There had to be a way for me to help my friend. The sense of urgency was playing havoc with my mental stability and I could not think for the frantic faces staring restlessly at me through the iron bars. I had, thus, only two choices: admit defeat and run home or climb under the gate and lead Thomas... where?
What would I do once I was inside? I still believed that the creature — hellhound — in the maze was kept beneath the trapdoor and was released into the circular chamber, that large casement at the heart of the maze, each night; but what if I was wrong. What if it was being kept elsewhere...
There was a plentiful amount of possible scenarios. Perhaps I had bypassed a hidden door in the bedrock or walls of the tunnels, heretofore unnoticed. Mayhap there were dozens of those hidden chambers — had I not myself only just discovered a secret door in my own chamber. The trapdoor in the floor might very well be the only exit and Thomas' only chance at escape; I could not live with myself knowing I did not even try to save him. I, therefore, would not leave him. The choice had been made long before this moment, I realized.
I knew my way through the labyrinthine tunnels well enough that I could give him some small hope of survival, but he would certainly perish if I did not. If the other malefactors did not kill him off... the maze's evil resident would. The existence of the beast, the bear-wolf creature, would be my burden alone; only I would know of it for now and not reveal the fact that such a daemon even lurked within these dark passageways. Better that they should imagine something else entirely because the reality was, in and of itself, unthinkable.
As I contemplated pulling myself through the gap below, I became aware of a burning sensation on my forearm — an agonizing itch spreading insidiously across my skin. I tried to pull my sleeve away from the unbearable sensitivity that centered exactly where my scars were located, but they were too tight, so I ripped desperately at the fabric with frenetic fingers, the wool tearing noisily, and gouged my nails across the pink marks on my pale flesh. The desperate need to rip my own skin from my bones became intense and almost crippling.
My knees sank into the snow and I grabbed hold of the portcullis in a futile effort to steady myself as a thousand spiders crawled up my spine and sank their needle-like fangs into my back... or so I likened the sensation. My breathing became sporadic and my muscles both atrophied and spasmed as I gulped down the acrid bile rising up and threatening emergence. The heart beating wildly against my ribs was not my own. It had suddenly grown twice its original size and now slammed around my cavity, ricocheting from my spine to my sternum and back again with the violence of a bucking hart.
"What in God's name is wrong with her eyes!" One of the two prisoners beside Thomas had raised his voice to a panicked pitch and I instantly growled for him to shut up.
The thing will hear you, I tried to say, but the lightening in my skull abruptly seized my brain.
Why had I snapped at him? That was not me! Wherefore had that ominous entity surged forth? It was, without a doubt, the same energy that had enveloped me during my encounter with Thomas in the stable. It was as terrifying now as it was then — this potency.
That low voice that had come from my breast had sounding nothing like my own! As I sampled the air with hungry gulps of air, their fear seeping heavily from their pores, I felt my mouth fill instantly with dense sputum; I was both enlivened and invigorated by their dread.
What the devil is wrong with me! But, the question came out in an agonized and indecipherable cry.
I could hear Thomas shouting at me now, the sensation similar to that of my head being submerged in vat of ice-water, my ears barely able to comprehend the muffled semblance of his horror-stricken yelling.
"Aria! Are you well? Speak to me!" But I shook my head and bit my tongue till the copper fluid spurted into my mouth.
I threw my head back and looked balefully at the pregnant moon who, in turn, glared from her starless firmament. Though the convulses continued, I hoped that the debilitating waves would soon pass, but her fullness, so clearly visible through the sheer layer of a snowy haze, seemed to contradict that desire.
The blizzard had since diminished into an almost translucent shower of flakes and the silver disc in the black heavens was eerily haloed by the ghostly clouds that veiled her. The awful feeling finally abated and I felt once more myself, albeit still panting heavily atop the ice like a greyhound after the chase. I became cognizant of the hysterical sniveling taking place around me.
"Verily, she is possessed! We must leave here!"
"And, where would you have us go, you bloody fool!" Thomas whined.
"Well, I'm not staying here!" The two nameless characters had flattened themselves against the wall beside the entrance to the tunnels, loathe to stay yet unwilling to venture into the darkened cave.
"Go then," I said scathingly, "but cease your whimpering... or I shall do so for you!" I stood and glared at all three of them then passed Thomas the lamp that I had taken from the bracket.
Although I was once again in control of myself, there seemed to be a devil riding me tonight and I could no more leash my venomous tongue than my own erratic heartbeat. There was yet another presence here... clawing its way to the surface.
However, the devil had naught to do with what ailed me now — not in the biblical sense in any case. There was something in my blood; a sickness lurked there, but for the nonce, it appeared contained. I was ostensibly, and horribly, defected. But I could not think on that now! I had to get Thomas to safety.
