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Chapter 3

"Ugh...Uh, huh?" I open my eyes, which lay, encrusted with goobery stuff. I try to reach up to wipe it off, but I can't move my hand. My blurry vision focuses and I see dark, rocky walls. I feel around, trying to deduce where I am.

I piece together that I am chained to a rock column in the center of a small cave with cold, steel cuffs. I cough, it's so smelly and musty that I can hardly breathe. The floor beneath my bottom is hard, and my tailbone starts to ache as I sit there.

"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP M-" I start, breathing heavily.

"Shut up," a burly voice behind me interrupts.

"Hey, please, tell me why I'm in here?!" I ask frantically, trying to piece the puzzle of my life together as I ask.

"You're a U'Ahdak boy, one that we think is from the village that the hero was found in," the voice responds. It sounds like a man, definitely, but why? I try to look at him, but I can't turn my head, for it is also chained up; except this time by a tight choker around my neck.

"Hero?" I ask, wondering if he means me.

"Yes, a boy your age who is supposedly the savor of Kaski, the defeater of the Pack. I think it's a pile of sticks that someone tried to turn into a tree, but hey, he has a price on his head, and that's all that matters."

I gulp. He does mean me.

"But why am I here? For you to slaughter?"

"No, for us to get information from, then yes, for us to slaughter," the voice laughs an evil laugh, like he's asking me to come and rip his throat out.

Why me? Why? Why did the wizards have to make that stupid prophecy and get an innocent boy into this much trouble? I didn't do anything to deserve this!

I hear another voice outside, but this time from a female, "Hildsiff would like to talk to him," a pause, "now." I hear the stomp of a foot as she says "now", and a door is unlocked quickly.

I strain my neck to see what's going on, but I cannot move my head one bit. Then a wide structured man comes into sight, holding a torch. At first my eyes squint in the sudden bright light, but then they adjust and I am relieved to see clearly again.

The man wears rusty armor and his expression is a mix of fright and anger. He takes a key ring out from a hook on his belt, and unlocks the chains holding me to the column. I watch in relief and nervousness as his dry, crusted hands grab mine, which are chained together still.

He thrusts me up, off of the ground. I stretch my legs, and I realize that I am almost as tall as him, and almost laugh out loud at my fright I had earlier. But that all comes back to me as he leads me out the entrance, through an iron bar door.

Standing in the hall is a woman with tight-fitting red and black leather clothes and a small, notched dagger in her hand. Her blood-red eyes fixed onto my brown ones as she yanked my hand from the man's.

"Follow me," she muttered, her voice piercing my ears. I shudder, she makes me want to curl into a ball and hide, never to see her beautiful face again.

As she leads me through endless hallways, she flips her long, sleek, black hair around in it's braid. I want to escape so badly at this moment, but I can't. Her grip is placed firmly on my wrist, her dagger raised threateningly.

We reach large, double doors with gold patterns painted on them. Guards stand on either side, each wearing the same uniform as the one who got me from my fetid cell; except both of these are holding long spears with tips like I've never seen before.

They were made of four metal spikes, twisted up into a spiral around each other and flared out at the end. It made my guts churn just to think about being stabbed with one.

"You go in there alone," the woman mutters, not a tinge of sympathy for my soon-to-be fate. "Try not to be too stupid."

The guards open the doors on her command and she pushes me forward into the massive, looming room that awaits me.