Ellas Past

Kane

After what seemed an age, the rattling of chains dragged across the floor signalled the arrival of our jailers, and seeing them, each of our guards uttered a sigh of relief.

Hauled to our feet, we were manacled hand and foot and then unceremoniously dragged by yet another four burly Nargu to the cells.

Sweat, piss and fear filled the air as we passed door after door set in the walls of the dimly lit corridors we were dragged along – iron banded wooden doors with barred peek-holes barely big enough to look through set in the centre. From behind each, whimpering pleas sounded as we passed on our way to our own confinement.

We must have passed a hundred such doors before those that held us stopped and dropped us to the floor.

One, the jailer I assumed, took a set of keys from his belt and fumbled in the dim light to unlock the door before him. He muttered and cursed as he struggled, and then commanded one of the guards to fetch a torch, even as in his frustration, he swung a kick at Anna.

But we were far enough from prying eyes now, deep in the confines of Dar’cen’s prison. Here we might find Gremok and the others.

The kick, still on its way through the air to Anna, met my knife as it materialised out of nothing in my outstretched hands, still manacled together.

‘Now,’ I said, quietly as the Nargu jailer began to howl in pain.

The chains that held us fell away the instant I spoke, and the magical Nargu disguises, the disguises that held the so over-sized manacles in place, faded to show our true form.

The guards were no slouches, two had weapons drawn, and one was making to run back the way we had come. My knife took him in the back and, before his lifeless form had hit the floor, I dispatched the other two, leaving only the still howling jailer.

Him, I silenced with a command, two words, ‘Be silent,’ spoken in the voice that had so many times reduced the bravest of men to cowering wrecks.

The jailer prostrated himself on the floor, quivering in terror, but he remained silent.

‘I wish you would not use that particular gift, Kane. I could have—’

‘Question him, Anna. We do not have time for this.’

The look Anna gave me then would have a dozen fully armed Nargu quivering, but all she said was, ‘Not here. In the cell… and put those,’ her eyes traversed the three corpses, ‘in the cell opposite. We do not know how well travelled this place is.’

The command in her voice was enough to have me moving before I even realised what I was doing. As I turned back to her with indignation plain across my face, she already had the jailer hobbling through the now somehow open cell door. As she stepped through after the foul creature, I heard her stifle a laugh as she said, ‘Men!’

Moments later, we both stood before the cringing jailer. Even sat on the floor he was a head taller than Anna, and yet he whimpered and begged as if she was Dar’cen himself.

‘The Ella’ren,’ Anna said, her voice quiet but so full of command that I myself almost felt compelled to speak. ‘Where are they held?’

The jailer shook his huge head violently from side to side as he almost inaudibly muttered, ‘No, no… Do not make me speak of them. No, no—’

‘Tell me!’ Anna commanded as she took hold of the huge creature's head. ‘Tell me, I command it.’

The Nargu stilled its head, and looked down at Anna. Terror filled its eyes even as it ground its teeth in rage, rage that was at complete odds with the cowardly ways of all the Nargu I had ever known.

‘Anna—’

‘I see it,’ she said, sharply. ‘He has a compulsion on—’

Before she could finish, the Nargu screamed, a gurgle of a scream, and he spat out his own tongue, chewed off in what I had thought had been the grinding of his teeth.

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Blood covered Anna as the Nargu fell forward to the floor, incoherent words and sobs flowing from his ruined mouth.

My knife appeared as I moved forward to finish the creature.

‘Wait,’ Anna said. ‘There are other ways than with words. Touching such a foul creature’s mind is a thing I dread. A thing I have avoided since the first. But… but now I see no other way. Move aside, Kane. It will take only a few moments, but I may not be myself after… not for some little time.’

‘Then do not do this, Anna. We will find another way. You must not take this hurt.’

‘I tell you this to warn you, Kane. You may have to look out for both of us for a little while… do not worry.’

And with that, Anna knelt and took the Nargu's shaking head in her hands.

Though the Nargu tried to resist her grip, she held its head firmly, much more so that I would have thought her capable of.

A moment passed, and then she began to moan and whimper as her eyes seem to look beyond the small cell we occupied to some invisible past. When she finally pulled her hands away, her face was contorted in rage, and she dry washed her hands as if to remove some invisible stain. ‘Kill that foul thing,’ she hissed. ‘What it has done in its lifetime deserves no mercy.’ And she stalked from the cell.

