Vedikus clenched his fist, replacing the feel of her lips, and stood, but not before he grasped her and hauled her up with him. He held her upright as she found her footing. He knew how soft and weak human feet were.
“So you can be of use to me and my brothers...” Branches rustled down the path from which they had come, and he raised his hand to quiet the female. A crackle and thump were followed by a groan. Vedikus settled his hand over the handle of his axe. He stared into the darkness from whence it came and waited for the attack.
Seconds passed without another noise. He dropped his hand and looked back in her direction. “No more talking. We need to leave now before the others stop killing each other and start searching for you,” he whispered.
She didn’t respond. He couldn’t see her face in the shadows but he couldn’t afford to wait much longer and assuage his curiosity. He needed to know that she wouldn’t run or scream or fight him every step of the way.
When he was about to throw her over his shoulder, she turned up her face, halting him.
Her hand grasped his arm, but he could not look away from her face in the filtered moonlight.
Why is she touching me?Vedikus narrowed his eyes.
“I want to return home,” she breathed with every last sorrowfully wistful note she had. He recognized the vulnerability in her plea, and it made him want to be a hero for a single sun-glimpsed moment in time.
But heroes died. They were fools.
He would always choose a hungering, festering life over death. Death meant an end to glory.
The skin where she clutched his arm burned. Vedikus growled out a burst of steam and flung her hand away.
“You have no home now, female, but you have your life and it is now mine. It will be mine until you breathe your last breath, and you will remain mine even when your heart stops beating and your blood is no longer fresh. Because even in death, there’s no escape, no rest, only survival. This world will take it all if the brutal don’t take it first, as I’ve taken you.” Steam escaped his lips as he pointed to the barrier that loomed like a poison cloud above the paths and rotting trees. “The hundred dead behind us will grow until the labyrinth is impassible, do you understand? If you approach those walls, you’ll have to walk over those bodies... and if you fall before the top, you’ll land within their moldering husks and they will have won.”
The female’s mouth parted and he grasped her neck. “Choose your words carefully.”
“I don’t want them to win,” she said, straightening, jerking out of his hold. The sadness from before was now gone.
He waited a moment before accepting her answer; there was no time to read into her response. Already, he could feel the thickening of the air around them, drawing non-sentient and malicious beings closer. He had to get her away before every step became a battle.
“No,” Vedikus laughed softly. “No one wantsthemto win.”
He reached for the rope around his hips.
***
The numbness that hadkept her going seeped out of her all at once. It was a difficult stab of reality. Aldora had seen her life pass before her eyes as she laid flat under the beast, as his musky, sweaty smell crashed into her nose, and his face hovered above her own. The heat of his body pressed against hers had nearly suffocated the life from her lungs.
Now, she was at the end of the rope he’d tied around her waist. She’d pulled at the cord, trying to release herself, had even taken her dagger and tried to cut it, but it wasn’t like the bindings of her world. Her captor had simply chuckled at her efforts.
“It’s made from the wheat grown by where I live and threaded with witch hair. You will not be free of it as you will not be free of me.”
There was barely two feet of give between them and he kept it taut, tugging her forward with every step.
He trusted her as much as she trusted him. Not at all.
They walked for an indeterminate amount of time and she didn’t bother keeping track. She attempted to briefly, but everything around her remained shrouded in darkness, and after she lost sight of the giant wall, she stopped trying. There was nothing but twisted growth and forked passageways with every step and nothing to keep her oriented to their whereabouts.
Aldora held onto the straps across the beast’s back and used them as leverage to keep her moving. When her strength waned, she took advantage of his. There was no sound between them but the crunch of his feet to the ground. She knew better than to speak at a time like this. Not with her ears already filled with every sort of sound that meant monsters were nearby. Even now, the persistent thunder of drums lingered in the distance.
Her eyes drifted to the plumes of dust below, unable to make out what about her captor made him crush the dirt.
Did she want to know what held her? Her nails dug into his buckle. He’d taken her away from her only hope of escape but he had also kept her alive. Her instincts warred, and the more she stared at the moving outline of his horns, the more her uncertainty grew.
He’s not an Orc.Her knowledge of orcs, if the stories had been correct, was that they were muscled, barbaric men with tusks and blunt features. They ate humans, like her, and their hunger for flesh was endless.Orcs travel in groups.
Aldora squeezed her eyes shut and let the shadow drag her forward a few steps.
He wasn’t a hobgoblin. That much was apparent. He had killed many prior to her capture and more as he led her away. Their bodies were half her size and contorted in unusual ways.
