The Unchaste

At the Death Row

The mud, the snow and the blood ended by the time Delilah and George had paced up the two storey's of what appeared like a fortress of western-Stormcastle

Upstairs, she found herself to be surprisingly outlasted in an although dark, clean corridor which was also chilly from lack of living_ compared to where they worked in the main castle. The traces the pair had followed had gone invisible by now and soon, they found themselves clueless of the arena they were mapping.

Delilah wandered to every door, trying to navigate any sound and George did the same on the other side. She wondered where they could have come from, those scream.

The red, velvet carpet took away the noise of their footfalls.

Several yards down the corridor, air changed. She paused. George seemed frozen against one door. She took the cue. He had found the source.

When Delilah touched his back softly in askance, George turned towards her with his glassy, mystified eyes, jaws tense in anticipation.

Delilah put her ear softly on the wood to catch any din but George stopped her and shook his head.

"Smell it." He whispered. "The stink."

Delilah frowned, but let her senses work.

An odd stench of burn filled her nose. Like flesh on fire, charred leather. Burn of cotton and wool. And something yet ghastly. A guttural moan among all this that erupted from behind the same door, giving them both a sudden start.

Almost deadly.

Almost death.

Delilah tried to twist the knob subtly but as predictable, it was locked. "Is he crated in there?"

"Probably." George softly pushed her aside and pulled out the skeleton key from his pocket. It took him several silent minutes of anxiety before the lock clicked, jolting Delilah heart with it, and the door knob gave way.

George parted the door ever so slightly, and peeked in.

"It's a foyer." He hissed and gestured Delilah to follow him in.
She found herself in a small lobby, a heavily curtained vestibule, perhaps to muffle noises of what was happening inside, and there was another set of curtains from beyond which, voices filled her ears.

She shuffled forth, shifted the woolen drape aside, slightly.

And found, what was meant to persist unfound, saw_ what had best not been seen and heard, archives, which would have better remained unheard.

True. Stormcastle was a dangerous place.

Philip, the boy, sat sunken on his knees, on the gloomy floorboard, hardly breathing yet he was breathing.

Her veins ran cold at the sight of him. The whimper she might have haphazardly voiced out died in George's palm, who covered her mouth right in time and saw, what she did.

Philips' face was gone, his facial bones have been bared, his flesh as if had melted away.

His oral region was black, charred and burnt. Dissolved. His teeth, exceedingly white from the same burn, so much that they almost glistened like pearls against his ashened mouth. The black smolder mark went down along his neck, vanished under his sweat dampened cotton shirt. Blood blotched shirt, that was_ she noted.

But his face was ghastly, bone and skull. His nose wasn't there, it was just a cavity in the bones.

His ears were bleeding. And forehead too. His eyes drooped. Lips black, semi-molten.