Just as she turned her head again in the direction they were running, her vision started to fade, or rather, dissolve into a slowly progressing darkness that ended in encompassing the entirety of her visual field. As her sight faded to black, her sense of smell was met with an utter putrescence. The reek was enough to almost make her wretch, and had it not been for her sense of hearing being focused upon a foreign sound, she would have expelled the contents of her stomach violently. Yet, where was the grass and dirt beneath her claws? Where had the warm rays of the sun gone? And what had replaced the fresh smell of the open planes? And why was she no longer running?
She looked around, and as she did, she noticed that her body had a distinctly different feel to it. Just moments ago, she felt lithe and agile, almost light compared to her strength, but now she felt grounded by the weight of gravity's pull on her mass and structure. She tried to stand up, and while successfully reaching the full height of her four limbs, this too did not feel natural. Her hind legs felt cramped as did her spine and hips. She did not know why, but she needed to stand on just her hind legs to stretch the length of her body.
Wait, hind legs? What was she thinking? What was happening and why was it so dark? She stood up and hit her head on something hard before she reached nearly half of the extension her legs offered. A loud clang accompanied a sharp pain to her head and she instinctively crouched back to the floor. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she was able to make out several light sources from some very small and dimly lit wall torches set several yards apart. As the light allowed her sight to return she looked around and saw that she was definitely not located on the Great Plains she had thought she was moments before. She saw rusted iron bars surrounding her in all directions. She was caged. The small four foot by four foot cage was suspended at least ten feet above the ground. With each shift of her weight, the cage responded by slightly swinging and producing an eerie creek with each slow pendulum swing.
As eerie as the creaking was, it allowed her a point of reference upon which she could focus and gain her bearings. She must have been dreaming. But it was so vivid that its realism penetrated her consciousness for several minutes into her reality. Her head hurt and throbbed in unison to her heart beat which she could now feel behind the drums of her ears. Her mouth was dry and thick and as she reached up to her head, she felt dried blood in her hair. Her lips were cracked from the dryness and lack of liquid.
She looked around again with a gradually increasing focus and was able to see several more hanging cells set several feet apart. While most of the cells were empty, a couple of them still contained figures. Whether these figures were just remains or still contained life, she did not know. Turning her head to the right, she saw a cell that was closer to hers than the rest. Within its bars she could see a slight figure hunched over with its head between its knees slowly rocking back and forth. How did she get here?
Just when she was at a loss searching for the answer to her questions because of the grogginess still affecting her from an obvious blow to the head, she heard a foreign sound. But this time, it was distinctly discernable as a pattern of speech. And though she could not make out the words, she was certain they were not conveying a boon to her current situation. However foreign the language was, it did carry with it an aspect of familiarity in its guttural pronunciation. While trying to listen more intently, yet still unable to discern where the language had come from, she leaned closer to the edge of her cage and honed her senses upon their sounds. Remarkably, in addition to knowing which direction the words were coming from, she was able to know how far away they were and could almost pinpoint that the vibrations were being carried around two corners and through two doors. But how was that possible?
"It is of no use," a faint and wispy female voice interrupted her auditory focus, "they will be back soon and then another of us will be taken and never returned."
Zyndalia jolted backwards. So intense was her focus upon the other voices that when this one spoke, though it was audibly weak and filled with a raspy, airy quality, it presented as a loud blast within her ears, the way a war machine's bullet might sound when shattered against the walls of its intended castle resulting in a grand shaking of stone upon which it collided.
"I did not mean to startle you, but you should know, before you plan for a possible escape, that it is useless," said the voice between labored gasps of breath.
"What do you mean, useless?" Zyndalia answered with a faint aspect of disbelief.
Between breaths stressing the weakened state of the soft voice, it paused to gather its dwindling strength and answered, "Have you not seen that which awaits you if your cage falls?"
Slowly, Zyn leaned her head against the bars encompassing her prison and looked down. All she could see was a blackness that extended farther than her powers of sight. "We hang over a pit?"
"No," said the voice as it adjusted its position in its cell. "We hang over a chasm. There is no end. We tried to tell how far down it went by dropping a stone from our cage. We heard nothing return."
Zyndalia, feeling pity for the weakened voice, now certain it was a woman, asked, "What is your name?"
"Liani. I come from," the voice paused for a moment, and when it continued it had grown thick with emotion, "well we all came from a village not far from here. Asylissin is, or was the name of my village. But it was burned in the raid. I do not believe any were left alive, except those of us who were taken."
"I've heard stories about Goblin raids, back home, but not one of those stories ended in the Goblins taking Men. It was always about the livestock or grain reserves, or money. But never people," Zyn said.
"Yes, that was the same as it was here. My village was never attacked before. The Goblins never came this far south."
"Liani, can you tell me what happened?" asked Zyn.
Pausing for just a moment, the weak woman did not answer. When she was about to begin, she was interrupted by a harsh, high-pitched voice speaking in the foreign tongue Zyn had heard before.
