Grand Game 400: Confinement (Patreon)

Multiple hostile entities have failed to detect you!

Multiple hostile entities have failed to detect you!

In the end, navigating the barracks proved as easy as I expected.

My biggest fear had been being interrupted by a change of watch or a chance-waking guard, but thankfully neither of those eventualities materialized.

Dragging myself past the door at the far end of the barracks, I found another corridor. This one was also lined with closed steel doors.

More prison cells? I wondered.

It seemed likely. Sighing, I rose to my haunches and scanned the empty corridor stretching away into the distance. Where in hells were Castor and his people?

Not here, I decided morosely.

I was running out of time, I knew, and while it did not press down urgently yet, it would soon. Still, there was nothing for it but to keep searching.

On that cheerful thought, I crept forward silently.

✵ ✵ ✵

The corridor fed into a crossroad.

Choosing a direction at random, I pressed on, but after multiple twists and turns, the passage came to an abrupt end. Ruing the wasted time, I returned to the crossroad and tried the next fork.

Unfortunately, the outcome was no different the second time around. Another dead end, I cursed, staring down the blank walls enclosing me. My lips thinning, I retraced my steps and entered the last unexplored passage. Surely, I will find Castor at the end of this one.

My optimism proved unwarranted.

After a half dozen intersections later—and no few dead ends, mind—and with my frustration mounting by the minute, I was still no closer to finding the possessed. Thus far, except for the guards in the two rooms, I’d encountered no one. All I had to show for my efforts were silent passages and empty prison cells.

Maybe, sneaking through was a mistake, I reflected. Maybe it was time to backtrack all the way to the start of the level and question the prison guard captain. Or perhaps Sergeant Manir.

I chuckled darkly. The thought had a certain appeal. Certainly, it would be better than—

“Goti… is… that… you…?”

An unknown entity has failed to detect you!

I froze. The thready voice was barely audible—even the in hushed silence of the corridor. Tilting my head to the side, I tried to pinpoint the speaker’s location.

“You… still… alive…?”

There, I thought, gaze fixating on a prison cell a few dozen yards ahead. He is there. Cautiously, I stalked closer.

“…talk… to… me… damn… you.”

It had to be a prisoner, I decided, slipping up to the steel door in question.

“He’s gone, Wostil,” another voice said tiredly.

About to peer through the small window in the prison door, I paused. The second speaker was in the adjacent cell, and by the sounds of it, in better condition than the first.

“… that, you… Megtir?”

“Yes…”

“When… he… go?”

“I don’t know,” Megtir replied sadly.

“Two days ago, I think,” a third voice interjected.

“Surlin?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were dead.”

A weary laugh. “It takes a lot more than a bunch of damn dark elves to kill me.”

“Who… else lives…?”

“Me.”

“I do.”

“Me too, but not for much longer, I fear.”

“I am—”

“Shut up everyone!” a harsh voice ordered.

Silence descended. Turning on my heels to identify each prisoner’s location, I stilled, too. I recognized the speaker. The last time we’d met had been during Castor’s ambush in the council chamber.

I’d found the missing dwarven thane.

“I thought I told you all: no talking,” Stormhammer continued. “We need to conserve our strength for…” He paused, taking a ragged breath. “For when—”

“For when what, milord?” the one called Megtir asked woodenly. “For when we’re rescued? There is no chance of that happening anymore.”

“You don’t know that,” Stormhammer growled.

“I do,” Megtir said wearily. “It’s been too long.”

Another silence, then Stormhammer spoke again. “Wostil, why did you call out?” he asked, choosing to ignore the despondent Megtir. “My orders were clear.”

“I’m… sorry, thane,” Wostil rasped. “I… I… thought… heard something,”

Megtir snorted. “You’re hallucinating again. The guards haven’t come in days. The possessed must be done with their tests.”

My ears perked up at that. Tests? What tests?

“Do you think they’ve succeeded?” another asked, fear lacing his tone.

“No,” Stormhammer said firmly before Megtir could answer. “If they had, none of us would be alive and our bodies no longer our own.” He grunted. “No, it’s much more likely they’ve given up.”

No one contradicted him, not even Megtir.

“Now everyone, shut up and go back to sleep,” the thane ordered.

As quiet descended in the corridor again, I eased myself against an adjacent wall and pondered the situation. I’d found the dwarven thane, and what, by the sounds of it, were the remnants of his personal guard. By my count, there were at least eight prisoners in the nearby cells—not counting those souls too far gone to speak—which left me in a bit of a quandary.

Did I rescue them?

Doing that meant revealing my presence—to both prisoners and possessed. There was no way I was going to sneak through the remainder of the level with eight injured and weary dwarves in tow. I could ask Stormhammer’s men to stay put, of course, but there was no telling if they’d agree. And even if they did, a guard patrol might spot them and sound the alarm, which while admittedly unlikely given what Megtir had said, might still happen.

On the other hand, the dwarves had information—about the possessed’s whereabouts and what they were doing—information I desperately needed.

So, to speak to the dwarves or not?

I bit the inside of my cheek. Not, I decided reluctantly after a moment’s consideration. Once I revealed my presence, there was no going back. And truthfully, until I killed Castor, the dwarves would be safer in their cells. And if I failed in the process, well, there was no harm done either. The prisoners would not manage to escape unaided. They’re better off in their cells for now.

Kicking off the wall, I resumed my silent passage down the corridor.

✵ ✵ ✵

It turned out I didn’t need help finding the possessed. Less than five minutes after I left the thane and his men behind, the corridor I was following spilled out into an immense hall.