I pushed my head between the gap at the nether reaches of the portcullises iron fangs as the eyes of my observers practically popped from their sockets. They had not thought me witless, or agile, enough to affect an entrance, yet here I was: doing just that, my lack of good sense notwithstanding.
My breasts wedged painfully between the bars and the ice-laden earth. I struggled to wriggle myself through. Had I suddenly increased in bulk? Why would I not fit as I had before? Perchance the moon's swollen influence, and the causation of that power, had induced my flesh to swell. I snorted at my own fanciful musings as I twisted and clawed at the snow, the gate's unforgiving spikes rending my cape and biting my back with each of my movements.
"Don't stand and gape, you louts! Pull me though!" I muttered. Thomas obeyed directly, taking the arm that I had managed to maneuver through the gap and yanked it so hard that I feared he might remove it from it's root.
My previous attempts had been cat-like and graceful by comparison; but my entrance tonight was quite a different matter. Eventually I forced my ribs through, though my hips and belly were now lodged momentarily in much the same way as my chest had done only moments before.
We do not have time for this madness! I was in as precarious a position as I had ever been in my life and the thought of being happened upon by the... Do not think it, Aria!
"Keep pulling!" I urged desperately.
My difficulty made no sense, but before I too began to lose myself to hysteria, my torso slid free as I catapulted awkwardly from the portcullises teeth, my pelvis and torso now assuredly bruised. My skin throbbed, but I scrambled to my feet and, taking the lamp from Thomas, began walking into the lair without further ado.
I had the wolf by the ears now; I could not go forward and nor could I retreat unscathed for I had placed myself irrevocably into danger. As assuredly as I now perceived the ice in my veins, I knew that the time for talk had ended... we were being hunted!
"This way," I indicated the far left tunnel.
My three companions obliged obediently and I led them into the maze, neither of us daring to speak about what had just transpired — when I had felt as though a monster looked out at the world from my burning eyes...
Once I had crossed the threshold, beneath the eave of the arched, spartan entryway, the burning sensation on my forearm lessened substantially as if the moon itself had been brandishing me with her grey fingers in much the same way the sun had the power to burn the tillers' faces each summertime. I sighed with relief and my cohorts eyed me suspiciously: what sane individual would find respite in the black gloom that lay before us.
I followed my markings through the snaking passageways, peering madly into the shadows, while Thomas stumbled on the uneven ground behind me. I latched my clammy hand onto his wrist, partly to steady him and partly to calm my trembling nerves. Despite the din of my own heart, I thought I could clearly hear the blood pumping pell-mell through each man's breast, but that was ludicrous and so I dismissed the idea. Every now and then one of them would whisper inanely to the other and I would blast them with a venomous scowl as opposed to barking a call to silence... which I longed to do, but dared not. We were already producing more noise than I felt was healthy.
The men knew, on some rudimentary level, that something seemed amiss about this place; their terror infected the air and mingled pungently with the unseen evil miasma that had settled thickly around us. We came to another series of shafts and I sensed, rather than saw, a presence in the middle shaft ahead of us. When I froze, my compatriots did the same. Something minacious was lurking in the exact same channel I wished to go. I could feel it's keen stare infecting my flesh with prickling intensity.
My saliva dried suddenly from my mouth, my tongue parched with dread, as I concentrated my gaze myopically into the complete darkness at the edge of my light. Where was the green vision when I needed it most!
"Why have we stopped?" said one of the two criminals. Without looking at him I threw up my hand and gestured for him to be silent, which he thankfully did.
But as soon as I had dropped my hand, the sound of death exploded into the quiet; it came in the form of a sequence of low, awful grunts that echoed through the tunnels from every direction, impaling my heart with shards of ice.
I ignored the panicked wails of the men huddling at my back and tightened my grip on Thomas, my fingers digging deeply into the softness at his wrist.
"Thomas!" I whispered furiously, keeping my eyes forward. He did not at first answer me and so I dug my nail deeper, effectively drawing blood. I could feel it oozing under my injured fingertips — a wet warmth that managed to dispel the panic enough that he finally heard his name when I repeated it a second time. "Get ready Thomas", I warned as the other two continued their frightened chatter, the sharp smell of urine reaching my nose.
I looked down for a moment and moved my foot out of the way as a yellow rill of piss trickled past me and along the gravelly floor into the darkness beyond, but when another series of grunting erupted, this time directly ahead, I shot my eyes forward in time to descry two pinpoints of fluorescent eye-shine in the shadowy void.
My heart seized and I nearly lost control of my own bladder, but the thing — the Greybacks' pet — was thankfully not of a mind yet to charge. It simply stared fixedly. Waiting. For what? But I knew: it wanted the thrill of the chase. It was waiting for us to run.
