Into the Dark

by M J W Harrington

  “I uh, found some herbs,” I started, but the large ogrin boss cut me off with a snarl.

  “Lie. There no herbs down in caves or near here on surface. Try again.” The other ogrin hung near the door, clearly unsure whether to carry out his original instructions at this point as Dirg slapped me across the face, once again jolting my skull. If I made it out of this mess, I’d have a headache for a month, I thought to myself idly as I hastily corrected myself.

  “I didn’t mean herbs - mushrooms, big glowing mushrooms.” I thought of the mushroom cave and the spores they sprayed. Thinking about it, this getting captured by giants thing was becoming a bit of a habit, and yet somehow this time was preferable to the last.

  “Mushrooms? Mushrooms don’t do that.” Dirg frowned at me, but didn’t slap me again, so I followed up my lie.

  “Oh yes, most mushrooms don’t, but these ones were special. We found them deep in the tunnels, you know how strange things get when you go deep, right?” I was fairly willing to bet he did, you don’t live in the Dark without seeing some weirdness, and he grunted affirmatively.

  “Go get others,” he commanded the ogrin at the door, “Female and small thing.” his minion scurried to obey, and Dirg turned back to me. “You may not die, but they do. You lead me to mushrooms or they die, you watch and then we bury you deep in hole.” The brute may not have been the most eloquent, but a bestial cunning lay behind his huge dark eyes. That didn’t sound like a fate I’d relish, so I swallowed and nodded.

  “Sounds like a deal.” I was under no illusions, the ogrin would probably carry out his threats regardless of what I did, especially once he found out there were no mushrooms that gave magical invulnerability, but at this point I was just stalling for time until a better idea presented itself. “But it is a long way, a couple of days of walking,” my mind raced furiously, “and I was unconscious for some of it. The mushrooms, you know?” I hurriedly explained as Dirg frowned at me, “I need to talk to my friends. The female and the small one. They know bits of it that I don’t remember. But not all of it, you know?” I babbled, not my finest work but I was trying to give him the impression of being a terrified cooperative prisoner, rather than a terrified prisoner trying to make it up as I went along.

  “Hmm. Okay.” to my relief, Dirg went with it and walked out of the room. I hung around for a while, occasionally testing my bonds but only managing to sway very slightly, the heavy chains that I’m pretty sure once belonged to a ship anchor binding me tight to the beams of the ceiling. How the hell did they have a boat anyway? Never mind. A short time later, the door slammed open and two bodies were tossed gracelessly into the room, bound with ropes, bruised and bloody.

  “Ah, Clara, Architect, so nice of you to join me in my cabin.” I quipped, words belying my eyes full of concern as I gazed down at them. They had clearly not had a good time of it, Clara’s long hair was missing a few patches, and the rest clumped together with dried blood. She looked up at me, despair in her eyes, but joining me in forced levity.

  “Dav. You bring me to all the nicest places.” she croaked, and spat out a little blood. The Architect said nothing, only the slow rise and fall of his chest indicating he still lived.

  “Is he alright?” I asked, dropping the humour for a change and watching his tiny form.

  “He shocked a few of them,” Clara replied grimly, “they returned the favour once they caught us. Several times.” I grimaced, ogrins with devices, what fresh hell would that unleash? Dirg strode into the cabin before we could talk further.

  “There, now you have puny friends. We go to the mushrooms now.” It was not a question, but I protested weakly.

  “But one of them isn’t even conscious, and Clara here is badly injured. The mushrooms aren’t going anywhere, we’re not going anywhere, can we not rest first? You get a good night feasting, doing horrifying ogrin things, we discuss the way to the magic mushrooms that made me powerful…” I locked eyes with Clara, emphasising the last words, and she picked up the baton.

  “Oh, the magical mushrooms? Yes, we were too weak to dare taking them ourselves, only Dav was brave and strong enough to eat some. We can take you there, for sure, once our friend here is awake, he’s good with directions,” she mummed, somewhat poorly, and I winced. If we made it out of here, I had to give that girl some acting lessons. Dirg was already sold on our little bit, however, so despite his eyes narrowing, he finally nodded.

