Darkness and Devotion - A Tom Riddle Story

The Dungeons

TW!! This chapter is a walking trigger. I'm going to write a synopsis at the end for those of you who cannot stand extreme violence. For those of you who can, I salute you, my brethren. If you like gore, it's probably not that bad (IMO at least). If you don't like gore... you were warned lol.

Footsteps echoed on the cold, damp floor. Thump... thump... thump. The slow, deep sound reverberated throughout the dungeon, broken up only by the sound of a steady drip of a crimson liquid that had spilled all too quickly. Power shook the walls with each pace. The dungeon recognized the presence of its master: a sinister force of pure evil that fed it what it so desired.

Blood.

He smirked. Perhaps it needed feeding again.

"Please!" the man chained to the wall sobbed. He had been crying for three days pathetically ever since he killed that useless partner of his. The body still lay on the floor of the dungeon, rats feeding on the carcass periodically. They scurried when he walked by; they, too, were afraid of the killer. "Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Just let me live!"

Out from the shadows, the man stepped out. The dim moonlight illuminated only one of Tom Riddle's eyes. Even it couldn't bring the light out of the pits of pure darkness. There was no light, not in him.

A sadistic grin rested on his face. He was composed even as he stepped over the dead woman. Her skull was broken, blonde hair matted red with caked blood. She died too quickly for his tastes. He liked making them suffer.

"Please, sir! W-we were only trying..."

But he trailed off when he saw the knife in Tom's hand. It was a black dagger caked with dried blood. The woman's blood. As Tom held it, he swore he could still hear her screams. The echoed through the dungeon for two days like music to his ears. He twirled it in his fingers, reveling in the way it called to the hungry power within him. It, like everything else in this world, recognized who its superior was.

Everything else but these two pathetic idiots.

The man had been in the dungeons for two weeks. At first, Tom left them alone. He allowed them to sit in that empty room, chained to the wall. There, their fear of what he might do to them ate them up almost as much as their hunger did. He didn't feed them for five days, only allowed them to drink the water dripping off of the wet stones from the rain. Their wands had long been broken, their magic destroyed. He waited until they were starving, thirsty, and completely desperate. Only then were they easily broken.

The woman broke first, begging for mercy the moment Tom walked into the room. Her blue eyes were wide with fear. She easily sold out whatever secrets she knew, which wasn't much. Useless, Tom thought as she told him all about a plan to test his powers before he ascended to his rightful position. But he already knew that much. How else would he have found their little "safe house" in the Welsh countryside? It was almost too easy. Shame. He would have to play with the others more later.

Tom began to kill her then. Slowly, of course. He reveled in the way the man's eyes widened as he watched his partner lose more and more blood each day. A cut one day, a larger one another, surviving on moldy bread and limited water. Tom enjoyed hearing the way her screams changed as he carved into her like she was the butter for her sad excuse of a piece of toast.

She died after six days. A damn shame, too, because he wasn't nearly done. Her fear when he entered the room with the knife was almost as entertaining as the look in the man's eyes as glistening beads of red flowed down her body. Desperate. Good. Desperate meant that he was still useful.

Not that Tom needed them for anything. He read their minds the moment he saw them huddling in the corner of the stupid excuse of a safe house. Nothing was safe from him. If they were intelligent, they would have known that. Then again, if they were intelligent, they would have left him alone. If they had, the man wouldn't be in chains and the blonde girl would be alive.