Nereyda

Chapter 3 || Sweet Memory

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Chapter 3 - Sweet Memory

They pulled her out of the square pretty quickly after that. From Nereyda's past experience, she expected the townsfolk to shout and scream in protest. The Anellian citizens obviously had a bounteous amount of respect for their King though, for they accepted his decision in silence, if with obvious discomfort.

Nereyda herself couldn't find any fault with how the King had treated her. He had adhered to the law and nothing else. He respected the word of the State and in return, the State respected him.

The guards were no less boorish in the way they handled her, despite the apparent sympathy of their King. She guessed that she was still their prisoner and they did consider her inadvertently responsible for the death of one of their most loved nobels.

They returned the way they had come, round the building and down the same ladder. When her feet hit the floor, she gasped as a cloth came over her eyes, realising that a guard had blindfolded her. With her hands still tied and her vision now stolen, Nereyda felt uncomfortably vulnerable.

They pushed her through the trees and she stumbled along in the dark, only hoping that she could trust them enough to prevent her collision with a tree or her falling down a hole.

They stopped her abruptly and then she was being guided down a set of stairs by slightly gentler hands. She guessed that it was a different guard guiding her.

When the floor evened out under her feet, the blindfold disappeared from around her face. However, she hardly noticed its disappearance beyond the feeling of shifting fabric because her vision remained pitch black. They were in some kind of tunnel and there was no light at all to illuminate the space.

The guards seemed to know where they were going though, and she continued to follow them blindly. It was only after another couple of minutes walking that her eyes finally started to adjust.

They were in a long narrow corridor that twisted and turned every ten yards. They'd veered off what she perhaps thought was the wider entryway, and now only narrower tunnels surrounded them.

Most of the original guards had left them and there was only the female and an unfamiliar male left. They were forced to walk in single file, Nereyda in the middle of either guard.

They led her down several other corridors and down another set of steps before they stopped in front of a large metal gate. She'd seen others like it on the way, and had even thought that she might have seen some other prisoners lurking in the shadows of their cells.

Although she remembered the way they had taken, she wasn't entirely sure what had happened before her eyes had adjusted, and even if she were to escape the dungeon, she would have no idea where in the forest she was.

The rusting metal gate creaked and choked in protest as the male guard pulled it open. Without being told, Nereyda walked voluntarily into the dark space. She was sick of being pushed around and the cell was quite obviously for her.

She was surprised when the male guard smiled indulgently at her. He didn't look any different from the others (tanned skin, red hair) but there was something in his eyes that made Nereyda feel slightly less intimidated.

The gate shut with a bang and the feeling was gone. The male guard nodded once at her before turning and leaving in a sweep of swirling crimson. Then it was just her and the female.

She sat down in front of Nereyda's cell, pulling an obnoxiously long knife from somewhere within her robes.

Nereyda looked around the small cell, perplexed. How on earth had she gotten herself into this situation? She was supposed to be crossing the Tainted Sea right now, not waiting in a cell for her inevitable doom, just one day from being catapulted back to Paladu.