3.3

Marta stood tall and strong, though she braced herself on Einar quite often. Still, she would be no coward. Father had checked that she was up to the task.

He had demanded that she be certain. He had given her every opportunity to avoid having to come here. To the place that had stolen nearly three years of her life.

That had cost Marta her original betrothal.

Not that there was anything wrong with Einar. But her presumed death had meant the once assured alliance via her marriage had dissolved.

Still he was a good husband. A baron in Arva. Less prestigious for the family, but a securing of the bond between their vassals was not to be dismissed.

And he was kind and supportive of her since their marriage.

He listened when she talked of her ordeal.

And he shared his own experiences with the terror and dark of an oubliette. The last war with the Kingdom Magarska had not been kind to her husband when he was taken in battle.

But just as he did not let his imprisonment and torment drive him from an honorable service in arms as a knight and lord. Marta would not let her terror be her master here.

Her Father had said that to bring all his family would make a stronger statement.

That Marta’s guidance in finding the chambers of her imprisonment could help? To guide them to that awful fiend of a woman’s larder? That she might prove aide if the High King himself could not press the matter here?

If she could be the instrument that brought justice down upon the accursed Elizebeth Bathory?

No fear or terror would stop her from exacting her due vengeance on the woman.

But such vengeance appeared like it would not in fact be coming.

“Of course my Liege, I’d be happy to have you tour my chosen manner of exacting justice upon the criminals of my lands. Right this way.”

Simple as that, they were walking with the Countess Bathory, along with her her disquieting Wizard and a pair of footmen who refused to look anywhere but straight ahead.

The woman’s words were sweet and her smile bright but every word felt like a lash to Marta.

The way they traveled echoed in her mind, rising to join the nightmares that she still woke up screaming from even now, years later.

Her feet knew these steps, though her shoes muffled them from the bare stone against her toes that the dreams had.

She knew this wallway, though she now strode it properly with her own gait.

Marta knew these stairs that they descended and then-

The hall.

The terrible hungering whispers of the dark in that hallway.

In her awful, never-ending dreams she walked staring blankly through these halls. And the worst of them are where she is not walking past them.

But is instead taken to her own cell in that darkness, when the creaking metal opens and she is led into the black, her breath panicked and sharp, her teeth clattering, a horrible unending hunger finally breaking free from inside and sucking air as a man dying of thirst drinks water.

Einar’s hand on her shoulder squeezes tight and her eyes can see again, her breathing is her own and she can slow the rising gasps.

But nothing stills her thundering heart.

This isn't the dream, she is here with her Father, with her Husband, with the High King and his guards.

They are safe and candles are in the hands of the countess’ footmen rather than weapons. Their bright light pierced the darkness that she had never before seen into.

Revealing at last what her nightmares had filled with a never ending conjuring of horror.

And somehow it was both disappointing and worse for how mundane it was.

They were women, girls by their height for some, but hardly all that different from Marta herself.

They wore the familiar smocks she still could feel hanging on her skin some nights.

Their cheeks were sunken hollow, their skin seemed paradoxically youthful and aged. Their eyes were mostly hidden in their sockets but glittered in the candle light.

Their hair was universally drained of all hue, pale in color for some, many locks were shockingly white.

The man, the Wizard, whose hair itself was somehow black and yet slick and wet red as well spoke up. He lectured like a clerk at the end of his day.

Tone familiar and confident, but as if he was commenting on the least interesting of grain or describing why he lacked a stock you had hoped would be available.

“You could have questioned us on this at any time, High King, no spurious rumors needed, no witch words spread. While we are not overly open to the citizens and their foolish knavery to properly learned nobles, the Countess has nothing to hide.”

Her father looked over the women in their chains, who stared at them with something not quite like dead eyes.

They were watchful gazes, not thinking ones, not like a man or woman would look at you.

But there was something following them from behind those eyes.

The gasping hunger had quieted when light shone upon them. SIlenced.

