Dark Wreathe

Chapter 2

I awoke to the splash of water that struck my face and ran down the length of my body barely covered by tattered and shredded clothing.
Water. Water!
Such a waste of water, of cool water.
I stick my tongue out in an attempt to quench some of my thirst by catching some drops falling from my mangled hair. When I tried to reach for more, I was immediately pulled back by my confines.
That's when the memories flooded in.
Being pulled by the hair, with each yank causing a shock of pain to run through my scalp.
Being dragged across the ground by my arms, knees scraping and bleeding.
The pure exhaustion that settled in after fighting against the guards.
The grins and sneers as they threw me on the ground and kicked me.
Over, and over, and over.
I could feel the bruises sprouting and spreading all across my abdomen and on my cheek and on my legs. How they swelled, how they pulsed. How they beat to the drum of my heart.
They then held me up and chained me to a wooden slab, holding me off the ground by a few inches and straining my wrists from my own weight. I let out a whimper.
"Human."
I lift my gaze away from the ground, and finally survey what's in front of me.
The two ugly guards were gone, replaced by an even uglier creature that looked like it was human. Once.
But that was the thing about the Ryverians. They all could be mistaken as humans.
His face had a rough, jagged scar coming down from his right ear down to his left jaw, taking a big chunk of skin from both his upper and lower lips. His skin looked rough and damaged, but nothing compared to his eyes. His eyes were all black, save for the irises that took on a vivid blood red color.
His lips curled into a smile when he saw the fear on my face, revealing razor sharp, shark-like teeth.
"Hello human. Welcome to hell."
My eyes widened when I realized where I was. I started shivering violently again and my head started to pound and ache. I felt more than I saw, a dark shadow pass behind me waiting, prowling.
"I have a few questions for you. Now, we can either do this the nice way, or the hard way."
He took a couple steps closer. "Tell me what she told you, what you know."
My teeth clatter hard against each other. "I--I-I don't know w-what you m-mean."
"I'm sure you know precisely what it is that I mean."
He lifted a hand to my face and scratched down my jaw with a clawed finger. I could feel the blood welling out before I felt any pain.
"Where did you come from, little human?"
"S-Sparrowen. I am from Sparrowen." I stutter.
"Good, good. There's a start. Now tell me, child, how did you manage to kill our 'dearest' Queen?"
I froze, not willing to bring back the memories of that time, of the things I had lost.
But they came to the surface no matter how hard I tried to keep them at bay.
The girl that I cherished, the girl that I protected. The girl I was in love with.
The girl that jumped off the cliff.
Then the quest, a hopeless quest to find someone who would have the power to bring her back. The Mad Queen and her Queendom of death and decay. Who was now dead, because of me.
Who had died with a smile on her face, and happiness in her eyes.
She did not have the answers or the power I had once assumed. She was only a broken woman with a power gained that she could not control.
"I stabbed her. In the heart."
I could feel the blood all over my hands, staining my shirt, covering my neck.
The way she fell and, even in death, still looking as beautiful as the legend spoke of her.
Once she had died, I only realized how meaningless it was for me to go on living without a purpose. But before I had taken my own life, that's when a group of soldiers, Ryverian soldiers, stormed the dilapidated castle to execute the Queen but instead found her murdered by my own hands.
"So tell me how is it that you were able to get close enough to do so without her killing you first? I wonder."
He started circling around the wooden slab I was chained to until he was out of my sight. My wrists were chafing against the chains even worse from me craning my neck this way and that, until I simply gave up and swallowed down my fear.
"I know she spoke to you. What did she say?" He whispered in my left ear.
"Did she spread her foul, human lies?" He said in the right.
"Tell me child." He walked around from behind me and stuck his ugly mug up close to my face. His breath smelled of blood and death.
I kept my lips sealed, even against all the clattering of teeth.
"Too bad, I expected more from you."
He stepped back and gave me a disappointed look that didn't reach his excited eyes. He lifted one of his clawed, disfigured arms.
Suddenly my whole body started convulsions and violent tremors. Voices and shadows started screaming all around me and clutched at my skin, trying to claw there way in. I can feel my soul weakening as they get closer and closer.
This is what I get for always being weak. This is what I get for not fighting back, for not standing up for myself. For not saving the one person I'd ever loved.
I bit my tongue to keep from screaming as my past swam in and out of my vision. The cheerful smiles. The empty promises. The sad eyes. The crazed and broken woman.
The Voices laughed at every painful memory, screaming and screaming and laughing.
I snapped.
A burst of laughter bubbled up my throat full of rage and hate and rippled up and out of the Tower where I've been confined all this time. It's sheer promise of violence makes me laugh even harder, filling me up with all the anger of ten thousand souls.
The Ryverian torturer starts to take a step back, knocking into a tray of surgical instruments. One look at his face, and I knew that I was the one suddenly in control. It made me feel stronger. I felt his shadows slink away as the pain subsides, and feel something in me take over.
The Voices that had haunted me all this time in my own cell had now taken form as dark, sinister figures reaching out to me, clawing at the shredded remains of my clothing.
They came at me more violently, more angrily.
It was a sudden kind of agonizing pain that was worse than what the torturer inflicted on me, and this time I couldn't hold back.
A scream came ripping out of my lungs, as bad as the last attack before the guards came for me. Then something surged out of me from within, something strong and powerful and I felt release.
My eyes started to close from sudden exhaustion, but not before watching the torturer get ripped to shreds by a dark form I could not make out. His cries for help and the whisper of footsteps ebbing closer and closer towards me were the last thing I heard before I drifted off into slumber.