The fools behind me had not yet noticed the creature's unblinking eyes. Good, I thought cruelly. One of us, at the very least, would die in the next moment, but it would not be me, and it would certainly not be Thomas!
I inched carefully and surreptitiously to the left, dragging a confused Thomas with me, while the duo beside us remained completely ignorant of my movements. When I was sure we were no longer in view of the uncanny, iridescent eyes, I shoved him flush against the wall and clamped a hand over his mouth as his eyebrows disappeared apprehensively into his hairline.
"You two," I whispered to our compatriots. The were scouring the darkness behind them, mistaking the source and direction of the noise, but they looked up the instant I spoke. "Look you there!" Injecting just enough panic into my own voice, which was not too hard to muster, I pointed their terrified gazed toward the direction I knew the daemon to be.
When they finally perceived the threat, they rent the gloom with petrified screeches and immediately did what I knew they would do: they ran.
A flash of black darted past my right shoulder and skidded to an awful halt, having sensed my presence. I had hoped desperately that it would be distracted by the other two, but the thing seemed strangely more interested in my scent than theirs.
It impaled me with large yellow eyes, the slaver hanging grotesquely from its broad jaws and long canines. It had yet to turn its body fully towards me where I yet stood frozen, blocking Thomas from its view. Then lifting its great muzzle, it sampled the air a moment afore releasing a frustrated gnar and pouncing into the darkness whence my cohorts had gone.
I gasped reactively as a full-throated, blood-curdling male scream pierced the fetid silence of the hive. Abruptly it ended with a sickening gurgle. I spared only a quick glance at the grisly scene behind me, the dim light of my lamp facilitating my eyes to scene of horror, before yanking a paralyzed Thomas' dead weight in my wake!
The creature stood lapping grotesquely at the spilled innards of its victim, the man's neck already half-severed by a powerful bite and lying at an impossible angle, but the luckier of the two men had been able to bolt after us without so much as a scratch, his petrified screech so strident that I feared the beast would yet give chase, if only just to rip the offender's vocal chords from his throat.
Running blindly, I allowed my instinct carrying me in the right direction, at least I hoped it did, as I followed the winding curve of the passageways. Sprinting this way and that, we darted through the maze at a manic speed as each long tunnel invariably divided and quadrupled into an innumerable amount of yet more alternatives. We would soon achieve the circular chamber. I could almost feel my blood singing with the excitement of the prospect for we had left the beast far behind us.
We will be free in a matter of-
"Oomph!" I careened headlong into a solid torso unexpectedly and my troops, what was left of them, consequently slammed into me, the lot of us ricocheting off the stranger's bulk and onto the floor.
My lamp still thankfully remained in my hand despite the rather bone-jarring collision. I angled my stunned gaze up into the lewd eyes of that same prisoner from the bailey that had disturbed me quite: the one that was almost as large as Carac, but dissimilar in every other way.
"Hello poppet." He moved swiftly for so large a man, I thought this as he bent down and dragged me up against his beefy frame, the stench of stale sweat and ale yet clinging to his odious flesh.
He bared his long, brown incisors lasciviously at me, his pockmarked grin hideously contorted by the deep grooves that played on his lineaments, and I noted, in a sort of horrified trance, that most of the other teeth in his greasy face were conspicuously missing save a few in the front — doubtless the result of many alehouse brawls. He shoved Thomas and the other man easily away when they had sought to aid me and, failing that attempt, they then observed warily from the side, unwilling to try again.
Useless bastards! I fumed, but pinned my vilifying glare, albeit tinged with apprehension, at the prognathous reprobate who now detained me, my lips curling in a defensive grimace as he leered.
"Release me, you whoreson!" My demand seemed only to amuse him for he only chortled as I began to shake with fear.
"I'll take this," said he smugly, removing the blade from where it lay sheathed in my belt. He then focused his eyes toward his own flaccid belly, where his own belt sat snugly. He then transferred the dagger thence and while his eyes were thus distracted, I moved into action.
Ere he knew what I was about, I unsheathed the remaining dagger from my boot and held it strategically hidden in the folds of my torn mantle, poised with ill-intent, just as the brute grabbed my breast roughly. When he bit into my shoulder with sadistic relish, the few teeth he had gouging my flesh, I sucked in a painful breath, however, I clenched my jaw and promptly stuck my blade mercilessly into his thigh with every ounce of power I possessed.
He yowled and jumped back from me, looking incredulously at the buried hilt of my dagger protruding from his thick trunk-like leg.
"You little bitch!" he raged, but his stunned glare was still glued to his thigh with disbelief.
We were not far now from the circular chamber. We needed only to get past the hulking rapist — for that he surely was — and we would be free. I took off while the cur remained preoccupied, but he caught my cape as I sidestepped him and yanked me back forcefully. But in doing so, he presented his back to Thomas, who leapt into action, snatching the blade from the man's leg which then released a bloody cataract.
