Captured

Tables littered the large hall in odd places, purple light crystals placed as centrepieces on each. They spread across the granite brickwork walls at regular intervals, while a steel-wrought chandelier crackled with smouldering coals. The hall smelled of sweetened smoke and the spilled vestiges of ale and mead. Cylindrical steel cages hung at odd intervals from the ceiling, sturdily constructed. Tinges of rust ate away at the bolts, stained with many applications of oil and paint. The floors of the cages were cushioned and violet, stained with tears and brown splotches of dried blood. Long golden and white strands of hair coiled in the hinges of the gates, also sometimes stained red.

They were all empty now, gates hanging open. The bodies of the used and the dead lay sprawled near the gates. Her knees were raw and red, legs littered with purpling bruises and back peppered with swelling welts, discoloured yellow to nearly black. Red gashes ran in harsh, criss-crossing lines across her back and shoulders, and trickles of fresh, hot blood ran down and into the small of her back, where it dried into creeks of brown-red. Her shoulders shook tremulously, golden hair draped around her shoulders and down over her eyes. Hot tears slipped down over her cheeks and dripped off her chin.

Two dark-skinned men and one woman surrounded her, ears tall and pointed. Their slight, elven bodies were tinted purple in the glow of the crystals, unmarred and tight with wiry muscle. The tallest of them, a raut’r by the name of Hérs’ak, examined her from on-high, hand planted cruelly on the top of her head, fingers digging into her skull and tangling her golden hair. He gripped tighter and squeezed, jerking her head backward and her face up towards his. Her cheeks ran with bronze and purple streaks of the urs powder they applied around her eyes. Another rough gesture smeared the hair away from her bloodshot eyes and forced her into a restrained sob. He spoke a word at her she didn’t understand, and then repeated it again, louder.

She shook her head as much as she could in his grip, letting out another sob, and he brought his other hand down against her cheek in a hard slap. The world exploded into agonisingly bright stars as pain rocketed across her face. She bit into her lip until she tasted blood as a muffled scream crashed against the roof of her mouth. He said it again, malice in his eyes, and when she didn’t respond, he threw her to the ground. The impact was jarring. When she opened her eyes again, they met with another pair, sky-blue, like her own. Her sister-elf laid a few tables across, sprawled like her on the floor, eyes unblinking and dead. Dried blood ran out the corner of her mouth and both nostrils.

That was what resisting got her.

Her wrists were bound with black shackles, and rattled when she tried to shake them. They were so tight that the edges bit into her wrists; not hard enough to cut, but more than enough to turn the flesh raw. She watched leather boots draw level with her eyes, and heard a chuckle from above. She shut her eyes as he spoke in his people’s tongue, and winced as a large hand closed around her bicep and pulled her back up onto her knees. They hurt enough to draw another whimper of pain through her teeth.

Her white robes were torn and tattered across her slender body, destroyed so much in places that entire swathes of bare skin showed through. The frayed edges of her silks stuck to her skin with dried blood, and the entire garment below her hips had almost entirely disappeared, torn and stained. A somewhat softer hand - the woman’s - took the shoulder of her dress, and then tugged hard at it. The fabric shrieked as it tore wider. She repeated the same word the man before her had.

It was especially cruel to hear it from another woman. By now she could gleam its meaning - it wasn’t hard, now. They had screamed the same thing at her sister-elves many times. Each time they had refused, they sustained another crack of the whip, or another strike to the face. Some of the others had faltered, given in. They were dead now. The others that had refused were as well. Only one of them had left alive, sobbing, bleeding and defiled. She stared at the ground, head hanging. Another tear at the shoulder of her dress appeared as the woman gave another vicious tug. Cold sweat ran down the back of her neck and leaked into her wounds. It stung.

Another slap rung out in the hall, for her unresponsiveness, she assumed. The river of stalwart hope and faith that once coursed throughout her mind had dwindled to a pathetic trickle. The Goddess had abandoned her people, truly, it seemed. They were enslaved and slaughtered for fun now, by their darker kin. What good was a healer of the sickly in a position like this? Surely, as it seemed, not much.

