Ah, that was a fine batch of tea you brought me this time. It reminds me of spice and days spent in the sun. I warn you now, if you have a weak stomach, you may not wish to listen to this story, for it tells of the horrors of the sorceress' of Angmar. Their power is steeped in blood, innocents, and death. If you remember right, I gave you hint when I told you that they sought women heavy with child. Well then, you have been warned. Sit and hear the tale of just what happened to her in that cursed place.
((OOC, as the sooth sayer mentions, if you cannot abide things happening to the young, more so those not yet born or newly born, please stop here and move on to another story. As always, I will gloss over it and not give detail, but for some, myself included, such things hit too close to home in real life.))
Falra was taken to cursed lands, where dirt and rock melt. We now know she meant the lands of Angmar, but this was how she continued to describe them throughout her time. She quickly found herself in a cage along with other women, her clothes, like the others, stripped from her. Every woman within the cage looked about ready to burst with child, so much so that as soon as she entered a panic started around a young woman whom laid on the ground in the center of the pit. As was her knack, she pushed her way to the woman to see what was the matter. Soon she realized the woman was giving birth. Falra had no herbs to give her, nothing to help the woman, other than a cool hand to press to her head and a knowledge of what to do as the baby's head crests from its mother's womb.
To Falra's horror, as soon as the woman finished giving birth, before she passed that which held the child and fed it, she was bodily picked up and carried from the cage, child and all. When Falra tried to give protest, she was slapped and pushed to the ground, gentle enough to not cause harm to her nor her child, but firmly enough to let her know she should stay on the ground till they were gone. So she did.
Lost and confused she turned to the other women, using the silent language of a slave to gather what information she could. What she learned chilled her to the very marrow in her bones. Both child and mother were to be sacrificed, one after the other. Nothing else was known, save that they took both, that and the horrible screams that issued forth soon after. Falra was thankful she could not hear the screams from the look on the women's faces, each holding their stomachs as if mere hands could keep this filth from their children.
Falra saw several women come and go, so early was she in her own pregnancy when she was first brought there. The women soon dwindled down to two of them, both still with months to go. It was Falra's way to try and protect those she could, but each time she was smacked across the face and pushed out of the way. This day they took three of the last five, leaving her and a younger girl. She wasn't quite as far as Fal, but enough that the baby dropped forward, making it hard for her to move with ease. Fal did what she could to help the child out, far to young to be carrying a child of her own, she couldn't be more than thirteen winters. It was at this time that the men entered the pit, heading toward Falra. The young girl pushed herself between them calling out that neither have given birth yet, nor were either close enough to try and force it. With a cruel sneer, one forced her to her knees while the other drew blade and sliced it across her belly, dropping the child to the ground below her.
So frightened was Falra, so abashed by what they just did, that she curled up screaming in pain, the heavy feeling of blood seeping from where it should not. It was too late for the girl, the slice to her belly was too deep, they cut child and mother alike, killing both in front of her. Falra's world exploded in pain, as she felt her body forcefully being picked up and taken from the pit. Blurry eyes trying to focus on the young girl and her child, no thought of her own pain yet. No, not yet. You see, it wasn't till she was brought to the alter that her pain blossomed again.
At the alter they beat her with hands and feet, along her body, but never at her belly. They hoped to cause her to discharge the child and so they did after a time. What happened after that.. Again I warn you, stop now if you need to, for what follows is gruesome at best, cause for a lifetime of nightmares.
You are still here I see, well then, what did they do as they retrieved her child from her womb? They tore it asunder before her very eyes. A beautiful boy, with eyes of his mother, hair of his father, torn to bits, his blood saved. As the icy cold of the blade pressed against her neck, Falra felt nothing but release from the cruelty of what she saw, but it was not going to be that easy. They savored the scent of death, the horror in a person's eyes. More so they enjoyed the screams of their victims, yet they got no screams from Falra, so frozen was her mind, so used to not calling out, to suppressing her pain, that she gave no voice to her grief.
It was this pause that saved her, or cursed her, depending on how you look at it. That is enough for tonight. Please let an old woman clear her thoughts of this horror. I have lost my own share of babes, but never in such a manner. Never to watch them killed in front of me, never were they ripped from my flesh as they were Falra. No, I must think on happier thoughts to continue, for it was kinder things that happened to her since that day. Come back and see me tomorrow. I promise I'll be in a better frame of mind then.
