The Bloodstone Prophecy - Book 2 (complete)

Chapter 10 - Bones

If you'd like, you can click on the Youtube video to add to the ambience with the appropriate title that matches this chapter - "Bones". Hope you enjoy!

________________

Liam wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and leaned on his shovel. Looking around him, all he saw was the haggard, defeated faces of prisoners. It was clear most of them had long given up hope of rescue. Many of them had a glazed look in their eyes and dug in the desert surrounding the cave mechanically, almost like robots. He would never have guessed he'd rather be in the claustrophobic confines of his dungeon cell. Working in the heat was exhausting. At least it was cool inside the cell.

The sun had been beating down on them all morning, causing his shirt to cling to his skin. It was annoying. He would have stripped his shirt off long ago if he wasn't sure he would end up with a lobster-red torso. A burn like that would make it impossible to sleep or perform the arduous tasks expected of him.

He dug his shovel into the sand and something crunched. The holes were everywhere, and inside the holes were bones. Human bones to be precise, all that he had seen anyway. The bones were coated in dirt and to Liam's untrained eye, appeared to have been in the ground for a long time.

Most of the holes were probably 3 to 4 feet deep, some even deeper, and spanned the circumference of the cave hundreds of feet in all directions. Liam felt deeply uncomfortable that the bones were being exhumed and piled in such a cavalier manner. These were once people, people who had lived, loved, dreamed. Liam wondered what had gone down here, why there were so many dead. He felt uncomfortable that the Shadow Queen cared so much about digging them up. He'd seen enough in the cave to know she would probably use these bones in some evil and twisted way. The Shadow Queen clearly didn't care about the state of the bones, considering they'd given him such a dull tool to dig with.

He tried to swallow, but couldn't. The heat made even a simple task like swallowing difficult, and his tongue still curled from the bitter aftertaste of the water. He wouldn't be surprised if it was contaminated and made him sick.

Liam paused and looked across the sand to another clump of prisoners. They were digging not far from the cave, only about thirty feet from the entrance. There was a flash of green, and he thought he saw someone he knew, yes it was her. He recognized her by the outfit she'd been wearing when she'd been captured. Yasmin, and the woman next to her which was probably her grandmother, were in this group. He felt deeply relieved to see she was still alive and not consumed by a hungry swarm of bees. He wished there was a way to talk to her privately and form an escape plan, but he didn't dare leave his post.

There were only about eight groups of prisoners overseen by the guards, apparently only those who still needed overseeing. Most of the prisoners were walking in a trance, just like Kami's grandfather had described them, with their unseeing eyes. There was no point in even talking to them. Liam had tried once, and the man walked right past him as if he couldn't even see him. He didn't know how those people were being controlled. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

A searing pain jolted Liam from his ruminations.

"Back to work," a burly guard snarled. Like the guards inside, he was also dressed in an Egyptian police uniform. Liam knelt and began moving the sand away from the bones. His shoulders and back ached from where he'd been shocked. He didn't know what kind of weapon the guard had used, as he had slipped it into his pocket before he could see it. Did it work like a taser? Only a taser would have knocked him to the ground. The shock was painful, but not that powerful. The fury he'd felt at being kicked in the side returned.

He shook the sand from a bone and tossed it into a pile. A hand reached out, grabbed a bone and shook it. Liam looked sideways into the face of a young man probably similar to him in age, maybe sixteen or seventeen.