Chapter 1

The view is pulsating when it’s just barely within reach.

Valencia  peered closer at the tarnished metal rods that separate her from the glistening starshine. Her breath caught as she glanced at the auroral sphere in the sky - that bright cerulean hue that lit up the heavens in glittering stars. Val sighed, swiping her coffee-colored hair from her eyes. Who knows when this view will show again…

She pawed at the glimpse of hope that sprawled across the atmosphere, like a splatter of paint from an ambiguous artist. Her gaze sharpened as she looked down from her congested cell, studying the levels of the fortress with sour eyes. She caught a low whistling coming from one room, a flicker of light in another. I wonder about the stories told by their broken sobs, their cries stifled by -  

A sudden banging at her cell door.

“Prisoner 6855.”

Val rolled her eyes. She concentrated on the paper-like frond with a pearl gleam that sprinkled her nose with soft snow.

“6855, open this door!”

She grimaced, then smirked with irony.

“Alright, I’m coming,” she drawled as she patted the rusted obsidian walls and leaned on the doors with leisure.

The subtle luster that flared from the guard’s torch  illuminated Valencia’s scowl, just for a second, before stiffly beaming into the guard’s lifeless eyes.

“Prisoner #6855, your presence is commanded by the Father of Red.” His eyes lifted towards her with a sneer. She gazed at the guard. Guards used to be kindhearted, Val supposed, once upon a time. Dutiful and valient, they used to offer warth to peasants and stories for the broken hearted. Val’s eyes wavered over his greasy clothes, his face smeared with soot, searching for some empathy, some hope --
Yet she only saw it from the brilliant illumination of the sky.

* * *

The cuffs dug into her malnourished arms as the guard shoved her impatiently into a courtroom. Valencia’s pale eyes widened as she took in the scene.

The courtroom was blackened with soot, and the grime floors was littered with dilapidated  and splintered crystals. A motoric man, shadowed in sin, loomed over a cowering Convict. He barely glanced at the new prisoner in his wake as he scorned at the ´sinner´ beneath him.

¨You desire to diffuse this… this affliction of humanity into mortality?” He growled at the prisoner.

The woman, streaked with tears, sobbed into her hands as she howled, “Father of Red, please, have mercy!”

“You have sinned, dear fool! Those who trespass through the minds of true realists wish to corrupt them by means of expressing notions.” He scoffed at her, his breathe sizzling her skin. “Imagine: exotic citizens, contemplating hazardous opinions. Idle thoughts of originality shall suffer.” His rheumy eyes glared down at her.
“I know that, sir!” The woman gasped, her knees nearly buckling before her.

“Pity of a Convict, too.¨ The Father of Red mused almost to himself. He bared his teeth at an attempt of a comforted smile.  ¨Prisoner 5021, look up.¨

The woman weeped hysterically, and was shivering so hard she was vibrating.

¨I said up, Convict!¨ Father of Red barked.

The woman’s once-crystalline eyes peeked up, seemingly towards the heavens, the angles seem to trill with the voices of essence…

Yet here, there was always perdition.

Valencia eyes traced the Convict’s grim and rotten attire -- nothing new there, she thought -- glancing into her futile eyes, her barbaric-like hair, up to what seems to be a chandelier…

What seems  to be a chandelier.

What once was a titanium-rich candelabrum, lush with russet embroider and lit with dim flames, now was a grating slab of obsidian. It hung from seemingly nothing, the burly bricks spinning in thin air.

The woman collapsed, sobbing hysterically on the grunge-filled floor.

Valencia, her eyes full of injustice, wrestled against the guard’s chains, but the guard  grappled her back, his mouth inches from her ear as he struggled to control her.

“Look,” he hissed to Val, clutching her jaw so she couldn’t twist her head. “This is the fun part.” He tilted her jaw up.

Val didn’t spoke a word, yet the guard seem to perceive a question sizzling from her mind.

“The bricks are a type of  current to electricity. 1010 mA a block,” he states, tilting her jaw  up to the rafters of the room. “See those power cables along the walls? They connect to the obsidian, trapping  the electricity from the inside.” The stranger grinned.  “And you could imagine what happens next.” 

As if hearing their hushed conversation, the Convict scrambled back, her eyes tear-stricken. “Father of Re--”

Her plea froze, and she was unable to move. She struggled to choke back her tears, yet to Val, it was like she was abruptly silenced, mute beyond belief. Tears rolled down her face, yet her face was almost content with what’s to become of her.

Val held her breath. “Please... no.” Her face was stone, but her heart was punctured, bleeding tears to what she was witnessing-- what she will witness, over and  over again, forever.

The brick fell.

To Be Continued