“It’s not his fault,” I replied. “It’s the drells. I think the wulvers are as much prisoners as we are. If we could just win Lukor’s trust, we might be able to unite forces against the drells.”
David stared at me with wide unbelieving eyes. “You’re dreaming,” he replied, shaking his head. “You’re still new here. In time you’ll learn to hate the wulvers, once you’ve had some time to see them in action.”
The days passed, and I started to understand what David was talking about. There didn’t seem to be the slightest trace of mercy or compassion in the hearts of our task wulvers. They seemed to get pleasure from our suffering. They considered themselves a superior species. They made that only too clear in their day to day dealings with us. They actually hated us for reasons I just couldn’t understand.
But there was more. The way they looked at us, especially us women really freaked me out. I swear they looked at us with lustful eyes. At least that’s how I saw it. Why would they? We were an entirely different species. Our taskmasters would inject sexually charged statements into the workdays, horrible things. Our morning taskmaster, a particularly brutal wulver by the name of Lemnock was among the worst. He’d often make reference to my chastity belt as the only thing standing between me and him. He talked of wanting to spirit me off into a dark cavern and showing me, well, I think you get the general idea. I think he kind of liked me but not in a good way. Still, it didn’t make him at all hesitant to apply the whip to me.
Through it all David hovered close to me, did his best to prepare me for the horrors of this place, protect me if he could. Yet there was one horror he hadn’t told me about, not yet.
It wasn’t until the morning of my fifth day in the caverns that Lukor again approached me. He assisted me in lifting a heavy rock into the hopper before placing his powerful hand upon my shoulder. “Well Debbie, it would seem that tomorrow yer scheduled for yer first leaching.”
“Leaching?” I whispered.
Lukor turned to David, a surprised expression upon his face. “Why David, I’ve heard tell that you’ve been schooling Debbie in da ways of our world and you haven’t told her about da leaching?”
“Please, sir, does it have to be tomorrow?” pleaded David. “I mean; she’s only been here a few days.”
“Tis already arranged, and I see no good reason ta change the schedule,” replied Lukor. “She’s had plenty of time to adjust ta our world, tomorrow it’ll be.”
I turned to David, as Lukor walked away. I thought he had told me everything he knew about the horrors of this place, but he hadn’t. “What is leaching?”
“It’s a thing that they do to us every three weeks,” he replied, a nervous expression coming to his face. He looked away. “I’d planned on telling you all about it eventually, really I did. I just didn’t think they’d be doing it to you so soon.”
“What is it?” I insisted, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Please, David, for God’s sake I have to know, no matter how terrible it is.”
David’s eyes met mine once more. There was dampness there, but it wasn’t the heat or the work, those tears were for me.
“The drells need us to work for them, but they need other things from us too. We’re not just their slaves, we’re their prey. When we’re no longer able to work for them we become their food, I told you about that, but there’s more to it than that. They need our blood too. They take it from us by leaching.”
Throughout the day, David told me of the strange ritual that I would face tomorrow, the ritual that he himself had endured over a dozen times. We all had to submit to it, to the humiliation, to the terror. It was horrible, made me ill to my stomach. Things here were going to be worse than I’d imagined.
Chapter 3
The next morning began as every morning did, with the clashing of the wulver’s rods against the bars of our cells, yet they passed mine by. The other slaves had already been led away to the work area when two wulvers came to escort me to the leaching chamber.
“It’s time, wench,” said the largest of the two, the tallest and burliest wulver I had ever seen.
I rose to my feet, was reaching for my sandals when he grabbed me roughly by the arm.
“You’ll not be needing those,” he said in a guttural growl. “Yer not going far.”
I was escorted roughly down one corridor and up another, a wulver gripping me by each arm. By the firmness of their grip I could tell that they were accustomed to dragging the more uncooperative of their victims to this place. The stones felt cold and almost slimy beneath my feet. I was shivering as we arrived at a black metal door at the end of the corridor, upon which was inscribed the golden outline of a gigantic spider. I’m not sure if that inscription was intended to scare the victim of this ritual, but to me it was real effective.
Inside, the strong aroma of incense filled the air, and long jet black drapes covered all four walls. Hundreds of red candles setting atop tall black candle sticks illuminated the room with an eerie light. The wulvers lifted me up onto the dark marble altar in the middle of the room, securely shackling my wrists to its back corners and locking me by my ankle shackles to the front corners. I felt like the sacrificial lamb, bound for the slaughter. Then they departed, leaving me stretched out, spread eagle, on that cold black slab.
God, I don’t think that I was ever so scared. For a moment I strained at the black metal bonds that held me captive. It was pointless, I knew it. I wasn’t going anywhere. David had said that it was best, less painful, if I just relaxed. I tried.
I stared at the rock ceiling, at a mural that bore the likeness of an enormous black spider poised in the middle of its web. The rendering of the spider, many times my size, was directly above me, its eight legs resting on light gray strands that radiated to the four walls. It was really detailed, the sharp jagged mandibles, the glimmer of the spider’s many red eyes, the very texture of the web. It was frightening. I prayed that such a beast existed only in mythology, not reality.
