Chronicles of Peign

After being kicked around and beaten, Kelaben eventually ended up in Brethil Peign. Time doesn't have meaning in that place, but he wasn't there long before he was broken. He took the remnants of his soul and hid them from himself. He forgot himself to protect a core of who he was.

After the breaking, he couldn't even remember what he had hidden. He gave them everything he could and more. He made up fantasies to appease them. The gnawing pain that lived in his body devoured him at all times. His tears dried up. His body withered to the brink of life. Coldness entered his heart and he became numb to the cries of other thralls. The beauty of life was stripped from him. It became the echo of a fantasy some faraway child had dreamed of.

The secret place inside him was lost. In time he would have traded that place for relief from life. He craved death more than death craved him.

He was so honestly broken that some believed his thralldom was complete. They quit their abuses, but others could sense something was still there and they probed the reaches of his heart and psyche in hopes of finding it. They were not gentle in their approach and sanity fled from him. His mind was reshuffled like a deck of cards, over and over. Their frustrations only made their treatments rougher and rougher.

He couldn't bear to look at himself in those days. The look of his empty eyes haunted him. Hate crept nearer and nearer. He saw the dark pathways open to him. Dreams became nightmares and nightmares became reality.

An empty shell of pain and hatred. He despaired of life and hoped for death. The rotten food of Brethil left him retching. The glorious beauty and strength of youth were gone. He was broken. There was no hope.

He tried escaping many times during his stay at Brethil Peign. In the beginning the guards enjoyed the sport of catching him. Like a wild dog they would hunt him down and corner him. They would beat him senseless and drag him back to his cell.

Eventually they became bored with this sport. He would leave the gates to the chuckle of the guards. They laughed at his pitiful state.

In his brokenness the wilds were worse then Brethil Peign. He was merely walking prey. He would always end up back at Brethil where he had a cold cell, rotten food, and a familiar pain.

**This story expresses the pain of living a loveless existence in a world devoid of nature