The Wilting Ballad

5

Baronn was chained to a stone wall with vines growing from it when he woke. The grounds shake and tremble at the chanting of hooded figures who, he noticed, were emerging inside this vast room one by one, crowding the room. All eyes were laid on him as they chant some kind of prayer.

He feels he's seen this place before though where or when he cannot remember. But it felt familiar, somehow.

He noticed that one painting hung on the opposite wall, the one with four horses not of this world, a horse that glowed the sun and that which brings shadow with it where it rides, a horse that had fire for a tail and one that reek of death, with nails for crown, pale and gaunt.

Webs of spiders were on all corners. The room smelled of dry soil and vomit. He startles at the sound of a door closing. Fifty or more were all staring at him, still chanting that prayer.

Baronn was rarely scared when facing enemies or beasts but this.... Siaur's hell is this? He thought. The hooded figures were swaying in unison as they chant in a language he doesn't know.

He gets more and more petrified as a candle-size skinny spider crawled up his boots to his bare legs and up to his injured thighs, they circle, it itches. His skin aches, his inside hurts, salty sweat paste his hair and clothes, he whimpered like a dog being kicked, waters falling on his cheeks have never been so humiliating.

He wanted to cry aloud and scream but the pride of an idiot is a powerful thing. He grunted his teeth as the spider pecked on his fresh arrow-driven flesh, the blood that smeared around it was torrid.

He shrilled out, the spider sticks its head in and tries clawing his wound, it stings, it throbs violently, he felt nauseated, the beating of his heart fasten, gravely fasten.

Then it stops, the chanting, the swaying, the spider, everything was silent but for the noises he makes. He heard a giggle that a little girl have but which belongs to Maladin. He winced at the sound and watched her crouched down on one knee, hand held out. He twitched as the spider left him and went into her hand.

"And thus the flesh of the Emperor's brother is at my grasp." Said Maladin, her voice like the laughs of a hyena. "I will have dominion over you, Baronn Shan. Soon... after my men work their magic on you you'll sing to me like some dockside whore."

"Why.... my flesh? What's it to you?"

Maladin grinned, the kind that was hard to look at without making your skin shivers, "Oh... you'll be amazed what a Star Shīza that follows no rules can do with a tiny bit of human's blood and meat. Oh, it's an absolute beauty. Purest beauty." She twirls around, slapping the faces of her followers in her excitement.

They show no signs of feeling or being hurt, just emptiness. Empty of life, of joy, with no will of their own. Maladin hands the one closest to her a small knife she got from the pocket of her robe, the man removed his hood takes the knife, "Stab your wife fourteen times, love." Maladin whispered, loud enough for Baronn to hear.

The man then turns and starts stabbing the woman standing next to him, who Baronn assumes must be his wife, she winced as he stabs her but did nothing more than that, she collapsed after the fourteenth time.

Awestruck but terrified, Baronn gape at the woman that lay atop pools of her blood, blood her husband spills. His whole body clenched with fear and anger. Maladin cackled aloud, "Isn't it beautiful?" She said.

No words found him, maybe for the first time, his eyes traveled from Maladin to the husband and back to the wife. She laughs at his fear-confused face, a face one wear when finding out that dragons were, in fact, real all along.

She scuttles out the door, followed by those under her control. They remained, three of them, it seems, to work on Baronn like Maladin had said earlier, breaking his mind so he can sing to her like some dockside whore.