I was startled as a wulver dressed in a long black cloak emerged from behind the curtain. This wulver was different from the others. Its fur didn’t seem to be as coarse and it wore a dark tunic rather than leather armor beneath its cloak. It was then that I realized that it was a female, the first one I’d seen. I guess I realized that such a thing had to exist, but it was hard to imagine what her mate, if she had one, saw in her.
“You’d be Debbie, wouldn’t ya?” she said, in a surprisingly feminine voice.
“Yes ma’am,” I replied, shivering all over.
“I am Kadra, priestess of Lilith. It is I who will perform the holy rite of leaching upon ya this day. Lukor, my mate, has spoken of your courage. Today I shall test it.”
I could hear the sliding of stone upon stone as Kadra reached into a hidden compartment beneath the altar and removed from it a glass jar filled with water and swimming brown blobs the size of my fist. She placed the jar upon a small table at my side and reached into it with a pair of tongs. She carefully removed a large squirming brown leach, the largest I’d ever seen, and placed it under my right armpit. I felt a sharp pain as it attached itself and began to feed. Tears came to my eyes as she placed another of the horrible creatures under my left arm and on the inside of both my thighs.
“Just relax Debbie,” she said, stroking my forehead with the back of her furry hand. The gentleness of her tone, of her touch, surprised me. “The leaches venom will soon numb the area where they are feeding and yer pain will subside.”
After a few minutes the pain eased, but my terror didn’t. I didn’t wimper, didn’t give my fear a voice. I think that impressed the priestess.
I don’t know how much time passed before Kadra finally removed the first of the leaches. It had swelled to many times its original size, bloated with my blood. Kadra squeezed it again and again over a large glass bottle, as though it were a sponge, causing spurts of blood, my blood, to burst forth. Only then did she return the leach to its tank, robbed of most of its spoils. One
by one she milked the other leaches, nearly filling the container. By the looks of it I had lost a lot of blood.
Kadra held the flask of blood above her, raising her head high. “Oh great Lilith, behold the blood offering of this unworthy human. May it nourish you and your followers so that they might better serve your purpose and spread your influence.” Kadra returned the leaches to their hidden compartment then turned toward me once more. “Lukor spoke truly, you do possess courage. Few have endured in silence what you have endured this morning. And you also showed wisdom and manners in the way you addressed me. This is also very good.” She gazed once more toward the flask, into the crimson liquid. “The deed is done; you will now be returned to your cell to rest and recover.”
With flask in hand, Kadra vanished once more behind the curtain. I felt even colder than before, drained of blood as I was, filled with the tranquilizing venom of the leaches. A few minutes later, the guards released my wrists from the shackles and carried me back to my cell. I’m sure I could not have made the trip on my own.
The world spun wildly as they laid me on my stone bed and placed the blanket over me. I thought that I heard one of them chuckle, but I could have imagined it. All I knew was that I had been violated. It was a crime as vile and insidious as rape. At that moment, all I could think about was escape, and I didn’t care where, just away from this place. There had to be a way out of this hell, I had to find it. In my fear and confusion, I cried for my mother, I cried to go home, and I prayed more fervently than ever before. After a time, darkness closed in around me as I fell into a deep sleep, a sleep filled with all kinds of weird dreams.
I dreamed of a huge spider that lived in a metal teardrop. It was surrounded by a brood of smaller spiders. The smaller spiders were gathered around the bigger one. They bowed before it like they were worshiping it or something. Then they brought offerings to it, sacrifices. I couldn’t see what they were, at least not at first. The sacrifices were all wrapped up in cocoons of white spider silk. The cocoons were about the size and shape of humans. Some were still. Others squirmed as if there were something alive in them.
Then I got a good look at one of them. Only the head was not cocooned. I gasped. It was me, wrapped up tightly in that cocoon, struggling wildly. All of the cocoons contained people, children. They were being taken into the giant teardrop where the great spider was.
Then, in a moment I wasn’t just watching this spider ritual, I was a part of it. I was the girl in the cocoon. I was hung by one of the smaller spiders upon a gigantic web within the teardrop in a row with the others. I tried to wake up but I couldn’t.
I could see the other victims more clearly now. Each was a teen like myself, totally encased within a cocoon except for their heads. Some were girls, others boys. All looked terrified. The huge spider swung around, placing its black bloated abdomen directly above the first cocooned victim. The spider was shaking like it was straining. Then a white gooey egg shaped thing popped out of the spider’s rear end and unto the stomach of the first victim. It stuck tight. The spider moved onto the next victim and did exactly the same thing.
I turned away. I was next. Not far away I saw another huge web with five cocoons attached to it, each containing a young person, or at least what was left of them. Now I realized that these things that were being attached to us were just what they looked like; eggs, spider eggs, only these had hatched. The baby spiders, about a foot across, were using the cocooned victims as food and getting a taste for human flesh in the process.
Then I felt the slimy egg drop onto my stomach where it stuck tight. I tried to wiggle to shake it loose but I could hardly move. I wondered how much time I had before that egg hatched. Already it was wiggling about like there was something alive inside. Then everything went to black.
