Blood clotted like a mask over the upper section of my face, leaving me little idea if it were night or day behind it. An excruciating jolt of electricity hit me between the eyes every few seconds, and the rest of my body reacted with spasms against the post. What I wanted, what I desperately needed were assurances that Scarfell had only removed the one eye.
"Missy?" I mumbled, but my hazy mind couldn't concentrate enough to contact her. The cold started to bite too, and remaining senses becoming sharper, I heard a careful crunching of approaching footsteps. "Who's there?"
Was it Grutas, bogs, or maybe Scarfell after another piece of me? The steps came closer until I felt this person's hand on my chest. "You're alright," he said, in a hurried manner. "What a bloody mess!"
"Kat? Is that you? Look what he did to me…"
"I'll get you out," he said, shocking my face with a sponge of some kind to clear the clotted blood. His voice was reassuring and kind, and the more I heard of it, the less of Kat I recognised. "Tell me who you are?"
Suddenly, without a parting word, this man's steps crunched out of earshot and I was relieved finally to see the pale moonlight in my right eye. "Hello?" I hissed. "Are you there?"
"About time!" came Scarfell's abrupt and impatient bellow. "They were expected five hours ago!"
I froze, fighting spasms, and through the opening slit of one eye, I saw flaming torches in the night and an anxious looking Scarfell hurrying down the temple steps, flanked by his constant giant and that lying bitch who led me here. "Travelling has been difficult," she explained to Scarfell, moving directly for the tall doors and the bogs before it. "Your removal of his eye will not please them. Not one bit, wizard."
"That was personal," replied Scarfell, without regret.
Arriving at the tall doors, Grutas saw to the heavy wooden block used to fix them shut. The doors opened inwardly, and Scarfell threw up his arms to two new arrivals.
"Welcome ladies! Come! Rest yourselves!"
Two females entered the fort. Identical to the green-eyed woman, they were also dressed in similar dark and all too revealing gowns. These alluring triplets embraced one another with stiff hugs, whilst obedient bogs sealed the doors once more.
"Oh, you're for it now!" said a minuscule voice in my head.
"Who's there?" I whispered, as the women followed Grutas and Scarfell into the unassuming temple. At that time, I had no idea that a worm had just popped out of a crack in my post and propped itself inside my ear. It was an uncomfortable sensation, as if being tickled by the blunt end of a pencil. I shook my head to free it but the thing wouldn't budge.
"Relax mate," it said. "Promise I won't go any deeper than this. Say, this wax here would make for great insulation! Mind if I take some with?"
"Yes! No! What are you? What you want?"
"I'm a worm. And I can't lay eggs if that's what you're thinking? Was just like you mister… but now I'm a worm."
Perhaps I'd flipped sometime during unconsciousness, on the wrong side of sanity? That seemed likely, until I remembered where I was, and how anything here was possible.
"Mind if I sleep here the night?" the worm asked. "It's dead cosy, you know."
"No!" I squirmed. "What do you want worm? You can't stay there!"
"Come for the company mostly! Ain't had a yap in donkeys years, and she ain't eaten in as long a while! Starving she is!"
"She? Which one?"
"The three are one! And if you're tied up here you're sure enough on the menu! That wizard brings food here for her, like he did me. Promised me a wish he did!"
I listened intently now to the creepy crawly. "Sometimes she hunts the food herself," he added, enjoying my attention; "but most scatter before she can get to changing."
"Changing?"
"She a monster, mate!" it squealed, as if common knowledge. "Wizard wants the whole Distinct Earth for himself, doesn’t he? Well that monster has lived in this forest for a thousand years — it's hers! They have an arrangement now though."
"The Scurge!" I gasped, after another hot sting and cold spasm.
"So that's what they call it!” The worm said. “Better hope she bites the brain first, mate. That should send you out nice and quiet…"
Predators of the Under Realms — Scurge: female monstrosity that feeds on the marrow of men. She was a honey trap, luring victims with lusty promises before transforming and devouring those poor devils, a creature with an insatiable appetite and no known weakness: an immortal. The woman I met in the forest, the two who just entered this fort, together making the Scurge.
"Wizard provides her with a regular feeding," said the worm, now dangling from my earlobe, "and he can have the whole realm so long as her hunger is satisfied. She chewed on my guts a good while, let me tell you!"
"I need to get out of this!" I grimaced, tugging at my bonded wrists. "Can you help me? Cut me out of these ropes!"
