*This chapter holds dark elements that those sensitive to torture or rape may want to steer clear. Nothing graphic is depicted, but sensitive topics are suggested.*
BARUT
“Baarruut,” Lana sung, “It’s time to wake up.”
Lana sat on top of Barut Mirehook, knife in hand, waiting for him to wake. She looked at his battered face, almost impatient for his eyes to flutter open. Oh the expression he would have once he saw that she came out the victor. And he would suffer as she had. But unlike her, Barut would meet death in the end.
The last thing Lana remembered before waking up in Barut’s prison, was walking about Sharn, hand in hand with some man. He had light blonde hair, like hers, and sky blue eyes. They had bickered off and on, though what about she couldn’t recall. She had also gotten two tattoos; a heart under her right eye and an intricate lace like design under her breast.
She and her friend had just left the tattoo parlor when a girl, maybe a year younger than Lana, ran past in hysterics. The look, the age, everything about the girl screamed Barut’s doings. Lana quickly instructed her companion to keep an eye out for anyone pursuing as she took off after the girl.
Lana entered into an abandoned church building. Caution had suggested otherwise, but when the blonde man caught up, he had said no one was coming. So into the building she went with the hopes to tack on another point toward Barut’s demise.
When she had nearly reached the sobbing girl, the young woman suddenly snapped her head up and yelled, “NOW!!” Instinctively Lana would have ran, but she found herself surrounded. She gained some courage when she heard the leader remind the five men to take her alive. Quickly Lana retrieved her daggers from her boots and maneuvered to the closest man. She figured she’d take out as many as she could, but she only managed to sink one of her daggers in before two arrows pierced her back.
When she woke, something wet and sticky covered her face. Lana reached up to wipe it away but found nothing was there. Instead she realized how cold her body was. She sat up, her back aching in the process. A shiver ran up her spine. For a moment she cursed her poorly chosen outfit as her thin night shirt hung off her shoulder and her waist high shorts left her legs bare.
Lana then heard his voice. She looked in the direction it came from and found Barut talking with a hag. He looked her way and curled his lips into a cruel smile. Barut returned his attention to the hag, bowing to her. She then extended a withered hand and placed it upon his head, her raspy voice saying, “Well done.”
Barut stood up right, the smile still there as he replied, “You’ve seen nothing yet.” He barely looked Lana’s way again as he left the room.
Lana looked about the place. She was in a large cage that had iron bars extending to the ceiling. Cold stone surrounded her. Beyond her cage the room was littered with rugs and various trunks.
She began to shake. Cold and fear coursed through her. Lana had to escape... but how was the question. The thought of squeezing through the bars crossed her mind, but the hag in the corner made her hesitant. Lana scanned her surroundings trying to spot anything that might help her. Something that she could use as a weapon would have been well received, but nothing was accessible.
Barut’s voice then drew her from her plans for escape. An orb at the foot of her prison began to glow, emitting a rectangular shape that held an image of Barut and a Halfling strapped to a concrete slab. The little man looked inches from death and his bright eyes were full of fear and pain. Blood was everywhere in various stages of coagulation. Lana could only assume that this was a viewing of what would happen to her and it made her stomach churn.
“Do you know what she has done? You say she’s a good woman, but you know nothing of her!” Barut said, whipping the Halfling with a thick, scoring cane. The man yelped in pain, Lana flinching herself. “She has done this to you! She has brought you here!”
Had I brought the Halfling here?
The little man, who took shallow breaths, looked back at Barut. His face was racked with pain, but the look his eyes held was fierce.
“Rin know Lana is a good woman!”
He knows me? Lana’s thoughts questioned. She looked more closely at the figure. There was nothing about him that was familiar. Perhaps it was because he was so battered and swollen, but even the voice remained foreign.
The man quivered as he tried to lift himself up against his restraints. “Rin will see to it that you will pay!” and with that spat in Barut’s face.
“She will be your downfall!” the cruel man retorted, hitting the Halfling a few more times in his rage. Lana gripped herself as she winced. She then watched as Barut smoothed his hair back, taking a few deep breaths. He informed the little man that she was there and that he would get to watch him beat her.
With eyes wide, Lana watched Barut walk out of the scene. His footsteps soon echoed down the hall and back into her room. She backed into the far corner, keeping her eyes fixed to him, trying to think more quickly what she would do.
Burn him with fire!
Her simple fire spell was all she had at her disposal, but quickly she found that that did little to him with his hag friend watching over. Barut had begun to unlock the cage door when Lana sent her spell at him. It would have hit, but it suddenly veered away at the snap of a finger.
“There’ll be none of that,” the hag croaked.
Lana could feel her sanity slip away as hysterics threatened to take over. She doesn’t know how she managed to keep it together, but she did. Barut entered her prison with a cat o’ nine tails in hand. Lana threw insults his way, hoping to throw him off his game, but he seemed all the more humored in her desperate tactics. Barut looked up where the rectangular image once floated. It had been replaced by a new orb. All it did was shine a light toward them.
Barut smiled and positioned himself. It then registered to Lana that wherever the first orb went, someone was watching. No doubt it was the Halfling.
“You have know idea what you have done,” he began, walking closer and closer to Lana, tapping the whip handle in his hand. “Your friend,” Barut pointed to the orb, “that is what you’ve done to him.”
“I did nothing to him!”
“Your actions have done this to him!”
“What actions!? What have I done!?” Lana screamed.
Barut jerked the whip, lashing it across Lana’s face. She fell into the bars, gripping them as the pain coursed through her. When she managed to look back at Barut again, he was tossing a glowing object in his hand. He threw it toward her and a smaller, rectangular image appeared. She watched as she, the blonde hair man, and some other woman, attacked Barut and two other men.
“I did that?” Lana questioned, the memory far from her mind.
“Those were good men. They didn’t deserve what you did to them!”
“If they worked for you, then their death was earned!”
Barut pinned Lana in her corner spitting at her, “Women like you must be punished!”
The room was then rent with the sound of the whip again, followed by the ripping of clothes and the screams of Lana. Though she couldn’t remember much of anything, she couldn’t help but wonder, would this hell end? Would the pain ever go away? Would the smell of sweat and rotten fish ever leave her nose. Would the memory of stone and Barut’s hot breath fade? Would the grip of his hands disappear? Would the feeling of him inside her vanish?
No amount of kicking or biting or thrashing could she do to thwart her attacker. Never had Lana felt so alone as the echoes of her cries went unanswered.
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