AFTER THE KING ordered to have her thrown in the dungeons, Maarit was dragged away from the opulent room with the incarnadine walls, out into vast corridors.

       The walk to the dungeons felt even longer than the horse ride all the way up De Montfort. It truly put the enormity of the castle into perspective.

       Even with exhaustion weighing her eyelids down and threatening to push her over the edge, Maarit used every bit of remaining strength to resist. She resisted the iron grips of the massive, burly guardsmen. She resisted spell after spell that was placed upon her by the warlock—Picard, as the king had called him. She resisted the aching in her own body.

       Her resistance was in vain. It was useless; she wasn't physically strong enough to fend off two guards that had been trained to capture criminals, and she couldn't use magic with that wretched bracelet on her wrist.

       In the light, after Picard had placed her under a spell once more (with the clear purpose of keeping her complacent), Maarit was better able to inspect it. The bracelet was an ugly thing and was composed of a material that she did not recognize at first. It appeared to be a mixture between metal and stone. It was onyx in colour and was fabricated like a thick, adamantine chain with no visible clasp.

       After pondering for a moment, she realized what it was: Sorcerer's Tenebrium.

       She had only ever read about this material, which, when combined with an enchantment, had the ability to suppress the magical powers of any witch or warlock. Yet there is was, before her very eyes, coiled tightly around her wrist.

       It was nearly morning, and the sun was beginning to rise; but when they turned a sharp corner, every ounce of light disappeared and it became evident that they had reached the dungeons. Everything was pitch black until Picard muttered a spell and lit a dozen candles that were lined across the walls.

       While the rest of the castle was lavish and luxurious, the dungeons were on the opposite side of the spectrum—foul, grungy and begrimed. One would not have thought that they were even part of the same edifice. The walls were made of crumbling grey stone. Besides the minuscule orange flames from the candles, there was a complete absence of colour. Contrasting the other parts of the castle that Maarit had seen, there were no shades of verdant, amaranthine or cerulean.

       There were about ten cells, each with bars on them. The rest of the cells were oddly vacant.

       The dungeon was utterly despondent, as though its purpose had been to suck the life from the prisoners by dispiriting them.

       With a swift wave of his hand, the warlock unlocked the cell farthest from the dungeon entrance. The door flew open; the two guards roughly shoved Maarit inside and locked it behind her. She nearly tumbled to the stone floor as a result of the guards' aggressiveness, but she frantically grabbed hold of the cold metal bars. Clinging onto them, she managed to steady herself—her pride refused to permit her to fall to her knees in front of them, no matter how fatigued she was.

       Maarit Pheraios would never yield.

       Still, her frailty was more evident than ever, and her nostrils flared when the guard she had ridden the horse with snickered at her.

       "Don't worry," the guard said with a saccharine smile, "you'll have some company if you ever get lonely." A booming laugh followed, flowing effortlessly from his mouth.

       The woman was confused at first. On the other side of the locked cell, the guard pointed one of his grubby fingers. Maarit's gaze followed his finger, but her stomach turned when she saw what he was referring to. In the very cell that Maarit was in, a human head was stuck between two of the bars. Most of the skin had decomposed, but there were some remnants of flesh clinging to the skull.

       It was still attached to a body and the limbs, decomposed only partially, were splayed out—the prison cell's previous inhabitant had clearly died trying to escape through the space between the bars.

       "You see that right there? That's what happens when you try to escape," the first guard continued, sneering. "Wouldn't want a pretty girl like you getting her skull crushed like that, would we?"

       "At leas' you can eat 'im if you ever get 'ungry," the second guard added, grinning widely to display crooked yellow teeth.

       A wave of nausea rolled over Maarit at the very thought. Her stomach was not normally sensitive, but the fact that she was being forced to share a prison cell with a corpse that was partially decomposed made her never want to eat again. She couldn't suppress the disgusted expression that made its way onto her face as the guards continued to laugh villainously.

       The warlock was still silent and did not converse with the guardsmen. Instead, he waited at the door, expressionless. When the guards' laughing had finally ceased, they walked over to the door and exited, leaving Picard behind. They continued conversing as they drew further and further away from the dungeons.

       A part of Maarit expected Picard to speak (either to threaten her or to mock her the way the guards had), but the warlock remained silent. The candlelight permitted her to get a good look at him. He was definitely older than King Theodoracius—she would have guessed that he was in his late twenties. He was quite scrawny and had very short brown hair.