It took Marta a while to realize none of the women behind the bars were breathing now.

They stood utterly still, chained to the walls at ankle and wrist every one of them.

Waiting.

Chained on very short links of thick iron, the cost in metal alone was no small thing holding them, there had to be over a hundred emaciated women on each side.

Finally her Father spoke up.

“Those are very heavy chains to hold such wasted and frail looking women.”

The Wizard sighed and turned to one of the Countess footmen.

“Approach the bars.”

The man froze at the command and Marta finally saw an emotion other than practiced, enforced discipline in his eyes. There was sudden terror, fear at the prospect of drawing closer and Marta realized that both Footmen, for all their posture of professional bravery, were not within what would have been her own arm’s reach from the bars on either side.

The Countess merely grinned widely at the hesitation.

But the Wizard sighed and commanded the footman.

“Walk into that cell and-”

The Countess raised her hand and the Wizard was silenced as sure as if she had covered his mouth.

The footmen had already been jerkingly moving to obey and then stilled utterly, but his eyes rolled in terror in a way that Marta could absolutely appreciate and empathize with.

“That won’t be necessary Jaksa. Really, you would waste a good and loyal footman of my house for a mere demonstration?”

Marta felt a pressure in her heart release she had not even realized was there. Had she been wrong all this time about the Countess? Was the true villain the Wizard all along? A monstrous sorcerer that had partially slipped its leash?

“No, send in one of the thieves from the larder Jaksa, An older one. It’s not like those hold much use for me or you.”

And all thoughts of such were dashed from Marta’s head.

A dry shuffling came from the other end of the hallway. She grasped Einar’s hand tightly in her own and could not stop her trembling.

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A rough and not altogether easy on the eyes crone marched out of the darkness.

She moved like a soldier, with the gait of a man in a way that Marta knew would feel awful in the hips and knees for she had felt it much the same from her own body.

Age was impossible to say, her skin hung loose and ravaged. But if that was by the awful sorcery of the Wizard or simple time and age, Marta could not say.

The lock to the cell next to them opened without a touch from any hand.

The crone straight backed unnaturally for her apparent age strutted into the room.

The cell closed and latched heavily.

And every unbreathing face shadowed in the back of that cell fixed on the old woman, heads turning in unison. The eyes that Marta had thought were merely flickering in the candlelight now shining.

Glowing like a cat’s caught in a torch. Their natural colors were all but lost for how wide the blacks had become. Only the shine remained flickering from within.

In a terrible chattering rush, sound rose up from the things in the cell that only looked like women.

The sharp inhales and exhales make their chests and shoulders pulse and bounce at a terrible pace. It was not like breathing, it was so fast that no air could possibly be reaching them, if they had been women the pace would set them to faint. But yet their ribs were swelling out in terrible starkness even under their shifts. Pulsing in a pace more with Marta’s heart than her breath.

Thundering.

And the teeth.

They snapped their teeth sharply and they were all flat and perfect.

Marta wanted them to be sharp, to be terrible and beastly but they were bright, healthy, pristine.

And far too mundane.

Just like the Countess’ own grin.

The agitation of the one cell roused whatever stupor had taken the others and soon the entire hallway was full of a veritable chattering whispering roar of sound.

If it had been one of the things Marta imagined it would be hardly audible in a crowd.

But a hundred? Maybe two Hundred throats sucking air as hard and fast as they could?

The thousands of teeth snapping together in seizing jaws? Chattering like a terrible cold had overtaken them.

The crone stood placid and asleep while her eyes were yet open, blinking too few times into the face of the horrors.

The High King swore an oath upon his patron stars.

Marta politely tried to find something to focus on so she might not recall them.

But there was precious little she wanted to commit to memory instead of the secret gods which watched over the king.

To pay attention to anything but what she was seeing.

She’d turn away from the things, but seeing the horrible gaunt faces with their cat shine eyes and pale hair was somehow better than the terrible visions from her nightmares that rose up when she dared to turn away or even blink.

