“Stupid, worthless, evil, wretched man…”
Kya grumbled as she slipped, once again, and
fell hard on her backside. She swore loudly and fumbled back to her feet. There
was absolutely no light, and her fingers were too numb with cold to help feel
along the side of the sloping granite cavern. But it wasn’t much of a cavern,
was it? Too perfectly symmetrical and smooth to the touch.
This all could have been avoided had the
general not been such a globbering dung-bat. It would have been simple to just
lock her back in chains and walk her through the front gate. Easy. But no, he
had to challenge her to get out herself, without being seen or captured again. Not only did she have to escape
the city, but she had to get out of his castle where they house a majority of
the Nibhein army!
It was a game, Kya told herself. He was just
trying to see if she would stay loyal to their agreement. He would, of course,
break her out if she was captured… right? No, he would send her to the mines to
rot – but she was in the mines anyway!!
It was the only reasonable way she could climb down the mountain without being
seen. The curfew forbade anyone to walk about the streets without a purpose and
a lone woman in military garb and abrasions on her wrists from iron cuffs and a
lack of proper footwear (hers were taken when she was brought up by the guards)
wasn’t going to get her particularly far.
So after an hour of stumbling through the
castle, leaping behind tapestries to avoid guards and at one point behind an
elaborate statue of one of their Gods, she wormed her way back into the city –
for the most part. She still had to get through the castle gates. That had been
difficult. Going through the gate would be impossible, they’d never let her
pass, and going over wasn’t an option. She ended up following the entirety of
the large wall until she found a small grate in which water flowed passed to the
tiers below (she still hadn’t figured out how the water got so far up the
mountain anyway). She praised her petite and slender frame for the first time
in her life as she easily slipped between the iron bars and tumbled into a
small reservoir just outside the large marble wall.
From there it was simply a matter of finding
a way down the mountain. Up had been
easy as she had simply followed the crowds, boarding on the lifts with groups
of soldier and civilians alike. Down the mountain on the darkest night of the
month with no moon to guide her was a problem. Guards patrolled all of the
streets and routinely inspected the shadowed alleys and crevices she would
normally hide in. So she had no choice. She had to risk an eternity of
wandering aimlessly through the labyrinth of mines.
Somehow, and she figured it must have been
dumb luck since Kya lacked any and all sense of direction, she managed to
slip into a surprisingly polished mineshaft while looking for a good hiding spot. The arches were tall and lit with
a series of torches which sparkled off the veins of gold and silver which
streaked through it. The floor was gracefully polished to feel like silk and
the walls were adorned with elaborate carvings in their face. More than that,
it sloped easily down in a large spiraling fashion. Perfect. Down was exactly
where she wanted to go.
Unfortunately, the torches did not last the
length of the tunnel and she began to hate that sleek floor. Her calloused and bloodied
feet slipped and skidded on the increasingly dramatic slope and the bowels of
the mountain became cold and frigid the deeper she traversed. The stone seemed
to sap away any warmth she retained from her fingers and feet, but if she
tucked her hands in the pits of her arm to warm, she would slip and skid a dozen
paces down the death-trap slide. But the walls created fear. She could
feel the grumbling and groaning of… something beyond them. She tried to ignore
it, but at times it felt like something was inches from her fingertips, scratching and banging and gurgling...
She was cold, sweaty, bloodied, and downright
cranky. Her stomach growled (she had not eaten since the morning prior) and her
head throbbed with each tentative step she took. Every passing moment, for she
could no longer decipher length of time, she hated the General more and more.
For all she knew, this was a new method of torture where he gave her a bloody
obstacle course, only to find a firing squad awaiting her at the finish line.
It was just a new technique to create a new level of humility for the pathetic
northerners.
Bastard, he was a bloody bastard. What she
would give to have him hogtied and helpless in a room for just five minutes…
Soon, she promised herself, soon she would get her chance.
Her toe stubbed on a sudden new terrain and
she tumbled forward, again. She stopped counting how many times she fell ages ago, around
the same time she stopped caring how loud her groans were. Wincing, she pulled
herself upright from the now graveled path and blinked into… light. It was the
faint outline of a door, there was no mistaking it. The light was bright and
severe as it wrapped around the frame.
Daylight. She had been blindly wandering around for the entire night,
perhaps she went through the next day and night as well, she couldn’t tell. She just wanted out.
She lunged toward it, desperate to escape this
wretched version of hell. She fumbled with the lock for a moment before
flinging open the small wooden door.
Sun! It was the beautiful sun! Oh, she had
taken it for granted up on that despicable mountain, but it was so beautiful!
She had lived in days almost entirely consumed by night in the farthest reaches
of her country, but that mountain consumed light and warmth far beyond the
snows of the north.
Smiling, she slumped in the warm rays, taking
in deep breaths of the fresh air. She hadn’t realized how stagnant it had been
in that hallway, if you could call it anything else. The air was so light and
supple and it caressed her skin with the softest of touches.
“Well, that took longer than expected.”
Well, shit.
The General was waiting for her.
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