Then, with growls and hisses, the shadows themselves fell upon her and she knew nothing but the pain.
Chapter 3
The pain was still there when she returned to her senses, or as close to her senses as one might suppose after the savage beating she had endured. The darkness was still all around her then, but the air was fresh and didn't have the muggy humidity that had existed in the cavern.
Her eyes fluttered slightly, and a mocking voice filtered deep into her mind as a stabbing pain issued through her chest.
"Well, well, the sleeping beauty, as they say, awakes."
That voice.
She couldn't remember why, but she knew that she despised that voice.
Elan groaned in pain as she forced her eyes open.
She was outside. The stars were starting to show in the barely lit sky above her, and she was unable to move. She tried to roll to her feet, but a sudden tearing pain from her shoulder almost caused her to black out again as she let out a scream of pain.
"Tsk, tsk," the voice said again, an edge of black humor tinting it. "Should have warned you about that... You aren't going anywhere, pretty girl."
Elanthielle opened her eyes then and saw the dark eyes looking down at her, and her mind caught up to the situation in a rush of rage and adrenaline. She growled and screamed, both in anger and pain, and tried to surge up at him. He just laughed as her back arched off the ground, but her limbs wouldn't obey her commands.
She twisted around, the pain still riding the edge of her mind, and stared in open horror at her left hand.
A naked blade had been driven through her wrist and deep into the ground. There was a pool of blackened blood around her hand, soaked into the dirt under her.
Her gasp of horror ignited a round of sinister laughter from around her, and she twisted again to see that the man wasn't alone. There were the demons, all of them, she supposed, all laughing at her predicament.
"Don't worry," the man, the human, told her then. "We were very careful...didn't cut anything vital, so you won't be bleeding to death. Well...unless you struggle too much."
That comment just brought another round of laughter from the demons, which redoubled when Elan fell deathly still.
The human smirked at her sudden immobility, his eyes dropping down across her body in a motion that made her follow them with her own. Another hiss of air into her lungs announced her shock and was followed by a muffled groan as a knife-like pain stabbed through her chest.
"Noticing the lack of clothes I suppose?" He smiled that oily leer that he had during their brief fight, and Elan felt dirtier suddenly than she had when covered with demon blood. "Well, your clothes were ruined, I'm afraid...and we just don't have anything in your size."
She snarled then, against the pain, and surged up again with teeth bared.
“You should count yourself lucky, child. You’re not my type, and I don’t work with any of the demons that favor human…flesh,” he said, drawing out the last word as though savoring it. “Normally I’d bring you back and give you to the master, but it’s a long trip and you’re not worth the effort. There are hundreds more just like you where we’re going, so I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here.”
He just chuckled softly and looked up at the night sky. "It's going to be a bit cool tonight, I'd warrant...but I wouldn't worry. You'll warm right up when the sun comes up."
He got up from his crouch then, lightly fingering his jaw as he looked down at the mottled black and blue of the bruises that covered the her body. "What's your name, pretty girl?"
She just growled again, fists clenched as blood began to run freely down the blade of the knives in her wrists.
"Very well." He leered again, mocking her with a half bow. "Have it your own way. I seem to recall my old friend Damasc talking about a little girl, now that I think of it. Hadn't really thought about it until now... I should have remembered you last night." He rubbed his chin idly then. "Now, what was it he said her name was? His little Ela, I think. Is that you, Ela?"
Her eyes blazed with blue fire, teeth bared as her lips were pulled back in a rigor of hate and pain.
"Yes...yes, I can see the resemblance," he told her mockingly. "Damasc had too much courage and not enough skill as well. You appear to have taken your looks from your mother, though... I would congratulate you on the luck, but it's not really going to matter much." He turned away from the snarling, twisting, and bleeding girl and looked around at the demons. "This is what killed seven of your brethren?"
They growled a little, glaring openly at him now, but were unwilling to do or say anything openly, as the only one who’d truly outranked the human was now dead at the hands of the child before them.
"Pathetic." He shook his head, then turned back to where Elan was pinned to the ground. "Well, now, pretty girl...I'm afraid that my 'friends' and I have a long distance to travel, and we really should get going." He kneeled down, mock whispering, "They really don't like the sun, you know. Allergies, I suppose. I do wish I had more time with you... We could have had such fun, pretty girl. Say hello to the sun for me, will you? I don't get to see it nearly as often as I'd like anymore."
Then he sneered at her again and rose to his feet, turning his back on her as she fell back from her struggles, the pain finally beating her down.
"Alright." He glared at the assembled demons. "Let's get moving."
The group started to move out then, and the man half turned back once more to leer openly at Elan's body.
"By the way—" He smiled at her, his eyes glinting in the dark. "—when you see old Damasc in the pits, tell him I said, 'Three for three'. He'll understand."
Then he turned his back on her one last time and walked away, vanishing into the darkness along with his demon cohort, leaving Elanthielle staked out on the blood-soaked ground to wait for death, from whatever source it came.
*****
There is an expression, which humans and other species have long used, that goes something like: “I'll believe it when the sands of the desert grow cold” or, another common expression, “when hell itself freezes over.”
Neither phrase is particularly accurate in their intent, as descriptive as they may be.
The Nine Planes of Hell, for example, actually contain many areas where the temperature would be quite conducive to freezing over. That was, of course, if there were any water there to freeze.
Of course, for artificially constructed dimensional pockets, the Nine Planes are disturbingly inhospitable, which goes quite some distance to establishing the mindset of those who created them.
The other expression is equally false.
The nights in a desert are actually quite cold, the ground giving up its heat more readily than would water. Shortly after sunset, in even the hottest of deserts, the temperature can drop so drastically so as to have frost form long before the following sunrise if the air should happen to have enough water to freeze. The wasteland in which Elan grew up didn't have enough water, so no frost formed around her, except in the ground where her blood had soaked into the dirt, and there it was extremely short lived.
That didn't make the temperature any more comfortable, however. As the ground gave up its greedily acquired heat to the rapidly cooling night air, she felt goose bumps rise on her naked flesh. Elan focused hard on the dagger in her left wrist, trying to find a way to dislodge it despite the pain, but soon the agony that speared her with every inched motion was too much and she fell back again.
Her anger was gone now, the block that powerful emotion had raised against the agony gone with it, and Elanthielle found that she could no longer move without crying out. It was all she could do to lie still, whimpering softly at the pain that seemed to come from all sides. Her bones were broken, her flesh was battered and cut, and she had failed.