Here's the new story piece, finally. Massive tl;dr warning on this one; it's a little over twice as long as the last story I posted.
Deep beneath the earth, beneath miles and miles of solid rock, there is a vast, yawning chasm carved within the stone, huge enough to swallow a small village -- so large and so dark that one cannot see across it, that if one were to stand in the middle there would simply be nothing but featureless blackness hanging all around them like an endless, beckoning void threatening to swallow them at any moment.
Of course, this is simply an idealisation, as the solid, inky shadow was frequently interrupted at points by small, faint points of torchlight, their orange glow defining the surrounding terrain with thin lines; were the entirety of the cavern to be thus illuminated, it would be quite clear that the structure was not natural at all, but had in fact been excavated by human -- or rather dwarven -- hands, being an immense subterranean strip mine, a single massive, irregularly-spiraling ramp going clockwise from the deepest point at the center all the way up to the outer rim at the top, a massive, empty void stretching between the bottom and the flat, rough-hewn ceiling above which covered the full width of the chasm. Small rooms and passages were carved into the shelves at random intervals; the rooms had sturdy, if rusted, iron bars set over them, and most of them were full to bursting with unclothed dwarves, as well as the occasional human or elf, a few clamouring to be released, but most of them apparently no longer capable of working up such emotion and thus slumped empty-eyed along the walls and floor in a tangle of bodies. There was the occasional echoing clink of pickaxes on stone, a few scattered grunts from prisoners being forced to shove unnecessarily-large blocks of stone up a long ramp scraped smooth by years of such activity, but for the most part the mine had long since been abandoned for its original purpose. No, its current purpose would have, had the lighting permitted, been betrayed by the numerous wood-and-metal devices set into the walls and arranged in rows on wide horizontal landings. Some were in use -- their occupants together representing most of the spectrum between death, unconsciousness, and agonised lucidity -- and almost all were covered in rusty red stains and various other filth which indicated, among other things, that proper sanitation and hygiene was not a priority here. The entire macabre scene was cloaked in deep shadow, hiding it from sight even if one was standing in the midst of it, although it did nothing to diminish the noise.
This was the Pit, located in the depths of Mirrorrasped, the former capital of the Torrid Lash -- a purgatory worthy of the continent's most glorious empire (according to its own records, and Tumam help anyone who implied otherwise).
Guthnur Libashlist, the former Sergeant-General of the Lash, sat in his cell, alone -- he'd at first thought it a show of mercy in accordance with his former station that he hadn't been put into one of the other, overpacked cells, but after a few agonising weeks spent locked up alone in a pitch-black room with no diversions whatsoever he'd decided that it had been done out of a special sort of spite. That was in the past, however. After years spent in total isolation, only broken when a bored noble -- at first generally one of his old nemeses, but it seemed as though even they had forgotten about him with time, and now it was simply whosever eye he caught first -- came to have him dragged to one of the various aforementioned 'entertainment devices' installed in the cavern, he really wasn't sure of anything anymore. There just wasn't enough of |himself| left in him for any sort of determination to take place in his hollowed-out mind. It would perhaps be more accurate to refer to the motionless form in the cell as the Sergeant-General's discarded husk, the insect inside having long since suffocated.
Guthnur looked up vaguely with unseeing eyes. Someone had been knocking on the bars of his cell. He saw a small, flickering torchlight, too dim even to illuminate the features of its bearer -- not that it mattered much, as their head was covered by a thick cloth shroud, featureless except for two black eyeholes -- and even if it had been, the light would have seared his famished eyes like the sun itself. Nevertheless, Guthnur instinctively scuttled towards the dim glow on all fours like an enormous, bony insect. He flicked his gaze up towards the torch's bearer, a peculiar expression on his face -- blank, emotionless, but with a certain animalistic alertness to it, like a small animal ready to flee into a burrow at a moment's notice.
