There I was, just standing there when what I wanted to do was forbidden. The sun baked the dusty hillside like an apple rotting back in the city streets. I knew it was forbidden, knew I should just keep on smashing at the grey rock face like I had been day after day. Seeking the gemstones that the wizards prized so highly. Any pause, even just to catch your breath, was strictly forbidden.
SNAP, the whip cracked over my head and I started to frantically smash the rock, pick raising and falling in a rhythm of unending torment. I could smell the sickly, sweat and urine reek coming from him as he approached.
"That's more like it my little pretty, hit the rocks with those little string beef arms of yours." I didn't look up, I could imagine him, whip handle passed from hand to hand as was his habit, grinning down at me with that sadists smile.
"If you don't improve soon it will be down the pit for you, scrabbling among the old and the lame, choking diamond dust for your supper. Oh, and you haven't tasted pain until you've spent time in that pit breathing in the splinters of magic." He sighed, "I should know."
"She may be young, but she is not stupid that one", he said to the smaller Atilanat jailer who had turned up to relieve him. "Keep an eye on her and that little Kaliten friend of hers. Those little almond-eyed bastards always give me the shivers. The way they're always silent." The Atilanat coughed its guttural belching laughter as Drumond walked off down the hallway. The reptilian eyes followed me as I retreated to my cot and lay down in the stinking rags. The Atilanat, licked its eye once, twice, to relieve them of the cell's dryness and walked away to the seat at the end of he corridor. Oh, how I hated that pig Drumond. It came to me in my dreams sometimes, just like in the time before, when mother used to gut the pigs in the desert camp. In my dreams Drumond was squealing as momma cut him from groin to throat, the men of the tribe calmly holding him down as he sputtered blood from those piggy eyes. Pleading, as watering eyes blinked and he choked his last breath from closing throat, I loved that dream, but even dreams were forbidden here if they caught you!
"The day I loaned Drumond 400 silver's will be his last sabat-day if I don't see them returned on the morrow." The Atilanat hissed as he greeted his replacement, a grotesquely obese man with jowls like a hippo. I crouched in the shadows, silent as shadow, sibilant as a snake. I moved through them in the fog, this was forbidden, what I was doing, dreaming in the Ethenware. I had finally come of age, my tribal heritage realised! The month's blood dripped down my legs, hot angry memory. I moved towards them both, black death in shadows breath. I moved through them, tasing their memories. The pig was at the brothel, that is what I tasted in their thoughts. I soared through the stones of the castle, it felt like a headache in my soul. Suddenly I was above the town.
Drumond emerged from the room gorged to bursting, to see a trail of death. Prostitutes stood leaning against the walls in the acts of their day to day. One had a smoke stick hanging from her lips, another was slumped against a suitor. Another had her skirts hoisted up around her waist, straddling a suitor. Blood dripped from their eyes, tears of death released in the breath of a shadow. He started to choke, as a dark red mist coalesced into the shape of a girl with a knife. He was paralyzed with fear, as the misty knife waved in front of his eyes.
"It's time for the slaughter piggy!"
The end.
This story is a combination of three prompts, each written in 5 minutes and posted back to back.
This post is in response to @mariannewest weekend free-write writers prompt which can be found here. Check it out if you want to join in with the mad dash that is 5 minute free-writing. A little admission is that I cheated a bit as the final sentance 'the day I loaned Morgan 400 bucks' didn't fit in with the story so I adapted it a little to suit the genre. This story is written in a Fantasy Fiction world which I created years ago when doing Imaginative writing at university. I have not revisited the Lands of the 3 kingdoms for a long time and it felt good to revisit them. Let me know if you would like to see more of the same in the comments below. The picture is from unsplash.com free to use. Credit to photographer: Michał Grosicki