She felt his breath on her forehead. He’d crouched low enough to meet her eye-to-eye, now, with his hand planted on the back of her head like usual. Her neck ached with the strain of keeping her head down - she submitted, letting their eyes meet again. The man spoke softly - the same as before. It was a command, to submit, to acknowledge that she’d been broken, and that she no longer deserved help from anyone - let alone the Goddess.

There was nowhere to go from where she was. Her shoulders slumped. He smiled.

And she opened her mouth, rasping something so softly that it was hardly audible. Hérs’ak leaned closer, tilting his head to the side. Again, she rasped. He dipped closer, turning his head so that his elven ear nearly brushed against her forehead.

She would never submit.

She shot forward and latched her teeth into the slaver’s neck, biting as hard as she could muster. She twisted her jaw up and away as a flood of hot, coppery fluid filled her mouth, and tore away. Blood lashed across her face and down over her front as Hérs’ak jolted violently, grabbing at his neck, and then at her - but it was futile. He gurgled out an order for help, clutching his neck as blood spilled between his fingers, and the enslaved high elf bolted up and away, legs struggling to keep her body up. She spat foreign blood and staggered away into a set of chairs and a table, teetering barefoot across the cold floor.

Only then did she look back, upon Hérs’ak’s motionless blood-pooled body, and the stunned, rigid figures of his lackeys. She’d never seen them scared before. Did brutal murder actually mean something to them, when it was of one of their own? She dared to smile; the muscles necessary had nearly atrophied.

It was just the two of them - all the others had left. There was no one to call out to for backup, but they didn’t think they needed it. A beaten and bloody high elf with her wrists shackled was nothing to worry about. Yet, they still seemed hesitant to make the first move. The muscular elf drew a wickedly-shaped, curved and serrated dagger from his hip, U’runian silver glinting in the purple light of the crystals. A pair of sliding blades ejected from the woman’s sleeves and clicked menacingly into place. And then they both bolted straight for her.

The faster of the two was the woman; she vaulted tables and leapt at her with a high-pitched war-shriek. The high elf threw her leg out and kicked a wooden chair into her path, staggering backward further, which her assailant tripped over and fell past, into a flailing mess of limbs and the satiny table-cover she’d brought with her. The blonde rounded several more tables, nearly tripping over her own ankles as she raced for the empty bar. The elf still following her was broad and heavily muscular, swatting aside tables and chairs with the backs of his arms, leaving a trail of mess and destruction in his wake.

Her muscles ached and screamed with objections - her body was not prepared for such abuse. Her elven physiology was designed for endurance, though, and she vaulted the high bar with a high-pitched squeak. The back of the bar was lined with sleek taps joined to large barrels of drink, the shelves below and above them full of a thousand different multi-coloured bottles, all of them stacked in an intricate pattern. She landed and staggered into them, knocking several bottles to smash hard into the stone floor.

Her pursuer slammed against the bar with both hands and leapt forward, reaching out over it and towards the beaten elf. She hugged the wall of taps and bottles, breathing heavily. He slashed at her with his dagger, but the tip fell nearly a full foot short of its mark. She knew that with his massive frame, he’d find it extremely difficult to get over such a high barrier.

And then he threw his knife.

She twitched just a second too late; the extremely sharp blade flew through the air and thudded into the barrel just behind her, missing her head, but cutting the majority of the point of her ear off. Pain lanced through her mind – she wanted nothing more than to reach up and hold it – but her wrists were shackled together. The waifish elf cried out in pain, biting again into her lip as she tore her head away from the pain. What little connective tissue there was at the point of her ear had severed instantly.

He shouted something that sounded frustrated in his native tongue. Liquor pooled at her feet – and she looked to the knife embedded in the giant barrel of ale. It seemed just high enough.

She leapt at it and butted her shoulder into the pommel of the dagger. The wood groaned and shuddered. Liquid began to leak from between the panels, and with another encouraging butt of the shoulder, the entire front panel gave way. The contained alcoholic beverage burst from the front in a torrential roar, crashing out over the front of the bar and into the muscular elf. The force sent him sprawling back to the floor.

