I could remember it like any other day.
The vision... The memory... The sight I had to behold as a child.
Watching my family get brutally murdered by a masked woman...
Being brought to this orphanage by the same woman who had killed his own flesh and blood.
I hated it...
Straining my muscles, as I grit my teeth-CLANG! The sound of my pickaxe gashing against the warm stone, echoed across the yard.
My eyes could never help but study the black wall that surrounded the orphanage he had always known.
The annoying barbed wire rippling and curling around the top of the six meter tall wall-like some sort of monstrous thorns, intending on keeping the children inside of this house of horrors.
"Pointless..." I muttered, feeling my knuckles grow white upon the wooden handle in my grasp.
Abraham- Who was patiently sitting cross-legged on the mud behind me-mumbled a prayer, only to look up and give me that same stupid smile of comfort.
"Cheer up Max, I really don't see your problem with this place. It has kept us safe from the Fiends after all..." Abe said happily, gently tucking his golden cross dangling from a rickety chain- underneath the collar of his muddy white shirt.
'Only you cannot see what the true point of this place is...' I couldn't help but think...
This place... I had been there longer than most. And survived three times longer than most.
It was made to be extremely hard of a task, in order to remain at the orphanage. Whether it was the horrid chores that we had to do on the daily-such as mine away at a stone surface that obviously could not be broken by a bunch of malnourished children and teenagers.
"Don't you see Abe..." CLANG!, "It's not that I'm angry or ungrateful for the roof to sleep under... But it's all too convenient... I mean think about it Abe. The maidens... The Priestess's and how they are required to take the oath... Just as they are required to protect their prefrontal cortex at all cost. Just as they are demanded to preserve the energy that their bodies create..."
I could only grit my teeth more at my own hatred, and the fact that I knew that I would never get to unleash said anger. Letting it forever bottle up in the fog of confusion that was the chamber in my chest.
"Either way... We cannot leave. Our God forbade it... Remember?" Abe said, worry clearly leaking from his eyes.
I could only turn my vision, avoiding the pained gaze of the fourteen year old boy who had refused to leave my side this entire time.
My name is Maximus Montgomery... Last surviving blood of the Montgomery bloodline...
And the blonde boy who clang to his religion like a sloth, was Abraham DeArmado... Second youngest blood of the DeArmado Bloodline.
"Abe!" A proud feminine voice called out from the rickety door that acted as the back exit of the orphanage.
"Diana! Hi, it's been quite a while since I've gotten to see you sister... Is everything alright? You are doing okay, aren't you?" Abe's smile lit up once he seen his sister, and his eyes studied her garments out of confusion.
I scowled out of the corner of my eye, striking the stone with more and more anger as I realized what Diana had done.
The ivory robes wrapping around her body, covering everything but her rough, yet attractive face.
"You took the Oath..." I growled, interrupting whatever pointless small talk the siblings had been taking part in.
Diana looked pained the second that I had called out her decision. As if she had already regretted it.
Now that I thought about it... There was a strange darkness in the corners of her golden eyes...
"It was not your decision to make, and it certainly isn't yours to critique..." She said darkly.
Our eyes met, and it seemed as if some sort of dark meaning had been passed through an attempt of pleading. Like some sort of terrible truth had broken free, and Diana-My friend and best friend's only family, had been forced to bear a burden far too dark for children like us.
A loud bell rang throughout the yard, jolting several husks of what had once been children-awake.
The only armed guard in the entire orphanage walked outside from the back exit. Carelessly slamming the door into the outer wall of the cabin-like structure.
"Meal time..." Bryan the guard said, scowling directly at me as he usually did.
"Let's go Abe..." I demanded quietly, grabbing Abe by the back of his collar and dragging him towards the orphanage... Towards that hell...
...
Me and Abe sat side by side on the wooden bench full of splinters and insects.
I bit into my stale bread with an exhausted expression on my tired face.
Abraham; however, silently stared at his own pathetic meal. After all, it was rare for him to not trust in the God that he worshiped so devotedly.
The God that they all worshiped so devotedly.
This cursed religion that has rotted the lands, and cursed its people into a demonic way of living. With rituals that only I had seen or noticed... Unlike most children in the orphanage... I had survived up until the age of 15. Which as I've said, is the most rare thing in these lands.
Abe was lucky... If Abraham hadn't met me upon his arrival...
Who knows what the boy would have been forced to go through...
"What Oath has my sister taken...?" Abe asked quietly, immediately sending a shiver down the back of my spine.
I raised an eyebrow with shaky tension rising within my body, my arms feeling stiff as I tried to come up with some sort of lie that would comfort Abraham.
"Max?"
I didn't realize it yet... But we needed to leave this place... And go anywhere but here, do anything in our power to escape the influence of the church...
And yet all I could say in that moment... Knowing that I would regret not being truthful to my friend. Knowing that I would have doomed his perspective the moment the truth left my mouth.
"Just forget it... It's not a big deal..."