Chapter 70. The Prison

rescent Blade grew fond of the fox-haired man.  At times he could be a little brusque, but given what she had done to disrupt his life his kindness and respect were more than she deserved.  He had offered soothing words while the Margonites bound her even while he was clearly frightened and in pain from the coils of biting cord cinched around his arms and legs.  When they had set her down to shiver against the cold black stone, he sidled closer and offered the warmth of his body against the chill ashen wind of the jagged canyon.

“I’m scared for you,” she told him as she pressed against him.  He nuzzled her as if she were a child while her head rested against his breast.  The slow knell of his heart was strangely soothing, “Why are they so horrible to you but they treat me with deference?”

“They don’t know what you are,” he whispered, “I can read it in them, their confusion.  Hide your knowledge of the shadows from them.  It may be your salvation.”

“I will.  And once I’m free, I’ll come back for you.”

“Look to yourself, first,” he murmured, “They have dark intentions for me.  If an opportunity to escape becomes clear, take it and do not risk capture by looking for me.”

“I’m sorry this happened, Peng Ren.  I never intended such evil to befall you or Master Bei.”

He kissed her nape and hushed her which only caused grief to overflow into tears.  She did not want him to suffer or die all alone in this horrible place.  This was her fault.

“I forgive you,” he said gently, “Please forgive yourself.”

She must have cried herself to sleep for her next memory was of being startled awake and slung over one of the hammer wielding warrior’s shoulders.  Frightened for Pendaran, she searched for him and wondered how he could remain so calm and detached when they dragged him to his feet and forced him to imbibe a potion of freshly drawn ichor.  He choked the substance down and soon fell unconscious as he was carried by a second warrior.

He never awakened as they journeyed across the bitter black plain. She curled beside him during the short rests that interspersed the long periods of silent marching.  Pendaran was still warm and breathing, but he did not stir, even when she dared to nudge him harshly.  Hours, possibly days, passed.  It was impossible to know for the dreadful mockery of a sun did not stir from its noon tide perch.  At last they curled down from the high plain through shattered ravines and spiky tooth-choked gullies into a low miasmal valley.  At its center, a lone butte of gleaming obsidian thrust skyward, its tabletop surmounted with a malevolent crown of spiked curtain walls and sinister looking towers.  A plume of black smoke wreathed its battlements and a sulfurous reek hung upon the air.

The valley was teeming with encamped demons.  Margonites of every station and caste drifted amid chained mongrel creatures with far too many limbs or appendages.  Misshapen corpses littered the ground and squelched beneath the feet of the warriors as they moved toward the cracked spiral of stairs that rolled into the spiked maw of the fortress’ gatehouse.  She tensed in her bonds and her gut grew queasy.  There was a wicked finality about the way in which the jagged gate crashed down behind them.  She feared she would never be allowed to leave and her spirit would be chained there forever.

Once within the shadowed walls of the massive citadel, she was freed of her bonds and led away, goaded toward a gaping set of stairs that flowed down into the gut-rock of the butte.  She glanced back anxiously to see Pendaran being carried toward the harsh outcropping of towers that loomed precipitously over the shadowed yard.  Crescent Blade swallowed when she realized she might never see him again.

A pair of Margonites drifted behind her, magi whose arcane powers were unknown to her. Their shimmering lavender forms towered over her, a constant menace as she moved down the steep black steps toward a molten glow.  The round chamber that greeted her at the base of the stair caused her eyes to water, its brimstone odor stinging and overwhelming.  Its only light flowed from the trails of molten rock and metal that flowed around a great anvil.  A pair of Margonites labored beside a demonic smith that shaped red hot metal with its dreadful claws.  At the base of the forge there was a long stone table upon which an assortment of vile looking weapons were arrayed.  They nudged her toward it, their silence more frightening than their strange harmonic speech.

The Margonites watched with clinical interest as she gingerly touched the weapons and selected a matching pair of short swords, the nearest thing she could find to a set of daggers.  She spun them around and moved through a form to get a sense of their weight in combat, sighing softly at the loss of her delicate daggers.  These would do, but she felt clumsy and her arms would grow tired quickly in prolonged combat.  The Margonites did not disarm her, but gestured back toward the stairs and herded her across the courtyard to a small portcullis gate.  It was winched open by a small snarling demon in a treadmill and she was thrust inside.  The gate roared shut behind her with startling finality.

Clenching her fists around the dagger hilts, she hesitated, gazing upon the end of the long corridor that was faintly alight with the lurid green light of the open sky.  The Margonites drifted away from the gate as she turned back to gaze upon the courtyard.  A patrol of demons rolled past with their disjointed knees and graceless gait.  She saw the black smoke issuing from the top of the tower above the gatehouse and wondered what its cause might be.  Hesitating for as long as she dared, Crescent Blade took a deep breath and slinked carefully toward the opposite end of the corridor, expecting it to be a pen of some kind, her new home until they decided her fate.