The guard stared down at the prisoner silently for a moment, his mask obscuring his expression but the dragging pause nevertheless communicating his apathy towards the man quite effectively. "Come," he said roughly, as though commanding a pet that he wasn't entirely fond of but was forced to keep for appearance's sake. Guthnur rose unsteadily to his feet and teetered out of the cell, fidgeting with his hands absentmindedly; even to the eye, he was a barely-recognisable echo of his former self, his powerful build having withered away to a frail stack of thin, gaunt bones; only the steel grey of his eyes -- now deeply-recessed into their sockets -- marked his former identity, and even then, the dim lighting made it impossible to see anyways. It did however, illuminate something on his forehead -- a brand seared into his flesh, in the shape of an inverted pine tree.
Upon seeing that his charge was following him, the guard turned and walked away, beckoning the prisoner to follow with one hand and massaging his forehead with the other. Truth be told, he wasn't operating at full capacity at the moment -- or, to put it another way, he'd been feeling slightly-ill for the past couple days, had been attending a going-away party for one of his relatives for most of the previous night, and was currently suffering from a head-cracking hangover combined with the general effects of severe sleep deprivation as well as mild joint aches and slight nasal congestion. He knew he shouldn't, strictly speaking, be on duty at the moment, but one does not simply call in sick in the Lash -- particularly when one is in the direct employ of the royal guard, and isn't entirely sure how to explain to their superior that the reason they can't turn up for work is that they spent most of the previous evening getting drunk on cheap sewer brew. Guthnur shambled behind him, the same animalistic expression on his face; his eyes darted left and right without pause, as though he was analysing his surroundings -- a ridiculous thought, as it was too dark to see anyways, but he hadn't been in a rational state of mind for almost two years and wasn't about to start up now.
The guard trudged up the slope in silence with his captive, his mind wandering directionlessly. Occasionally, the stifling quiet was broken by the echoing screams of a tortured prisoner, its source impossible to determine between the near-total darkness and the immense chamber's acoustics; anyone else would likely have found the sound to be fairly-nauseating, but the guard had heard it so many times by this point that it was simple background ambience. Besides, it wasn't as though any of these people actually |mattered|. They were the nation's trash, and this abyssal hole was its dustbin. The guard's feet hurt slightly as he proceeded up the seemingly-endless slope; he considered whether he should invest in some inserts for his boots. The near-total darkness certainly didn't help; by this point the guard could almost pinpoint exactly where he was on the spiral by pure instinct alone, but the inability to confirm his position was nevertheless disquieting. It was as though he was floating, unmoored, the small circle of visibility provided by the torch -- its brightness limited by strict regulations -- feeling like a raft in a sea of shadow. Occasionally, the bars to a cell would drift into the torch's tiny world, and a grove of emaciated, clamouring arms would sprout out, grasping and clawing at thin air, their owners yelling and pleading in a desperate, semi-coherent babble. As with the rest of the Pit's background ambiance, the guard took no notice of this, and continued on.
Finally, the guard reached his destination -- a wide, flat landing with multiple 'entertainment devices' installed on it in no particular pattern; those that were currently in use were dimly-illuminated by torches which cast their occupants into a bizarre play of light and shadow. However, these were not what he was looking for; instead, his gaze alighted on a small, dimly-illuminated chair upon which sat a dwarf, their features cloaked by shadow but who was most likely an elderly, fat female judging from their build and the lines on their face -- thrown into sharp relief by the nearby torch, which was really more of a dim red ember. Her elaborate clothing indicated she was of the nobility, although it was impossible to make out her identity beyond that -- at the very least, it wasn't anybody he knew, certainly not the Consort or one of her circle. Strictly-speaking, she wasn't supposed to be here, but then strictly-speaking this entire place wasn't supposed to exist either. Strictly-speaking, none of the prisoners in this room existed and none of the torments currently being inflicted on them ever happened. Nobody knew, and those who did did not speak of it. For all intents and purposes, everyone here was a phantom, existing on a plane separate from conventional reality.
