Ellas Past

Kane

‘Hush,’ I whispered, as I held my hand up to stop Anna. We walked along a derelict street, low walls either side of us marked the remains of what once were buildings.

The paved street we walked upon was covered with row after row of almost parallel ripples, ten feet or so apart, almost as though pulses of devastation had flowed through the town, melting everything in its path. What remained of the buildings, too, showed signs of the waves of heat and destruction that had flowed from the centre of the town outward.

No more than a hundred paces in front of us stood the remains of what must have once been a grand building. Its walls were much more intact than most, standing six or seven feet in places.

Behind a section of those walls, I knew several Nargu hid, and I also knew that they had seen our approach, and had crouched behind the wall in order to capture us.

Move closer, Anna said, in my mind. Close enough to stumble upon them… be startled and show fear before you run. Remember, cower and cringe. You are a deserter in fear for your life.

I nodded, and walked forward slowly, again overemphasising my wariness. Anna followed a few feet behind.

Reaching the highest section of wall, the wall that hid the obviously crouching Nargu, I said, ‘We hide here for the night.’ To Anna the voice would be mine, the words but a whisper. The Nargu would hear the quiet but guttural voice and language of a Nargu – or at least that's what Anna had said they would hear, what I prayed they would hear.

Together we clambered over the lowest section of wall in the pretence of sheltering inside the ruined building.

‘Agh!’ I screamed, even as I turned and ran, leaving Anna to fend for herself. Nargu are cowardly creatures, and none would stop to aid another, none would even consider such an action.

Anna was caught immediately, by two burley Nargu who pinning her to the floor. I ran like the wind, Nargu can move extremely fast when they need to, especially when fear is a factor.

They brought me down three or four minutes later. I'd just cleared a low wall when the huge bolas – iron chain-link rope connecting to heavy, spiked iron balls – wrapped around my legs and brought me crashing down onto the hard stone floor.

I thrashed and bellowed, and then began to scream and beg as my Nargu captors hurried towards me.

Guttural laughter, bellowed commands to be silent, and numerous kicks followed, before I was hefted to my feet and dragged back to where Anna lay.

Together, we whimpering and begging to be set free, while the six Nargu surrounding us bickered over the share in the reward for our capture each would receive.

He does not reward, I thought. Empty promises of power and wealth, pain and death are all that any ever received from Dar’cen. They will fare no better.

Surrounded by the heavily armed Nargu, we were dragged and kicked across what remained of the town, through all the devastation and across the boundary that marked the demarcation between what had been destroyed and what was untouched. So precise was the weapon he had employed, that mere inches beyond the destruction, not a blade of grass was harmed.

Two hundred yards beyond the line of devastation stood the stones of Alfent – the entry to his stronghold. Between us and the stones stood a rank of Nargu Elite, all shoulder to shoulder, surrounding the stones; only the peaks of the stones were visible over their heads.

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Twenty feet before the stones we were made to stop as the leader of our group, a sergeant I supposed, hesitantly walked forward to a Nargu standing proud before the defending rank of Elite, an officer, I assumed.

The officer was all of ten foot tall, and built like a rhino. Unlike the others, shod in iron and leather, his armour was gleaming steel, and his whole bearing was that of command. Even from where we stood, the cruelty in his eyes was plain. Words were exchanged, but I caught little other than what seemed to be a request for a reward, before the officer backhanded the sergeant across the face with his heavily studded, steel gauntlet.

Staggering, the sergeant dropped to his knees and immediately began to beg for mercy. The officer roared with laughter, and then kicked the almost prostrate Nargu. Behind him, his troops filled the air with hoots and cheers. A moment passed with the sergeant pleading for mercy as he used his arms to shield himself from the merciless kicks that the officer dolled out.

Then, his need for violence obviously sated, the officer stood back and barked an order. Four of his troops immediately broke rank and marched toward us.

Unceremoniously, Anna and I were dragged forward and dropped at the now grinning officer’s feet.

‘Deserter filth!’ he shouted, his steel shod boots thudding into my torso as I lay sprawled before him.

‘Do nothing,’ I whispered to Anna. ‘He cannot kill us, nor harm us too greatly. He will answer to Dar'cen if he does… great pain and death belong to him only. All who serve him know that.’

We had had the same conversation when Anna first spoke of her plan – a beating was inevitable, I knew. Nargu are cruel and enjoy inflicting pain whenever they can do so without hurt to themselves. But I still needed to reinforce what I had said in case Anna broke and lashed out with her magic.

Another kick landed and I groaned between pleas for mercy – Nargu would never suffer in silence. A third kick and the officer seem to tire of his sport, for he ordered his men to take us to the dungeons to await the master’s pleasure. He placed great emphasis on the last word, and grinned as if, in his mind’s eye, he saw our fate as he looked down upon us.

We were dragged into the circle of stones and dumped in its centre.

The four guards, who now stood rigidly to attention, formed a box around where we lay. They now enter his lair, and fear for their own lives, I thought.

Anna watched intently as a fifth Nargu, almost reverently touched symbol after symbol on one of the nine standing stones.

There was a blinding flash and an instant later we lay upon a rough flagstone floor in an almost circular, high ceilinged room. The room was dark and dingy, barely lit by the flickering torches set seemingly at random in wall sconces around the room’s perimeter.

We were again in the centre of a circle of stones like those we had just travelled though, but these weren’t standing. Each was laid flat on the floor, their etchings face up, glowing and adding an eerie chill to the flickering torchlight.

Chained next to each stone was a creature, or at least the remains of a creature – some might have at one time have been human. Only the upper half of whatever they had been remained. Enormous eyes dominated their faces, and their ears were elongated to allow them to catch the faintest of whispered commands. Their arms were long and thin with a single finger at the end of each, to allow them to reach the glowing runes on the stone each supervised.

A narrow slit replaced where a mouth would once have been, as they had no need to talk – the slits were to allow their screams to be heard by their overseer when they were punished for the slightest of infractions.

Sustenance was supplied through the tubes, inserted into their abdomens that snaked away into the walls behind them. And that sustenance took the form of the liquefied remains of whomever or whatever Dar’cen had finally finished with.

It was said that the very first ‘meal’ these creatures were fed were their own lower limbs, liquidised to a paste, as their overseers jeered, laughed and taunted them at what they were fed.

This was what many of his playthings became; changed horribly, unbelievably painfully to amuse him, to feed him, and fulfil a function for at least a short while.

Worse was that I knew such creatures would retain all their memories of old. He did so, so that they would remember the horror of what he had done to them.

The sight before me was not new; I had seen this all before, long ago, in a time yet to come. He does not change, I thought. He repeats all his evil…he had done it all before.

All that was before me, I took in the split second before our guards forced us both to prostrate ourselves upon the floor, faces flat against the cold, dark stone. And then, they came to attention, barely seeming to breathe as they stood eyes forward waiting to see who it was would come for us.

I knew that he would not come, not unless his hunger was great and no other was within reach. No, we would be dragged screaming and kicking to the dungeons where he kept all his playthings, his food. But these guards feared that they would stand before their master – they feared quite rightly for that own lives; Elite or not, no one was safe when it in his presence. As I, too, had learnt at great cost.

We were kept waiting. I whimpered and begged for mercy throughout, as was expected, but no blows or kicks fell. To do so in this place without expressed permission from Dar'cen would be to forfeit their own lives.

And so we waited. The only sounds that of our faked whimpers, and the uneasy breathing of our Elite guards.