To her surprise, it was a rounded arena with black sand upon its floor and rows of benches rising skyward high above the level of her head.  Margonites perched upon them, silent and curious as she turned in a slow circle.  Now she heard the distant rattle of the portcullis rising at the far end of corridor from which she had just emerged.  A distant roaring slavering sound issued from its throat and a clot of shadow emerged.

Crescent Blade did not need goading.  The rows of meat-encrusted teeth upon the low eye-less face of the beast told her she must prepare for battle.  The senseless creature scudded toward her, jaws snapping like a whip as it leaped toward her face.  She whirled, blades flashing to form a protective wall of metal.  Its putrid fangs zinged off the daggers and it recoiled.  Snarling, its splayed wedge-shaped feet kicked up plumes of black dust as it prepared for another lunge.  Now she followed the lines of its backward jointed knees and braced for an attack.  It rose up exactly as she predicted and she thrust down, her twin blades cracking through bone and chitin where its foul heart should be.  Gouts of reeking black ichor burst from its jaws as it emitted a gurgling roar.  She pulled up, her blades sliding free as the creature slithered off of them and crumpled twitching to the sand at her feet.  Before she could plant another blow to ensure its death, it exploded, showering her with hot foul-smelling flesh and burning blood.

She gagged, luckily having turned her face away and avoiding getting its filth in her eyes.  Dropping to her knees, she grasped handfuls of sand and scrubbed the burning substance from her exposed flesh, grateful when its coolness quelled it. She shuddered when the distant sound of the gate echoed down the long corridor once more.  Crescent Blade feared they meant to kill her in this fashion. Squaring her jaw, she clenched her fists around the hilts of her blades.  Very well then, she would fight as long as she could.  If torture were the alternative, then this was her preference.

Instead of another demon an emaciated Margonite arrived with a bowl of water and another of an unwholesome looking stew.  It laid them on the sand and departed.  Meanwhile, the ones who had been silently observing her in the gallery disappeared and she was left alone beneath the lurid green sky.  Truthfully, she was parched and starving and her body began to quiver with exhaustion as she edged toward the meaty smelling offering.  Some hapless creature had been quartered and boiled for her consumption and she tore off a pinch of the meat to sample it.  Unable to deny the needs of her body, she gave in and devoured it quickly, afraid it might be taken away.  She gulped the sooty water and then retired to the shadows, watching and waiting until she dozed, curled around her weapons.

Her life was now one of mind numbing nothingness followed by rapid flashes of steel.  After each battle, a reward of food and water as if she were no more than a treasured pet.  Each fight was predicated by the silent arrival of the Margonites in the seats high above and each creature was worse than the last, bigger, angrier, and deadlier. 

One day her rest was interrupted by the hideous blare of horns like the bellowing of a demonic yak herd.  Rising quickly to her feet, Crescent Blade stalked toward the far end of the corridor and peered beyond the jagged gate, watching as the courtyard teemed with snarling demons and rushing Margonites.  Battle pennons flew at the top of the towers and the air resounded with battle cries.  Gleaming bowmen lined the battlements and shot down upon the plain while a deep boom and thud issued from the gatehouse.  Winged demons rained down from the sky and tore at the Margonite forces.

She watched the demonic war with a mixture of fear and amusement, glad to see her hated foes laid low but vaguely worried what it would mean if they were defeated.  The Margonites had thus far shown no interested in killing her, but the mindless violence of their foes was terrifying.  They attacked indiscriminately, ripping and tearing with hooked claws and misshapen limps, killing anything that moved, including each other.  At times the winged ones collided in a blur of ichor and tearing claws until one died and the other landed to devour it and perch there snarling, its crop too distended with food to take flight again.  Filth dribbled from them constantly and soon the fortress was streaked with their pale guano and offal.  Her eyes streamed as the courtyard roiled with their squalling horde.

That was when she learned the purpose of the smoking tower above the gatehouse.  From her vantage she watched as Margonite warriors shoveled something into an enormous cauldron until smoke and fire rose in a putrid column.  Then, with the pull of a gleaming lever, a boiling explosion of molten rock rushed down upon the stones of the courtyard and the milling crowd of ravening filthy demons was incinerated.  Crescent Blade rushed away from the gate, terrified the fiery substance would flow into her pen.  She hid at the far end of the arena as stillness descended upon the courtyard and the busy sounds of the Margonites and their enslaved demons resumed.

