank and a cutter, and he cut the plank along it's fibers.

"See, even these simple materials can be used if we apply sophisticated creativity to it. I really hate wooden splinters stuck in my fingernails for example. So perhaps you wouldn't be too happy if I rubbed this plank near your eyes. Am I right?"

He moved the plank really close to the left side of my head, and I could very much see the tiny fibers coming out. He took it away and turned for another one of his tools. This time something similar to a small flat prying chisel.

"I like this one, because it is life saving in some medical situations, but if you're healthy, it's not so good. Curious about what it does? Well, we need to open up a hole to one of your bones, and this is used to scratch it. Sometimes, it makes a screeching sound. An annoying sound I would say."

He took out a knife. Very common and easily expected with a torture master.

"I don't have money to build contractions that look too fearful, but simplicity is effectiveness.  This needs a lot of skills from me for it to be not so bloody. You know, I used to be a surgeon before I lost my family. I can do a lot of precise work with it. Skinning, capping, cutting open the same spot and healing it every day, it really quite numerous. The other torture masters have abandoned the proper way of inflicting insanity and builds their weird metallic tools for too much visual appeal. I don't do that. The first man I made insane was a man I put in a locked black box with a hole for breathing for many days. It was elegant until he broke a bowl and tried to suicide with a piece. That only made him look worse as he never found the courage to complete it. After that, I had to feed him everyday. A lot of tedious work."

He put his tools down on the ground, pinched my jaw with his thumb and index finger, and lifted my head to stare into my eyes.

"You know what'll happen if you don't be easy on me and just tell me where Prince Alathorn is. Do you want to say now?"

I can't shook my head when he controls it, so I just said I didn't know.  smiled anticipatedly, and took a few steps back.

"No phobias to my unappealing little tools? Guess you should see it."

After that was a dreadful two hours, I found a metal pin stuck in my forearms, wood splinters everywhere. This made the knife work difficult, since some splinters blocks the path of the knives, but he had a great deal of precision. He took his things and left me there for a while, but came back then every hour for around twelve times to add a little more cut to wherever he'd previously sliced open, causing some of the wounds to grow in size. I tried to faint but never managed to actually accomplish it, because cumulative pain are felt by human nature consistently to alert us.

The torture master seemed rather depraved of sleep and definetely overworked, having to come back every so often in eighteen hours without a comfortable chair in my cell. He developed dark eye bags, which made him look slightly scarier.

Every single second I would think when his next arrival will be, and it came regularly. The time intervals were accurate and I could pretty much expected another cut whenever my blood flows from the tip of my finger to dry and not create visible smears. Then they would be reopened and again the time counter in my head resets.

In the twenty or so times he'd came, he decided to block the small barred window for air circulation to be a bit worse and for the cell to be slightly darker and creepier for me. It wasn't a futile action he did. I wasn't able to tell the time after that.

He came tediously and laboriously, and with his perseverance through fourty times refreshing my pain every single time.

The next time the torture master came into my cell, he was no longer alone. I vaguely saw him bringing someone into this cell, but my vision was blurry from bloodloss.

"Vrynscyth..." I hear a familiar voice amongst the people he brought it. I tried to widen my eyes, but couldn't because of the pain.

"Vrynscyth!" I hear again. I forced myself to open up my eyes, and I saw an old man all bruised and injured, chained and knelt, lashes visible across his face, making it difficult to identify. But I will always be able to recognize it no matter.

It was my father.

"Well. What a happy family reunion. Sad that it will have to be parted soon if you don't tell me where Prince Alathorn is. I did what I did you to him and he knew nothing, but I've kept him alive because I knew he could be useful."

"Don't tell him, Vrynscyth! Even if we are in prisons and if we are in the most dire situation, we are still Valeries, and we Valeries follow our legitimate King to our graves."

"Well? Will you say or not?" The torture master held a triumphant stance, before he took the knife he used on me onto my father's neck.

"I... I... I know where he is. Let my father go, I beg you."

"Finally you have thought it through? It didn't have to be this hard did it."

"He... He's at our hideout not far out from Pottersfield."

He produced a map of the capital city, drew it close to me, and fed the knife's handle into my teeth so I I could point where exactly this "hideout" which I made up was with the point of the blade.

"Very good. Wasn't so hard was it. You didn't have to endure two days of excruciating pain. I hope you're not lying to save your father?"

"No."

"In that case then this man is useless. I don't want his revenge should he ever manage to get out. We'll keep you alive though, in case we don't find Alathorn."

He walked over to my father as I cried. "What are you doing?" He lifted his knife, and I yelled from the top my my lungs a deep "No!" A few seconds later, blood that were not of mine splattered to my face, and I turned away. Then my father's head rolled before my feet.