From the Pits of Gribdehl

Word Count = 2198

The cold dirt of the floor drew Victor from his dreaming fog, sending tremors of ice through the wiry thief’s toes as they brushed stones.  A single eye opened to confirm the despair.  He had been pulled from the depths of a vivid dreamscape to face the torture of imprisonment.  Yawning and weary, Victor craned to the left and peered through a barred slit in the wall.  The sky was black.

“The sun has yet to rise.”  He spoke to the shadows, finding a hollow false-comfort in the echo of his voice.  “Bah.  Let it stay hidden.  At least I can take solace in the sanctuary of my mind.”

He dropped his head once more, staring into darkness through the veil of his thin, brown hair.  A breeze moaned in through the window, and ran a frozen finger across his naked back.  Victor sucked in a breath, fighting off the urge to submit to winter’s chill.  Hanging by his wrists on the prison wall, Victor was a figurehead poised to face whatever horror might emerge from the shadows that engulfed him.  Hours seemed to pass, and Victor was beginning to fade back into his dreams when lantern light illuminated an archway across the circular room.  In the dim shadows, the portly silhouette of Victor’s visitor revealed him to be King Fadiuhm.  Victor hardly took note of his captor, however.  His attention had been seized by a smaller shadow at the king’s side.  As the pair descended into the dungeon, Victor bit his lip so as not to cry out.  Fadiuhm forced the young girl to her knees and picked up a chain from the floor.  The heavy links held taut to their tether as the King hooked the other end to a metal collar around the child’s neck.  Straightening up again, he took the lantern and approached Victor.  The girl remained on the floor, defeated and whimpering.  Victor’s eyes only left her as the king stepped close to the thief’s shackled body and lifted the lantern to his face.

“You know this child, pig?”
The smell of rotten meat and vomit rose from the king’s mouth, bringing Victor to the verge of gagging.  He swallowed a lump of vomit before answering in cold monotone.
“Should I?”
The girl’s whimpering cut short, and she lifted her head, looking up to the thief.
“D-dad?”
Victor kept his eyes locked on the king.  The girl jumped to her feet.
“Daddy?!  You know me!  It’s me - Ella…your ‘Duchess’!”
The chains that held her clanked and clamored as the girl started bouncing and shouting “Daddy!  Come down and save me!  Dad!  Daddy!-”
King Fadiuhm noticed the glimmer of tears form in Victor‘s eyes, and a wicked smirk stretched across his face.
“Is this not your daughter?”  His tone carried a skeptic’s mockery and a blasphemer’s accusation.
Victor closed his eyes for a moment, before looking the king in his single, grey eye and responding.
“I have never see this child before in my life.”

The girl, whose bouncing jangles had grown into an echoing metallic commotion, now fell still.
“But, but-”
Victor’s voice had lost its emotionless sense, replaced by  the arrogant confidence of a know-it-all. 
“Fadiuhm, if you seek to test my will against the suffering of a petty squirt like that, you’re wasting your time.” 
“If this is not your child,” the king pulled a rotten apple from beneath his cape, “then you won’t mind watching her demise.”
Arrogance spoke before reason could open its mouth.
“What, you’ll feed her rotten food?  Why not breathe on the girl instead!  The putrid smell of your mouth could do worse than a measly apple!”

“Fool!”  The king spun round, and exploded in rage.  He stormed back across the dungeon, kicking the girl as he passed.  Her stomach caught the tip of his boot with a fleshy thump.  As he reached the archway, he tossed the rotten apple over his shoulder.  It’s brown peel squished and splattered at the girl’s side.  King Fadiuhm turned to face his prisoners and raised his left hand.  In the lantern’s glow a large ruby ring glimmered against his index finger.  As the king spoke his voice droned, deep and boding.

“Ah-may Pom-deht-insectus.”

The ruby glowed for a moment before fading as the dungeon air grew heavy.  The king turned without a word and left down an unseen corridor, out of sight from the thief.  The lantern, still propped against a column ledge, flickered its light.  In the dancing shadows, Victor watched as clouds of small flying insects emerged from every nook and crevice of the stone cage.  They hummed in a constant reverberation of static noise.  The rush of tiny wings against Victor’s skin sent the fine hairs of his back prickling.  Failing to restrain his instincts, the thief flinched, twitching his head in a feeble attempt to shoo the bugs that had filled the room.  The seams of the prison wall bled a flickering red stream of fruit flies.  The child whimpered once more, throwing sporadic glances to the encroaching swarm.  “Dad?”

Victor writhed and tugged his limbs, straining against his iron shackles.  He watched as the cloud surrounded the girl, blanketing her kneeling form with arms outstretched.  As she fell to a knee and began coughing, Victor uttered a scream that shook the air and stunned the flies for a passing moment.  The lantern flame danced in its glass case.  The thief’s pupils dilated in his rage, lifting a corner of the shadow curtain.  Several minutes passed in the uproar before the thief had spent the last of his strength.  His cries echoed dim for a moment, and when Victor recovered enough to lift his eyes back to the child the pit of his stomach wrenched as if gripped by a pair of talons.  The flies had formed an undulating suit of armor.  He watched in hopeless sorrow as the buzzing horde pressed toward the floor, shrinking around the child.  Silver and blue beams of moonlight eventually gave way to the first shards of pink and orange sunrise.  As the bugs met the floor, the mute grey of bones rose from the crimson mound.  Quaking with rage, Victor held his breath and watched the army of miniature horrors clean every bit of flesh from the small skeleton.  He choked on the air at what followed.  With nothing left to devour, the insects turned to the rotten apple laying untouched beside the girl’s remains.  In lines that resembled tentacles reaching for prey the horde of fruit flies collected around the apple.  As the tentacles wrapped around the fruit, it’s moldy insides were replaced with the red flies, now bulging with their fill.  They entwined over each other, wrapping themselves around the apple core.  Then, as the last strand found its place around the nexus, Victor realized the cursed things had become the apple.  In their red tint, the apple had been given its shape back, each organic curve emanating an aura of deceptive life.  Victor swallowed a lump of dust and phlegm that had formed in his throat.  The thief’s eyes never left the cursed fruit, even as the curtain of sleep closed around him.  Hope gone, Victor closed his eyes.