The other slaves were being returned to their cells as I came to. I’d slept the entire day away. I stumbled to the bars and gazed out into the corridor. Marci observed me from her cell, her eyes were full of sympathy.
“The first time is the worst,” she whispered. “You’ll get used to it after a while.”
Get used to it? I’d never get used to it or this place.
And then there were those nightmares that came with the leaching. They were the worst. I thought it was the effect of the leach venom, but when I asked others I found that they never had dreams after the ordeal on the altar. They just slept the day away. That struck me as odd.
With the passage of time my hands became rough and calloused, and my back was covered with scars from the task master’s whip. My body hardened, adjusted to the demands of the hard labor, the pain. But I never got used to it. I came to realize that the rooms we were cutting from the rock were to become new cells, many new cells, a cell block four times as large as the current one. Soon there would be even more of us in the dark domain of the drells.
The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. I counted the days, as Marci did, although one day became pretty much like another. I endured the leaching again and again. It was painful yet Kadra was never cruel. It seemed to me that Kadra had come to like me. She was always as gentile as possible. Her words were always soothing even if the ritual was not. She sometimes tried to distract me from the horrors of this ritual by getting me to talk about my life and family back on Earth.
And with each leaching came the nightmares. They weren’t always the same, but they were always about this place. Sometimes I saw an underground city populated by the drells. Other times I saw them at play, and when I say play I mean play with humans. They didn’t just kill us and eat us when our time as laborers was through, oh no. They played cruel games with us first. I don’t even want to write about them. They were just too awful. It was like a window into the mind of the drells. It made me fear the end all the more. Why did I have these dreams while the others didn’t?
I even had a cellmate for a time. Just for a time. She became little more than a footnote in my tale of horrors. Her name was Letha. She was a pretty blond haired German girl. She didn’t speak much English, which seemed to be the agreed upon main language of the slaves. I tried to teach her but she wasn’t in much of a learning mood. I did find out that she came from a wealthy family and wasn’t accustomed to the kind of work she did here. She did her best to keep up with the rest of us but she wasn’t very strong. The wulvers beat her frequently. She was with me for about two weeks before something very strange happened, something I don’t fully understand even now.
It was after dinner of an unusually difficult day that they came. I call them they because I don’t know what else to call them. They were human, totally human, dressed in some sort of military uniforms from another time, maybe from another world. There were five of them, four men and a woman, accompanied by three wulver guards. I remember one of them had on a royal blue cape. He seemed to be the leader. They spoke a language I’d never heard before. I noticed that the wulvers treated them almost like royalty. There was no doubt who was the boss here. The strangers walked slowly through the cell block, eying each one of us carefully as one might look at a dress or a suit on the racks at the mall.
After several minutes they selected seven of us, five girls and two boys. One of the girls they selected was Letha. A wulver opened our cell and told Letha to come forth, that she would be leaving this place. I remember she really didn’t offer any resistance to them. I suppose she figured that whatever they might do to her couldn’t be worse than what was happening to her here. None of those they selected offered any resistance. I thought that was sort of odd. In fact, there were those that practically begged to be taken with them.
Then as quickly as they had come they left. I later learned that they were servants of some guy by the name of Malfacian. Even the wulvers knew little of them other than the fact that they were allies with the drells and were to be treated as such. Anyway, those who went with them were never seen again. I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing. Do you stay with the devil that you know or go with the devil
that you don’t know?
It was after Letha left that I set off on a mission of sorts. I needed something to hold onto and the people around me needed hope. Perhaps there was a way to get both. I made it a point to talk to God every evening in my cell. I think at first I was trying to battle the loneliness I was feeling. But as I went on it turned into something else, something better. At the same time, I tried to be a positive influence in the lives of those around me. I had to give them hope. I spoke of deliverance. If not of the body at least of the spirit. Thing is, I knew so little about spiritual matters or the Bible. How I wished that I had a Bible, or someone to teach me the things I’d ignored for so long. I spoke to others of God when I could, but it seemed that no one was really very interested in hearing about Him. That sort of surprised me. Not even David was much interested in what I had to say. He did say that I’d developed an effective coping technique. Those were the exact words he used. He thought that was a good thing. Still he figured that if there were really a loving God out there somewhere, why would He allow such a place as this to even exist? I had no answer for him.
Then there was Consuela, my second cellmate. She arrived in early December. She was about my age and was from Spain. I was able to learn that much. I did my best to communicate with her using the little Spanish that I knew from high school but she was inconsolable. She couldn’t adapt to this new life. I think she might have been a little unhinged even before she came here. She cried herself to sleep one night and ranted and cursed the next. You could never predict what she was going to be like the next minute.
A lot of her anger was vented at someone by the name of Maria. She insisted that Maria had sent her here, and spoke of what she would do to her if she ever got back to Earth. At least that is what I gathered from her sometimes frantic ravings. She called Maria a witch. What Maria had to do with her being here I couldn’t be sure but I had a suspicion. After all, I had my own suspicions when it came to Keira.
The Realm of the Drells Page 4