It uttered some unintelligible words and stopped. Another voice, thickly accented and presumably meant to translate spoke next, "Grand Chief welcomes. He be here soon. Do not think escape. If dark not kill, we will."
Together, the three goblins who had entered the prison area turned and walked through a faintly lit door. She was still surprised that she was able to tell exactly how far away from her they were as well as the exact direction the voices originated from.
Waiting for the Goblins to traverse the boundaries of audible distance, she turned to her fellow captive and asked, "Who is the Grand Chief?"
"I do not know. But I can tell you this, every time he does come, some of us are taken and never return," she said with a still weak, but somewhat stronger voice.
"Do you know where they are taken and what is being done with them?" Zyn asked as she continued to examine the bars in hopes for finding a way out.
"No. They are taken, and we never see them again," said Liani with resignation.
"Did you ever see how the Goblins get them out of the cages?"
"There is some sort of pulley system set up that is worked by some sort of mechanism from the ledge. Other than that, I was not able to see anything else. They keep it too dark in here and I can barely see the lights on the walls let alone make out any detail."
Taking a more focused visual examination directed toward the exterior walls of her current and foreseeable residence, she was able to distinguish their details with greater clarity than her companion had indicated. Peering deeper into the darkness, and concentrating her vibrational abilities to assist her visual perception, something she had never thought to do before but believed she could, after a moment of concertation, she noticed the lighting within the room brightened significantly. Still amazed at her growing abilities, and equally perplexed by them, she could not deny a small aspect of familiarity with them even though they were newly developed. As the room brightened, the details in t
he walls came alive as did the full expanse of their current situation.
She could see to the outer edges of the cavern. Between her cage and the walls, suspended over the cavern just as hers, were at least 30 other cages arranged in a circumferential pattern extending as radial lines with their center at hers. Even though her increased visual acuity presented with an eerie green glow, the details were clearly visible. Each of the hanging cells was similar in shape and size as hers, with the exception of four outer cages which she estimated at roughly four times the size. She noticed that some of the chains suspending the cages ended without an accompanying cell, presumably left barren because it and its contents fell into the depths of the cavern. She peered downward expecting to see the bottom of the hole, but instead of seeing the cavern floor, she noticed a faint blue light emitting from its depths that she doubted was detectable for the normally functioning mortal eye.
After being momentarily distracted from her intent of finding the mechanism responsible for transporting the cages back and forth from the ledge of the cavern, she refocused her attention on the outer walls. Within a few minutes, she had found what she had been searching for. She saw next to the singular entrance, mounted about three feet above the floor, a foot long lever protruding from the wall. This lever was hooked onto a system of ropes and pulleys which allowed them to extend upward to the ceiling. She followed them upward and saw that each line of cells was hung from the same initial rope system. She counted eight different systems extending from the original one connected to single lever. Attached to the opposite end of each rope system behind the last of the cages within the system, was a counter weight set to balance the empty weight of the cages. She suspected that if the counter weight was severed from the chain of cages, then they would all move toward the ledge.
"How long have you been here?" asked Zyn.
"Time has a way of losing track of itself in here. I do not know, but long enough to have lost track of the days," she weekly said.
Zyn continued her inspection of the room but found no more useful information regardless of the length of her examination. After the focus and inspection was repeated over and over again, her mind began to lose its grasp of her present situation and drifted to yet another she had little to no control over, Rony. She was so entirely wrapped up in her predicament, that she had given no attention to the current situation of her brother. And in truth, she did not know his current state. Did the poison work quickly enough to overtake him and render him dead? Or were the wolf pups able to reach him and lead him to the location of the moonshade? And if they did find him, would he even be physically able to reach it?
With the initial impact of her capture passed, and the return of her brother's possible state, she felt very defeated. They had left with so much promise, hope, and optimism. She and Rony had reached a different and better understanding of each other. They became more of a team during their endeavor to find a new home. They had made it to newer lands that held the promise and potential of finding an end to the uncertainty. And now, after defeating the large and unnatural hounds, and after she had found the moonshade to help her brother, things were even more uncertain than at any time in her life.
She longed for home. In this moment, when she felt helpless to redeem her current future, now seemingly solidified to be at the whims and treacheries of her Goblin captives, she desired nothing more than to be held in the arms of her mother the way she had been on the eve before their departure. She longed for that certainty and hope. When her future seemed entirely hopeless, and she feared for that of her life and the lives of her brother and mother, she wanted nothing more than to return to the only certainty she had ever known, her home. But where was her home? It could not be where it was before because there was no foundation upon which to continue its sustenance. After all, what was a home if not the concrete and unwavering condition of familiarity? She realized, for the first time, she was not only hopeless, but homeless as well.
