Damned if you do

Unlikely Friends

She wakes in a dark room that she's all too familiar with, slime slick walls drip on the floor in piles of chunky black muck, she sits up and brushes the black slime off her arms the best she can, panic bubbling in her chest, making her hands shake and her breath come out harsh and squeaky, each brush leaving streaks of it on her new clothing.

She peers through the darkness around her, a single floating candle in a silver lined holder rises up and down in the corner, right over Roget's head, it's wick cold and unlit.
Just as she's about to stand to see if he's awake a door opens from the wall, strings of slime stick to the door opening.

A priest stands to one side, waiting for her to move to get up.
"Come now we don't have all day" crows the voice, mocking her earlier statement, he stares down at her, evil written in his eyes "I know you stole my ring to get out, that's why I had you followed before we even left the market, catch the helper while we can" a smirk comes from his lips, his brassy teeth gleam in the faint light.
"Let him go, he was an unwilling part to my plan, just let him go" she pleads, hearing the guilt in her own voice echo off the cells walls.
"Doesn't matter, this one's already been through the punishment once, now he's on his way to become part of our brotherhood, he's off to the stretching bar soon" the priest cackles, throwing his head back and swaying.

She leaps for him in fury, screaming like a wild animal, she claws at his robes, use her feet against the wall to get near his face, her nails dig deep into his neck, scraping against his sharp bottom teeth, She hears a light shuffle then a blade pierces through her left hand, pinning it to the wall, stopping her sudden advance. She stares at it for a moment, hot pain seating through her fingertips, another moment passes, it feels like eons when the iridescent blood finally starts to pool, then drip down her fingers, the tapping of her blood on the black floor the only sound.

Her head moves on its own to look up on it the face of her new enemy, and she stops. The face she sees is kind and nervous, his silver eyes dilated to pins, long brown locks tied back but still falling in his face, he study's her carefully, those were the eyes she remembered. The priest from the street, from the capture tonight.

"Priest Siam, remove your weapon and bring the Time Piece to me, you know that shouldn't be too hard to handle even for your first day" the Priest clucks and starts to walk away without looking back. The Priest Siam takes her hand in his, removes the blade and wraps her palm in cloth, his eyes quick to her face to make sure she wasn't planning to escape, she just watches him, he's different than the other Priests, kind enough to wrap her wound.

We move through the passages, "I'm to take care of you Time Piece, don't be a handful" his hand on my shoulder ushers her forward, the room they come to is bright and open, with a pool like object in the middle, it's the burning room.

She backs into the Priest Siam whimpering, he leans down, are far feat for his eight feet of height and pats her back. "Go now willingly or it'll be worse for the both of us, that's a warning Time Piece" comes his soft voice again.

"Your supposed to take care of me right"? She questions, scanning the room "but what they want to do to me, will hurt me, doesn't that bother you? Please help me escape, it's horrible" she begs him, turning, tears in her eyes.
"I can't, and I shouldn't, now go, cooperate and all will be fine" He mutters.
All is lost, her family, her friends.
Her freedom was so close.

She steps up onto the platform, the floor sucks in her feet like thick, cold slime.
Slipping through the mud to the middle of the platform, she hesitates and look back at the kind Priest, begging him one more time.

"please" she manages to get out, her body is freezing, the feeling of the cold mud going up through her legs, her muscles ache, her fingers start to curl in on themselves, the strands of hair that touch her face dangle limply with frost.
His eyes widen at her frozen form, her hand still stretched out to him, now covered with a delicate lacing of glittering ice.

She moves her head slightly, tucking her chin into her shirt to bite the hem, the muck bubbles like it's boiling, it's inky surface shimmering with gold, rising higher up onto her legs, each inch of her legs it overtakes burns with molten metal.
A splitting scream comes from her throat, she shudders and tilts, a fruitless effort to get away from the mud, and finally, the mud reaches her stomach. She's screaming at the top of her lungs.
Warmth touches her one arm, then the next, her legs are no longer heavy with sludge, she's being pulled slowly by her top half out of the mud.
The Priest Siam grips her arm with his large hand, he pulls a little harder and the ice cracks slightly, falling into the mud, it boils and latches onto her right leg, biting into her flesh, she watches as her iridescent blood pools into the mud, disappearing.

The mud builds in mass, getting bigger and bigger till it's right ready to envelop them whole, a sound emits from somewhere deep inside like the grumbling belly of a hungry beast.
Elisra grips the Priest Siam's robe in pain, his other hand reaches into his robe and pulls out a little blue vial, the blue liquid inside moves like a magnetic pull, he opened the vial with his thumb and the liquid all but jumped out onto his sleeve.
The mass of mud is getting closer, billowing over the sides of the platform like smoke, creeping sluggishly towards them, she wiggles and twists in his arms, holding her breath she waits for the pain, when it touches the Priest Siam's robe it sizzles and drops flat, depleted.
"Thank you, thank you" she tells him crying, holding the belly of his shirt front so he can't step back, "Thank you Priest Siam, for your care" he shakes his head and whistles between his teeth, "Yea I don't think I'm a Priest anymore, just Siam will do".
Those grey eyes, she sees them now just like she saw them then, full of pity and empathy, he glides his hand down her shin to her ankles, releasing it of the sizzling mud.
He stands to his full height, nearly a full persons length above her, reaches into his sleeve, retracting his arm, out comes a staff of gold, so long and pure it hurt her eyes to stare at.
The staff, a long golden rod that tampered to a tip on the bottom and a three sided axe head at the top, looked deadly and elegant, she recognizes the Ânasteel crest at the bottom, the flash of memory that came next was chilled.
Her mother's voice came sharp and loud in her ears, screaming her siblings names to run, to fight, her father's back lunging towards the Priest's of silver, his hard set eyes meeting hers as his last breath leaves his body, gold faded eyes going entirely white.
Cold silver chained to her neck as they stumble over their fallen comrades bodies, family members chrome coloured iridescent blood mixing with the red dirt. The smell of death and burned flesh coming off the guards and Priests that escorted them to the Tribue city.

She flashs back to the present, sucking in as much air as she can, now having fallen to the floor, the Priest Siam slashes the mud beast back and forth, purely angering the monster, he jumps and spins at the thing, thrusting the head of the axe in its direction, the sharp tips of the axe come free of their perched spot on the staff and dig deeply into the guck; severing it's grotesque limbs, the sharp tips return to the staff and Siam wipes them off with his sash, sliding it back into his robes sleeves, the mud slithers and floppes around trying to build itself back up slithering and hissing, Siam turns to her spot on the floor and suddenly, looking into those deeply empathetic orbs Elisra understood all too well that this is her next step to freedom, she reaches up to him as he grabs her sleeve and they make way down the dark tunnel.

What an unlikely friend.