- Chapter One -
A Lock Without A Key
It was very hard for Locke to make out clearly anything in regard to his immediate vicinity, so soon after his awakening. He was not at all unintroduced to the phenomenon of rediscovering consciousness in such a . . . 'compromised' sensory capacity; worrying him a bit more pressingly was the fact that he could not recall when, or, on what specific occasions, he had been so introduced. Where had he been so indisposed before, and with whom? There had been company, hadn't there? He had the vaguest recollections of one (or many?) enjoyable . . . evenings . . . spent in what he could still intuit was a ludic disregard of consequence, but there were no faces, no recognizable places, just vestigial sentiments evacuated of purpose or context. Locke, that was his name . . . but what was his last name? Did he have one? There was no response forthcoming for these queries either.
His cheek felt as though it were plastered to what was coming into focus as a grey rock floor with what he could only presume was his own sweat. With an audible 'thwack', he emancipated his face from its' squalid embrace with the stone to take stock of his surroundings.
Leaning hulkishly on both arms, he turned a glance upward, to meet what was suddenly the heaviest affront to his senses. Fractured rays of bespeckled cerulean brightness, which had been excursioning down onto his naked back, now met his eyes with total hostility - and, he noted with concern after quickly whipping their focus back to the floor, the backs of other prone humanoid figures laying around him. He palmed the back of his head in sudden worry, to check for blood or disfigurement, but could feel no wound.
It was hot. He was in a sparsely-lit, tiny, rectangular room - a dungeon in every obvious sense of the word. Squinting, and craning his head around one way and then the other, he saw walls of roughly cut grey-stone on all sides; around, above, and below. There was a . . . wooden desk, adorning the wall to his right. The lone break in the dimness was in the ceiling, which he could now estimate was maybe 15 feet above him, where a square, grated window granted the morning light passage.
Was it morning? Oh, the birds had informed him.
He raised himself onto his knees, and then stood tentatively, gradually less able to ignore the gross amount of accumulated phlegm in his mouth. He lurched to his left for a few steps, and spat at least thrice, as hard and earnestly as he ever had to, into the wall, wiping the insides of his lips with the back of his wrist to clear away the remainder. He was momentarily relieved to recognize he was at least clothed in the trousers he had gone and wiped his hand on.
He checked his pockets. Nothing.
Then he turned his attention back to the humanoid figures on the floor around him. Who were they?
Who was he? He stopped to consider again, this time in a more controlled state of desperation. His first name, Locke. His favorite color . . . black. He remembered his tool kit! Then, the pride he had for living by his wit, the sorts of tastes he enjoyed, what some of his skills were - who he was, per say; but not when, where, or with whom he had been being who he was. Almost no identifiable particulars, just . . . feelings.
Vexing, he thought, with a perverse sort of detachment. Well, he consoled himself, at least he was still cognizant enough to count. There were three of them, each splayed as sloppily as he had been upon the stone, clothed in nothing but the plain trousers and boots that looked as positively foreign on each of them as they did on him.
Then, three things caught his eyes almost simultaneously as they adjusted further. One, was one of his companions' head of bright white hair, which met the sparse light rather distinctly. The other, was the faded rim of what seemed a circle painted in green on the floor, within which the companions lay. The last, was the bronze handle to an old wooden door on his right, which had hitherto eluded his notice.
He lumbered toward the door for a few halting steps, then stopped. If he was going to escape this place, he thought, he would probably need his tool kit. And he would definitely need to refrain from . . . lumbering.
He sat to remove his unfitted boots, then stepped barefoot back to the middle of the room, where the dusty light ran down to illuminate the bodies.
He kneeled down to check each of their pockets, taking note of their faces, and races, in the process.
One of them was a at least partially Elven, owing to the ears. The other two bore the slender stature of full-blooded Elvenkind; one of them, a female, with skin as black as a raven's beak, and the stark-white strands of hair Locke had noticed briefly before. What he noticed now was her exposed upper body. Whomever had dropped them all in here, Locke thought, he had as little care for niceties of prudence or modesty as he had taste in women.