And then the shackles popped open on just one of the things in the cell.

Marta had not even time to gasp or close her eyes.

First the thing was against the wall.

Then it and all the others were in motion. But only one of them was not arrested in its lunge by hard iron.

The roar of clattering metal and the sound of straining stones that had been used to anchor them filled her head.

It would have been better if, somehow, the crone before her had been bisected by a blade, cut cleanly, or simply vanished into a pulp under the violence that befell her. Anything would have been better.

Instead the blunt force and the dull, all too human teeth pulled, tugged, shredded and tore with terrible power, inhuman ferocity but not total overwhelming might.

Bones had been slow to snap or even crack, flesh had stretched in too many places before it tore.

Blood briefly splayed out in a flowering splash of crimson.

But it did not reach past the bars. It did not even stay extended entirely as far as Marta’s own eyes had seen it arc.

No it was pulled inward as suddenly as it had been thrown loose from the now corpse of an old woman.

Pulled inward and turned wet and gurgling as the once near-silent reedy breathing suddenly went thick and almost choking as the thing standing in front of them ‘breathed’ the blood in desperate convulsing gasps.

No, not just breathed, pulled and sucked the blood into itself through every part it could manage.

Skin trembled and throbbed, visibly flushing as pores drank up what blood they could find and flushed it into veins and skin.

Eyes wide and brows flexing like a throat trying to swallow, crimson rivers poured into the sockets and then disappearing into the corners of those widely dilated eyes or seeped up under the lids.

Ears and nostrils flared and flexed to draw in the thing they hungered for.

Everything of the thing before them was gorging upon the blood.

Dragging it into itself by any means.

By all means.

No one spoke as it continued.

Marta could not dare to turn away from the spectacle, feeling compelled to witness the act.

It felt like hours.

And then as if finally satisfied, leaving what had once been an old woman now a mangled, leathery dry husk, the thing in the cell turned its gaze on them, its eyes still shining with the terrible witch light of a cat’s eyes.

But it was no longer half starved looking.

Lips and face were fuller, cheeks healthier. Muscle and tone partly returned although still there were signs of sunken starved flesh.

Even some color had returned to the hair. A pale red where before it had been bone white.

But the face held nothing like life.

Only that same blank faced desperate hunger.

What expression there was resembled more a starving hound than a woman.

And the throat was still so horribly dry as the voice broke free.

Barely a whisper.

“Mhoooaaarrr”

The Countess turned back to Mathias and Marta’s Father.

Smiling like nothing of note had occurred.

“Well, does that demonstration satisfy my Liege? Or would you like to check my larder for any other wayward noble daughters?”

The thing in the cell was straining, struggling with itself, flexing and writhing to try and move towards the bar even as its own limbs forced it in an awkward backward march to the wall.

Back to its chains.

The High king shook his head.

As one they turned and began leaving the place of Marta’s nightmares behind.

But she could still hear the weak, now plaintive begging of the voice of the thing they had allowed to ‘sup’ on the old woman.

“Mhooar?”

Marta could hear it being shackled back into place with the desperately hissing breaths and clattering teeth of its sisters in bondage. But still the only throat that gave voice to the hunger Marta could hear in every single wheeze was that one.

“Mhhhoooaaarrrr!”

Marta was shaking but she did not care.

She could feel Einar’s hands trembling in hers as well despite his own valor as a man and a lord knight.

His words whispered softly into her hair as he held her close.

“We are never again coming back to this place.”

Marta knew it was craven but she did not care.

She could only nod and cling to her husband.

The relief brought to her by his words nearly took her to a faint.

But even with the hall, stairwell, heavy doors and heavier stones between them Marta could still hear that terrible voice in her mind.

The thing that haunted her dreams and woke her in panicked screams begging, pleading, screaming in a reedy voice for that which it hungered.

“Moar!”

The fate she had only barely avoided for herself.

The hunger she could feel the slightest twinge of in her own heart.

That would never stop wanting.

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