18. Escape Plans

Castus was left alone in his cell after the archbishop's victory speech. It was a tormenting solitude with the guilt and pains of losing his family. He had run over the scenes of the house on fire, Reid bleeding out in the kitchen and Yursa bravely trying to defend him.

'If only I hadn't gone to the kitchen maybe things would have been different.' Castus lamented once again.

He had thought of every possibility and every different choice he could have made. He longed to change the past. But it was all a facade covering up the simple truth.

'I'm pathetic. A coward. A weakling. It doesn't matter what choices I made. There was never a choice I could have made that would have saved anyone. By the time I was awake Yursa was the only one alive. At least that I saw.'

His thoughts circled back to the singular ray of hope left in the wake of his devastation. 'At least Aria and Erin weren't home.' This thought kept breaking him out of his cycle of tormenting what ifs.

Every time the cycle wrapped around to his twin sisters his weakened and pathetic resolve steeled slightly. Like a piece of steel having the impurities removed. Castus realized he was still alive. He had time still. Time for revenge and to protect his sisters from whatever the church or world would throw at them. Sure he was the younger brother, but being a 20 something year old before had warped his perception and he firmly believed himself the older sibling.

Finally after days of circling through his thoughts Castus seemed to snap out of a daze. His childlike face had a maturity that didn't match it. For the first time Castus stopped being so concerned with his precious life being revealed. He had a mission to complete and the first step was getting out of this prison within the church. He reached out towards the bars of the prison ready to analyze the metal as he had the ropes and break out. His hand touched the bars and….

Nothing. He had analyzed this metal before. When he had started experimenting with his blessing a while ago he had analyzed some metals and fate was cruel. His blessing showed the metal as crude iron. The same kind he had found before on the back of his property in a shed during a break while training with Ben.

'Fuck.' Castus swore in his mind realizing that as much as he was gung go to break out of this cell it wasn't going to be as easy as willing his way through it. Sitting down and looking at the abilities he had available to him, Castus realized the simplicity of the answer.

First he would make a metal file. Then he would cut through the bars and replace the metal he cut with his own created metal. When he had cut through enough bars he would remove his added material and escape.

Quickly getting to work Castus discovered the first issue. While he could now comfortably make enough metal for the file shaping the metal was slow. Painfully slow. It took all of his concentration to slowly cause the metal to warp and bend the way he wanted it to. He could only work on the metal for 10 minutes before his mana would run dry. That was the simple problem. His low intelligence made the process tedious and slow, but Castus had time. The archbishop had mentioned that they higher ups wouldn't come anytime soon. Based the on the three meals the guards would bring, Castus had been in that state of self loathing for two days. He now had a little bit less than two months to escape.

It took 3 days to get the file into a recognizable shape. It took another day to get the teeth of the file into a useable state and Castus waited for dinner before beginning his work to avoid any guards from entering his holding area. The prison cell he was in only had one way in so the guards sat outside the door and only entered to give him food. Castus hoped the sound of him filing would be quiet enough to not be heard. The distance to the door was about 50 feet and the entire chamber was built with thick stone. Castus had actually analyzed it in the hopes to break through the wall. This led nowhere and caused Castus to have to push his bedding against the wall to prevent the small chunk of missing wall from being noticed.

Reaching forward an hour after dinner with shaking hands, Castus placed the file against the metal of his cell and moved it back and forth. Sawing the metal didn't make a ton of noise but If anyone had been in the room it would be obvious what he was doing. It didn't take long before Castus was halfway through the bar when an ear splitting shriek emitted from the file. The bar had pinched the file due to Castus' nervousness and caused the bar to resonate, creating a monstrously loud noise.

Castus froze up again. Similar to when he had seen Ben standing over Reid. This time though he snapped out of it just a little faster and rushed to hide the file. It was too late though. A guard had rushed in to investigate and saw the file. His hand reached through the bars like lightning and grabbed Castus' wrist.

"Sneaky aren't ya? Don't know how you got this but I'll be taking it. I'll be sure to tell the archbishop too." The guard wrenched the created file away from Castus. His plan had been foiled. Desperation filled his eyes and he knew his chance had eluded him.

The guard called to his partner who sauntered into the room clearly waking up from a nap and looked at the file with surprise.

"Well I know he couldn't have snuck that in we searched him when he was knocked out." The second guard remarked, looking at the crude file. He turned to Castus' child like form and muttered to the first guard. "Suppose we should put him chains for now to be safe."

The first guard grunted in annoyance and tilted his head at Castus. "You do it I'm gonna tell the archbishop."

The guard entered Castus' cell and pulled out a long chain with a handcuffs on one end and a heavy key lock on the other.

Castus backed up against the wall playing the only card he had left. "Wait please I'm just a child. Why are you doing this!" For a second Castus felt proud of himself. Thinking of playing on the guards emotions by using his childlike appearance. To his dismay the guard simply snorted. "Your a fool if you think I'll risk this job for some filthy orphan."

Castus was stunned as the guard chained him to the wall. His gaze fell to the ground defeated as he looked into the puddle that reflected his face. He saw his reflection. A dirty face gazed back at him. Oily black hair, green eyes that looked dim in the low light and soot covered his face.

'An orphan huh.'