INCIPIENT ➵ EDMUND PEVENSIE

05 | Dear Little Antagonists

05 | DEAR LITTLE ANTAGONISTS

Waking up was a horrendous burden.

    Her head spun and her body lay sore. She eyes the ceiling above her, barely visible in the absence of light.

    "Where am I?" she whispers to herself, simpering.

    She props herself up using her shoulders, muscles screaming as she struggles to sit up. She pushes her torso up all the way-

    She hisses when her temple collides with a hard something above her.

    "I see the girl's awake," says a male, virile voice. Then again, she is certain she hasn't quite 'woken up'.

    "Who are you?" she asks into the darkness.

    "They call me Nikabrik," the same voice replies, crudely.

    "No forgetting me, Wokirik," introduces another.

    "And me, Banebrik. That's ba-nee-brik, not bane-brik. Get that right."

    "It's so dark, I can't see," she says, but regrets it at once. Could they be a copy of the horrid creatures that attacked her?

    A stifle sounds, followed by a clatter of something metallic rebounding off the ground. Finally, a glimmer of light shines from above. It is a lamp, sophisticatedly sculpted, boasting it's exemplary workmanship. Two metal rods cross the body of the lamp, casting a delicate shadow of an 'X' around the room.

    The flame of the lamp illuminates the room in a dull apricot, divulging the appearance of those around her.

    As she guessed beforehand, they seem to be of the same breed as the two that endeavored to abduct her on the ruin-filled cliff - the same appearance of a Pygmy - dwarfish and stout, with slightly pointed ears, plump button noses and a somewhat bothersome grin that accompanies them. The strange, threatening aura that revolve around them is as vexing as their outlandish physique.

    The very next thing she catches on is the very fact that she is put in some type of-

    Cage.

    She grapples at the bars of bamboo, flinching the moment her back scrapes the top bars of this heavily confined space.

    "What are you!? And what do you want with me!?" she shrieks, hysteria strangling her words as she rattles the bars around her in desperation, causing the hanging cage to quiver with the movement.

    "We're black dwarves, adept craftsmen, the best in the country. Which is why we would advise you to save up your energy. This little coop we've built specially for you is inescapable," one of them, whose voice she recognises as the supposed 'Nikabrik', snickers as he steps towards her.

    She tears her hands away before he can apply his touch on a millimeter of her skin.

    "I wouldn't dare to lay a finger on you, my dear," he remarks at her reflex.