Thursday, January 17, 2013

Austin Baritone: The Stranger In The Cell

The man with blonde hair and blue eyes woke up. He was in the cell, lying opposite the other man, also blonde but with longer hair and in need of a shave. He was asleep, and he looked injured. It took him a while to remember the Necromancer girl. He groaned and slumped against the bars. His throat still hurt and there was blood in his mouth, probably having bitten his tongue, and when he clicked his fingers, nothing happened. The cell was bound. He looked back to the sleeping cell mate. There was a thick crust of dried blood on the back of his shirt. The man shifted slightly, but still slept. Curious, the first man went to shake him awake.

Austin murmured something incoherently as he raised himself up. He had seen his sister drag the man in, mumble 'Vextor Dex', something about getting a head injury seen to and go away. "You must be Dexter."
Dexter nodded uncertainly. "And you are?"
"Austin. I'm the brother of the girl sent to capture you."
"So she was telling the truth with that bit?"
"...if she was crying, she was faking it...Cadence is a good actress..."
Dexter rolled his eyes. "Wonderful." He hissed. Austin smirked. "She said she was planning on trading me for you."
The necromancer's smile died. "It obviously didn't work. If it had, I wouldn't be here still."
"No, they want your sister for something else."
Austin nodded slowly, moving further from the wall and closer to Dexter, hugging himself for warmth. "I guess I'm lucky. My sister seems to be an incentive to keep my alive and relatively unharmed. You, on the other hand, might be starved or tortured. They like doing those here..." He gazed into some of the other cells where the ill and the injured lay, some unmoving, some staring back, some recognising Vex and finding themselves amused at his capture. There was one man trying to cut through his bars with his teeth and fingernails. He wasn't doing too well. "It smells in here. Of blood and sickness and waste...and death..." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Most of it is repulsive, but something I'm used to. I'm not used to sleeping like a normal person. I normally sleep rough with the bad smells and the freezing cold. The death that lingers here feels sweet though. I've never understood it. Part of me doesn't want to leave this cell, but the rest of me screams that I am still a prisoner and as long as I'm here, those I love will be used...how do I deal with that?"
Dexter shrugged, a little unsure of what to make of what this stranger had just told him. "I don't know..."
"Yeah, me neither." He waved to the man trying to bite through the bars. "I talk to him sometimes. He doesn't talk back. I think I irritate him. I used up all my good jokes within the first day of being stuck in here." The heavy door at the end of the hall opened and closed and Austin heard an off-key whistling. The same Nickelback song as he had heard before. "Ah. This is one of the guards. He heals people sometimes, that way they can survive longer and be in more pain. This is one of his ways of torturing us. He likes to take part first-hand...I'm kind of giving you a tour, by the way." Esra came into view and kicked at the man trying to get through his bars. He glared into Austin's cell.
"You're next." He hissed to Dexter, eyes narrowing. "I'll bind you, drag you out kicking and screaming and then we'll have a nice little chat." His voice turned to a mutter. "Just need the approval. Just need to ask to bring you to my office. Mine to question. I need my answers..." He hurried out, still muttering.
"Nut job?" Dexter asked, grinning.
"Serpine's son." Austin replied, nodding to confirm. "Not a job nuttier than him."
"I'm sure he'll be great company."
"Oh yeah. You'll be sitting in his office having tea and a lovely conversation about the Faceless ones and his gruesome goals."

-----

Esra went back to the Grotesquery. He stared at it, almost finished now, and he felt anger bubble up inside his chest. He knew what it was for, he was certain. Even if he was wrong, its purpose was something he despised. Sure, he had been raised to believe all this stuff about these faceless Gods, but even B-J believed it more than he did. He believed they existed, but he didn't believe they were his Gods or saviours. He had spoken to the skeleton detective the last time he had been in custody, and the conversation had moved to the Faceless ones, and he believed what the skeleton had said. He could sense the truth, mixed right in there with the madness. He could sense it in the madness. He sat on the table and stared at the monstrous creation, thinking for a moment. Would it be wild or controllable? He would need to talk to someone with experience. He went back to his notes, having made some on resurrection magic in the past. He felt he had perfected what the Necromancers had started and his target was Vengeous.

1 comment:

  1. Amazing chapter! I love your writing, and I like Austin's character. I'm excited to see what will happen with the grotesquery :)
    -Saph

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