Abandoned (Born From Shadows #2)

The blade stabbed deep into his skin but no sound left his mouth. No scream, not even a grunt. He laid with his arms, legs and wings strapped to a cold stone table. When death did not come for him the short dwarf before him cursed. Then another came and stabbed at his heart. Every day at least once he was stabbed in the heart. His tolerance for pain by this point was excruciatingly high.

He closed his grey eyes, remembering how stupid he was to get caught in the first place. It was supposed to be a simple quick scouting mission. When the ambush came it didn’t mater how good he was with a sword, he still managed to get captured. Now here he laid suffering for his stupidity.

He deserved every blade.

Not much of his life before this was accessible to him. He didn’t even know his name nor if he had a family. It had all disappeared; he just saw the rocky mountain walls. Some things showed up in his dreams, a voice calling out to him with kindness but then he would wake up to the whispers of the knife through his skin.

Occasionally they would try something different. An explosion filled with shrapnel, a burning hot fire that’s colour was bluer than the sky. Some days they would aim at his head instead of his heart, but it all healed. They tried to chop off his arm but couldn’t cut through the bone no matter how hard they sawed. Blood poured out him, a flowing river with no end.

“How is he?” the wicked female questioned from outside his vision. The voice was unwelcoming but familiar to him.

“Still alive,” one of the dwarves replied. It was rare they spoke the common tongue, but they didn’t care what he heard. He probably would never leave this cell.

“Keep trying. We are running out of options and the people are hungry for blood,” the woman told the dwarf, staring intently at his blood painted body. “Clean him now,” she ordered.

The dwarf wasted no time and obeyed her command. He felt the cold-water cascade down onto his pale skin and cloth scrub away at the dirt in a rush. The dwarf then stepped aside to present his body to her like an artist presenting their work.

The woman’s fingernails scraped against his skin at where he was previously struck yet his body did not react to the feeling. From his place tied down, he could not see what she was looking at, but her face said everything he needed to know. “A scar,” the dwarf said in astonishment.

“The wound healed but left a mark, bring me the blade that did this,” she said immediately.

For the first time since he had arrived, he actually felt as if his life was in jeopardy, and he prayed so hard to the gods he didn’t believe in, that it was in fact the end.

She scraped the knife along his stomach, ensuring that the cut was deep before pulling away. Then she waited, watched as his skin mended itself together but not to perfection. A line was left imprinted along the side of his abdomen. “Interesting,” she murmured. The tip of the blade was then positioned right above his heart. It pressed down without hesitation, and he waited for death to carry him away, but the peace never came. Only a scar was left over his heart.

“Disappointing. I want you to modify this, so it has him screaming,” she said and handed the blade back to the dwarf. It was all very disappointing, to both her and the broken, winged warrior she was leaving to rot beneath the mountain.