"Have you brought the whelp?" said the toadlike woman unctuously, her voice raspy. There was a distinct slurping, which the guard desperately tried to convince himself wasn't the woman licking her lips. People like these were the one part of the job which the guard hadn't yet gotten used to. It wasn't his business what vile deeds the prisoners had done to get in here, but seeing someone take such glee in something so dark right in front of him was much harder to distance himself from. The disgust gripping his stomach was visceral.
"Yes," said the guard curtly, failing to hide his distaste; "He's right here." He gestured behind himself vaguely, desperate to get this over with. However, the figure simply tilted her head questioningly. The guard got an icy feeling in his stomach as he slowly wheeled around... around... around.
His legs wobbled slightly beneath him as he saw nothing but empty darkness.
Guthnur padded across the rough stone on his bare feet as fast as he could manage without making noise, sheer animal instinct prodding him along. He'd noticed, not on any rational, intellectual level, but something far more primal, that the guard wasn't paying attention -- just shambling along, staring at the ground, shoulders slumped. Only occasionally glancing up at passing objects -- never backwards, at his charge. Guthnur detected an opportunity to slip away unnoticed, and so now here he was, rushing through the featureless darkness with a mad furor -- in the pitiful light, the odds of anyone finding him were low. Though he wasn't in a state to calculate his odds, they were surprisingly-high, considering. The Pit was quite sparsely-guarded; devoting large amounts of personnel towards a facility that didn't exist was not deemed to be effective workforce management, and more-importantly would risk inconvenient questions being asked. Even as he heard the guards raise a full alarm and stomping feet clad in metal boots sending echoing clangs throughout the cavern, Guthnur was confident that he would not be found. There were hiding places everywhere in the nooks and crannies of the quarry, and in the pitch-dark, even the wide, flat landings could work to conceal himself in.
Guthnur grinned madly, or more accurately bared his teeth and stretched his mouth across his cheeks, as he reached one such landing, feeling the ground level off beneath his feet; he could hear guards closing in, but he was unconcerned by this. Quite the opposite, he saw this as an opportunity; it would be impossible to slip past the guards on the narrow pathways, but evading them in an open space such as this would be simple. Guthnur dropped on all fours and scuttled towards the back of the landing like a spider, completely-unseen, quickly feeling his way through the dust and loose stones with his hands as he went; a few of the devices were in use, their occupants illuminated dimly by torches, but all this did was make him harder to see in comparison.
Guthnur's hands brushed on something made of wood -- likely a crucifix of some sort based on the X shape. He scrabbled himself up and around it, flinching as he accidentally brushed a chain, causing it to rattle quietly. He pressed himself up against the crossed wooden beams and peered across to the other side, breathing heavily; he couldn't see anything save for a few small, faint pinpricks of light from the other side of the quarry, but he could hear metal boots pounding in this direction. Guthnur tensed, alert to the slightest movement; moments later, a dim glow crept in from around the edge of the rock face from up the slope, and three guards -- all dressed similarly to the one he had left, with minor variations in build that Guthnur was entirely not in the state of mind to note or care about -- shortly entered into view, each bearing torches. Guthnur watched, his eye twitching slightly, as they proceeded to split up evenly and proceed forwards across the landing in a line like an advancing wall; he couldn't slip by them -- they were too close together. Nevertheless, he instinctively darted across the ground closer to his destination -- the slope leading further upwards. He didn't know how close he was to the top of the quarry -- the thought never crossed his mind. All he knew or cared about was that he had to keep going up and up.
Guthnur drew closer to the guard, a little over twenty feet away, stepping carefully so as not to disturb any loose stones; his insides squeezed from fear, yet the guard didn't notice him -- he couldn't, in fact; the feeble glow from the torch the guard was holding ironically blinded him to everything outside its small, pathetic sphere of light. Guthnur did not consider this, however -- all he knew was that, for whatever reason, the guard was not taking notice of him. He froze in place, his frenzied mind bubbling like a cauldron. He was so close, but at the same time, so very far. The noose was around his neck, tightening further with every step forward the guards took. His eyes twitched.
