Ellas

Dar’cen/Jalholm

Jalholm awoke, to screams, cries, and the clash of steel on steel.

His tent flap ripped open, and a man he barely knew, Smirk he thought his name was, burst in. ‘We have to go!’ the man shrieked. ‘There are too many of them… you must come with us now.’

Jalholm, shaking off the last remnants of sleep, stood, fully dressed from the night before - a habit he had adopted after Alex and he had been relentlessly pursued by Nargu those very few months ago.

‘Nargu?’ he asked, quickly followed by, ‘How many?’

Smirk ignored him, and grabbing his arm, he dragged him from the tent.

‘The others are already waiting to take you to safety. We cannot let them have you.’

‘Me? Why do you think they’re after me?’ Jalholm said, but deep down, in his heart, he knew.

Dashing to the horses, Smirk shouted above the clamour of battle, ‘Step said that they’d hold them until we get you clear… when they know you’re safe, they’ll break off and make a run for it.’

Sadness washed over Jalholm’s face, to be quickly replaced by hard resolution. ‘It is how it must be,’ he muttered to himself.

Two men that Jalholm didn’t know sat astride their horses, each holding a spare mount.

Mounting, Jalholm shouted, ‘He must not get my rod! He must not be allowed to follow!’

‘This way!’ Smirk shouted as he led them at a gallop past groups of defenders - each group hard pressed, and barely holding the Nargu at bay.

In moments they charging past the last of the Nargu and out into the night, but they didn’t slow until the light from the camp fires were no longer visible and the noise of the fighting couldn’t be heard.

Half an hour later, they reached an outcrop of large stones. ‘We stop here, and the other’s will catch up to us when they break from the Nargu,’ Smirk said, as he dismounted.

Jalholm sat his horse, staring back toward where the camp must lay, searching for followers.

Suddenly, Two Nargu burst from behind the stones, and before he could form a defensive spell, one looped a catch-pole noose around his neck just as the other bludgeoned him over the head.

Barely conscious, he was dragged from his horse and thrown on the ground.

Smirk stood above him, a huge grin on his face, as the Nargu again clubbed him over the head. The last he heard before darkness took him was, Smirk demanding his payment, and the Nargus’ gutteral laughter.

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‘So finally you are mine again,’ Dar’cen’s voice hissed as Jalholm writhed in pain at his feet.

‘You, who are mine… my creature for evermore, thought to escape me!’

Jalholm screamed, his back arching, almost bending him double. His bladder and bowels emptied as he beat his hands against the cold stone floor.

‘Yes, I shall enjoy my time with you again. How I have missed your whining. But first I would know more of what this one has told me,’ Dar’cen said, as his hand gestured to Smirk who was stretched out naked across the floor, with only a few strips of skin left on his body.

‘Tell me, Jalholm. Tell me all. Leave nothing out, for if I am forced to take it from you… well, you know what that will be like, don’t you,’ Dar’cen cackled, gleefully.

‘But remember, I will know if lie… or try to evade. The thing, the corpse there, told me of Anna… Anna the witch, the one I thought dead. Dead at the hands of the one who dared to betray me!’ Dar’cen screamed.

‘Tell me all you know!’

Jalholm’s body lifted from the floor to hover upright in front of Dar’cen. His mouth moved, but only screams came, as a fresh wave of pain seared through his body.

‘Come, come, you know you cannot resist me. I could simply compel you to talk, but I so much enjoy pain as my method of questioning. So tell me, where have they gone, and what silly little plan have they hatched?’

After what seemed to Jalholm to be hours, but could have been mere minutes, he lay sobbing on the floor.

‘So the witch lives still!’ Dar’cen screamed, rage filling his voice.

‘And Kanteth, the betrayer, the one who was as my own child, has followed her to my world! How? Tell me, my pet, how could they have travelled there?'

Jalholm snivelled, his nail-less hands shaking.

‘Speak!’

‘I do not know how Anna… I mean the witch, travelled there, master. The betrayer used the rod… your rod,’ Jalholm said, pleadingly.

‘How? How could the rod alone do this without your portal? How?’

‘Time, time is the key. Master. You… you came from long ago, and… and needed the power of the portal to assist the rod that you bade me create. That is the only explanation I can give.’

Jalholm screamed as yet another wave of agony swept though his body.

‘And what is it they seek on my world? Tell me!’

Through clenched teeth, Jalholm said, ‘Something to defeat you, master. I know not what, please believe me.’

‘Ah,’ Darcen said, as Jalholm’s screams began anew. ‘Tell me, my pet, what is my name… my true name, that which I gave to you when you first brought me to this world?’

Jalholm convulsed, his mouth agape, eyes bulging, but no words came.

‘Speak it!’ Dar’cen commanded, using pain and compulsion together to force Jalholm to talk.

But still Jalholm uttered not a coherent word; only incomprehensible gurgles left his mouth.

Finally satisfied, Dar’cen let his hold on Jalholm relax. ‘Good, my spell holds. So it is my name they seek, and that they cannot, must not have. This,’ Dar’cen said, as he held up Jalholm’s travelling rod. ‘If what you said of time is true, this will allow me to follow them, yes?’

‘I believe so, master… but it is flawed, weak. It will take you, but only you… or perhaps one other. It—‘

‘Silence! Set it… now! Set it so that I may follow and destroy them. I will finally make an end to the witch that has plagued my life… and bring the betrayer to heel!’

Jalholm, hands shaking with terror and pain, fumbled and set the three rings on his travel rod, and then prostrated himself on the floor, holding the rod up before himself.

‘Good, good, you have done well, my pet. For your reward, you will remain here until I return… safe in the hands of my most accomplished pain givers.

Turning to the two Nargu that appeared next to him, Dar’cen said, ‘See that he suffers… continually until I return. No sleep, no rest from pain. He must pay for the years that he was absented. But do not take his life, do not overly damage him!’

Jalholm screamed as he was dragged away from Dar’cen’s presence.