The pockets of the mostly-human were as empty as his, and Locke took only a few more moments to verify that the same was true of the elves. Then he checked their pulses, one by one.
The elves, both alive. So was the mostly-human.
Locke briefly considered attempting to slap the 'man' out of whatever stupor they had all been put into. But, there was an element of irreversibility to the action that struck Locke as not worth the risk, at the moment at least. When, or if, attempting to wake him, or the elves, revealed itself as being necessary to his escape, he would. Until then, he would attempt to learn as much as he could about where, or who, he was, while setting as few irreversible, or at all noticeable, schemes into motion as he could. He might not know (or remember?) who these three were, but he knew enough of himself to conclude he wouldn't risk having to find out if he didn't need to.
He rose and went to check the desk next, which had three drawers running down the front of it's left side.
What for all his doubts about the value of doing so, it yielded a few goods. There were some silver coins - but deprived of a wallet to put them into, he left them scattered about in the drawer that contained them. There were some clothes as well; a few good shirts, a rather fancy girdle - the clothes he and the others had been wearing? He wondered. Then he lifted and examined the black overcoat, running his hands along its' top to hold it to his chest. Seemed a right fit. He whirled it on hastily, then hesitated for a long moment in the act of closing the drawer back up.
"Well," he forced his bristly voice up from his throat tentatively, "I guess I can offer them a bit of decency for when they come around."
He went to work with a wry smile.
After he had clothed them the rest of the way, he had dragged them out of the light and leaned them against the wall by the dresser. Having guessed their stupor as being something induced by either drug or sorcery, he'd succesfully betted on the unlikelihood of awakening one accidentally. Now he was examining the symbol on the ground that he had moved them from. It was indeed a painted circle, but there was a square inscribed within it as well. A mage's symbol for teleportation? He couldn't be sure, but it was an explanation for how they might've gotten here, one only a bit more farfetched than having been physically transported.
But, it was a farfetched situation to begin with, in his estimation.
He went for the door again. He listened with his ear against its' surface for any sounds beyond. He held for a measured pause . . . there was something. The echoes of dripping water, and the distant, garbled speech of two guttural voices.
Orcs? Locke guessed. Or Hobgoblins. In either case, he hadn't been killed yet, so whatever presumably arcane purposes the real mastermind of this strange plot held out for him, it probably involved keeping him alive . . . up to a certain point, anyway.
If it's a misadministration of drug dosage that I have to thank for my early awakening, he considered, there's at least a remote chance that nobody is watching the other side of this door right now. And the longer I wait . . .
Taking and turning the handle, he pushed quickly outward to overcome any latent friction , then followed his motion through more slowly as it opened. He kept his eyes primed for foreign motion, and his body low, poised to leap. But, all he could determine in this newer, much blacker darkness, was that he'd entered a hallway, which streched for some undetermined distance to his right, and, peeking his head out from the safety of the wooden barrier, to his left. He could still hear the distant voices of the speakers, but couldn't distinguish which way, if either, lead their direction.
So, without much confidence in where we was headed, or that he'd make it there alive, he closed the door and headed left, intent on avoiding whatever fate had planned for him in that miserable little chamber.
===================
Corbag snorted wildly, choking on his mead and pounding his chest with his fist to regain composure. He splayed his legs out at the base of the fire, and reached for another stick of kindling, tossing it in to burn.
"Ay, wen dat durn' Warlock ret'rns, we'll give 'im a piece a' our 'pinion! Elves ar' fur eatin'!, not for lettin' sit and rot!"
"I says we eats 'em now," his companion Vigdish grunted emphatically. "It beyn two days! Dat Warlock ain't comin' back to pay us none!"