Just then, an impulse struck him. Perhaps it was simply some primal urge, or perhaps some small lingering remnant of his former intelligence had managed to push something through to his conscious mind. Perhaps both. Grinding his teeth, Guthnur picked up a rock -- fairly good-sized, large enough to fit into his palm -- looked at one of the other guards -- the one in the middle of the three, to his right -- and threw it as hard as he could at him.
The projectile struck home, smacking the guard's shrouded face with a significant impact -- Guthnur's withered arm couldn't put much force behind it, but a 5-pound chunk of solid granite didn't need much force behind it. The guard shouted in shock and reeled backwards, falling roughly onto his behind in a stunned daze. The other two instinctively turned their attention away from their surroundings towards their fallen mate, readying themselves for combat -- weapons out, stance wide -- as the realisation slowly dawned on them that they were under attack, and they couldn't even see where their assailant was.
Guthnur grinned wickedly at the sight of his tormentor's fear, how their posture tensed. He felt a familiar rush of power that he'd thought he'd forgotten -- and, with it, a sense of clarity. For a moment, the Sergeant-Generral remembered what it had been like to be himself. Long-unused gears in his brain started to whir to life. For the first time in ages, he was something close to lucid. Little things which had been little more than a blur in his feral state were now starkly-clear.
His attack hadn't severely injured the guard in any capacity, but it had stunned him, and more-importantly, rattled the other two. They were standing at alert, scanning the area around them for disturbances, which wasn't exactly to his benefit; however, he also knew intuitively from experience that they were on the brink of panic, and the slightest jostling would push them over the edge. The Sergeant grinned deeper as he picked up another stone and threw it at the guard farthest away from himself. The projectile flew unseen through the air and hit the guard in the chest, barely glancing off his breastplate; it hadn't caused any significant injury at all. However, it had served its purpose as a threat nonetheless. The two guards instinctively shuffled towards their fallen compatriot, who was rising unsteadily to their feet, and the three of them drew small iron daggers from sheaths on their belts, waving them around in no particular direction at the impenetrable shell of darkness surrounding themselves in anticipation of further attack. Guthnur smirked and picked up one final rock; this he threw into the void to his right, after which he immediately padded in the opposite direction as quickly as he dared without making noise. The rock impacted the ground behind him with a satisfying knock, immediately drawing the flustered guards' attention just in time for him to slip past them and continue padding up the hill.
As Guthnur ran, he considered his situation. He hadn't exactly been in a position or state of mind to converse with the other prisoners, but he could occasionally hear the wardens muttering to each other while on their shifts, and one topic in particular had occasionally caught his attention: escape. Prisoners had escaped the Pit, he had heard. It wasn't much, obviously, but it was proof that what he was attempting was possible. He didn't even know how much farther he had to go before reaching his goal, or how many more guards he had to evade (or even how many were on duty at any given time), but he knew that it was at least theoretically-possible, and that was better than nothing. He pushed forward with determination, forcing his frail body to keep going; he stepped carefully up the slope, unable to see his surroundings, only knowing that, so long as he kept going uphill he would, eventually, reach the exit. It occurred to him that it would likely be under guard, but he would cross that bridge when he got to it. More than once, he would take a step only for his foot to plunge into thin air, and then he'd reel backwards from the edge only just in time; at no point during the Pit's dual existence had anyone thought to install guardrails, or generally put anything in between the sloping walkways and a sudden, bone-shattering tumble to the next level down.
