Wade looked down at his hairy feet. Wrinkled as old apples, patches of skin already turning white and ready to be pulled off from being soaked for hours. The jail cell was spacious, much bigger than what he had pushed people into back in Deraforda but there was something about the possible trench foot that took something away from the luxury.
But somewhere way back in the corner of his mind, past the voice of his father screaming at him to kill every one of those tail wagging, pointy eared, scaled, short stack, disease ridden, thieving sons of bitches (his father voice usually just mixed everything together to save time), he could hear Alouella's voice somehow shaking its non-existent head and with the most disappointed sigh and overt disgust that makes you spit your s's and p's,
“I'm so disappointed in you Wade. You deserve this.”
I've done everything anyone has ever asked of me my whole life. I did as my parents asked, everyone hates me. I do as the knights ask and I'm not good enough! I tried, how I tried to do as Alouella asked and I'm in jail while everyone else is out THERE!
“What am I doing WRONG!?”
He screamed at the walls, the shout echoing down the halls and startling the game of cards the guards found themselves killing time with. They'd taunted him for a few hours but when he'd dragged one of them against the bars and strangled him until a dozen guards had managed to save their comrade they'd decided poking the bear wasn't such a great game.
Then there was Clarke. This...weakling loser who somehow had the whole world bending over backward to help him, competent people throwing themselves at him to party up for fame and adventure and he never even smiled or not in a way that didn't look like someone had made him suck a lemon first!
Wade jumped up and onto the raised stone that counted as a bed and paced back and forth. It was the only dry place to walk and he needed to move, he needed to...to burn off the anger boiling in him.
“Hey. Having fun in there?”
He stopped, looked at the window that dripped water from the rain outside. Wormwood nodded at him.
Wade looked around, saw the empty hallway beyond the bars with flickering torch lights showing no shadows of humanoids. He leaned in close to the bars.
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“It's great. Why don't you come on in and enjoy it with me? I think there's a private room next to mine.”
“No thanks. Had a lovely human made stew, got to sit near a fire. There was some tasteful interracial semi-nude lounging. It was quite a party.”
“You shut up! Alouella wouldn't let someone like you see her unmentionables!”
Wormwood laughed, three little ha's that were more for irritating others than to show amusement.
“She was very demure about it unlike that dwarf. Just splayed out, laying over furniture and stuffing her face. You wanna hear about Clarke's underwear too?”
Wade spit at him but it flew past and out into the rain.
“That was disgusting. Filthy habit you picked up in prison.”
Wade tried to reach through the window and the bars but his hand got stuck halfway down the tunnel, forearm scraping on the stone. He jerked it out and rubbed his arm.
“Go away.”
He muttered but Wormwood whistled and waved his index and middle fingers in the little comeback sign.
“It's not commonly known but you can challenge a champion set by the Great Tail to be absolved of a crime. You fight, you win, you go free. A scaly told me and you know they aren't smart enough to fabricate lies.”
Wade scowled, looking over the smiling rain soaked face in his prison window. He looked like the sort of devil to come telling sweet lies that end in ironic deaths and the forfeiture of your soul.
“Well, I've done my part. I'm going back to the lounging and if you make it I suppose we'll see each other again. Good night.”
He scampered off into the dark and the rain, disappearing quickly as a shadow.
Wade stared out into the dark and let his skull fall against the bars. There was a chance to escape this and make it back out into a world of excitement and fame and adventure but he couldn't shake the shroud over his heart, the feeling that everything on the other side of hope was an illusion. He stepped off of his bed and sloshed to the bars.
“Hey! HEY! Where's that head guard!? The freak with the big body.”
They ignored him and he yelled louder and louder, jerking on the bars since there was nothing else in the cell to bang on them with.
“Hey! I know you ear-less whore-sons can hear me!”
He pushed on a bar in frustration and it, unsurprisingly with the high humidity and constant rain, broke off at the rusted point near the bottom, snapping like a twig.
Hammering away at the bars to the loud tune of a dwarven anvil brought a wary guard.
“P-put that down, prisoner.”
He threw it through the bars where it banged against the wall beside the startled guard.
“You either get me your head guard or you tell him that I'm officially declaring I want to fight for my right to freedom. I don't know the fancy term you scalies use but that's a thing you guys do, right? Might makes right? You gonna tell him?”
He leaned on the bars, pushing here and there until another rattled badly in his hand. He glared at the lizard.
“Or do I have to find him myself?”
The lizardfolk ran as fast as he could.