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Next chapter - I hope you like it. Thanks to my two anonymous reviewers, you're great. Thanks to the people who vote, too! :-)
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Jailers and Pain
I opened my eyes, not knowing where I was. Darkness was all around me and then pain crashed over me, waves of agony flooding my system. I let out a strangled cry, my throat dry, and my chest aching with every breath I took. Slowly I realized that I didn't lie on the floor but hung from a wall, handcuffs digging into aching wrists, my arms and shoulders stiff and sore. I was thirsty, my tongue dry like sandpaper and my lips chapped. I could taste dried blood when I licked them. I tried to remember what happened when memories flashed up. The fire! Sorr'an was in the Steel Keg. This man... Can't you see it's too late? Flames flickered out of the roof. The fire spread staggering fast, nobody could escape this hell. I had tried to do something, to extinguish the flames but he was right. I killed people – I didn't remember how many but I remembered the black strings that pulled at my core.
Sorr'an was dead. Something in me broke; something I didn't know I had still in me. Well, not important anymore because I was sure that I would rot in this dark brig. Something rattled at the door and a moment later it opened and an ugly, huge guy ducked under the door frame, holding a sooty torch in one hand and a bowl in his other. He pushed the fire in my face, almost burning my skin and my head snapped back, hitting the hard wall behind me. White dots danced in my sight because of the bright flame and the pain that exploded in my skull.
"Ah, so you're awake, Puppeteer. Good, you need to eat to stay alive." He stuck the torch into a holder at the wall and took a wooden, moldy looking spoon from his belt, pushed it into the bowl and then deep into my mouth. My gag reflex kicked in and I coughed the slimy mash out, gobbets of it hitting the jailer's face. "You filthy bastard, spitting at me!" He hit me hard in the face and my vision blurred. When my head met the wall again I was sure that my skull split open. After a few moments the spoon was again pushed into my mouth, this time not as deep as before. I swallowed and a foul taste remained in my mouth but was replaced with an acid one when that bastard threshed his fist into stomach, making me vomit violently. "If you don't like what we serve then you get the special treatment." When my gagging calmed a little another spoonful of disgusting slime was loaded in my mouth and I gulped it down. Suddenly white stars of agony exploded in my head. That bastard had hit me in my scrotum – hard! The pain crawled up my spine, blossomed over my whole body and again I was fed another mouthful delivered with another blow to my groin. I screamed in misery, tears rolling involuntarily from my eyes. My torturer remarked in a hateful tone: "Seems I find the right spot that hurts you enough to be fun for me but keeps the food down. We don't want you to starve before the judge passed their sentence to you." When he was done feeding me he opened a waterskin and emptied its contents over my face while I tried to swallow as much from the lukewarm but godly tasting liquid as I could. The jailer punched my jaw for good measurement and then left me in complete darkness once again.
From then the days blurred; I was alternately in a semi-consciousness state that was filled with weird dreams, moments of agony when I was fed by different jailers and rare moments of blissful unconsciousness. The dreams were about fires eating up a whole city, burning peoples running out from the fire towards me, Sorr'an, Arias, my mother, Kip, Gerald – I tried to run away from them before they could set me on fire, too. Sometimes I didn't know if I was dreaming or not, fever making my skin burn as if on fire one moment and then made me shiver the next.
There were other jailers aside from the first, whom I called Mauler and who had taken a likening in turning my balls in egg-sized, rock-hard stones that ached constantly and had me cry in throes at the slightest contact – not that any of his touches were kind. The others didn't hit me as often and as hard and mostly in my ribs and kidneys – not much of an improvement. One of them was even worse, though. He never hit me, but felt me up in a tender way, caressing the inside my thighs, my over sensitive groin and my stomach, murmuring endearments with it. He also showed me phallus shaped carvings of splintery wood, whispering in my ear that he would prepare me for long nights of joy with him after the judge had set my sentence. His falsetto, touches and filthy words left me shivering in disgust and fear.
The humiliation of not being able to move and therefore defecate and urinate on myself, the permanent darkness that robbed me of my sense for time and date, an ongoing, mysterious drain of energy from my body, the pain and ache and constant thirst slowly but steadily planted seeds of madness in my subconscious that started to root. I saw shimmering threads flow through the air, heard sweet voices and smelt fresh, earthy air like the scent after a shower of rain in a forest. I knew they would not hurry to put me on trial because this way they could easily torture me.
One day, after Mauler had paid me a visit a few hours ago, the oubliette door opened and two watchmen entered the room, placing a chair a few meters in front of me and a woman entered the room, sitting down with the guards at her side with their swords drawn and gazes fixed on me.
"Puppeteer," the woman sneered, "my name is Fisania Warlando, successor of Mornagol Warlando." An aristocrat – and my judge I guessed. She was kinda tall for a woman, had light blonde hair tightly pulled back in a bun, wore a high-necked, dark green dress and had plain face with a sharp nose and stern looking eyes. "I am your judge. You're accused of four time murder and of practicing forbidden and demonic magic within the city walls. What do you plead?"
I tried to answer, but my throat was dry and swollen so I just coughed violently. The situation seemed suddenly very funny to me, in a rotten hole they called prison with one judge but no jury, and I wasn't even able to defend myself – not that it would have mattered anyway. Welcome to my life. A throaty chuckled left my mouth and suddenly Fisania jumped from her chair and approached me, poking her index finger in my chest but before she could say something she wrinkled her nose and took a step back, gaping for air. "You smell abominable!"
My chuckle turned into a maniacal laugh and I croaked out a few words between fits of laughter. "Sorry Milady, if I would have known... you were visiting me today... in my chamber... I would have taken a bath... in rose water."
She surprised me by slapping me hard in the face with the back of her hand. 'How unladylike!' "Don't you dare to make fun of me, filthy spawn! While you exercised your hideous magic you killed an elderly man who was my cousin's servant. A boy of eleven years fell victim to exhaustion as did a young, expecting maiden. So what do you plead?"