"Naw, shut it, yew idjut!" Corbag, tiring now of this demand, slammed his blade into the wooden stool between them. His scowl returned. "I beyn payed fur watchin' two batches a've em already! He's jus' runnin' late this time."
"You ain't beyn payed none, yew ain'y got nothin' to show fur it since last I seen't ya!" Vigdish grabbed the hilt of the blade to pull it free, but couldn't quite muster the force with just one arm.
Corbag grabbed the brat's arm and yanked it forward into the flicker of the flames. With a yelp, Vigdish lashed backwards and fell on his back off of his stool.
He was preparing to muster up words of apology, willing now to submit to Corbag's greater strength, when a boot met the side of his face at full velocity. He felt blood gush from his nostrils.
"Hit ME, will ya!" Corbag's voice was bellowing. "Le's see how yew take hits ta the face!"
Vigdish's mind scrambled for answers. He must have slapped him crossways as he reeled back and fell!
"Corbag, wait, ay - oouughh!" He was cut off by another boot, this one landing in his stomach.
"What d'yew take me furr!? A coward! Git up!"
Vigdish cradled his midsection with one arm, his gut aching for air but unable to take any in, and his nose numb to feelings except . . . wetness. He rammed himself up onto one knee as quickly as he could, his other hand out in supplication, head bent low.
"Pleeze, I didn't mean ta . . . yew know ay ain't no match fur yew . . . ay know it . . ."
Vigdish could practically feel Corbag's infamous scowl beaming, in all it's inglorious majesty, down upon him, as he waited in bent posture for his superior to respond and pardon him for his presumptuous arrogance.
Then his blood froze - he heard a "thwack", Corbag was taking up his blade from the stool that he'd buried it in!
Vigdish sent his head lower in desperation, on both knees now, and he pried his other arm off his stomach to join the other, palms up in a silent plea for pardon.
He heard Corbag grunt abruptly in rage, but he sounded strange, as though he were in pain. Had he really hit him that hard? Perhaps he didn't know his own strength.
Then there came a crash, something landing on the floor across the fire. Vigdish panicked. The meat! He raised his head to look, forgetting Corbag's rage for just that moment.
There, to his right before the fire, was one of the elves, the dark one!
She was straddling her position in a wrestler's stance, eyeing him up, Corbag's new blade in one hand, and a looped strand of rope in the other. Corbag, on the other side of the flames, was struggling to right himself from a prone position on the toppled meat rack, his feet kicking wildly to free themselves of the heat of the fire, and right hand gripping the edge of the stool that he had taken with him in the fall.
Vigdish leaped upward to fight - and was bent over abruptly by the unrelenting pain in his stomach.
The dark elf was leaping to it's rising foe on the other side of the fire now, and from his peripheral vision, Vigdish could see two others dash into the fray from the hallway exit to his right. One of them headed straight for him.
His hand went to his scabbard, and he pulled out the twin to Corbag's blade. He would have to fight doubled over, wearing the worst grimace of his life, but only felt more deadly for it now.
"Come on, yew flimsy waif! Ah'm gonna send ya back home to yur sparkly, elfie heaven now!" He shouted at his foe in common tongue.
This elf, light-skinned with long, braided blonde hair, seemed not to acknowledge or comprehend the taunt, his eyes and features as calm, tight, and focused as a craftsman in the midst of a masterwork.
Vigdish halted the weakling's advance with a quick jab, glancing over the rising flames again to take stock again of Corbag's situation.
His back was to the fire now, but he held the flailing body of the dark elf against him with his elbow under her neck. He had her sword arm at bay in a vice-like grip above their heads. The third elf was a few paces away from them against the wall, whispering something under his breath.
Suddenly, Vigdish noticed the one in front of him relax his stance. They had both been watching the others.
Vigdish whipped his curved blade forward and up, just missing the twig-worshipping bonesack as the thin thing darted abruptly toward the fire. Vigdish swore loudly as the cramps from the movement in his midsection flared through his body.
