The prisoner

There was darkness.  An endless plumet through a featureless void.  In fact darkness would be too light a term for the impenetrable anti-light.  Time passed, it didn't really have a choice about the matter.  The darkness got darker.  Eventually, a sarcastic voice broke the silence of the darkness, "Dark isn't it?"
Caeros awoke to the rising of the sun.  The coarse, splintered wood of his narrow bed felt, as always, strangely reassuring to the young monk.  It was practically a prison, this island, with he as one of it's inmates quietly serving his time.  Supposedly, Caeros thought, he must have come from somewhere before he was found as a youth, naked and impoverished, washed up upon the shores of the monastic island.
The monks had been kind, of course, taking him in as one of their own and teaching him the mysteries of the mind.  The abbot, a strict yet patient elderly man by the name of Aaron, had taken a liking to the mysterious child that was Caeros, and as such, his progress through the orders had been swift.  He had been specially selected to be trained in the art of Shing-la-con, an ancient method of unarmed combat.
Despite this, Caeros often wondered about his past, he sometimes fantasised that his parents were powerful and influential people, and he a rich man, free to roam wherever he would.  Still, it was not so and the sun was well risen by now, he would have to postpone his childish imaginings and report for the morning ritual.
Visitors to the monastory often remarked upon the splendid grandeur of the building.  Constructed hundreds of years before out of smooth marble hewn from the surrounding cliffs, the monastery was said to be a greatly imposing feature.  Caeros always thought it was just too breezy and needed a more modern makeover.
The sweet, pungent aroma of incense choked the main chamber.  Thousands of elaborately crafted candles cast dark shadows throughout the chamber, starkly contrasting with the almost harsh light of the room.  Exquisite gems glinted upon the elegant, evenly spaced pillars, opals, saphires and emeralds.  
They were all there in that room, the prisoners that is, each mouthing the litany without passion, a mere habit now ingrained into their psyche.  "Bel shel olem, a tizrah cannah di."  Caeros didn't even ponder upon the meaning of the words, written in a dead language rendered untranslatable by the passage of time.  Anyhow, whatever the purpose of the chant, it had either been fulfilled long ago or never would.
The Abbot lay upon his simple bed, deep in meditation.  His reflections were not of the nature of being, nor of the nature of the Words of Power, nor did they focus upon the spiritual betterment of mankind.      The elderly monk who services the Abbot would have been mortified to learn that his master's every thought went to the grand purpose of getting off this island where he was confined.  In his deepest meditations there was just darkness, that and his own sarcastic voice constantly criticising the teachings and demeaning his sacrifices.
Caeros felt a strong surge of emotion as he gazed back at the monastery from the crude wooden raft he had constructed.  Hate, anger, fear, even a kind of deep and terrible love for what he would leava behind all fought for control, until he had to avert his gaze or drown forever in his feelings.  Still, he would be free.
The full moon shone overhead, glaring at him, cursing Caeros for his treachery.  The waves were the demons of Aroth, a thousand deformed entities reaching to grasp this heretic who had defied their master.  Eventually, the young heretic fell asleep.
A month later, Caeros awoke to the rising of the sun.  The soft, luxurious mattress he now slept on still strangely unsettling in his mind.  Automatically, his lips mouthed the sacred litany, "Bel shel olem, a tizrah cannah di."  Free in body, his mind was still a captive of the island.
Time passed quickly, it didn't want to hang around.
Ten years later, Caeros was driving his expensive sportscar home from his new offices.  He had left the monastery behind now, his psychiatrist had freed him from that prison long ago.  Now he was going places, a successful entrepeneur, a rich man, a king among men, free, the world his oyster, master of himself, slave to money, his possessions his new prison.