The morning sun was beaming through the barred hole when the sound of approaching footsteps  drew Victor from sleep.  His shoulders ached.  His legs twitched and quivered in uneven rhythm.  The few hours of rest had given Victor new resolve, and the tide of emotions had receded.  He watched the entryway in cold anticipation.  A man shrouded in a white cloak entered the prison.  Within the shadows of his drawn hood the man’s eyes glittered against rays of sunlight, a pair of emeralds half embedded in the wall of an open cave.  White robes shifted and tossed with each step the man took, clinging lightly against a muscular frame.  Green eyes turned from Victor to the floor as the man’s attention turned to the apple.  He knelt and picked the fruit up in one hand, before standing once more and approaching the thief.  Rotating the apple, the man eyed its peculiar curvature.  The very shape of the fruit appeared to turn and slide against itself as he held it.

“Iskar, have you come to set me free?”
Victor’s voice was a raspy whisper, the only thing that had not yet recovered form the previous night.
The robed figure shook his head.
“As much as I wish so, here such a feat is impossible.  Even if I did, we would only be fleeing into a greater demise.”
Victor frowned.  As he spoke, his eyes returned to the apple once again.
“You have not come to aid me, despite my own obvious helplessness.  Why, then, did you risk walking headlong into the lion’s den?”
“To send word that the king has attacked once more.  It was no more than two days from your capture.  His royal guard met us on the street, doubling the numbers of our caravan.”
“How many were lost?”
Iskar sighed, turning his head to avoid making eye contact.
“Iskar, you have stood at my side near ten years now.  I have shed my own blood and spilt the blood of no less than a hundred others in your defense. Yet in the matter of an ambush you refuse to even look at me?  Out with it man!  What number fell to the blades of the corrupt?”
“One in blood, and another was taken as hostage.”
Victor raised an eyebrow.  “You risked your skin to tell me that we lost two men to the bastard king’s guard?”  His body shook, chains rattling with the wavering tension.  “Mockery does not suit you, Iskar.  Leave me to my fate.”
“Your mind is weak. I never said it was men that we lost.”
The thief’s eyes narrowed, his pupils contracting as he locked eyes with Iskar.
“The meeting had to be planned.  By all rights, we should have been slaughtered on the street.  But when they came upon us, the captain told his goons to take only what was ordered.”
“What was it they took?” The cold monotone had returned.
“The took Dianna, Victor.  Dee fought - no, we all fought them.  The guardsmen kept us back, but Dee managed to slip through their grip and fought to save her.  The captain ran her through, and took the child.”
“And when they left, what did you do?”
“We tracked them, following at ear’s length.  After five days we saw the kingdom of Gribdehl in the horizon and were certain they were taking the girl here.  I rode ahead, giving the guard as much space as I could.  I hoped to make it here before them.  The caravan approaches even now.  And knowing that you have not found death, we will find a way to free you.”
“My friend, you are too late.”
“What?”
Victor nodded toward the skeleton lying beside the column, a pile of steel chains laying at its side.
“There lies Dianna.  And the food in your hand holds her killers.”
Iskar leaned his head to the apple, peering at the pulsating red thing.
“That piece of unholy fruit is made entirely of fruit flies.”
Iskar’s eyes grew.  His mouth fell agape.  Keeping hold of the fruit he extended his arm, giving as much distance between his face and the multitude of filth as possible.
“The swarm enveloped Dia and devoured her, leaving only what you see laying in the dirt.  Christ protect us, I fear we face more than the wickedry of a corrupt king.  Dark forces are surely aligning against us.”

Iskar dropped the apple, and raised a foot.  In the shuddering of horror, his boot slammed into the fruit.  Insect parts mashed together, spattering against the dirt floor.  A small cluster of surviving fruit flies jumped from beneath Iskar’s descending foot and flew in hectic confusion to the seam where walls met ceiling.  The bugs disappeared as they landed in the dark crevices.

“If kings are resorting to the horrors of rites long thought dead, then we all face a future of uncertainty.  Our position is desperate.”
Victor nodded.  “This is nothing new to me, friend.”
“Come sunset tomorrow, either you will be free or we will all perish.”
“No, we haven’t time to wait for the caravan.  I don’t think my fate is death.  Not yet.”
“What, then?”
“If I were meant to die, he would not have brought Dia to face me.  No, I believe he seeks something that only I can bring him.”
“Nonsense.  King Fadiuhm is as twisted as a marriage knot, and demented beyond the reason of man.  He seeks only torture and, eventually, death.”

The sound of a keys jingling in the hall halted the conversation.  Iskar moved soundless to the side of the entrance and peered into the prison hall.  The king was standing at the base of the main stairwell, some twenty feet away.  His gaze was fixed on a red glow emanating from the back of his hand.  Pulling the white hood back over his face, Iskar threw a glance toward Victor before ducking down the hall and into an open, unguarded cell.