The other elf – who had finally cut herself out of the table sheet – slipped as she haphazardly attempted to cross the large pool of alcohol, boots slipping over the polished stone flooring. Her dual forearm-mounted blades were still drawn.

She was a healer. She’d spent her entire life trying to fix broken people. She’d never raised a hand to someone before then. But things were different now – it was her life on the line, and she was not prepared to back down and just let her enemies beat her down. Previously dormant, the heart of a warrior now beat within her chest. Her bruises and gashes were irrelevant, as were her near-broken muscles. This was survival.

She leapt from behind the bar and over the side as both the hulking elf and his partner righted themselves. Now weapon-less, the broad elf gave lumbering chase, slipping over his own feet every few steps. Her heart beat furiously in her chest as she ran in long strides along the outskirts of the hall, jumping over toppled tables, chairs and cages. The other elf joined chase much faster and quickly began gaining on her.

They had covered a lap of the hall, and she could practically feel her pursuers nipping at her heels. Drink splashed around her feet as she ran. One of the tall, black cages stood in their path – the one she’d been emptied out of to begin with – with its door still yawning open, and thick chain still attached to the ceiling. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder. Her pursuers shouted something else she didn’t understand in their guttural tongue.

And with an unusual display of dexterity, the blonde, bloodied and beaten elf dropped onto her knees and side, sliding under the gap between the cage bottom and the drink-pooled floor. The stone scraped at her sides as she rolled underneath.

The cage rattled and boomed behind her as the two elves chasing her barrelled in through its open door, the smaller, more dextrous elf knocked into the miniature prison by the much larger follower, who was unable to stop. The chains rattled, the both of them shouted incomprehensible things at one another – but it was her that got back around to the door first. She knocked her hip into the large, barred gate as hard as she could, sending it crashing back into place. The thick, steel latch fell into place. Her enemies were locked in.

She didn’t wait around to gloat, though – she was far from out of the bee’s nest. The waifish elf glanced around the room, ignoring the trapped captors’ pleas for help and snarls of rage. Hérs’ak’s corpse still lay just a few feet away. She grimaced – she could still taste him behind her teeth. But he was the ringleader, and he held the keys to her shackles.

It was an awkward position to take up; she needed to sit with her back to his body and search his myriad pockets. It was only ten minutes later that, after the trapped elves in the cage had finally calmed down, she felt a thin, metal ring with the tips of her fingers in his right pocket. She tugged at it, it jingled. She nearly smiled. She took her time to work them into her hands properly. The key-hole for her left hand was the hardest to find, but after some infuriating trial and error, she at last felt the shackle catch and fall open. Her other wrist was child’s play.

When she stood and looked down to her freed wrists, she did smile. They were raw and bloody, but it had been so long since she’d been able to move them independently. The female in the cage drew her attention with a sharp whistle and a word she recognised to mean something akin to ‘slave.’ She motioned for the latch near to the top of the cage door.

She was no idiot. She shook her head, and motioned instead to her captor’s forearm-mounted blades by tapping the undersides of her own, and then pointing at the stones before her. The dark elf laughed, shaking her head. It seemed she didn’t want to give up her weapons so easily – so she needed to be shown a reason why she should want to. Raising an eyebrow, the beaten elf limped towards one of the close tables and plucked the light crystal from its lantern. It was warm to the touch.

Light crystals were popular with the dark and high elves because many of them were magically talented, so recharging wasn’t hard. They provided soft, ambient light, unlike open fires, which tended to be unnecessarily hot and bright. However, they were not without their dangers. Scraping the crystals against stone created incendiary sparks; she remembered this all too well after her silks caught fire back in Talik after she knocked over a light stand.

The blonde elf turned the diamond of crystal over in her hands, shifting it from palm to palm, as if she were inspecting it for imperfections. The lake of spilled alcohol shimmered underneath the hanging cage containing her captors. When their eyes drew level once more, and she extended the crystal out over the edge of the pool, they seemed to catch on.

