Without movement, sound, smell, the ever-present taste of blood in her mouth, or any earthly rumblings, Zelika stirred. Her first thoughts of awareness were that the Hull who ripped her soul out of her body must have thought the punishment sufficient and summoned her back. It had told her that that was how the ritual worked. Her unrealistic waking self mused at what she had done to merit such a thing: stepping as hard as she could on the foot of a commander when it surveyed her mind to make sure she had been scried completely. At this Zelika's almost cheerful wonderings turned dark and flat, for surely she would now be subject again to the same starvation, torture, dehydration, and degredation that she had dealt with daily for the last... what was it? It felt like years, but there was a tiny window in her cell; she tried to keep count of the days, and her estimate was somewhere in the one hundred and twenty area. About a third of a year. How pathetic, she challenged herself, to have stayed so long and not escaped! A small voice in her head that she vaguely recognized as reason told her to stop moping and get up. Perhaps food or water had been given to her while she was soul-dead.
Almost fearfully, Zelika decided to open her eyes. She winced as she crawled painfully to her hands and knees, still trying to adjust to the scars on her back where a few Hulls had whipped her for fun. She had found the attack painful, but it had not been enough to break her spirit. Nothing had done that, and as far as she was concerned, nothing ever would.
Looking around the room, Zelika noticed immediately that something was different: the sunlight filtering in lit up the small, unfurnished cell, in which only she and a small cape lay. She glanced at it curiously, for it had not been there before. Her outfit was worn and tattered, so perhaps one of the Hulls had left it for her. She dismissed that with little rumination, however, since they didn't seem to care if she was comfortable. In fact, she had been slated for death after they found that they had extracted every trace of memories that were of use to them out of her. If she died of exposure, all the better for saving supplies, so what was the black cloak doing in her cell? She crawled forward gingerly and picked it up to investigate.
Zelika gasped. There were bleached bones under the cape, all from a human body. She remembered being told by Hem at some point during their stay in Nal-Ak-Burat that Hulls were left as decomposing corpses or bones depending on how long they had been around, so this one must have been killed somehow. Instinctively she dropped the foul-smelling clothing she'd been holding. It had been worn by a dead body for what she thought was probably a disgustingly long time, perhaps even a year. Nonetheless, if she could improve upon her rags... thinking the better of leaving such a valuable resource, Zelika picked the cloak up again and pulled it around her neck, finding that it used a pin and button to stay attached to a human, or, as the case may be, Hull.
Suspicion washed over the Il Aran unexpectedly. How had the thing died? Why? Questions swarmed into her head and she stood, biting her lip as the scars began hurting again. The pulsing pain wore off quickly except for one welt, and she realized angrily that she'd reopened it, though she did nothing to stop the bleeding. She swore out loud, then stepped towards the door and pressed her ear against it. Nothing. A hesitant hope boiled within her and though she tried warily to repress it, it swelled and made her attempt to push the door open. The hope became astonishment as it swung wide, and then evolved into eagerness; she sprang into the empty hall, in which two more piles lay. By whose hand Zelika knew not, and nor did she care, but the point was that all the Hulls were dead.
She was free.
A/N: Edited a few things, all small, since they added up. =)