Suddenly, Guthnur caught sight of a light coming down the path towards him, and his stomach twisted up; one of the guards was approaching, each clanking footstep sending them closer to his location, and there wasn't anywhere to run. He glanced behind himself; in the distance, he saw three small lights -- likely belonging to the guards he'd left behind earlier -- heading slowly up the slope after him. He wasn't eager to move closer to them. He felt panic clouding his mind, and scuttled towards the steep rock shelf on the outside, pressing himself against it instinctively. Then, an idea occurred to him. He felt his way along the rock face until he found an outcropping just barely large enough to conceal himself behind. He flattened himself into it, wishing he could somehow melt into the stone.
For a time, Guthnur could see nothing, the only noise being the pounding of his heart. The scream of a tortured prisoner -- female -- echoed through the cave.
However, a pair of metal boots clanking against stone soon intruded on the uneasy silence, making Guthnur's heart race further. He tensed; he would only have one shot at this. The dim glow of a torch crept in from around the outcropping, leaving Guthnur in shadow, and also incidentally revealing just how precariously-narrow the pathway was; there was only about twelve feet between where Guthnur was hiding and a sharp drop down to the level below. Guthnur gritted his teeth; he supposed, if nothing else, he might be able to slide down the steep incline in a controlled manner as a last-ditch escape.
The footsteps grew closer and closer until, finally, a metallic fist holding a torch came into Guthnur's view around the outcropping. He held his breath, waiting for his opportunity.
The instant Guthnur saw the guard's face, he quite literally sprang into action, propelling himself away from the rock face and slamming into the guard with what little force he could muster, which admittedly wasn't much; however, the guard was not expecting the assault, and shouted in surprise as Guthnur shoved him away, causing him to drop the torch in the process. The guard staggered away sideways from the force, the weight of his armor and his unstable footing causing him to tip, then fall...
...Into empty space. Guthnur winced as the guard plummeted down over the edge of the walkway, his armor banging and clanging as he tumbled down the slope in a brutal manner; there were a few unpleasant cracking noises, and Guthnur was willing to wager that the guard did not survive the fall. He closed his eyes for a moment to steady his nerves, then quickly picked up the torch and threw it out into the void as hard as he could; it sailed away in an arc and fell down, down through the darkness to the bottom of the Pit. Well, there's that dealt with, he thought.
Just then, another idea occurred to Guthnur. Smuggling his way out of the pit would be rather-difficult, what with the readily-obvious brand on his forehead and all, and he felt that he might have stumbled upon a solution. He glanced down the slope at the three approaching torches -- their owners having now broken out into a full run -- dropped down onto all fours, and quickly felt his way towards the inner edge of the walkway with his hands, after which he very carefully turned around and backed his legs down the slope until he was hanging from the edge by his fingertips. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes tightly, then let go, his stomach clenching as he plunged down through the darkness; he pressed his body against the slope in a futile attempt to slow his fall, small edges and irregularities clawing painfully into his flesh as he went.
Suddenly, solid ground slammed up into his legs at full force; there was an alarming crunching sensation in his ankles accompanied shortly afterwards by intense pain. Guthnur slumped roughly onto his knees, his eyes watering, then struggled to a squatting position and quickly tested out his legs, padding them to and fro; nothing seemed broken or otherwise incapacitated, but he definitely would be feeling the consequences of that injury for quite some time.
Right then, thought Guthnur; he dropped onto his hands -- the dust and grime smarting against the cuts covering his palms; he'd have to clean them as soon as he could -- and quickly felt the ground around himself, investigating the area until he happened upon his target -- the prone body of the guard. There was no movement, no reaction when Guthnur touched him. He felt for the guard's head and gave it a shake; it lolled back and forth with a revolting crunch, and he could feel some distinct dents in the skull through the warm, wet hood. Guthnur grimaced; his military career had inured him to violence and gore, but playing with the corpses was a whole new realm of depravity which he had been quite fine with not partaking in. No getting around that now, however; with all his strength, Guthnur hoisted the guard's heavy body up and began to hurriedly remove his armor and clothing, piece by piece -- breastplate, faulds, chainmail, gauntlets, boots -- no helmets, not much call in a prison facility full of unarmed detainees -- and also his shirt, trousers, and hood, wincing slightly at the numerous damp, sticky patches covering the fabric, and how the guards' limbs flopped about aimlessly in unnatural ways as he worked the clothing off of them. He worked in haste; he could hear the other guards' shouts echoing in the distance as he worked. They'd realised by now that this wasn't an ordinary escape attempt -- this prisoner was |special|, even if they weren't aware of his recent kill.
