Central Calendar - Unknown
A flash of light engulfed the night, as one of the Sky’s children fell towards the earth. A shooting star in the shape of a human trailing behind hues of oceans and blood and leaving behind nothing but flames and stardust in its wake.
The soil exploded where she landed, stones red and sand hardened from the heat of her arrival. The lone figure at the epicenter of this crash, though, was sound asleep. Dressed in odd garments, with fabrics woven fit for even the nobility of Elvoth and Galonas.
Figures in robes gathered at the edge of the crater murmuring amongst themselves. Words of unknown language repeated over and over like a chant throughout the people. They slid down and surrounded the sleeping star.
She looked…odd.
Her bones were too thin to be a child of the mountains. Her ears, too round for a child of the forest. No claws on her hands like shapeshifters, no wings on her back like demons, and no scales of children of waves.
A brave fellow neared her figure and with a gloved hand, peeled back her eyelids. Unfocused eyes the color of caramel stared back. They had never seen this creature before, who was seemingly unhurt from the fall and the fire.
The man underneath the hood grinned from ear to ear, the magic symbol on his eyes glowed dim green. The Rama hauled the girl over their shoulders and marched back to the institute they called their home.
They finally had gotten their hands on a Sky child.
A dark cell with droplets of moisture dripping from the ceiling and pipes leading deeper into darkness. A haunting song echoed for hours on end, its singer, an old woman with dried bloodied skin littered with holes from where they picked off her scales.
The sound of screams never ended. They penetrated behind the metal bars of cells where the robed men with glowing eyes had dragged them. In the darkness so deep, only the eyes of seafolk could see. Perhaps that’s what made the old woman insane.
The Glowing Eyes would drag the creatures along the floor, the prisoners so thin and fragile and weak from the countless tortures they’ve experienced. However, that mattered not to the robed men. They only wanted blood.
These creatures had no fight left in them. Only the Gods knew how long they’ve been enduring.
A small figure huddled in the corner of her cell. Chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles, dragging on the cold floor every time she walked. Her cheeks were now sunken and there was no part of her body that didn’t bruise or ache as per her beatings. She was wrapped in the very same garments she came in with, well, what was left of it anyway.
A human. In a land with no humans.
A Sky child.
Her being proved the existence of the God of Magic and Dimensions the Glowing Eyes worshiped. By association, they should have treated her as their savior, as the embodiment of their God, but somehow, their actions were different from the peace-loving priests from her home world.
The girl woke with the opening of her cell. A Glowing Eyes entered again with a grin so wide it could’ve broken his face in half. The Glowing Eyes mouth opened as he spoke words in a language she didn’t understand, pointing towards the outside once again. She knew what this meant.
It was time to go out again, she thought.
She stared at them with eyes full of defiance as she refused to move from her spot, the only form of rebellion she could do with this beaten body of hers. Two more of the Glowing Eyes entered and dragged her out by her arms, with the first one of seemingly higher position, walking ahead.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been here. The air in the dungeon was stale and moldy, like it hadn’t been aired out in years. She looked away from the opened cells with bright blood glowing from the torch light. Bodies littered the floors of these cells, blue and black from the beatings. Some barely breathed, while others had been sleeping for many, many moons.
They entered the only room well-lit enough to see its entirety. Low ceilings made of stones with gems glowing from the singular slab of rock at the center of the room. Multiple instruments laid out haphazardly on the side, its edges crusted with leftover blood.
The Glowing Eyes who first opened her cell pulled his hood back and faced her once again. He spoke again, his mouth opening grotesquely from the ritualistic cuts made on his cheeks. A singular glowing eye stared happily back at her, with a dark void where his other eye would be.
The ones holding her placed her on the stone table and tied her to it, her arms and legs stretching to each of its corners. He said one last thing, before the three priests crowded her, each holding a bloodied instrument, and finally did their work.
She came back again tonight. Much later than usual.
A bloody trail remained where they dragged her body across the floor, the metallic smell of her blood never seemed to leave her nose. That leg of hers looked far from fine, and her skin once again looked much worse from when she left.
They felt a weight on their chest, but it was accompanied by a feeling of relief. Through her misfortune, the amount of torture they went through reduced. With her arrival, the Glowing Eyes mostly forgot about their existence, focusing mostly on a selected few.
They didn’t know how many times it had been when the Glowing Eyes crowded themselves in her cell for a chance to touch her supposed holy body.
She was barely in her own cell anymore, sometimes even spending time from when they awoke to when they slept outside of it. Each time, she was dragged back, unconscious, with more scars than before, with a transparent white liquid slathered all over her body.
The Glowing Eyes called her the Sky Child, a God’s embodiment and incarnation. Silently, they prayed for her, the only one who showed them kindness, the only one who stopped their suffering at the cost of her own. They wished for her to be put out of her own misery, like the ghost of those who left. Desperately, they wished for the Glowing Eyes to kill her, but secretly, deep down in their heart, they hoped that something, anything, could be her beacon of hope. Like how the fire in her eyes never left, they prayed to the Gods that she would forever hold onto her will to live.
ns 15.158.61.5da2
