Perception (Book 7) | Chapter 05 - I Hate the Fae. (Patreon)

Perception (BK7) Chapter 5 - Eric - I Hate the Fae.

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It is a small cold room that I have been kept in. The overhead lights never turn off and rob me of any sense of time. There is a latrine in the corner, but no privacy. The floor is made of drainage grates and the walls are bare with no windows. There is one door. Metal restraints chaffed my wrists and ankles. Making them raw and sensitive in an unpleasant way that demanded all of what little attention I had to give. I squirmed, trying to shift so that my skin was no longer contacted. It was a wasted effort. The binds were too tight. Beneath me, the rigid flat tabletop made my body ache. It had no give, and I’d been restrained too long, more than was usual. 

The long sleeved top and loose fitted pants I wore were purposefully thin, they gave no comfort. Deprived of both sunlight and warmth, I shivered uncontrollably as I hoped someone would come. Fabric bunched against the restraints as I agonized. I had been given the command that I may not kill myself and the Fae were careful not to kill me, they didn’t want to give me the opportunity to revenant.

They were cruel, but there was nothing I could do. Too uncomfortable to sleep, I passed the time by counting the seconds and entertained myself with abstract thoughts. If I didn’t know they were listening, I would have spoken aloud to soothe myself, but that could give away secrets without realising. Maybe it hadn’t been as long as I thought. At least most days, I was allowed to stand, but something was different now.

A faint ‘click’ followed by the gentle hiss of magic ended my speculation, someone was here for me now. Simultaneously compelled by hope and filled with dread, I turned my head toward the door. If it were Àvila, she would let me stand and stretch, guards might also allow the same or they might do worse. Unfortunately, today it was Markos Bellerose, and I began to tremble.

He stalked into the room as if he owned it, and me, with a plastered smile. His clothes tucked and fitted with pompous precision–if I ever got the chance I would have loved to drag him through the mud. He carried a bucket in each hand. A dry cloth lay draped over his shoulder. 

“And how are we today?” He began with a pleasant up-tone, as if we were friends. 

I swallowed my bitterness and spoke as softly as I could, not a difficult task given the circumstances “… Please…” I writhed already knowing nothing could save me. 

“It’s rude to ignore a question when asked,” he chastised. 

Coming to a stop before me, he placed the buckets on the floor, and dipped the cloth into one of them. The back of my throat tightened automatically. 

“Please…” I pleaded more earnestly, agonised even before he began ringing out the cloth.

He petted my cheek as I struggled, “Do you think I’ll fall for that?”

“I’m not playing any games!”

“Lies just roll off your tongue don’t they?” 

Markos placed the soaking wet cloth over my face and I began to hyperventilate. Reduced to a state of anxiety, I dreaded the sound of water sloshing side to side displaced by the inertia of movement. If I could see, I would have held my breath, but there was no way to know and it was the anticipation that brought on a slow death. I hate these people.

“Something interesting happened today,” Markos commented, “Someone asked about you.”

Long seconds passed, but I didn’t answer. I was sure he would pour the water over me if I tried. 

“Did you have one of your horde cook up some illusionary spell, hm?” 

I shook my head.

“Well…” he began and ice cold water washed over me, sudden but not unexpected. It drowned out sound and light as I strained against the holds, suffocating on dry land. 

The fae emptied the entire bucket over the span of forty five seconds. I thrashed involuntarily as my body tried to escape the rush of asphyxiation, would it ever end? Was I going to die? I wanted to fight and scream, to do more than endure it. Instead, tears watered down my cheeks as I coughed and gasped for air only to inhale wet fabric. My lungs burned.

“…Since we both know you’re lying,” Markos continued unconcerned, “I just wanted to let you know it was hopeless. No one is coming for you.”

He dragged the cloth from my face and I glared back at him as he smiled. 

“That’s all I have time for today, unfortunately, but don’t worry. I’ll come back. Until then. Enjoy your solitude.”

“Coward..” I whispered before I could stop myself. 

I knew it would earn me more torture, but part of me thought that was better than being alone. Bellerose didn’t fall for it, he’d learned too long ago that leaving me by myself was what broke me. He turned. Leaving the second bucket of water untouched and disappearing through the door. If I were able, I would have tried to stop him, but the chains didn’t slacken until he was gone. 

Without thinking I launched from the table, toward the door. The chains clanked and tore the skin as I reached the extent of their length too quickly feet from the door. When I couldn't reach, I turned toward the bucket of water. The chains were shorter today and it only took a second for me to realise the water was also beyond where I could reach…. That was the cruelty of today. Water dripped from my hair, but there was none to drink. 

A small, savage giggle worked its way up from my throat as I understood. The Fae were worse than anything I’d ever known. More violent than us and more cruel than humans. I collapsed sideways and curled inward on myself, laughing in manic fits and sobbing until I coughed. I’d been here since I was a teen, isolated, tortured, at the mercy of the retracting chains that could pull me back to the table at any moment.

Nothing and no one was coming to help me. This was my fate. 

I wanted my father, I missed my home, my family. And to think I had ever tried to save these pompous assholes. How I had pleaded with my father to spare the Fae, imploring that genocide wasn’t necessary… I was foolish, now I would suffer for my self-righteous idiocy. Amidst the abstract torment of my captors, my thoughts drifted to the past.

The warm smell of fresh cooked pastries, the brightness of sun-cast beams streaming in from the full length windows that lined our dining room on two sides. A gentle breeze stirred the air, let in through the open windows and the sunlight heated my back. With his hair freshly washed the loose strands hung forward, and his long, straight lashes clumped together.

