— Brushing the Void with the Fingertips

Darkness filled the room. The silence was suffocating.

Leyade sank to her knees. Tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks, and a heart-rending scream broke the heavy silence.

Tears drenched the elf’s face, sobs wracked her body, and all the pressure she had been under came pouring out at once.

Time passed. Days, hours... She had no idea how long it had been, but every now and then, she found a bundle of food and a glass of water beside her bed.

Leyade kept screaming Fayla’s name, but no one came.

“Damn it! I have to get out of here! Fuck!”

The elf could not keep still.

“Open the door! Let me out!”

Anxiety had taken hold of her. She could not think clearly. Her screams and the clanging of steel made it sound as though a banshee had been locked in the dungeons.

Leyade’s breathing grew uneven.

Shorter.

Faster.

Each breath became harder to draw.

The pain of being dead, the emptiness, had turned into desperation, pressure and anxiety. Knowing she was alive, locked beneath a castle with no way out, was worse than accepting that she was condemned to an eternity of torture.

Her heart raced. She tried with all her strength to pull free. She no longer cared if she hurt her wrists, as long as she could get out.

“You’ve made a mistake!” she kept shouting. “Get me out! Get me out, get me out, GET ME OUT...!”

Her ragged voice faded to a whisper too faint to hear. Only strangled cries escaped her throat. She struggled to scream. Panic had gripped her body and would not let go.

‘No, no, no, no, no... Please,’ she thought, breaking out in a cold sweat as she hyperventilated. ‘I can’t let them die. I can’t. I have to get out. Only I can help them... But...’

An intrusive thought crept into her mind.

‘What if I can’t? What if I give up? Surely they’ve sent someone else,’ she thought. ‘I wasn’t their first choice. Surely not. Why would they send Leyade the crybaby? Years must have passed by now, and someone else must have saved them. Surely they knew I wouldn’t manage it.’

Her cheeks flushed with the effort.

‘They probably never trusted me...’

A voice in her head answered.

‘Breathe. Calm down.’

Trying not to faint, she focused on her breathing.

‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop looking for excuses to give up. Stop putting obstacles in your own way. Self-indulgence won’t get you anywhere.’

Slowly, with considerable effort, Leyade brought her breathing under control.

‘So what if they’ve sent someone else? So what if you weren’t their first choice? So what if they didn’t trust you? You have a chance to prove that you are their first and only choice, that they can trust you and, most importantly, that you will be the one to save them.’

Leyade closed her eyes, took one last deep breath and rose to her feet, clenching her fists.

‘Now tell me. Are you going to give up? Or are you going to stand up and... fight?’

The elf wiped away her tears, steadied herself and declared aloud:

“I’m going to fight.”

From that moment on, Leyade stopped screaming and crying. Since she could not leave, she decided to spend her time doing something useful: training.

She would not let her body fail her when the time came.

Every day, she did press-ups, sit-ups and whatever other exercises the chains allowed. She also meditated and recited poems and songs to keep herself from going mad in a place without sunlight. The magical light being switched off gave her some sense of day and night, but it was not the same.

Now that she had calmed down and seemed to have given in, the fairies began approaching her again to bring food to her cell.

Sometimes they made polite conversation, which gave Leyade the little bit of company she needed. She had even managed to persuade them to lend her books to keep herself occupied.

Even so, she could not get any answers. Whenever she asked how much longer she would have to stay, the fairies dodged the question, put her off or fell silent.

Still, that was more of a response than she got when she asked about Fayla.

Then they simply vanished.

Leyade had resigned herself to being treated that way. Even so, she still tried calling for Fayla whenever her anxiety returned.

“Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four...”

Leyade was doing press-ups when a fairy appeared outside her cell.

“Must be midday,” she said to herself, her voice weary.

Despite seeing the fairy there, Leyade did not stop. The ritual was always the same: they approached the bars, announced their arrival, passed straight through them, landed in the middle of the cell and took their time setting everything out.

Their leisurely pace was usually exasperating to watch. To Leyade, it was time she could have spent doing something else. And, if she was honest, fairies were no longer visitors she welcomed, for obvious reasons.

Just as Leyade had expected, the scene unfolded as she had seen it more than a thousand times before.

“And in she comes,” she murmured.

“Here’s your food,” the fairy announced.

“Here’s your food...” Leyade echoed under her breath, mimicking the fairy’s voice as she spoke.

Once the whole routine was over, the elf stopped and sat down to eat.

Everything went as usual. Leyade devoured her food as though there were no tomorrow. All the energy she spent exercising left her hungrier, but unfortunately, the fairies’ food contained very little protein. The most she had managed to secure was a larger helping of fruit, with additions such as moon fig seeds served with honey to give her more energy.

The meal passed in silence, broken only by the sounds of the young elf eating and gulping down her water as though her life depended on it.

When Leyade had finished and the fairy was clearing away the dishes, the fairy finally spoke.

“I have a message from Fayla for you.”