Guthnur threw the guard's soiled shirt and hood onto himself, jumped into the trousers which felt as though they'd have been a size or two too small even if he wasn't terminally-emaciated, and fastened the armor onto himself as quickly as dwarvenly possible, after with he stood up unsteadily, the weight of the armor which he had once been so used to -- almost fond of -- feeling foreign and awkward to him after so many countless moons trapped in here. His general lack of anything resembling health and his rapidly-swelling ankles weren't helping. In any case, Guthnur could feel that his new ensemble was ill-fitting, and he was willing to bet that whatever bodily fluid currently staining them would be readily-visible, but he'd cross that bridge when he got to it. The guards wouldn't be paying him any mind anyways -- they were looking for a unclothed prisoner, not someone in full armor. If anyone asked why he was leaving, he'd just tell them that his shift ended -- he doubted any of the guards actually knew each other or paid each other any mind, not in a place like this.
Guthnur turned and ran -- or rather strolled -- up the slope as fast as he could possibly carry himself, his legs aching. He was so close to freedom he could almost smell it. It was significantly-different going up now; the prisoners in the cells quieted at the sound of his boots, and he felt secure now, no longer exposed to the elements and to enemy detection, but safe behind a veil of metal and cloth. He felt steel, real courage, enter his heart again, for the first time in a lifetime, and though his body was still frail, his palms bleeding, and his injured ankles were screaming bloody murder, he pressed onwards up the slope towards freedom with renewed determination. A few guards tilted their head at him questioningly as he passed them, but they said nothing, and Guthnur simply nodded and strolled past without incident. Perfect, he thought; at this rate, he was as good as out of here already. He kept walking, walking, further and further up the slope, leaving more and more of this purgatory behind him. He nearly stumbled straight off a ledge in the pitch darkness multiple times, but this did nothing to discourage him or slow his pace. Nothing would. He was nearly out.
Finally, he could see it, up the slope in the distance ahead of him, slightly to the right. A blinding shaft of light -- real, honest fungus-light, not the pathetic mockeries they used in here -- erupting from a roughshod hole carved into the cavern wall. The exit. Freedom. Guthnur redoubled his pace up the remainder of the spiral, his insides tingling as he drew closer and closer to the world he'd been cast down from. His eyes smarted as he drew close to the shaft of light which felt so foreign to him after so much time spent stagnating in the dark. Finally, he crested the top of the slope, gasping and puffing for breath through the filthy hood; there was a landing up here roughly the size of a decent-sized dining hall, with a small wooden table off to the left surrounded by stools. A guard was sitting in one, his head resting on the table, likely napping.
Guthnur stared into the light pouring from the exit, his atrophied eyes unable to make out anything but a shining, featureless bluish circle in a sea of darkness, and stepped forward, his entire body shaking. Suddenly, two spears shot out from the darkness to either side, blocking the way; they were followed by two guards -- one tall and burly, the other rather smaller, scrawnier. Guthnur flinched, if only because he wasn't expecting it.
One of the guards, the tall one, spoke, his voice surprisingly thin and weak. "What are you doing?" he demanded; "Has the prisoner been caught?"
Guthnur's mouth flapped uselessly under the hood for a few moments, as he desperately tried to remember how to speak.
