Brotherhood

Bloodshed. Anna's eyes shifted, hard and calculating the nature of the wind that clawed at her face. Lying with her face down in the dirt, she could hear the somber harmonies of the monks above her, chanting. Puer Natus Est Nobis. She snorted.

A painful nudge to her ribcage reminded her of the reason why she was in these hidden chambers. In that moment, silence was worth its' weight in gold, a price she did not have the means to pay. So she lay, still... hearing the shuffling of feet above her, the faint murmuring of the monks, her irregular heartbeat pressed to the ground, and the steady breath of the young man beside her. The wind-draft that had stoked her face with sharp fingernails now traced its way around her neck, down her spine. She felt it prick the nubs of her backbone, spreading chills around her body. Silently she tried to exhale all the air out of her lungs, in an effort to warm herself with at least a small semblance of life.

The space around her seemed to grow and shrink in size, wobbling, shadows shifting around her. Sometimes she felt that they had more amounts of soul left in them than she, dark that they were. A jerk on her hand, a sudden lower back shove, and she was on her knees, crawling through the underground recesses of the tombs. She held onto Issac's ankles, following his lead through the passageways of these catacombs. There was a burial taking place just beyond where they lay, which could work to their advantage: either serving as a distraction to cover up their position while they crawled further into the tombs, or, depending on how they decided to play the situation, could become their exit out of this passage way. Anna felt relatively sure that Issac was as unfamiliar with the catacombs as she, and yet he seemed to be directing them with a confidence that would lead her to believe otherwise.

They'd been on the run for weeks, escaping a purge that Justinian had instituted, which ordered that anyone who did not worship according to the government-instituted church would be either forced to join the royal army, or be "put to use for the government"- which, in effect, meant be forced into slavery. The theory was that if you followed set religious guidelines, you were a "free man": otherwise, the government had no way to "supervise" you, and thus the other alternatives were to make one cooperate in ways other than mentally. Issac saw this as the choice between being brainwashed or becoming a prisoner for choosing to think freely: an outspoken, passionate man, the government had him pinned on their list for years. "Freedom"-he spat as he said the word-"freedom is not being given the choice over which type of control the government wishes to manipulate you with." She grimaced as she remembered the lashes he'd received for his words. Soon after, he'd been locked up-God knew for what, though she had some ideas- and she didn't hear from him in months. She remembered glancing at his face in the moment he returned, and intuitively feeling a hardness that had not been there before his imprisonment. Since them, he hadn't spoken much of his time there.

Now, they were both trying to escape Ireland- he, because he refused to be a cooperate with corruption, and she, because she had vowed to herself to not leave him on his own again, until he was settled and safe with a wife and at least two children. The thought brought her a wry twitch to the corners of her mouth every time she thought of it- she'd been with him through at least two attempted engagements, and each time he'd managed to scare the women away from him before he could ever convince them to consider him as an option. No matter. He was a brother to her, where she had lacked one; the father who chastised her when she attempted idiocies, the friend she silently conveyed her fears to. She had needed him, for years- in recent times however, they both understood that they stayed together out of loyalty rather than need, which had, she'd come to decide, made the bond between them the stronger for it.