Characters: Adam, Malkav, Lucilla, Kim, Siarra
“Why are you doing this?” Adam asked Lucilla as they were carried down a dark corridor with only the warmth of a few sparsely lit torches for light. “You aren’t the ruthless type.”
“No, but I am the fair type,” she answered as she opened one of the cell doors. There wasn’t much inside there, save for a tattered straw bed, which she laid Siarra’s body on, and solid dirt walls that climbed all the way up to the six-foot ceiling. “I warned you about Queen Isabella. You chose to meet with her anyway.”
“But you don’t have to lock us up. We’re not criminals!”
“Just be glad we’re not killing you,” the Paladin holding Adam and Malkav said as she tossed them on the bed next to Siarra. “At least, not yet.” Kim was thrown into the cell next and all the guards left except for Lucilla, who stood by the doorway with her arms at her side.
“Look…” she said, eyeing first the men and then Kim. “Don’t make me out to be the bad girl here. I don’t trust that Necromancer any more than the rest of you, and if she makes a move—the slightest twitch of her little finger towards hurting Isabella—you can rest assured that I will chop her up into bat food. I do not tolerate Forsaken scum.”
“What about Men?”
“…Slightly more tolerable. At least you Men are worth something. The Forsaken aren’t even worthy of polishing my boots.”
She turned to leave, but Adam called her back.
“Miss Lucilla,” he said, standing up on the straw bed. “What’s going to happen to us?”
She stepped back into the room, a bit too cautiously to be bringing good news. “Well… You’ll probably be turned into slaves. I don’t see any reason why Isabella would want you dead. I don’t know why, but you were looking out for her and I’ll put in a good word for you. But…you never know. Her Highness can be a little moody. She could turn you into pin cushions.”
“Can’t you do anything about it? Can’t you convince her that we’re here to help her?”
Lucilla raised her eyes. “…Frankly, I’m still not sure I trust you. Your meeting with Isabella and the surprise ambush at the Tournament of Champions were too close to rule out the possibility that you had something to do with the attack. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were working with Gena.”
“If we were,” he remarked, “then why would we be in here?”
“You can bet I’m going to look into it,” Lucilla said as she closed the door and bolted it shut.
Kim ran over to the door and looked through the bars just in time to see Lucilla’s figure disappear down the corridor. Furiously, she threw her shoulder into the door, but it was sealed tight. She tried again and again until her arm was as red as her hair and she collapsed next to the doorway, breathless.
“I guess we failed,” she said.
“Not yet,” Adam remarked, hopping down from the bed. “There has to be a way out.”
“How? You’re too big to fit through the bars of the door and our weapons are useless here.” She sighed and relaxed her head against the wall, staring up as clods of dirt dribbled from the ceiling. “This is the last LAN party I’m ever going to.”
Meanwhile, Malkav remained on the bed, inches away from Siarra’s nose. He stared up at her, the strands of fading pink hair over her brow, and balled his fingers into a fist. “…That bitch was going to sell us out.”
“She wanted her brother back,” Adam said over his shoulder. “You would’ve done the same thing in her situation.”
“Don’t be so sure. I don’t sell out my friends.”
“I thought you were all about looking out for yourself. Remember? Mr. Selfish, Mr. Live-Day-by-Day, Mr. If-It’s-Good-For-Me—isn’t that who you are?”
The glitter of Malkav’s dagger pierced the darkness. “But I’m no rat! I have my morals.”
“And so do I and so does she. Her brother means something to her. You’d understand that if you ever cared about somebody other than yourself.”
“I do,” he said, dark and cynically. “…Or I did.”
“What are you doing with that dagger?”
Malkav turned around and raised the blade to his face, reflecting the ominous glow in his eyes. “I’m done caring.”
“Put it down, Malkav,” Kim whispered, slowly prying herself away from the wall.
“No. No, you know what? I’m so sick of everything. You all think this world is so fantastic because it’s so much different than the real world. You see what you want to see. Nobody sees the truth—that this world is the exact same as our own! I get pushed over and walked on here just like I did at home. And laws? You think we escape the tyranny here? Because now we’re apparently servants to an immature bimbo who thinks the world revolves around her. But wait, maybe it does, because everything here is insane. Where do the hell do we go for help? Isabella is the cockiest little bitch I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, Lucilla doesn’t care what happens to us, Gena and Roxanne are sure to kill us sooner or later, and none of the wonderful girls we’ve come in contact with have shown the least bit of interest in giving us anything more than their boots in our faces. And now—now, dear Kimberly—our own friends won’t even stand by us. I trusted Siarra. How can we trust you, Kim, when you’re one of them?”
She raised her hands, trying to show she didn’t mean any harm, and slid the quiver from her back, setting it down next to her bow. “Malkav, calm down. Nobody is going to hurt you.”
“Somebody already has and she’s going to pay in blood.”
“You won’t really hurt her. This is a game, remember?”
He grinned into the silver of his blade. “Then call this part of my sick fantasy.” Then he faced Siarra and touched the flat edge of the knife against the creases of her skin, pushing aside the loose strands of hair. She continued lying there, her breaths slow but real, her eyes pinched together in the bleak stillness of the room.
“Do something!” Adam yelled at Kim.
She stared down at him and dark thoughts came rushing back to her. She saw the forgotten nightmares in her mind and her heart went numb. “…It’s happening. We’re turning against each other.” She staggered back and dug her fingernails into the wall, clawing at the dirt. “I…I don’t feel so good.”
“What the hell is wrong with you!? Stop him before he kills her! Kim, you have to do this.”
Her eyes widened, as if blinded by a sudden light, and then she collapsed to the floor.
Malkav finished pushing away the final strand of hair, tucking it under her cheek with the care an artist would give to his brush strokes. The hair must have tickled her, though, because she flinched a little and rolled on her side. Malkav stepped closer, caressing the curves of her ear as he leaned inside for one last kiss.
“I never did love you,” he said softly and the life was gone from his voice. “What were we thinking anyway? This was all some fantasy that we made up in our minds, telling ourselves that it was real. It was never real, Siarra. You’ve lied to, used, and betrayed me for the last time. We knew it was over before it began. Why did we ever go on pretending?”
She moaned and a crack appeared in her deserted lips, but it soon faded to air. With precious fingertips against his blade and her skin, Malkav carefully traced out the pattern in Siarra’s ear, noting every bend, every line, every part that made her what she was. Then he pulled back his elbow and leveled his hand.
“This is for love,” he said and thrust his arm forward.
He didn’t get it far, though. Just when the dagger was about to slice into Siarra’s cold skin, a flash of metal gleamed through the air and crashed down on top of him. It came hard and sudden, cuffing him at least twice before he fell over, a gash across his face, and fainted. The last thing he saw were the perfect strands of pink hair, combed so flawlessly and tenderly, as the slits of his eyes turned his world black.
Adam stood over him, gripping his mace in both hands. With heavy breaths, he dropped the mace and put his head into his palms, inhaling the aroma of blood and skin.
“We can’t all be insane,” he said aloud. “This world, these people…”
Gradually, he raised his head and dropped to his knees. He rolled Malkav over, using the fallen dagger to cut two strands of cloth from his robe, which he wrapped around the gash on Malkav’s forehead. It was a makeshift bandage, but it worked. Gripping Malkav’s wrists, he dragged his comrade across the bed and laid Malkav’s head against Siarra’s shoulder for support.
Then he stepped back, breathless. “Rest well, my friends.”
Giantess World