"Y-yes," he finally stammered out; "There were setbacks, but the prisoner has been apprehended and dealt with." He wasn't entirely sure what they did to escapees, so he decided to keep it general. Guthnur motioned towards the exit, willing his hand to stop shaking; "Now, |if| you please, my shift already ended some time ago." His voice was hoarse and dry, but it was still that of Sergeant-General Guthnur Libashlist, and carried with it an unmistakeable tone of authority. The guards' military training immediately kicked in unbidden, causing them to reflexively nod and stand aside before they even fully realised they were doing so. Guthnur nodded at them both and strode forward into the light, his face stretched into a grinning rictus under his hood. He could hardly believe in his gut how |close| he was. Just a few more steps, and he'd be just another off-duty guard. The light embraced him as he walked through the exit, blinding him with its brilliance as he returned to the world of the living.
At this point, a clarification would likely be helpful. It was mentioned earlier that Guthnur's odds of escaping were surprisingly-high. This was true. However, this should not have been taken as implying anything about his chances once he had left the Pit.
Guthnur squinted, his eyes watering from being forced to handle levels of light they hadn't been exposed to for years; however, he soon could make out his surroundings, and what he saw made his stomach freeze over. He appeared to be standing in a barracks of some sort; a long, smoothly-polished stone dining table was set to the right, with a couple guards sitting at it on obsidian seats, and a sparring area was to the left. Various weapons and armor were on racks set against the smoothed stone walls. Small fungus-lanterns hung from the walls, bathing the room in a soft, clear blue light.
However, Guthnur was most concerned with what was directly in front of him. A guard; not a prison guard, but one of the Royal Guard itself, their full steel armor -- inlaid with cobaltite pine trees -- gleaming brilliantly in the light, was standing before him, in front of a marble doorway -- blocking off his escape route. On each side of them was another, monstrous guard, far larger and bulkier than any normal dwarf, encased in strange -- but terrifyingly-familiar -- sky-blue armor; unbidden memories replayed in Guthnur's mind at the sight of them, memories of the fateful day on which this nightmare had began -- a nightmare which, Guthnur realised with creeping terror, he had not nearly woken up from.
The royal guard pointed at Guthnur accusingly and stepped towards him. "Name? Rank?" she -- for it was a female voice -- demanded. The monsters stepped forward in unison next to her, forming a wall of metal; an eerie red gleam pierced the slits in their helmets, just as Guthnur remembered from the last time. The guards sitting at the table put their heads down, their shoulders hunched, as though shutting out what was happening.
"Uh-- um--" coughed Guthnur, his bravado instantly liquefying and trickling out of his feet like a happy dream. The royal guard, clearly unimpressed with his response, reached forward with her steel-clad hand; Guthnur's innards fluttered as she whisked away the hood covering his face. The symbol on his forehead was all she needed to see. She nodded at something behind Guthnur; moments later, he felt the familiar sensation of two enormous hands enveloping each of his arms, afterwards shoving and pinning them roughly behind his back as though he was in one of the devices back in the Pit. There was an agonising popping noise as one of Guthnur's shoulders wrenched out of its socket; he shouted involuntarily, his eyes watering from the pain. He scuffed around on the ground with his feet, desperately trying to find purchase on the stone, but it was no use; he may as well have been shackled directly to a wall.
"This one's more trouble than it's worth," she grunted; she turned away and tapped on the armor of each of the monstrous guards at her sides. "Dispose of it," she said lazily as she walked away, as though Guthnur was a chicken bone to be thrown away. The monsters nodded in acknowledgement, a deep chuckle rumbling out of one of them -- its armor distorting the noise into a hellish shuddering -- as they stepped forward and wrapped their freakish, leather-gloved hands around Guthnur's head, blocking his vision once more.
Guthnur emitted a muffled, agonised yell as they squeezed, flailing his legs helplessly like a trapped insect. There was a terrible, thunderous cracking, and
E: Er, not to be a drip, but am I somehow irritating people by posting these? I note that the thread seems to kind of go silent sometimes after I post a story .-.
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Topic: (34.11 Succession) Clobbermountains -- The End(?) (Read 400892 times)