  “Okay. But if you lying, I break her, then him, then you go down the hole.” He accented his threat with a huge meaty finger at my friends before levelling the digit in my direction. I nodded as best I could, even my head somehow restricted by the chains that bound me. The ogrin had taken no chances when tying me up, which I could respect.

  “Oh understood, but just think - once you have mushrooms like me, you will be so mighty!” I fed him one last piece of bait and he simply grunted.

  “Don’t push it.” he said simply, striding from the room, the heavy door slamming shut behind him and shaking the beams from which I hung.

  “So,” I said to Clara, “any ideas how we get out of this?” She sighed and looked up at me from where she lay on the ground, bruises swelling her face.

  “Dav, you’re an idiot.” Hurtful. I gave her my best impression of a shrug despite being unable to move my shoulders, and we lapsed into silence, me trying to put my thoughts in order, Clara settling down and closing her battered eyes to try and escape the pain. I gazed down at them both, the Architect occasionally shaking, the very tip of his nose singed and blackened while Clara wincing as the pain from the punishment she’d taken wracked her body. I raged, and the darkness inside me raged with me, mine in sympathy with their pain, the being within railing at my restraints and being denied the deaths of the other ogrin. For once I found myself in agreement. If I made it out of this mess, the brutes would pay. Dirg first and foremost. I tried my bindings once again, but the metal had no give in it, shifting only slightly thanks to my efforts. I strained to look around for more options, but the limited range of vision my chains offered me didn’t reveal much of use. The room was relatively plain, its finery long ago smashed and desecrated by its new owners. Here and there I could see a hint of gilt inlay that still remained, tarnished and dull, but all that remained of its former grandeur were hints and echoes. Through the partially ruined window of the cabin I could see a small section of the rest of the village, with a few slaves scurrying about, attempting to avoid the occasional ogrin inflicting some random casual act of cruelty.

  My vision was drawn once again to the door as it slowly creaked open on damaged hinges, and Clara also shifted on the ground and twisted to look towards our latest visitor. I snarled as I recognised him and the darkness briefly took hold.

  “YOU.” I growled, and the old man poking his head in the door panicked and immediately withdrew. It was the old slave I’d seen at the fire, the one responsible for our current straits.

  “Dav, get ahold of yourself.” Clara barked up to me, concern in her eyes. I took a breath and forced the darkness back down. A large part of me welcomed its fury and agreed that this man deserved to die, broken and bloody, but the rational part of my brain was intrigued why the man was there, and I didn’t want to give Clara reason to doubt my control.

  “Sorry. He’s the one who pointed us out to the ogrins.” I explained, still breathing deeply. For a moment Clara’s rage mirrored my own, because that usual annoyingly calm pragmatism set back in. Before she could respond the old man finally stuck his head back around the door.

  “Yes, I uh, wanted to apologise for that…” he mumbled, averting his gaze and furiously studying the chipped and stained floor of our cabin. “You were going to get caught anyway, and I just wanted a little more to eat…” I took in his long unwashed hair and scraggly beard, beneath which his sallow cheeks hung gauntly. Despite my fury, my rage softened. I’d encountered men like him before in the slums of Qalea, pushed to and over the edge of starvation and subjugation so many
times that they’d sell their own children for a stale hunk of bread. Many of them did. Hells, many of them had more kids just to do so. You could buy anything in the understreets of that place, one of the many reasons I wasn’t particularly hung up on going back to that pit.

  “Come in.” I told him flatly, my rage somewhat tempered by his desperation, but forgiveness far from my mind. “You’re still going to die if we get out of this, but you’ve clearly got a reason for coming here. Spill it.”

  The old man swallowed and made his way into the room, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder as he did so and shutting the door behind him. He was dressed in the same rags as before, the marks and scars of long servitude buried beneath the dirt coating his skin. In his hand he carried a small sack. Nervously casting a glance at my chains as if to reassure himself, the old man spoke in his croaking mumble.