The Nargu screamed as I moved to make an end of it; I cut its throat to silence the noise it made. Given how Anna had reacted, I doubted that he himself had ever given any such a quick and merciful death.

‘Are you well, Anna?’ I asked, as I emerged from the cell.

‘Better than I expected,’ she answered, curtly. ‘Come, we must retrace our steps some little way if we are to find this Gremok of yours.’ As she walked away, she spoke over her shoulder, ‘Few know of the Ella’ren. It has been his little secret… perhaps he wishes to pit them against his own to test them—’

‘Then that is why it attacked me when it should have seen a Nargu. I thought that—’

‘I know what you thought, Kane. But my magic did not fail us, I assure you. Regardless, be silent and listen… It is good that we came here, for this is where he kept them, and why it was that the one I read knew of them. He has had failures, and of the ten… plus the young one, Gremok, for he captured him, too, all that remain are the one we fought, and three that he still tries to—’

‘To make into creatures such as I was…’

‘Yes, what you were, Kane. That man, that creature, as you say, is gone now… long gone.’

‘So where do we go, Anna? Where are the three you speak of? Do you know?’

‘I saw them in that foul creatures mind… changed, but not yet fully his. One has been taken today; the jailer, he delivered him. The other two are not so far along, and his minions train them with their beatings… they—’

‘They condition their minds to pain,’ I interrupted. ‘I remember well that time, Anna. Those we must take first… what they suffer is… it is what will break them.’

I fear you are right in your choice, for the other is with him… for that one we must wait. We cannot take him from Dar’cen, we must wait until he is returned to his cell.’

‘But what of the jailer? He at least will be missed.’

‘I am the jailer now, Kane, and you are my assistant.’

‘You are?’ I said, as a set of keys appeared dangling from Anna's belt and the wicked, spiked cosh that the jailer had carried appeared on the other side.

‘I know the jailer, Kane. I can be him, but you must be subservient, afraid at all times of what I might do to you… he was evil and cruel even by Nargu standards.’

‘Clever, Anna, very clever.’

‘We go now to where the other two are… trained.’

‘Where will we take them?’

‘Why, to the other cells, of course. Are we not jailers, after all?’

We walked along dark, dank passages, up a steep winding staircase and then along wider but equally dark passages.

All the while Anna swaggered, head high, exhibiting the confidence of the jailer off to collect his charges. I, as her assistant, slouched behind, only hurrying when she called me forward, her voice to me that of Anna, but harsh, guttural and filled with malice for all others that might hear.

A few moments later the passage widened and opened out into a room dominated by a single huge wooden door at the far end. The door was belted with iron braces and a single hatch sat in its middle.

Anna marched directly toward the door, the door flanked by two huge Nargu.

‘What you want, Grok?’ The one asked, as he peered at Anna or Grok as she appeared to him. His voice was filled with scorn and contempt.

‘My business, you bone ’ed,’ Anna replied in an equally contemptuous tone, as she casually smacked the guard across the side of his head with her spike encrusted cosh.

‘Agh! You shit. I'll do—’

‘Not today you won’t, bone 'ed. I'm on the boss’s business, I am. What yer gonna do? Delay me, when he’s a waiting? Don’t think so, do you bone ‘ed?’ Anna smirked, not a pleasant sight, but whatever the guard saw caused him to back up against the wall.

‘Sorry, Grok, didn't mean anything by it. Just a bit o’ fun, that’s all.’

‘Out the way then, bone 'ed. Or I'll be reporting yer… and you know what that’ll mean,’ Anna laughed, and the huge guard shuddered.

I was glad that what I heard was Anna’s voice and not whatever the guard heard.

Bone head swung the door open. ‘What do yer want, Grok? What can I do fer yer?’ the guard snivelled.

‘Well fer a start, you can tell 'em bloody pain givers to lay off, and then you can bring the two chimps down to the cells… door will be open. Sling 'em both in the same cell. Boss wants 'em to see what they’ll become when e’s finished. Gonna chuck the new 'un in there with 'em, he is.’ Anna smacked the guard across the head one more time as she turned, and then marched back the way we’d come.

To me she said, ‘Don't just stare at 'em, you dope. They'll be along soon e’nuff.’

As I trudged after her along the passage, the two guards were barking orders at the torturers.

‘Let 'em be Zob, you too, Kark. Boss’s orders. He wants 'em now! So no bloody delays, we’s a gonna take 'em.’