For months, Stozu had sat in his cage, steeling himself for the tortures that he knew to be coming. Before he had joined Staspst's lance squad as a wrestler, he had been employed as one of Snang Ronuxlozu's many torturers. He knew all the methods of extracting information from a prisoner, from the hooks under the eyelids to iron gauntlets heated over an open fire, and he knew that confining him away from the light was only the beginning. They would expect him to be more pliable, able to be rewarded with a glimpse of the sun or a breath of outside air. Perhaps they even expected him to go mad, to shriek the secrets that he held as his mind fled the confines of his skull. But he had envisioned his torture dozens of times, seen the grin on the dwarf's face as he tightened the vice around his elbow and asked him once again what he knew. He had carefully prepared a list of falsehoods, to scream as if in defeat when he could feel the heat of the glowing spike on his eye, to deceive them. He had rehearsed, within the steel bars, a speech that he would give, suggesting that he might be of use to the dwarves, that he would go back to the Allied Cruelty and feed information back to them, warning them of impending attacks. And he could see the dwarves, taken in by his change of heart under their knives, releasing him to walk free again and plot his revenge on those that had tortured him.
The sound of footsteps shook him from his fantasies, and he pressed his eyes to the bars of his cage and strained to see in the darkness. The sudden light of a lantern being unhooded dazed him, light that seemed as bright as the sun sending him staggering against the back of the cage. As his vision swam with colors, he heard the rattle of keys in a lock, and the creak as the door to his cage swung open. His vision returned in time as dwarven arm, clad in purple silk, reached in to grasp his arm firmly and yank him from the cage.
He allowed himself to be shoved in front of the dwarf, knowing that any anger he provoked now would only be cut out of him before they began asking the actual questions. Ahead he could see the dim light around the central staircase, and he was grateful that at least that part of this smelly rat-hole had light in it. They reached it and descended, then continued into the darkness of the next level down.
"I'll never talk." He said in broken dwarfish, hoping that the intent carried through if not the precise words. The confident ones always broke, he knew, and broke most dramatically and thoroughly. They would need to believe that that was what had happened to him.
"Eshom" Barked the dwarf, her tone clearly conveying that she didn't care what he had to say. Sloppy, he thought to himself. Their torturer didn't even bother learning the language. He shook his head at their amateurism. You can't talk if you can't communicate. Some of the best torturers even spent years learning about their subject's culture and mindset. What could they expect to get if they couldn't even speak properly?
His feet faltered as he came across another stairway in the dark, his leather shoes losing their purchase on the packed sand as he unbalanced and fell. The dwarf never slowed, twisting his arm behind her as she swept past him and dragged him down the steps before he could regain his balance.
When the stairs ended he was still in darkness, forced to follow behind the dwarf until the hewn stone beneath his feet gave way to smoothed tiles. He looked up to see a statue, dimly illuminated by torches burning a deep red. At the feet of the statue lay swords and knives, axes and barbs, each made of steel and each coated thinly with fresh blood. The statue itself, a tall figure shrouded in a long cloak, was carved out of blood red stone and had ruby eyes. It was, he felt, a bit over the top for a torture room. Blood only went so far in instilling fear, and he felt that the most effective blood to frighten a subject was their own.
The dwarf holding him carefully selected a small knife from the foot of the statue, and hauled Stozu to one side of the room. There there would be a table, or a chair, with restraints on it. He stumbled ahead, his free hand searching for it. A table was more confining, but more passive. A chair meant they expected him to fight, and expected to be able to draw that out and break him with it.
His hand touched only open air, and he felt the bite of the knife between his shoulder blades, the blade sliding easily down his spine. Not a lethal blow. Barely even breaking the skin, in fact. Maybe they weren't as incompetent as he had thought, he reflected as he felt the warm blood flow across his back.
"E Armok, etom." Intoned the dwarf behind him, and a dozen more voices echoed "Etom." Stozu barely had time to wonder what they had said before he pitched forward, barely getting his arms out in front of him as he fell through where the floor should have been, landing heavily several feet down on smooth stone.
Above him, he could hear more dwarven chanting as he struggled to his feet and looked up at the dim red square above him. Just a moment now, to collect himself and figure out how to escape from his new cell. The first thing to do, he knew, was to find out how large it was. Maybe with a running jump, he could pull himself up into the torture room once they had left...
The first wave of silk hit him from behind, forming thick fibers that pinned him in place as he struggled to turn to face his attacker. His arms stuck uselessly at his sides, he jerked slightly as he felt the fangs enter his shoulder, and then felt only pain as Oxoxaslo the giant cave spider, avatar of Armok in Lanternwebs, fed on the first of many sacrifices.
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On time? Did I say on time? Anyway, it's not dead yet, and the last few updates should flow reasonably quickly from here.
And, the giant cave spider is untamed, as avatars of Armok should be.
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Topic: Lanternwebs (The End!) (Read 80060 times)