The Forest Keeper

Chapter Sixteen: IN WHICH The Darklings Take a Stand Again

Thursday, October 25th

Talyn groaned and struggled to open her eyes. Her left eye was swollen shut, and the whole right side of her face felt raw and unprotected. She looked around to find herself tied up to a tree, a scene she couldn't remember ever being a part in.

She licked blood off her cracked lips and wriggled her legs. Legs. When did I get those back? She muttered a string of heavy curses and writhed in her shackles. The iron burned her skin the more she tried to move.

After a moment of letting the metal burn her, she relaxed and hung there, still and contemplative. "Alright," she whispered to herself, her voice nothing more than a low croak. "How did I get here, and how am I going to get down?" She growled in frustration – after this ordeal, she would never be a darkling again – and tried to bring up memories of herself being tied to a tree.

By the smell of the area, she knew she was in the Dark Quarter, or at least a part of the forest that was beginning to rot and decay under Dameon's plot. So that meant that Dameon brought her here, perhaps after Leonas had locked him in a tree again. She smirked – Stupid Laconis. Did he really think that same tree could hold the demon for longer than an hour? – and kept thinking.

A flurry of visions and memories flooded her mind, and she gasped and tried to stem the flow of it. Visions of Dameon coming closer, knife in hand and claws at full length; his face set in a sneer and the black orbs he called eyes cold and narrow; his hands all over her, tearing her apart inch by inch, forcing her down and tearing the last of her clothes off...

She opened her eyes, breath shallow and forced. She looked down at her body to see blood staining her skin and open wounds trying to heal to no avail. Shreds of her clothing clung to her sweat-covered skin for dear life, barely covering the important bits. All over, tingles of pain reminded her of her bout with Dameon, and... it was Hell.

Her eyes drooped closed again, and all she wished was to sleep and never wake up. This all had to be a nightmare. She had worked for Dameon before; he wasn't this crude to her then. But then again, demons were very changeable creatures, even more so than humans or Laconis. It would have only been a matter of time otherwise...

She groaned, and her groans slowly crescendoed into screams. She took strength from her cries, and she tugged with all that strength and more on her bonds, willing them to break. She muttered magic to make them as brittle as they could be. Soon, she heard them strain and crack under the pressure she forced on them. Three, two one...

The shackles shattered and fell to the ground in fifty pieces, and she dropped onto her feet in a crouch, one hand pressed flat against the ground. She took a break to breathe and regain the strength she had used to break the iron. She tore the restraints off her ankles and stood up tall, healing the iron burns under her breath.

"Looks like you didn't need my help after all, Mere girl," a weak voice chuckled behind her. "Now how about you help me a little?"

She turned, reaching for her dagger. As her fingers closed around air, she remembered that her weapons were gone, taken from her by Dameon. She hissed a curse and looked to the speaker. She relaxed and put her hand down.

The speaker was Abaddon.

"I didn't know you were here too," she chortled, walking to his side. He was chained too, but with silver instead of iron. Much easier to break. She put her hand on one of his shackles and made it brittle enough for her to break apart with her bare hands. Once that one was broken, she moved to the next one.

Abaddon grabbed her arm. "Why are you helping me?" he hissed, cocking his head and glaring at her with fire in his eyes. "Why are you letting me go like this?"