Weekly Drabble #97: Day after day after day... (Patreon)

This week's theme is 'monotony' from David Myers. In this short story, we have a tale of two prisoners and their confinement. Hope you enjoy!

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Day after day after day:

Ailyna Palemane, junior Inquisitrix of the Solanae Empire sat in her prison and tried to ignore the growling in her stomach. Down here, there wasn’t any way to tell one day from another. Her ‘cell’ was a fairly sizable natural underground cavern with rough, lichen-covered walls. One side was taken up by a underground stream, about six feet wide and getting up to twenty feet deep. There was no way out through it; the shallow upstream end of the channel was a waterfall that poured through the rocks. Downstream, the small river did get wider and deeper, but it only led to a small opening that had been barred and warded long ago. Perhaps by the mountain’s current inhabitants, perhaps pre-dating them. Ailyna was fairly certain that she could eventually loosen the bars, but beyond them there was only darkness. There was no telling how long the river was and when, if ever, it reached the outside or if there any air pockets. In all likelihood, it was trading incarceration for drowning.

At least there was light here, though. Aside from the intermittent orange spar that shone down whenever the Inquistrix’s captors would open the heavy door far above her head and cackle down, the room was suffused with a pale blue glow. Along and within the stream, there were bioluminescent plants and fungi that shone with various hues of blue and green. There were a few glowing spots along the other walls, and through the grating, Ailyna had seen the faint glimmer of other natural lights, though not enough to make the blackness beyond navigable.

By her reckoning, she’d been here for three months. There was no way to differentiate the days, but her period had come and gone three times. If there hadn’t been light, the young woman was certain that she might have gone mad long ago, but that was the only real benefit to her situation. She wasn’t alone in her prison.

Across the chamber, laying stretched out to her full five-meter length, was Palemane’s cellmate and intended executioner. A Half-made. A naga. Human from the waist up and serpent below, her second stomach was swollen with her most recent meal. Though she looked asleep with her head cradled in her arms, her yellow eyes were half-open and she stared across the cavern in drowsy caution at the human woman.

Palemane had been investigating reports of missing people along the Seawall Mountains. There’d been rumours of bandits or beasts in the region and she’d been following the trail of the last individuals to disappear when she’d been ambushed herself. It was not her finest moment as a horde of cackling goblins had overwhelmed her, pulled her from her horse and dragged her back to their lair for a mockery of a trial as a gluttonous, morbidly obese blob of a ‘Mountain King’ had pronounced sentence upon the intruder. With a wave of his hand, a handful of his subjects had pulled back the stone cover over the hole and Ailyna had been thrown down into the pit. All she’d seen during her descent was blackness, something leaping out of the shadows and then she’d heard an agonized scream.

Luckily, she hadn’t broken anything on her fall – mostly due to be caught halfway down, however briefly – and as her eyes adjusted, she’d seen what had almost been on her. A naga, writhing on the floor in a pained, thrashing tattoo. Acting on instinct alone, Ailyna had scampered back from the Half-Made, the creature’s struggles calming. Panting, the snake woman had raised herself on her hands, glaring at Palemane as if she were about to charge her, but she’d seen the amulet hanging around the inquistrix’s neck. The jewel within it was a deep red oval the size of a large fingernail. It was something that all Inquisitors and Inquisitrixs of the Empire carried with them, some on the hilt of their swords, others as bracelets or as Ailyna herself did. It was a gem of protection, labouriously crafted and forged by master artisans. It dispelled magic and repelled anything touched by it. As long as she wore it, no spell could touch her… and the Half-Made monster out there couldn’t devour her.

Every so often, the goblins would roll back the cover to peer down, continually confused as to why they didn’t have one fatter prisoner instead of two. They would chatter to one another, or shout at the naga to eat the human. They’d threatened that if she didn’t finish that meal, she wouldn’t get another, but they appeared to enjoy sending members of their own tribe down the hole too much to follow through on that. Those feedings were infrequent – punishments for some slight or crime, real or imagined. If they were feeling particularly brave or drunk, they’d piss down into the cavern, jeering at the women below.

Ailyna had figured out very early on that her companion wasn’t here by choice any more than she was. She wondered how the goblins had managed to capture her. She’d asked. Once.

The two of them had started out hurling threats and accusations at each other. The naga had no love for the Empire or humans in general, and Palemane knew very well what kind of threat Half-Made could be. Neither of them could do anything about the other. The gem of repulsion prevented the naga from getting too close to Palemane and without weapons, Ailyna was no match for the snake woman even if she could catch her unawares. She might have been able to sneak up on her while she slept, but she would have to take off her amulet to do so. 

They’d settled into a truce, lobbing insults and arguing with one another, but when hunger had started to take its toll on Ailyna, the naga had pointed out which plants and fungi were edible. 

In return, the young inquistrix helped the naga get food. Many fish and other creatures came up the stream to feed on the bioluminescent plants, or the animals that did so. With the naga at one end of the channel and Ailyna at the other, they were usually able to capture something. They weren’t starving, but hunger was a constant. It was worse for the naga than it was for the human. She couldn’t eat the plants, and until the inquisitrix’s arrival, she’d only rarely been able to catch food for herself, relying entirely on the mercurial nature of her captors.

The only respite for the naga came when the portal above opened and a screaming goblin was hurled down. She could leap surprisingly high, extending her body to snatch the creature mid-fall, just as she’d done with the inquisitrix, but unlike Palemane, the goblins had no wards to stop what came next. The crunch of bone, the ripping of meat. Sometimes the naga was so desperately hungry that she swallowed her prey whole, whether or not they were still alive. 

Ailyna had asked about the missing traders and villagers. The Half-Made told her that she’d been the first human she’d seen in more than a year, and that one had been one of the face looking down at her. She did remember hearing human voices at times during situations that sounded much like Ailyna’s own ‘trial’ or other foul goblin events, but whatever their fate had been, it hadn’t ended in this cavern.

As she watched her cellmate half-sleep, Ailyna rose to her feet and paced over to the water’s edge. She looked under the stream’s surface, into the shadows. The barred grate was too far and too deep to be seen from here. Like the inquisitrix herself, it carried wards to prevent magic being used against it… or a desperate Half-Made from tearing the bars loose and swimming to freedom. Ailyna had an idea. It was dangerous and foolhardy.

The young woman thought for a moment. Her companion was still laying on the far side of the chamber. Palemane’s training and her experience said Half-Made were not to be trusted, but… Ailyna could never swim through the dark passage. Under her own power, she’d run out of air long before she reached the end. The naga was faster with better vision… but she couldn’t get near the grate to open it.

“Cecilene,” she said, using the naga’s name. As the snake woman raised her head, Ailyna turned to meet her eyes. “I think it’s time we got out of this place – don’t you?”