Bound between worlds

1

Liana

I woke up screaming in pain. My whole face burned like hell. Before I understood what was happening, the same pain exploded on my back. Screaming, I twisted and slammed on the hard ground. A boot kicked me in the head which made me see black dots. Then in the ribs, in the belly, in the face. The last kick transported me back to unconsciousness.

Groaning, I came back to. My whole body hurt miserably. I had barely opened my eyes when I felt nauseous and I had barely time to turn to the side before I puked. Everything hurt. When my stomach had finally calmed down a little, I could carefully look at my surroundings. I was lying on a dark rocky ground - naked, as I noticed in horror. But that wasn't even the worst: with my hand I could feel an iron ring around my neck. A slight turn of the head confirmed my guess. I was wearing an iron spiked collar. My wrists and feet were tied to chains. I was sitting in a dungeon. At this realization, a sob escaped me before I began to cry completely. What had happened?

A sound in the darkness suddenly silenced me. A faint light was lit and illuminated the corridor in front of the cell. The dungeon looked like it was carved right into the mountain. Footsteps at the end of the corridor became louder every second until a giant of a man came into my field of vision. He was wearing a uniform. The uniform of the palace guard. Only sheer willpower kept me from wetting myself in panic. Why was I held captive by palace guards? What the hell happened?

The man had short-shaven hair, rough hands, and a hard face ruffled with scars. At the smell of my fear, he twisted his lips into a grimace that shivered down my spine. He liked it. I barely dared to breathe. Without saying a word, the guard fished a key out of his uniform and un-locked my cell. My self-preservation instinct came to life and I tried to crawl away from him as much as possible. However, the chains promptly ended this miserable attempt. Due to the short distraction, I had lost my focus and now found myself right in front of the warrior, who in turn did not lose time to work me over with his fists. Screaming, I wanted to curl up, but the spiked collar immediately drilled painfully into my throat. In panic, I held the iron ring so as not to impale myself while I was being beaten by hands and feet. After a short time, several bones in the face and torso were broken and I coughed up blood. The pain was unbearable. At some point my body became numb and I longed for the feeling of unconsciousness. Another kick against the head granted me my wish and I fell into nothingness.

The next time I woke up in pain and the feeling of suffocating. Screaming, I tore at my shackles to escape the hard, ice-cold jet of water I was tortured with. But the torment was relentless. I could only try to protect my airways so as not to drown. The cold stinged like a thousand ice needles. I couldn't think anymore, I couldn't move anymore. Why did all this happen? When I finally felt nothing, the water jet suddenly stopped. My body had even stopped shaking. Somewhere in the back of my mind I darkly remembered that I was probably life-threateningly hypothermic. But the thought quickly disappeared when I started to float. Smiling, I gave myself to the feeling and closed my eyes.

I had no sense of time anymore. Day and night no longer existed in the darkness of the dungeon. There was awake and unconscious. I was lying between vomit, piss and feces. I didn't get any food, so by now I could only spit blood. The only water came from the water jet with which I was regularly mistreated. I could hardly drink the boiling water, with which I was alternatively tortured. I didn't know how much time had passed. I was always beaten until I was unconscious. The guards took turns or joined forces. In the meantime, they had also found pleasure in whips. The pain was indescribable. It ripped the flesh off my body. I didn't know what they were using, but the metal at the ends burned me in addition. Fortunately, I was so weak by now that I lost consciousness after a few strokes.

But I was still not dead. I understood that the least. Despite the uninterrupted torture, I kept waking up and most of the wounds were healed. However, never the whip straps. By now they covered my entire body. But I was too weak to worry about it. I just wanted to die. No one wanted to tell me why I was here. What I had done to deserve all this. They liked my pain, that was clear. They wouldn't stop. I just wanted to die.