The dark elves threw up their hands: “Razukt!” They shouted with their eyes wide. It wasn’t hard to guess what razukt meant; ‘wait,’ or something similar. The high elf tilted her head to the side, and motioned once more for her adversary’s forearm-mounted blades. The woman sighed, muttered what she was sure was a curse, and unfastened the weapons from their places, slotting the small bundles of leather straps and retracted blades through the holes in the cage. The dark-skinned elf glared daggers at her as she crossed the gulf between herself and the weapons. She kept the light crystal ready to drop – any trouble, and it would fall to the flammable liquid below – engulfing them all in flames.

She strapped the infernal weapons onto her arms, tightening straps with her teeth when necessary. The blade mechanisms were triggered by pulling on a metal pad at the base of the palms, and retracted with the same gesture reversed. The dark elves always were some of the best metalworkers in Illinara; it worked flawlessly.

The elves watched nervously as she then looted Hérs’ak’s body of his valuables; she discarded her tattered and torn robes, donned his ebony-dyed leather armour, took the coin purse from his pocket, and used his dagger to cut away at the legs until they were suitably short for her to wear. Her cuts still stung, and her bruises still reminded her they were there with every slight motion, but she needed to be strong if she wanted to get anywhere.

She put the crystal on the bar with a light clink, used one hand to gather her hair back into a single handful, and with the other, used Hérs’ak’s dagger to shear the waist-length strands away. It left her with chin-length, cropped hair. She looked once to the bundle of golden strands in her fist, sighed, and reluctantly let them fall to the pool of drink below. She sheathed the dagger, took the crystal up again, and turned back to the locked cage with her captors inside it, trapped like animals.

She stepped out of the pool of liquid, scuffed Hérs’ak’s boots against the stone to dry them, and looked over the elves. Their eyes pleaded at her pathetically; she wondered if they even noticed that same look in her sister-elves’ eyes right before they slaughtered them. The high elf felt no sympathy for them, now.

She threw the crystal at the stones before the cage – and the moment it sparked and cracked, she saw the dark elves recoil, just a moment before a colossal plume of blue-hot flames exploded across the wetted stones and leapt instantly to the ceiling. The heat was searing and the roar of the fire so loud that she barely heard the squeaking death-cries of the dark elves at its centre.

The heat was terrible; all of a sudden, as the flames overtook the wooden bar and began catching at the tables around the hall, she knew it was time to leave. With screaming muscles, she ran towards a thick-framed door and threw the latch open. She spilled out into an ethereal, cool breeze. The din of a thousand different dialects of dark elven echoed through the alleyway. It was filled with oddly-sized crates and decommissioned cages, dodgy-looking stains, but no life.

Her heart picked up again. She had no idea where she was; she was in U’rune, the capitol of dark-elven society, that was for sure – but she knew not where she’d been taken. She cautiously glanced left and right down the alleyway. Bumbling out into the streets of U’rune was a sure way to be killed; high elves and humans were slaughtered on sight, especially…

No.

She looked up. There was no sky above, no moon, and no stars. In their place, giant, luminescent stalactites punched out from the rocky roof above, illuminating the streets in cold, unrelenting purples and mauves. The structures hung ominously, occasionally gradating through many different neon colours.

If it weren’t for the fact that this meant she was in the under-city of U’rune, it would have been quite beautiful. But she was there, countless leagues underground, in a city roughly ten times as large as Aurora, Illinara’s sprawling capitol. It wasn’t even as though she would simply have to find her way up into the surface city, no, she needed to find out what level of the under-city she was on. She’d heard legends before, of how U’rune extended nearly ten levels down into Terra’s crust.

It was nearly impossible to imagine the sheer number of dark elves that populated the city; Tens of thousands? Hundreds?

It was pointless to think she’d get out alive.

The elf clutched a hand to her heart and hung it there for a moment, before giving a firm sigh.

She was Ai’nel of Ileriaden. She would find a way.