       His eyes were round and protuberant, giving the impression that he was always somewhat in shock. The flickers of light of the candles reflected in his eyes as he stared at them, as though in a trance. Then, he seemed to shake himself out of his daze. He raised his arms to his sides.

       All twelve candles flickered out at the same time; a second later, the door to the dungeon—Maarit's only medium of both escaping and seeing light—was slammed shut. She heard the hollow sound of a latch, which would keep her from venturing out even if she miraculously managed to escape her cell.

       Everything was completely tenebrous. The embrace of darkness—which would have otherwise been welcoming to Maarit—fell upon her like a pair of hands intent on strangling her.

       She figured that this was what blind people felt. It was a nearly indescribable sensation—she felt lost even though she knew exactly where she was. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again as though she would suddenly be able to see. A low groan arose from her throat.

       Frustration, disgust, anger, denial, despair—she could not even name all of the emotions that she was feeling. She was plagued with regret for ever having told the villagers about her vision—though she had done it for the greater good, her motives no longer seemed perspicuous to her.

       Most of all, she was absolutely helpless.

       She grappled blindly in the cold, fetid air until her quaking fingers met the rusted metal bar of the prison cell she was trapped in. Sliding her hand down the bar, she used it to guide herself to the floor in order to relieve the burning in her legs. Then she crossed them. She still wore nothing but a dressing gown, which was newly torn and stained with blood.

       The entire dungeon smelled of death and rot; with a pang, Maarit understood that the rotting smell was emanating from the corpse that she shared a cell with. Still, who knew how many other corpses there were in the other ten cells? Who knew just how many people had died there and were in the process of crumbling to dust?

       Gagging, she held her stomach and leaned forward, deciding that she would breathe from her mouth instead of her nose so as not to smell the rancid odour. Her hands clenched into fists, causing her nails to dig into her palms.

       Illusive silence crept in on Maarit, as though there was not a single beating heart left in the world. She wondered if the warlock had enchanted the dungeon to be soundproof so that no one in the castle would be able to hear the screams of the prisoners. Such was very plausible.

       "I am going to die here," Maarit whispered to herself, her voice high-pitched with hysteria. The sound of her own voice, hushed and quivering, was oddly comforting as it broke through the silence. "I will die among the rest of these corpses. Perhaps I will freeze to death... or I'll die of thirst!"

       She laughed irrationally and her voice echoed off the stone walls balefully. There was a certain malevolence in her laugh that frightened her.

       Violent shivers instantly racked her entire body. Goosebumps appeared on her bare legs underneath the very thin fabric of her dressing gown. She was not entirely sure if all of this was a result of the chilly air or not. She choked back sobs.

       "Maarit, no," she told herself aloud, pressing the heels of her palms to her eyelids.

       She knew that she could not afford to lose any fluids through tears. She knew not if she would be getting food and drinks, and the chances of that were very slim. Perhaps leaving the prisoners to rot in prison was simply yet another vindictive method of execution that the royal family used.

       "Maarit, no. No. Don't cry," she said, lifting her knees to her chin and rocking back and forth. "Don't cry. You will be fine. Don't cry. Stop it. Stop acting weak. You're not weak. You are not weak. Do something. Don't let yourself sit here and waste away."

       Her breaths came in short pants as she urged her burning eyes not to allow tears to spill over. Panic was eating away at her soul, lacerating the hope she still had to shreds. There was nothing left—no love, no light, no warmth, no optimism. She would die in darkness—her skin growing sallow with the lack of sun exposure, her heart growing cold with the lack of affection.

       She rested her chin on her knees, attempting to curl up in order to keep warm. The floor was hard, cold and dirty, strewn with the sins of past criminals that had occupied the dungeon cells.

       Maarit absentmindedly fiddled with the Sorcerer's Tenebrium bracelet. She searched for a clasp again, but could not locate one. Impulsively, knowing full well that the bracelet was indestructible, she struck her wrist against the stone floor as hard as she could. Pain shot through her arm, causing her to scream out in anguish; and when she touched the bracelet to check if it was intact, she found that there was not even a minuscule dent.

       Breathing through her gritted teeth, Maarit spoke again to herself.

       "It will be fine," she muttered soothingly, squeezing her eyes shut to prevent herself from succumbing to tears. She said the mere words that she assumed caring parents would have spoken to her. Holding her throbbing left wrist, she continued to sway, whimpering like a wounded animal. "Listen to me. It's okay, sweetheart. Don't cry. It's okay. It will be okay. I promise you, it will all be okay."

       But she didn't believe the hollow words of comfort; they were in vain, too.