Chapter 8
Sacrifice
I awoke to someone tickling my ear with their words. At first it felt funny, and I giggled, but then I remembered all that had happened as I had fell out of Elvira's safety, and right on the ground where I could have been in serious danger. All I remembered was being stunned, falling to the ground, not being able to move for a while, and then everything had gone white.
I tilted my head up and immediately winced. My eyesight was still coming back to me, but something terrible had happened to the back of my neck, because it felt like something has plastered itself there and was sticking thousands of needles into me at the same time. I kept my head low as I whispered, “Tailan? Is that you? Did we get them?”
“No, open your eyes,” Said a familiar voice, but I couldn't quite pick it out yet.
I realized my eyes had only been half open, and I attempted to open them both wider.
The first thing I saw was floor. Granite marble stone gray floor. The next thing I saw was that the floor was at least 3 feet below me, and my feet were high up in the air. The next thing I saw, the three ropes tying tightly around me and binding me to a large rock that protruded out of the ground.
I glanced over at where the voice had been coming from. Artemis looked worriedly back at me. Her face had one large purple gash on the cheek, but her eyes were checking my own face for anything.
“Good.” She whispered in her funny fairy-like way, “You are not injured.”
“SELINQIOU!!!!” Shouted someone from the middle of the room, “Que ses en basta. Cos somos retar.”
It sounded an awful lot like Spanish, but the accent was terribly different and the way he said it sound almost like-
There was a terrible moan from where the voices had come from. I forced myself to look briefly up.
There in the middle of the room, stood a stone table. Around it, stood two figures in dark red robes, the color of dried blood. On the table, lay Argenteus, in full mermaid form.
“Oh, that is not good.” I muttered.
They had her chained to the table and were chanting and muttering and waving their hands. You could see that it was having an effect on her. She looked as though someone had drugged her with something to make her sleep, and she was fighting it with all her will-power.
The pain in my neck shot through my nerves again. But I had managed to get a good enough glimpse. All around the room, our troupe was chained to the walls. I had noticed that the girls seemed to be on every side of the boys, as if they were most precious.
Looking up one more time and fighting the pain, I managed to examine everyone. On the far opposite wall away from us, maybe 20 meters from Artemis and I, hung young Magenta and Natalia. Between them hung Tailan. Tailan's head slumped over his shoulders, Natalia the same, but Magenta's bright green eyes peered out from a bruised bloodied face.
It was right then, as I was looking at Natalia, she popped awake. Immediately, as if she had been awake all this time, she began rattling the chains that held her spread-eagle style on the wall. “Let me go! Let me go!!!!” She screamed “Give me my weapon! Have a proper duel! You cowards! Come now! Have a proper duel!”
At first, the two men in the middle of the room seemed to pretend to ignore her and continue chanting over Argenteus. Then the larger of the two nudged the other on the shoulder and gestured with his head to the yelling Natalia. He quickly scampered up to Natalia, who attempted to kick him, or spit on him. “You demons! Release us now or I swear I will never stop until-”
With a simple flick of his wrist, there was a crackling noise. He touched Natalia's foot with one finger. Natalia's eyes rolled back into her head and her head lulled back onto her chest.
“Zap her harder next time.” Said the other one who had stayed at the table as the other one reproached, “She is getting annoying.”
The other one grunted and nodded and began the ceremony where they had stopped.
Making as little noise as possible, I looked up again to the wall on my right. There, strung up like ornaments were three people. Two girls, Ammie and Coral. Between them hung Corr. He looked the terrible. Coral looked a bit bruised, Ammie didn't even look touched, but Corr looked severely hurt, with blood stains staining his shirt and trickling from his mouth as if he had been kicked in the stomach a little too many times. They had stripped him of his vest and left just his thin commoner shirt. His arms looked almost unusuable with what looked like scar marks ripping down them.
Artemis nodded over at him as she noticed me looking at him. “He was the one who wouldn't let them touch the little ones, like Magenta. They beat up Magenta for the fun of it to torture her before his eyes. He and the little one,” She gestured with her chin to Coral, who looked just as bad, if not worse than Corr, “And myself all tried anything to get out of their arms, but then they zapped us,” She whispered, glancing at Natalia, “And we wake like you.”
“What else?” I muttered quietly.
“Well, we get here. What else to tell?” She mumbled quickly as one of the men at the table glanced at us again. I heard Argenteus give a futile moan.
“What are they doing to her?” I asked, clenching my teeth.
“Magic,” She whispered, “Look at Magic Boy.”
She must've meant Tailan, as he was the only magic-user male, and the best I had seen so far, so I looked up. Indeed, as I watched closer, it looked almost like half of their gestures seemed toward him, and drawing something from him. He jerked whenever they did so, only half-awake.
