Disappearances in the South

As we were herded out of the iron gates I was thankful to find that it was nightfall. I had grown used to the darkness, to be exposed to light after all this time would have surely caused me some form of injury. We were taken across the great circle along the centre path. I took a deep breath expecting fresh air, though it’s taste was no sweeter than the ash and smoke I had become accustomed to beneath the surface. Eventually we came to a halt, forming a circle beside an incomplete siege tower near the far eastern wall.

What I believe to have been several weeks had passed. Within the pits, it is impossible to tell just how much time has been spent. I wake within the barracks to the sound of the first horn, I work the forges until the second, and then we are escorted to the feeding halls to eat what the overseers named slop. Each mouthful is like chewing a corpse, the taste and smell resembles as much. On numerous occasions I gagged and spat it back out only to receive a whipping for good measure.

As I awoke in the chamber to the sound of steel scraping upon stone, a memory that I thought had long since passed returned to me. I remembered waking to a similar sound fourteen years ago when I was a prisoner of war in Ithillian. The band of Easterlings that captured us were vicious and cruel, the cruellest of them all being Mordevin, a man who still to this day haunts my dreams. I remembered the day that he found me again many years later, seeking to use my past fear to his advantage.

It has taken me some time to remember the events of that evening. We had travelled a great distance, Sparrow was on the verge of collapsing and I could not blame her in the slightest, she had been through much in Enedwaith. We made camp beside a pool nestled between two hills. I denied Sparrow lighting a fire yet she slept soundly enough, I remember listening to her breath as she slept with the child wrapped within her arms. The night was quiet; the only other source of sound came from the pool which made my eyes grow heavy.