  “I didn’t know, I… I’m Harkin. Harkin-”

  “I don’t care.” I interrupted. I didn’t need more of his name to humanise him further, I meant exactly what I’d said previously. The darkness inside me rumbled its agreement. Once again I’d been caged, once again I’d been rendered helpless. That didn’t sit well with either of us. Harkin swallowed nervously and continued anyway.

  “I’ve been here for… years now. You learn to push down that little voice telling you to look out for other people… I…” he paused before letting out a heavy sigh. “I saw an opportunity to get ahead and took it.” As he hesitantly my eyes I couldn’t help but have a hint of understanding temper my reaction. After all, I’d been there myself.

  “Thanks so much for that. It worked out well for you I hope? What did you get for condemning us to death or worse, a little hat saying ‘slave of the month’? Perhaps a tiny parade?” Sarcasm dripped off my every word, and Clara piped up from the floor.

  “Maybe he gets his pick of the slave girls, although from his personality I assume he’s more into the damn ogrin instead.” The old man winced under our verbal barrage, but I found it hard to care until he opened his mouth again and mumbled out two simple words.

  “My daughter…” well damn. Now I felt a bit bad for him again, and by Clara’s silence I could tell she felt the same. Finally meeting my eyes without flinching, Harkin continued. “I did it to save my daughter. She’s only small… we’ve been here for years now.” I sighed deeply.

  “You do know that we were planning on freeing the other slaves in the pen before you ruined everything, right?”

  The old man snorted in response, for the first time showing an emotion other than abject terror, I found I preferred him with a little backbone.

  “What would that have done other than gotten them all killed off by ogrin if they tried to run? Do you see any chains?” He waggled his boney arms at me, exhibiting the lack of shackles.

  “I just assumed that’s because you’ve sold enough people to the ogrin to be killed and eaten.” I replied. While I had a small amount of sympathy to the man now I understood him a bit better, I was still sore about being chained up, and the darkness inside still very much hadn’t forgiven or forgotten the promises of pain it had made previously. The old man winced again.

  “No I… well… I have, but no. They let us roam freely, because they know we can never escape if we try to run. The way to the surface is guarded, and they let anyone who wants to run into the dark. They’re dead anyway.” He swallowed deeply, “Though I have considered it many times.” I understood what he truly meant by that. Running into the dark with no supplies and no weapons was tantamount to suicide. Admittedly that’s pretty much what I’d been doing for years, excluding the few devices I managed to hide for myself, but all things considered this trip still didn’t even rank in the top five most suicidal delves I’d been on.

  “So why are you here?” Clara asked bluntly from the floor, after she’d finished absorbing Harkin’s words.

  “I just wanted to apologise…”

  “Bullshit.” She really had a way with words.

  “Alright, fine.” the old man conceded, “I saw how many your man took down,” Clara mumbled something briefly about me not being her man, and I could almost hear the eye-roll from where I was hanging. “Realised I might have made a mistake. Maybe you could free us.”

  “Great,” I said somewhat unenthusiastically, “Now that we’ve been tied up, beaten and had all our possessions stolen, maybe we can finish the job at a significant disadvantage.” Harkin shrugged.

  “Sorry. I can’t do much, but I have this.” From parts unknown, he produced a slender hilt that I recognised as belonging to my collapsing blade. My eyes widened.

  “That’s… certainly a help. Doesn’t do much about the chains though.” I did my best to try and gesture with my limited range of movement towards my bonds, but stopped as I considered how silly it probably looked.

  “It’s all I can do. I overheard them saying they were going to eat you rather than keep you as slaves, so… good luck?” With that, Harkin reached down and slipped the hilt into Clara’s hand before scurrying away without a word. We lay there, or in my case hung around, for a moment to process what had just happened.

  “What an asshole.” Clara finally opined, and I grunted agreement while the gears in my head began to turn.

  “Don’t cut yourself free just yet.” I cautioned.

  “Agreed, I’m in no shape to run and you’re… like a chain burrito.”