He saw the elf leap high over the fire, landing with his own arm around Corbag's neck, feet planted smartly on the thick belt encircling Corbag's waist. Then he was plucking at the blade still in the dark one's hand - a moment later, delving into Corbag's neck with it.
Corbag was stumbling backward into the heat of the fire, and the elf leaped to the right again, this time to flee.
Vigdish, approaching the pair from the other side of the fire in a rushed shamble, prepared to put all his energy into the swing that would cut the coward down once and for all.
As he heaved his sword arm forward towards the momentarily off-balance elf, a blinding burst of brightness and heat engulfed him from the direction of the adjacent fireplace. Flames burst up from all over his upper body as his vision flickered back to him; utter agony as he'd never felt before. He heard the crash of Corbag's body onto the floor only moments before he forced his own to follow suit, rolling and flailing with all his energy to beat out the sprouting, stinging pain. His eyes were tightly shut, and he couldn't keep his teeth from clamping down onto his outstretched tongue. Then, there was a slam against his head, and his thoughts faded away to a dreamlike trickle, then to nothingness.
"Quick, whip up some torches with that fire, can we!?" Valadin shouted in hushed whisper to the elves, running to Rossla's side. "We want to meet any others that might be nearby on equal footing!"
He watched Filinduil as the nimble elf sent a wooden stool crashing into the burning orc's head once, then, again. Its flailing ceased, the mostly extinguished flames still forming an animated patchwork of red and orange on the scorched beast's body.
Rossla was bent over on the ground beside the other orc, clearly trying to keep her rough coughs and gasps for air as silent as possible, but doing a pretty poor job of it, as far as Valadin could tell. It didn't matter now, he thought, as he bent down to help her up, whoever else was in earshot had certainly heard it all.
Rossla pulled herself up by his outstretched arm, then pushed away from him, crossing the extinguished fireplace to see down the hallway they hadn't come from.
"Anything?"
Rossla waited a moment before answering him. "No, nobody is coming, and I can't hear anything either."
"Then we're lucky, I guess."
"I am especially," Filinduil chimed in a low monotone, clearly unphased by whatever this new development was. "I've recovered both of my swords." Valadin watched as the elf gingery set about retrieving one of his his scabbards from the burned orc's belt. He recognized it from it's partner on the other orc.
"Rossla might have been choked to death, and the first thing you go to are your blasted weapons . . ." Valadin grumbled under his breath.
Filinduil raised his head, amused.
"Oh, I didn't for a second believe she had been choked to death. I could still hear her coughing, after all. Besides, I still don't think she trusts me, after finding me outfitted in her girdle." He smirked and shook his head.
"You're right, I don't." Rossla confirmed for him. "And I don't fully trust you either . . . 'Valadin', but ours isn't the situation that demands full trust. It is the kind that demands our willingness to work together to get out. I'd say we're off to a good start on that count, let's not ruin it." She had walked back to the other orc's corpse, and kneeled to undo that scabbard. "If these brutes had your swords on them, Fil, then they ought to have mine somewhere nearby." She looked around.
She tossed the scabbard in Filinduil's direction, who caught it swiftly, then walked to the end of the room opposite the two hallways. She examined the weapon rack she found there, which stood wedged between two cabinets and an assortment of crates.
"Ah, there we are." She pulled her double-edged longsword out of the rack with a loud clatter, holding it up in front of her to see the condition of the blade. With her amethyst-hued eyes, she could see as well in the pitch black as could a cat, and they glowed as a cat's would in adjusting to the dark. She breathed a sigh of relief; her blade was as keen as it had ever been.
She looked back to the others, who were now beginning to look a bit lost in the room, as the low light from the flickers of flame still clinging onto the dead orc's clothes died down to leave darkness.
"Torches and pitch anywhere here?" Valadin asked again.
No comments:
Post a Comment