***
…fathoms away in one of many hearth rooms of Cardonea Tower…
The room was barren of mortal life other than Illala’s own, as it had been since she had awoken that morning to find Evanshade gone. It was silent, dark and cold, but outside in the waters beyond she heard screams.
After what they had done together last night how could he just leave?
In the corner of the room, setting on a small ornate pearl desk, he had left her salmon, hardened seaweed and cubes of something sweet to eat. She let it sit there, nibbling on the seaweed from time to time, but too depressed to eat much in her longing for his attention.
She hovered in a lonely lost state as goose bumps rose upon her body. Then a soft stone grinding noise began below her, attracting her attention. Diving, her fingertips searched the smooth stone floor. Vibrating in her touch, a single shale brick ground up and out of the floor. Following it was a single hand, grasping before her as if for breath. Its fingertips were pulpy, bloodying the water about them. Illala gagged in repulsion.
A metallic voice came next, as if it had come from teeth being ground against an iron plaque. “Save me!” The strong hand grasped her thin wrist. “They’ve imprisoned me in this darkness. Free me!”
“Who are you?” she responded. “Pull back your arm, and show your face through the hole.”
The massive hand released her, scraping the hole’s cragged sides while descending. The pained metallic voice returned. “I saw you through a hole in my cell’s wall as you arrived the other night. I am a Meridian, as you yourself appear to be.”
Illala gasped while looking through the hole upon the man’s almost featureless metal-clad face. His blue flesh stretched and melted across his head, bruised in places and deeply gashed in others. His nose looked to have been torn off somehow, his lips stuck together in places around a metal contraption clasped on his head.
“What happened to your face?” she asked, trying not to hurt his feelings by sounding totally disgusted.
Coughing up something from his lips, the man’s head shook violently. “The day they took this realm I was made with others to dig and open up the lava flows below Meridia. As the molten streams bubbled on the sand they laughed at me, pressing my face and body into its flow. I am outwardly but a shell of the man once known as Odyssey. But inwardly I am a stronger man than they shall ever know.” As if in a nervous twitch, the man’s head shook again.
How can I love a man who leads others in doing this to my people? Illala thought to herself. “Do you have any ideas for how I could free you? I know we are in Cardonea Tower, but I don’t know much about its inner workings.”
“There is…” the man spoke then swiftly hushed, a look of terror playing on his deformed face.
It was then that the world played itself in slow motion before Illala’s sight. She wished to speak or interfere in some way but lost all voice in her throat, her body turning to stone as the noise of an opening door echoed within the man’s room below. Odyssey dove from view as Evanshade glided in.
“Have you lost your wits with your appearances you poor soul?” Evanshade thrust a pointed bone club against Odyssey’s fleshy form, and the sound of weeping softly filled the room. “Your babblings resonate unintelligible sounds within the outer halls. There is no one here with you, you poor creature. Do yourself a favor and silence your lips before the guards do so themselves. As soon as you are healed, you will work with the molten streams again.”
“…no…” Odyssey mumbled and Evanshade struck the bone on his shoulder, blood rippling out from where it was thrust and clotting in the stagnant waters. The hull of the man was overtaken by limp unconsciousness.
Illala went cold as she watched.
“Don’t worry.” Evanshade spun to leave the unconscious man in cold blankness. “You won’t be alone. We’ve discovered your runaway fellow Meridians along the outskirts of Orion’s Birth. Soon they will return to slave by your side.“ The stone door echoed in his departing.
Silence swept through Illala’s soul as she came to the full realization of what Evanshade was telling Odyssey. He’s going to capture Maanta and the others and bring them back here to torture, she thought. Images of Venge swooping from nowhere to capture her, against her and the rest of her traveling party’s wills, drowned her mind in dark thoughts. There will be no escape. There will be no hope for any of them, and then a darker thought arose in her mind while she placed the shale stone in its floor opening. Should I murder Evanshade as he sleeps tonight? Would that make a difference?
Wrapped in seaweed sheets, she hovered in the waters as night came, not asleep, but clenching a sharp bone hair tool, plotting for when Evanshade would join her.
The waters were cool and still as Evanshade entered the room. “I missed you today,” he whispered to Illala, careful not to wake her barely crimson-lit form floating wrapped in seaweed sheets in the room’s center. “I wish I could have been here with you. I wish a lot of things.” His strong noir hands gently moved her seaweed sheets and then wrapped them once more around them both as he moved his arms around Illala to hold her close.
“No!” Her harsh voice filled his ears while her foot throbbed against his tailfin. “No!”
“Why? What has happened to you?” he asked, worried, but there was no reply. He wrapped his arms around her again, only to be kicked once more. “If I didn’t do what is being done to your people it would just be another of my people doing the same.”
Hours, it seemed, after Evanshade had made his last attempt to hold her, Illala managed to find the world of slumber.
The man she was no longer sure she cared for, Evanshade, spent his night staring and lost in thought out the bedroom window upon Meridia’s ruined city. Was what he was doing so wrong? If he had not obeyed his master would he not be dead himself? In the darkness of this night I see Meridia has lost its beauty since I first arrived here. They were such a joyous people before we arrived. If we had not come they would be joyous still. And yet then I would not have found Illala.
Throughout the long hours of the night, Evanshade found neither sleep nor solace. But in the wee time before aquatic dawn, in a state of sheer exhaustion, other thoughts entered Evanshade’s mind. Regret formed for the ways in which he treated Odyssey. He called Odyssey’s guards away for an early morn eat before returning dressed in flowing, disguising black garb and entering the stone prison room.
“Who are you?” Odyssey’s gritty metallic voice greeted him. “What do you want of me?” Evanshade grasped Odyssey’s shoulder where he had received the beating earlier that night.
“Shhh…” Evanshade whispered. Would the man attack him if he knew who he was? “They will hear you if you speak loudly. I am a friend. That is all you need know.”
“Are you here to rescue me?”
“Here.” Evanshade shoved a heavy bundle of kelp and whale meat into the man’s hands. “Eat this or hide it before the guards come with your mush. You deserve better food.”
“Thank you.” The starving weary man tore open his package, getting whale meat beneath his nails while devouring his morn meal.
As Evanshade thrust his tail in the waters and left the room he felt as if a stone had struck his heart. “I’m sorry…” he whispered.
Odyssey’s grotesque face looked up, covered in food. “What?”
But Evanshade had gone.