  “A what?”

  “Oh, it’s an Amari dish, you wrap pretty much anything in a sort of flatbread… why am I explaining this now?” I snorted in response.

  “You started it, and what else are we going to do? Would you care to dance? I think I can just about manage a wiggle in here.”

  The Architect groaned from his patch of floor.

  “Please stop talking.”

  “Archie!” Clara exclaimed with delight, and the little man groaned again I felt his pain, ogrin fists and hammers to the head felt like the morning after without the night before.

  “Shhhh!” the Architect hissed at her and lay silent again for a moment. I wondered if he’d passed out again, but after a moment he opened his eyes. “I assume we have been captured by those brutes?”

  “Yup.” I replied.

  “And they are probably going to eat us or worse?”

  “Yup.” Clara replied.

  “And I assume you have an escape plan already formulated?”

  “Yup.” I grinned.

  “Wonderful. I’m going back to sleep, let me know when you intend to do something insane.” With that, the Architect rolled over and did just that.

  “You do?” Clara asked softly, doing her best to let our friend rest, but the soft groans at the edge of my hearing made me think he wasn’t as comatose as he appeared.

  “Oh yes,” I replied, “and we might even survive it.” To her credit, Clara didn’t immediately ask for any immediate clarification, and just replied with a long, drawn-out sigh.

  “Tell me in the morning.” With that, she also attempted to get somewhat comfortable on the splintered wood of the floor.

  After a few hours of hanging around thinking, my companions started to stir and I quickly outlined the basics of the plan I’d been thinking about while they rested. Thankfully whatever damage Dirg’s hammer had done in my skull felt mostly healed, making it easier to think and talk without daggers shooting through my brain.

  “...that’s it?” the Architect said once I’d finished outlining the plan.

  “That’s… not even really a plan, Dav,” Clara added, “it’s mostly just ‘escape and run away’.”

  “Are you opposed to escaping and running away?” I asked, slightly affronted by their doubts.

  “It didn’t exactly work last time.” Her lack of faith was disturbing.

  “That’s because last time there were more of them. This time I’ve killed a large portion of their population and they think we’re beaten just because they captured us once and took away all of our gear.”

 
; “That’s because they captured us once and took away all of our gear.”

  “Look, do you have a better idea?” I asked, frankly hurt by their negative attitudes.

  The Architect paused and thought for a moment. “...unfortunately not.”

  “Then we escape and run away. Excellent, glad we agree. Speaking of our stuff, did anyone see where it was taken?” My companions shook their heads from the ground. “No matter, we’ll think of something.”

  “I hate you sometimes, Dav.” Clara groaned. She really was in such a hurtful mood, I blamed it on the lack of a good night’s sleep and hunger considering they hadn’t fed us since we arrived. As if summoned by my thought, the door creaked open and Harkin appeared, carrying a cracked wooden tray, upon which sat three dirty cups with water and some stale looking bread.

  “Oh look, room service.” I quipped, “Perhaps I’ll leave a positive review in the guest book after all.” Harkin didn’t respond to my hilarious joke, which I put down to being a generally downtrodden slave and an asshole, but he did look down meaningfully at Clara, still concealing the hilt of her weapon as he put the tray down next to her.

  “Dirg’s gathering up a band of ogrins. Says they’re heading out. Might want to be ready to move,” he muttered in a low voice, licking his lips and casting a look back at the door. “Whatever you plan to do, might want to do it-” before he could finish his sentence, he slammed across the room, overturning the meagre rations and crumpling to the ground somewhere out of my limited field of vision. From his groans I suspected he was still among the living. I still found it hard to care.

  “Changed my mind. We go now.” Dirg stated, as if he hadn’t even noticed the bedraggled slave he’d just punted across the room. Time for step one.

  “OK fine, take me but leave my friends, they don’t even know where the mushrooms are, they’d just be in danger out in the dark!” I did my best self-sacrificing white knight impression, and Dirg squinted at me for a moment. I probably needed to dial it back, but before I could think of something else to say he responded.