Great, she had only been awake two seconds and was already bleeding again.
But then she realized it was her right hand she was looking at. She flexed her fingers. A general stiff ache pervaded her, but her arm was healed. Slowly, she peeled herself off the damp stone floor.
“I wouldn’t move too far,” the voice said again. “They put you in the middle of the cell. They probably didn’t realize that it’s the safest place.”
She squinted through the darkness, hissing as her vision first fixed on iron bars. Her headache redoubled. She put her hand flat on the floor and measured her breaths until the worst of it passed.
“I’m back in the Lands, aren’t I?” she said, lifting her head slowly again. “Where are you?”
“Here.” Through the gloom, she sighted movement. Her eyes adjusted and focused on the vague outline of a person sitting in a cell that shared a wall of bars with hers. His hand lowered once she had fixed on him, but his face remained lost in shadow.
“What did you mean?” he asked. “Back in the Lands?”
She ran her hands over her face, sighing. “I was exiled. Where are we? Who are you?”
“Who are you, exile?” he shot back.
“I’m the one you hit with a rock,” she said, wincing again at the bleeding spot on her cheek. She surveyed the cell. Near the door was a pitcher of water.
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “The bottom is made of iron, to make you sick.”
She recoiled from the pitcher. “Or to kill me.”
“There is a crack in the stone,” he said, “by the grate. Water runs down the walls and pools there. You can drink that.”
She squinted again into the dark. The iron left her head throbbing and made it difficult for her to see as well as she would have otherwise.
She crawled over toward the iron grate that was bisected by their shared wall. It stank strongly of piss and shit and rats, but the stones around it were broken up, crumbling, and a small puddle had collected in one of the fractured spots. She leaned close to it, sniffing, just to be sure it wasn’t all rat urine. She sipped it. The gritty flat taste of stone and dirt scraped over her tongue. She slurped it all up, sucking it like soup until it was nothing but a damp hole.
Then she scooted back toward the middle of the cell.
“You must’ve done something very bad. Lavana is livid,” he said, a smile in his voice.
She kneaded her temple, attempting to assuage the iron-induced headache. “Lavana. She brought me here.”
“You don’t remember?” he asked.
“It’s coming back to me,” she said. “There was an ogre.”
“You fought an ogre?”
“If you call being thrown twenty feet and having your arm broken fighting, then yes, I fought.” She twisted around, searching the gloom. “Are we alone?”
“There are only two cells,” he said. “Having trouble seeing?”
“The iron,” she said, rubbing both temples now. “It’s giving me a headache.”
“Is that all?” he asked. “I was violently ill for days.”
“You haven’t seen a warrior here? His name is Damion.”
“You and the guards are the only ones I’ve seen for two days,” he said. “Lavana was here before that, but no one else.”
“She hasn’t found it, has she?”
“Found what?” he asked.
“The Enneahedron.”
