The Healer

Throbbing pain was the first thing she noticed. Her head felt like it was being struck each second, and she groaned. Then she realized she was not lying on dry leaves or soft moss or even the rough bark of the oak tree, but on cool, damp stone. She tried to move her hands apart to get up only to find them bound together in iron manacles. Her eyes flew open in fear, but it was still dark. No, she did see a strange, orange light, which seemed to shift and turn through an unusually organized netting of shadows. A lantern? That netting is metal... Am I in a cell?
Then it came into view. The lantern flickered and shifted, and its holder glared silently through each door. He had a scowl carved into his face, and although his expression didn’t change he lingered on her before moving on. A shiver passed through her. She hadn’t been put into any sort of restraint in years. Had she been back in her forest, the man would have been almost nonthreatening. But she was stripped of everything she knew. Her mind was muddled, her supplies gone, and her home she had no hope of seeing again.
A door screeched open and then crashed closed. The dungeons were in complete darkness, but a few prisoners shuddered and woke. Through the dim light and the cell door, across the corridor, Acacia saw the reflection of a set of eyes. Her anger at the people who kidnapped her would have grown to an unbearable peak had she not seen the wetness of this person’s eyes. She sat up, a wave of nausea hitting her as she did. She pressed her hand to her head, moaning. The person she had seen gasped, surprised.
“I… didn’t know you were conscious.” The voice belonged to a girl.
“I wasn’t,” Acacia replied. She had never wanted to be reunited with her race, but she supposed in her state she didn’t have much of a choice.
“Where are you from? Were you with these people?”
“No! I have never been with them or any of this race.” My speech is still halting, she thought, frustrated.
“Oh… Then where did you come from?”
“I live alone.”
“Really? So you aren’t with the settlers either?”
“I can’t say I am. They have been destroying my home for months behind my back.”
“Oh…”
Acacia was curious of this girl. She seemed to grow dark at the thought of the settlers destroying her home. “Are you with the settlers?”
“Well, mostly.”
“How can you be only partly with them?”
“I live with them, but I don’t like how they leave the land. What used to be full of energy they turn into a flat, lifeless place.”
She looked at the girl now with empathy. Both of them shared their love for nature, and they had both been imprisoned here. “How did they get you? Surely in your settlement there were too many people for these villains to snatch you.”
“I was at the edge of the settlement. It was later into the evening, so most were with their families for the evening meal. I was listening to the birds. They snuck up on me, I guess.”
“I am sorry.” And she truly was. Despite her dislike of humankind, she felt that this girl at least was innocent. Her only quarrel with people was their selfishness when it came to nature.
They were interrupted by the screech of the door followed by the same hollow booming, and two sets of footsteps made their way down the hall. The sentry’s light slid through the cell doors, illuminating both her own face and the girls. She gasped; her clothes were tattered, and through it she saw that her sides were bruised and torn. Blood and a clear liquid had dripped or were dripping from the cuts. Anger filled her once again at the pain that these people caused. Who could do this? It is one thing to kill quickly, but how does a person become so heartless as to torture like this?
She was so distracted that she did not at first notice the sentry opening her cell door. Another man stood behind the sentry; thickly built, with only a simple leather tunic covering his chest. His black hair was pulled into a low ponytail, and scars laced his bare arms. Two more guards appeared from the direction opposite where this man had come from, and they quickly stepped into the cell, each grabbing one of her arms and dragging her between them. She dug her feet into the stones beneath her, resisting them with what little strength she had. A moment later the guard on the left kicked the back of her knee. She cried in pain before stopping her efforts. She had no strength for this, and it would only earn her more agonizing punishments.
The sentry returned to his duties while she was pulled along behind the man, through the door she had heard and into a nearby room. It was small and simple, with only two flat-seated wooden chairs, one with strange mechanics built into it which had no back. The guards forced her into it, fastening her manacles into a hook-like piece of metal on the front of the seat that held her arms between her legs as she sat. Her legs were placed in restraints similar to her manacles, and were nailed to the chair, removing any chance of being able to fight back against whatever abuse would soon be upon her. The door boomed shut as the guards left the room, stationing themselves outside of the metal barred door. A wooden beam was slid into grooves built into the door from the outside to bar any potential escapee’s way.
“I suggest we do this efficiently, but that will require your cooperation. So, will you give me the information I want?” It was the man, his voice becoming threatening as he spoke. He stood halfway across the room, wandering as he spoke.
“Why should I tell you anything I know?”
The man chuckled. “Such arrogance! I hadn’t expected such a thing from a settler woman.” He gave her a hard glare. “I am a believer of second chances, so I will ask you again; will you give me what I want?”
“I will not repeat my answer.”
“Alright. Let me revise my question, then.” He grasped her by the hair and tossed her sideways, scraping her side and bashing her head for a second time. She groaned, her earlier sickness returning. “Give me what I want, and I might think of sparing you more punishments.” Her head throbbed greatly, and she wished only to be able to reach her hands up and hold it. Now she knew the answer to her own question: This man is heartless enough to torture like this.
“... What do you want to know?” She knew that she had no answers for him, but he would not accept anything less than knowledge she did not have.
“Good. Now, we have obviously discovered your rat-nest of a village-
“The settlement is not mine.”
She yelped as he pulled her back up into a sitting position by her hairs, and watched as he shook off the strands he had torn out. No wonder that girl’s hair seemed thin.
“Lies will not be tolerated here. There is nowhere else for you to have come from than there. From now on you will answer my questions quickly and without interruption. What is your population?”
“I do not know.”
He punched her in the side, eliciting another cry from her.
“Do not toy with me. To resist is to bring agony upon yourself. What is the population of your village?”
“I don’t know!”
tossing her chair over, he began kicking her in the stomach. Once, twice, three times he struck her before stopping to ask again; “What is the population?”
“I… Do… Not… Know!”
This cycle repeated for what felt like hours. Her vision grew blurry and dim, and she saw that she had thrown up at some point. Each kick was like a hammer pounding an anvil into oblivion, sending tendrils of pain to every point of her body. Tears flowed sideways down her face, and the man cursed her and insulted her weakness the whole while. Finally, she was aware of two figures entering the room and unbinding her. They drug her back to her cell where she was laid roughly on the ground. Soft sobbing seemed to follow her through her half-consciousness, and she felt that she must have landed in the deepest parts of hell.

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