For several hours she watched as the filth and ashen remains of the attacking demons were cleared away.  A new batch of liquid fire brewed above the gatehouse as the leavings of the first were cast far below onto the plains.  When next they opened the gate, it was to lead her away, this time without her swords, up toward the cluster of towers that rose high above the jagged battlements.  Near the top of a curling flight of stairs, she was guided into a strange chamber with walls forged of flesh.  There was an underlying odor of sweat and a foul sticky closeness as she was guided past enormous dangling growths that hung from the ceiling.  There was a cell that opened like a puckered scar in the wall and was sealed by interlocking bars.  Into this she was cast and she curled into the far end of the tiny chamber, watching and listening as the Margonites stirred in the chamber beyond.

Crescent Blade stirred when the sickening violet glow of the Margonites departed, leaving her to bask in the lurid green light of the sky that flowed through the high puckered windows.  In the stillness she could hear scrabbling as insectoid vermin moved about looking for scraps. Rising, she gingerly placed her hands on the interlocked fangs of her prison door and gazed upon the dangling fleshy structures that lined the walls of the room beyond.  The disgusting pustules had narrow necks that grew from the shadow-shrouded ceiling.  Each was drawn taut by the weight of a pear-shaped bulge at their terminal end large enough to contain a balled up human, perhaps a demon.  The heavy base dangled at roughly waist height above the slimy floor and she imagined they were filled with pus or something equally disgusting.  From her vantage she could clearly see three of them, two of which were dark and gangrenous.  The third swayed faintly, its long neck pulsating rhythmically with a peristaltic movement and its pendulous sides shifting and bulging as if it were alive.  Ugly black hairs and veins traced its flank and she wondered for what purpose the noisome things had been crafted by the Margonites.

She decided she did not wish to find out.  Certain she was alone, Crescent Blade dared to shadow step and was relieved when she moved easily past the bars of her cage.  She wove past the hideous pustules, careful not to touch them and found the open doorway through which she had been led.  Beyond that she followed the stairs upward one more flight and emerged at the top of the tower. Grateful for the open air, she stood there for a moment allowing the cold wind to flow through her filth matted hair.  She surveyed the valley, seeing that it was still thick with the armies of the Margonites.

Their numbers were overwhelming, reminding her that her freedom was merely and illusion.  While certainly she was not confined to a cell, there was nowhere to run that would not bring her face to face with more foes.  She might be able to evade them for a while, and after that, she would still be trapped in this awful realm far from the beauty of her true home.  And Pendaran would be trapped as well, wherever he was.

A sickening feeling clenched her gut as she thought this.  Moving slowly back down the stairs, she entered the room full of pustules and approached the one nearest her cell that seemed alive.  With a trembling hand, she dared to touch it and gulped as she traced the distinct hardness of a human head and shoulders pressed against one side.  Oh gods.  Her gorge rose and she wanted to vomit.  What had they done to him?

“Peng Ren,” she whispered, then clearing her throat, she drew her mouth closer and spoke as loudly as she dared, “Peng Ren, is that you in there?”

The horrible thing shuddered as the human being trapped inside fought to escape, heels and knees and elbows protruding for a moment as he made a fruitless struggle.  It was horrible beyond imagining.  She had to get him out of there.  But how?  And even if she succeeded, where would they go?

She could not let him stay like that.  His horror was palpable.

“I’ll get you out,” she murmured, “Just hang on.”

She clawed at the hard warty flesh of his prison, feeling the slime that lay within it slide between the folds of skin.  Crescent Blade tore at it, pulling and thrusting until it began to ooze blood.  The pod shuddered with his struggles and a low unintelligible groan rose from its depths as if he was trying to tell her to stop.  She was hurting him and he could not speak beyond base animal cries of pain.

Backing away, she looked on in disgust as the wound sealed up.  To succeed, she would need a sharp blade, and even then she feared cutting into the fleshy walls might kill him.  It was part of him now, keeping him alive and immersed in the disgusting flesh of Torment.  But why and for how long?  She anxiously touched one of the dead looking pustules, gasping in disgust when her fingers went through the fleshy outer rind as if it were dry paper.  It crumbled to ashes as she dared to continue probing.  She found her answer when she discovered one of several bleached bones inside of it.

The hair of her nape rose as she heard the faint rustle of Margonite robes fluttering in the hallway.  Swiftly she shadow stepped back into her cage and waited, hoping her brief escape would go unnoticed.  The nearly silent figures drifted into the room and she crept toward the bars to watch as they chanted toward the ceiling.  A new pustule was forming there like a boil emerging on pristine skin.

“For me,” she realized in horror. Gods, no.  She had to get out of here.