A hall that was very much occupied.

Hugging the nearby wall and cloaked in shadows, I surveyed the scene before me through widened eyes, more than a little horrified by what I beheld.

There were no prison guards in sight, but the hall practically crawled with possessed. There had to be at least twenty of them moving about in the room. Yet, it was not the possessed’s scarred and ruined bodies that I found appalling, but the rest of the hall’s contents.

Assorted wooden and metal structures filled the space—unusually thin and elongated tables, thick chains hanging down from the rafters, steel cages, open pits of steaming liquids, spiked chairs, and many more accouterments whose workings I failed to grasp, but whose purpose was abundantly clear.

They were instruments of torture. Bloodied instruments, all. And currently in use.

A piercing wail rose above the background noise in the hall. My gaze darted left—to the source of the scream and the gruesome device from which it arose. A large orc had been squashed inside the tiny coffin, and it was getting smaller by the second as the possessed attending to it turned the lever at the bottom.

The orc shrieked again, his voice raw with agony. I wrenched my gaze away, unable to bear the sight. No one else in the room was similarly affected. None of the possessed so much as flinched at the sound, and the room’s other occupants—another dozen orcs—were too absorbed in their own pain to give their companion’s plight much thought.

I bared my teeth in anger. Wolves were killers but never needlessly cruel. What the possessed were doing was disgusting. Revolting. And I wanted to charge into the room and put an end to it—immediately.

But I couldn’t do that.

Facing off against twenty possessed would be nearly as bad as fifty. Worse yet, Castor wasn’t among them, and I couldn’t afford to forewarn the elite I was coming. A cool head was needed; whatever I did next would have to be done carefully, with precision and forethought. Don’t lose sight of the mission.

I surveyed the room again, seeking more information. How long has this been going on for? I wondered, swallowing my distaste as I inspected each torture victim minutely. And more to the point, why? The possessed were a lot of things—callous, self-centered, greedy—but gratuitously cruel? They had never struck me as such, so why were they torturing the orcs?

Not torturing, I corrected, recalling Stormhammer’s words. Conducting tests.

But what sort of tests are these?

An irregularly shaped mound in the far-right corner of the room caught my attention. It was hidden in shadow but that made little difference to me. Narrowing my eyes, I studied the mound.

It was a pile of bodies. Discarded and heaped atop one another like so much offal. My anger quickened. And not only mine. “We have to put a stop to this,” Ghost growled.

“I agree,” I said, already revising my plans. I could no more ignore the atrocities in this room than Ghost could. My gaze drifted over the corpses. They all appeared to be of dwarven or orcish origin. Judging by the size of the mound, the possessed had performed their ‘tests’ on scores of prisoners.

Another tortured scream cut through the air.

“Do something, Prime!” Ghost urged.

“Rest assured, I will,” I murmured, my eyes sweeping the room again. “But before I act, I need more information.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The tunnel entrance,” I replied absently.

The torture chamber was the only area I’d not fully explored on the level yet. I’d followed every other passage to its natural end but hadn’t found the way down to the underground tunnel. I was sure Castor wouldn’t leave its entrance unguarded, and considering the number of possessed in the hall, I was betting the way down was in this very room.

But I couldn’t see it.

In fact, other than the open archway through which I’d entered, the hall appeared to have no other exits—I’d reached the end of the prison level and for all intents and purposes had hit a dead end.

“Hansen,” a possessed yelled. “Get Dirk!”

Ignoring him, I kept searching the room. The possessed operating the coffin device looked up. “What? Why?”

The first possessed gestured to the orc gasping for breath beneath him on a torture rack. “This bugger is about to die.”

“So?” Hansen asked callously.

“So he is one of the proles’ head honchos.”

Hansen blinked. “You mean Lorn?”

That caught my interest. Leaving off my examination of the chamber, I fixed my gaze on the victim in question. The orc was a bloody mess, his face all but unrecognizable. Reaching out with my will, I analyzed him.

The target is Lorn, a level 47 orc. He is near death.

“Ah,” I breathed.

“What?” Ghost asked.

“It’s not only Stormhammer the possessed captured. They’re holding Chief Lorn prisoner, too. That’s why the orcs refused Elron’s overtures. They didn’t want to admit they lost their leader.”

“That’s the one. This is him,” the first possessed replied after a too-long silence.

“Jorge, you fool! I told you to leave him alone. What were you thinking?”

Jorge shrugged. “Yeah, yeah. I know. We can’t let him die.”

Hansen laughed. “There’s no ‘we’ here. This is your mess. Clean it up yourself!”

Jorge’s mouth dropped open. “But Castor left you in charge. If the prole dies—”

“If he dies, I’ll let Castor know you failed to follow orders,” Hansen interrupted. “The boss’ wrath will fall on you, not me. I’ll make sure of that.”

Jorge stared at his companion in horror, much to the amusement of the other possessed looking on.

“Now, stop standing there like a gaping idiot!” Hansen roared. “Can’t you see he is dying? Go and fetch Dirk.”

Jorge still didn’t move.

“Quickly!” Hansen snapped.

Coming out of his stupor, Jorge dashed into motion. I followed his progress with interest. There was no one named Dirk in the hall. I’d already analyzed everyone and confirmed as much.

Jorge didn’t head towards me and the room’s only apparent exit, but to the left side of the room. Crouching down, he fidgeted with something on the floor.

An illusion has been lifted. You have found a hidden hatch!

“Well, well,” I murmured, a smile spreading across my face as Jorge disappeared down the hatch. “There you are.”