How long had he been in this place. How long had it been since his eyes beheld light? Days, years? Time had lost all meaning to him. His world was all darkness, a tiny ledge above a bottomless pit.
Why do you not kill me? He screams into the void. Better to die under the sword than suffer such isolation. He screams and screams until there is no sound.
He collapsed against the smooth stone behind him, tears of despair flowing free. In his mind, the idea of stepping into the black, the great fall into the great beyond... To his mind, it seems more and more appealing.
It was at his lowest ebb, that a new sound reached his ear. It is laughter. Laughter! Not the gentle kind laughter of a child or friend. No. The reproachful coughing cackle of mockery.
It echoes out of the darkness, seeming to come from the very pit itself.
Who's there? He commands, only to be greeted by another coughing chuckle.
Scream all you like! Smiles the voice from the dark. T'will not avail you...
All is silence and darkness. Think you the only wretch here in this desolation? asks the voice. Think you the only Forgotten?
Who's there! He commands, on his feet, fist out before him.
Heh, heh. Echos the voice. Look at you! Fool! Think you to leap across this void... to pummel me with your bare fists?
As the voice speaks, a small spark of blue light leaps out in the black. A tiny round orb of light. In the blue flame he could make out a shape. As the flame rolled about in a blue-silver ball above his fingertip, the shape resolved into a man. In an instant he could distinguish the person, a man of age, but not dottered.
He was broad shouldered, but bent by starvation and neglect. He inhabited a ledge just like his own, on the other side of a great chasm separating them.
Who... who are you? He asks of his new-found neighbor.
I am Syr-va-ahl. At your service. Stand not amazed, my fellow... we share a wretched place, from which there is no escaping. Not alone at least.
Escape! The word rang in his ears like a talisman. Escape... to flee this horrible pit, to wage vengeance upon his captors... to once again see his homeland and his love.
He begs his new friend to tell him how, to show him the way up the sheer face of the wall behind him, or some safe path down to the floor below. Another round of mocking laughter is all that is returned.
Climb? Ha!... says the man. I have been here for a very long time... and have watched in silence as many who have stood upon you side have tried that very thing... only to fall to their death. The craftsman who built this place of forgetting were very... steadfast. They did their duty too well. Even if you could find foothold enough to climb... many measures above, and the same below, the rock has been shaved smooth, so you may climb no further. After a while of hanging, unable to go up or down, their strength always gives out... they always fall... no one can escape here by climbing!
He slumped down against the smooth wall in depair.