“They are drawing Magic from him,” Artemis said quietly, “They know he is strong. And when he has run out, they will use the girls.”
But I was only half listening to the small girl's words. I was peering over in the dim lit room at the other wall, opposite from Ammie, Coral and Corr. Three other people where plastered to that wall with chains. One looked nearly dead, the others looked bedraggled, and I could tell they had been here a while.
“PSSSST,” I said.
The two men in the middle of the room glanced up at me. “Zap her,” Said the bigger one.
“Hold on, we are almost done with the ceremony. Only ten paragraphs to go,” Muttered the smaller one.
They left me alone, and I was quiet for the next, about, four minutes, but then urgently whispered to Artemis, “I need to talk to them! Look! No ankle holders!”
Artemis glanced at the three strangers. Her eyes sparkled. I assumed she saw the same as I did. And the same problems.
“How do we talk to them?” I asked.
“Simple.” Then, with some disgustingly accurate aim, she swelled up her cheeks and then spat on one of the girls.
Yeah, SPAT on them.
Immediately, the girl's head shot up. She made a loud, disturbed sound as if she had been awoken from a slumber. She looked up at us. She was young and elven. She had black and purple hair, and her ears ran down with multiple piercings.
I twisted in my barriers to point at my feet. Her tired eyes rolled down to them. She didn't seem to understand. Artemis pointed with her nose at the torch next to her. She glanced slowly over at it, and then back at us, a puzzled expression still etched on her face. I made a kicking motion as best as I could.
Her large eyes widened. She seemed to be getting the picture. I once again pointed my chin at her feet and then the torch.
But over by the trembling Argenteus, the smaller of the two men had seen us. He pointed and muttered something softly to his partner. He looked up at us and his eyes glittered underneath the cloak with something that sounded like a crackle resonating from them.
The smaller man trudged up with a hand raised. I knew what was about to happen, and I knew it wouldn't feel too good. I flinched, pressing myself up the cold wall, tensing myself for the blow.
But to my surprise. The man, in an instant, switched his hand to another foot. One small and fairy like.
And my helpful companion chained next to me gasped and slumped in her spot.
As the man trudged back to his spot I swore under my breath that I'd give Artemis my share of the food this week. AND my spot on an animal.
Meanwhile, the elven girl on the other side of us was attempting to swing herself. You could see her strength had been gone for a while, but it was returning as she begin to use it once more. She bent her knee and leaned her body against one side of her wrist holders. The way she twisted it would seem that she was almost numb to the soreness the holders rubbed on you.
But she made it. It was a miracle kick. Like some kind of golfer, she first aimed her foot, took it back and THEN swung it.
It hit the bottom of the torch. It was right then, as the torch was flying through mid-air that I realized the flaw in my plan. What had I expected the torch to exactly to do? Had I just wanted to see if being free from ankle holders, the strangers could somehow express freedom? Had I wanted a distraction? Had I just want to feel satisfied that we could do SOMETHING about the situation?
It tumbled through the air, the flames on the top flickering and bursting. Then it landed, and came crashing down with a terrible din. The men must've been in a really important part of the ceremony, because they didn't even notice. Or atleast they pretended to. Argenteus was thrashing on the table, and all I could do was watch the torch burn higher.
Burn... higher?
In awe, I saw the torch roll over to the foot of one of the men, the bigger more menacing one. Still chanting, he must not have felt the heat.. or smelled the smell of his cloak catching fire.
It was a miracle. Perfectly aimed, perfectly shot. It was all as if it had been planned by fate itself.
The flame crept up to his leg, you could hear him smelling something. Then there was a loud shriek from the other one, and soon both of them were jumping and dancing up and down on their feet, shrieking and hooting.
The fire continued to eat away at his purple velvet cloak, and soon, he threw it off, onto the ground, leaving him in some rather bare underclothes. There was a long silence. The larger man stared intensely at the cloth on the ground, while the little one quivered.
“Was it a sign, Mahmed?” He asked timidly.
Mahmed, clutched his bare arm with one hand, let go and then clutched the other with his other hand. It looked like some sort of signal. Some sort of religious ceremony sign.
It took a while after that for Mahmed for answer. Every conscious eye in the room was on him.
“It might have been.” His bright blue eyes that resembled the small boys we had met earlier, sparkled. They followed the trail to where the torch had come from, where the purple-haired elven girl hung limp. Thank one of the nine Rallshackmnas, she was a good actress.
“But then again, the eviler forces might not want us to continue.” His icy eyes glittered once more, “Come, we get me a new robe. And return at dawn tomorrow. Send in one of the slaves to feed these sacrifices.” And with that, they exited the great iron door near where Corr was being held up against the wall, and slammed it shut.
Too bad they left a world-wide known thief in here. Although, my skills are a bit rustier than they used to be....