Like this is when we looked most alike. His damp hair, although a shade darker than mine, shared the same textured wave, and our eyes were an identical shade of deep blue. The only features I gained from my mother were her chocolate-brown hair, shorter stature and venomous mind. Although the latter could have come from either of my parents.

My father worked in the kitchen wearing a cloth apron. He cracked two eggs against the side of a glass bowl in one hand with practiced skill, and dropped them into the batter simultaneously, discarding the shells to the side. As a child I watched with my head in one hand, wondering if I were the egg or the shells, useful or just wasteful calcium to be thrown away? It was hard to tell.

No emotion broke the immense calm of his expressionless face as he beat the ingredients together. He didn’t pretend with me. Giving no placating smile and not wasting any time on common social gestures, every movement was methodical, planned. As if the success of the recipe hinged on the precise perfection of his technique.

Of course I knew my father was cold on the inside. He wasn’t plagued by intrinsic anxieties nor did he feel the touches of love or fear. His understanding of others didn’t stretch into the murky waters of uncertainty, it floated above with clear cut clarity. One look was all it took for him to cast his judgment, but that didn’t mean he was hollow.

He cared for me, in his own way. No physical need went unmet, I was well fed and clean… But my continued existence hinged on obedience and prestige. I was to be well behaved, quiet, and to appear ‘naturally talented’ in everything I did. I used to be good at that, before my eighth birthday, when I was injured during a revenant ceremony. 

It’s supposed to be a right of passage for young Vanir. Their first ‘revenant’ to show the manifestation of their magic and mark them as true warriors, strong and brave. The weak don’t survive—until I did. I returned from death incorrectly, screaming as the decay ate away at my flesh. The damage was healed, but lost tissue couldn’t be restored.

I was left with no sensation in my left leg from the thigh down, and a mangled concave of missing muscle as if anyone could have forgotten if I weren’t deformed. I couldn’t walk unassisted, let alone maintain the air of perfection my father required. If I was any one other than his son, I would have been left to die. There is no pity for the defective among Vanir. You keep up or you don’t, no one will wait.

Katla, my mother, disowned me immediately. With her vast intellect and analytical ruthlessness, she deemed me to be of no further use, and a crippled child wasn’t one she would care for. The woman distanced herself from us, moving her own chess pieces from the shadows while my father blamed her for my injury and continued as if I weren’t injured at all.

His ego wouldn’t allow him to acknowledge the slow leak of magic that discolored my right eye over time or my inability to walk. He expected that I would act as normal and attend training. When it became apparent that the severity of my injuries was greater than even my eternal will to please him, Mercury had me removed from his sight. 

Unable to look at me, he sent me to live with my grandparents under the stipulation that I should not return until I found a way to walk again. Nania, my grandmother, delighted in this arrangement, I was her broken bird to nurse back to health and her kindness oozed in a sickly sweet way. She believed every day a new beginning, and every broken thing a treasure. 

My grandfather, Eyvindr, was less pleased. He watched me with a hard gaze and thin pressed lips, like I was a viper invading the house. I’d once thought it was because he and my father had a strained relationship, but I grew to understand that it was just me he disliked. He considered me an omen of death, and could never shake his paranoia. It made me more determined to walk again.

I had almost perfected the runes by the time my father declared open war on the Fae. It pained me to watch him leave on missions knowing I could not follow. In two years he conquered twenty percent of the Fae lands, increasing his range all the while advancing on the Fae stronghold of Leúchtend castle. I tracked every one of his battles using hundreds of for-seeing spells and waited at the gates of our village each evening for his return. 

When he arrived with his legion of troops, other members of our family and lesser families, he walked past without so much as a glance in my direction. I was nothing more than a hovering little goblin with a leg brace. Others snickered on the way past, until Brigetta, my cousin, stopped to lift me into her muscular arms. 

She had told me each time that I wasn’t supposed to wait where others could see me, that it displeased Mercury to be reminded of my deficits. Brigetta cared for me like ivy cares for old structures. I was hers to grow on, but the roots of her concern cracked my foundation and while I resented her for it, I couldn't hate her. She was more a mother to me than Katla ever was.

Outside of her and my grandparents, Karyna and Kári were the only two who could stand my presence. But even that was only so long as no one else saw us together. They would be punished for interacting with something that was no longer supposed to exist. I was the child who lost the right to his family because of weakness, and no one hated me more than I hated myself.

I carved different spells into the side of my leg, over and over, trying to write one that would work. Heal the damage, restore my ability to walk. Success came after what must have been the hundredth attempt. Few tiny spell lines served as conductors for the broken nerves. Progress was slow at first, every step like treading on hot coals and every failure another hard fall to the floor. 

But with time I rebuilt the muscle to stand, then walk, then run. I practiced while my father was away. It wasn’t enough simply to walk again. I had to catch up. Mercury wouldn’t accept me back as his son for the mere benchmark of being able to stand, I had to be the best. In secret Brigetta helped me train until the day that I could stand on my own at the gates. 

I waited as my father returned from the forest. He rode atop his boar, a sow so enormous that my father almost looked like a child sitting on her back. Her fur was a deep harvest gold, a sign of pedigree, and her mane glittering with trophies. If the boars weren’t fierce enough, Mercury would eliminate them himself.

When he saw me waiting, standing in the middle of the gate on two feet. He dismounted and came to stand before me. We were almost the same height now. He clasped a hand on the back of my neck with a for show smile for those watching.

“At last you have returned my child,” he announced, as if I had been missing.

“Yes,” I answered, grateful when he rested his forehead against mine.

“Good, I was beginning to lose patience," he spoke low, before releasing me and wheeling to face his men with all the charisma of ten leaders, “Prepare the banquet, today we celebrate victory on the battlefield, and the return of my son!” 

I had worth again, and I would fight with my father against the Fae.

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