As her thoughts drifted to her mother and brother and the life she had with them prior to setting out only a short week ago, she noticed that she was growing tired and her eyes were becoming heavy. She looked toward her new companion and saw that she was sleeping. Trying to resist her body’s and mind's requirement for slumber in and effort remain immersed within her thoughts of home, she slightly shook her head and rubbed the wakeful sleep from her eyes. But the momentary effect of increased vitality waned a few minutes later. She repeated the same technique, but each time, she returned to feeling drowsy only moments afterward. Giving in to her consciousness calling for sleep, she closed her eyes with the intent to drift into what she hoped were dreams of home, hearth, and health.
Fading into the memories she longed to have, her dreams were largely disconnected and spanned what seemed to be the entirety of her life, at least, the entirety she could remember. Present within the subconscious deluge of brief yet sharp scenes were mixed images of her mother and brother, and even some of her father, or at least what she remembered her father to be. In one moment, she was being playfully chased by Rony and her mother while her father was chopping firewood, and the next she was sitting next to her mother receiving lesson upon lesson regarding the healing properties of plants.
During one particular memory, the earliest she could remember of her brother’s countenance permanently changing from the carefree and warm presence she remembered into the coolly focused and unforgiving epitome of stoic self-reliance he had become, she saw him sitting on a large stump near their house. It was evening and the sun was setting behind him, but he did nothing to see its brilliance. Rather, he sat, with his knees pulled up to his chest and surrounded by his arms. He just stared at the woods in the distance as if he was still hoping, even though all light of hope had been extinguished from his boyish heart, he would see his father return. Her dream, existed outside of the normal passage of time; for in her heart, the heart of a young woman who had only just seen her brother as he was, broken and trying to do the best he could, was softened toward him now.
"No! I will not go!" shouted Liani's voice abruptly pulling Zyn from her much needed and peaceful sleep. She shot upright, the result of which was a loud clanging from the impact her head made with the bars of her cage as she attempted to protest the unfolding scene. Being knocked back to her cage floor, and left groggy from the recent impact, she felt her vision cloud and become dark.
"No! You will not take me!" she heard the frantically loud voice, now bordering on hysteria, shout again. Being yanked back from the edges of dissolving consciousness, Zyn’s visual and auditory functioning returned to normal.
Zyn saw the row of cages belonging to Liani begin to edge closer to the ledge as a small group of Goblins impatiently waited. They had their weapons ready, each ending in a blunt end presumably in case the current object of their endeavors attempted to offer them resistance. She looked to her companion's cage and saw her huddled at its rear edge trying as much as she could in her weakened state to halt its progress.
"Please, have mercy!" came another frantic shout. But the Goblins stood, fixed in purpose and intent, with grins on their green and distorted faces.
"No! You cannot do this! You cannot take her!" Zyndalia shouted through gritted teeth. Achieving her goal of drawing the attention of the Goblins, she continued to shout at them in protest to their actions. But when they responded with only laughter, she resorted to yelling insults through her now crying eyes.
But none of her insults, pleading, or screaming slowed the progression of Liani's cage. As it reached the end of its short and horrible journey, the Goblins opened it and yanked a terrified Liani out by her blonde hair letting her fall to the ground face first. The Goblins were on her in seconds. Two jumped on her back, holding her arms to the ground, while two others unsheathed daggers. Zyn, with her enhanced vision could see the unfolding scene and began yelling frantically. The two Goblins holding the short knives used them to cut the clothes off the horrified young woman
. As much as she was attempting to struggle, it was impossible for her to gain any leverage against the two Goblins pinning her to the ground while in her weakened and outnumbered state. As the very last resources of what little strength she held in reserve left, so too did her desire to continue fighting and struggling. In that moment, the Goblins had achieved what they sought to achieve, not the dominance of her body, but the dominance of her will as it was left spent with no fight left.
Seeing all battle leave her cell mate, Zyn changed her tactic from screaming at the Goblins and focused instead on Liani in the hope to provide some shred of solace as she was being shattered by this hideous and unfair evil. "Liani! Do not worry, no matter what, it will be ok. I am here. You are not alone!"
As she lay there, brutally dominated and naked in soul and hopelessness, after the words meant to assist her fell upon the ears of a mind too fatigued to believe and a heart too detached to acknowledge comfort, through the door strode a very large figure. This is what the Goblins must have been waiting for. None of her captures now responsible for physically subduing her had progressed further in their intent beyond the removal of her cloths. While the action of the moment demanded it continue, they waited. And when this figure strode through the archway, filling it completely and momentarily blocking all light, she knew the reason for their pause.
It, for it was too large to be called a man, walked behind her fallen figure and knelt. Watching the scene unfold in the suspended helplessness of her cage, everything seemed to slow to an unbearable progression of dwindling light and goodness. How did life come to this? Was there not any mercy for those of the world who stood to do right by it and just live without causing any pain or evil or hate to anything? Was there nothing that would intervene on behalf of this poor woman, who, through no fault of her own, was being subjected to the most treacherous and underserved form of evil and hate she could imagine?
Convergence (The Dragon Within Saga Book 1) Page 43