It spewed forthwith, shooting violently from the man's cleaved flesh, yet rather than stab my assailant again, Thomas dropped it clumsily to the floor and received an almighty blow from an iron fist for his troubles. Although Thomas lay unmoving on the frigid earth, his intervention had enabled me to free myself of my attacker. I stumbled back.
A keening howl erupted from whence we had only just come and all three of us, the surviving criminal included, froze to listen; Thomas was still blissfully deaf and frozen in his unconscious oblivion. Stark terror gripped my gut with its long-fingered omnipotence as the nefarious vocalizations rolled along the rigid hairs standing erect at my nape. There were sounds in this world that shocked a soul into action and urged even the bravest to flee...
But then there were sounds the likes of which now rent the air and vibrated through the dark — the essence of nightmares that paralyzed the brain and stiffened a body into catatonic immobility!
Run! Run! Run, damn you! I beseeched myself. But I would not go without Thomas!
I grabbed him by the scruff of his tunic with benumbed hands and shuffled backwards, the lamp in one hand and Thomas' shirt awkwardly in the other. With my burden, I moved at an agonizing pace towards the direction of my quarry: the trapdoor. However, I kept my frightened stare on the back of my assailant's head as he peered into the shadows.
My lamplight receded gradually from the two men I'd left behind, each agonizing step I took plunging them further into shadows, but I had not moved far enough away before my skin crawled horrifically at the sound of my attacker's terrified bellow. Time moved slowly in that instant, as of an awful dream, as I caught sight of the large head of a grey daemon, it's sharp ears flat against its gruesome skull. Barely a fraction of a second had passed as it clamped its omnipotent jaws over the rapist's despicable pate.
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly as time returned once again to normal. I had not stopped moving throughout my attacker's hideous demise, nor did I do so now. I fastened my gaze onto safer territory, the regular rise and fall of my friend's chest, and tried not to listen to the appalling sounds of rending flesh and the deglutition of human bones and gristle, but I heard that and more: the din of the monster's satisfied moans issued forth persistently whether I willed it or no. But when the pounding of slapping feet echoed through the dark, I shot my gaze back up, my eyes filling with shock and horror, as our companion sprinting towards us. Though 'twas not he that dried the spittle from my mouth.
The shadowy form of a monstrous ghost, it's fur a silvery grey, loomed at the edge of the lamplight as another creature loped insidiously behind its prey. I could neither look away nor vocalize my own terror as the chase came to an inevitable end. The man's scream detonated throughout the passageway the moment the beast leapt atop its quarry, pushing the hapless criminal into the dirt.
With a sickening inevitability, two very crucial facts were now made obvious: the first was that, with the death of our companion, Thomas and I were now the last of the prey that scurried in the dark, and secondly — most shocking of all — there was the realization that there was more than one creature that haunted the darkness! I had been so utterly wrong to presume otherwise.
The thing that had killed our first companion had seemed to be the same one that had devoured the rapist, yet I now questioned whether that was indeed the case; they looked alike, but might very well have been two separate creatures with similarly dark grey coats. Neither beast, if indeed they had been different entities, were the same one that had only just materialized, wraith-like, behind the remaining criminal. That creature had been so light a grey as to seem almost ghostly — a daemon in the darkness.
It was still masticating wetly as it sundered human sinew and grunted in rapture. All this time I had assumed that there was only one of these things. 'Twas only God that knew now how many there truly where. The first of the beasts I'd seen on that fateful night, weeks ago, had also been dark, but unmistakably gray.
My feet were numb from terror and cold. My hands looked skeletal where I gripped my light, my skin practically translucent and bloodless. Finally, I turned left at that familiar, sharp corner and my muscles seemed to swell with renewed vigor as I neared the chamber. When I entered the room with the vaulted ceiling, I instantly became alive with hope and my heart awoke from its depression to fuel my body quickly forward despite the extra weight I dragged with me.
It dawned cruelly on me how great the magnitude of my hopelessness had been. In the face of my imminent success, I acknowledged that, until now, I had expected any second to feel the bite of saber teeth wrenching me in twain.
My ragged breathing sounded like a veritable cacophony as I tried instead to breathe through my nose, but it was no use for I was equally excited and hysterical at the prospect of escape. My lungs demurred any attempt at control; the air therefore gushed and heaved from my agitated chest without restraint.
I deposited Thomas near the trapdoor and he groaned audibly as I struggled to free my key from my blood-spattered gown.
Oh, please work! I implored desperately. Do not fail me now, Ulfrlykill!
🌟Be honest! LOL I know this chapter was a little creepy...just a tiny bit perhaps? 😈🌟