"Sorry mate — no teeth. Don't worry though, if you turn into a worm then there is plenty space in the post for both of us. But if you turn into a bird then forget we ever had this conversation! Name's Gus by the way!"
Gus returned to his hidey-hole in the post while I continued to struggle; but no amount of effort could set me free from this sacrificial post.
***
Dampness and melancholy had set throughout the cellblock. The Gorgon kept Harmony and Kat awake with her incessant sobbing; ignoring her was the only thing to be done. No others stirred, and the naked man hadn't woken since his last episode.
With his cheek pressed against bars, Kat scrutinized and smirked at the many freaks here, but his gaze always found its way back to a glum faced Harmony Valour. "Can I ask a question?" he said, rousing her from boredom.
"Anything samurai, anything at all."
Kat shuffled nearer her bars, and Harmony was open faced with curiosity. She waited intrigued, and Kat waited too, composing himself before asking this most important question: "What," he started, softly, "is Heaven like?"
Harmony sighed, seemingly unsurprised. "Have you someone waiting for you there?” she said. “A loved one?"
"That was not my question."
Wearing a troubled expression, Harmony rubbed the skin at her elbow.
"Well?" Kat insisted. "What is Heaven like?"
"The subject is not permitted to be discussed outside your own life support," she replied. "It is a question I have been asked countless times since my exile, from countless lost souls, and my answer is always the same — Heaven holds something for everyone, it will warm the coldest heart, and the view of the universe would humble the greatest man." The angel then set her forehead against her knees. "I wish to return so very much."
Kat slunk, satisfied with the answer.
***
I was awake to see in the morning, and it seemed the whole fort was too. My left eye-socket had scabbed over again, and as I searched the crowd for the possible identity of last night's Samaritan, I saw only the unpleasant faces of Scarfell, Grutas, and numerous smears of bogs in preparation.
Suddenly, a great tribal symbol clashed from inside the temple, stirring the army into a practised drill. Starting at the bottom step of the temple, the bogs formed a circle stretching behind my post and to encompass most of the fort. This was rehearsed, precise, and I could only surmise how many times the Scurge had dined inside this black ring. Grutas loitered at the smoking temple door beside an impatient looking Scarfell. Once the wizard received word from inside that temple, he eventually turned to address his restless admirers. "They are ready!" he announced to adoring snorts. "May you all enjoy it! May you all survive it!"
Scarfell stepped aside to reveal the seductive triplets at the door, their chins held high and their barely covered bosoms causing bogs to rub their groins. As far as I could tell, the only apparent difference between these sisters was their eye colour: hypnotic green, sky blue, and startling scarlet.
***
A pensive Harmony watched the bright window at the far end of the cellblock, the light giving a gleam to her constricted wings. Kat's patience meanwhile was being tested by the crying Gorgon, still sobbing under her bagged head. "Shut up!" he snapped. "Shut your mouth or my sword will open your stomach!"
"Kat!" yelled Harmony, appalled. "Not everyone is as strong as you!"
"Where does her body find all those tears?"
The Gorgon carried on regardless of Kat's temper, so he thumped his face like a thug against the cell bars.
"Now it can't be all that bad!" said a new voice, a man free from the confines of any cage.
"Who is there?" asked Harmony, peering as far as possible through her bars. "Who is that?"
Presently, Sir Godwin Eddinray left the shadows and stepped into a ray of sunlight.
"You?!" choked Kat, agog. "Can't be!"
"Can be!" the knight declared, with a royal wave and a deep indent marking his helmet.
"And who are you?" asked the French girl.
Eddinray's eyebrows immediately sprung to the top of his head as he beheld the fallen angel. "Divine," he mumbled, losing track of himself.
"Pardon me?" she said. "Are you an ally to us?"
With a rattle of the head, the knight seemed to recover from his spell. "My name is Godwin Eddinray, your ally and knight in impressed armor. I have come to your rescue, madam! Come to save the day!"
"How?" asked Kat, still flummoxed by the gaunt Englishman's appearance here.
"Thrown from the flying horse," he said, "I woke with concussion under a bloody tree some time later. Followed the path here and waited for my opportunity to elude security, which by the way, leaves a lot to be desired."
"What have you there?" pried Harmony, pointing to a bulging bag in Eddinray's hand.
"My dear," he said, smiling; "I have used my skills to recover… what was taken."
Eddinray parted the bag to reveal all the weapons stripped away by bogs — Kat's swords, katana and wakizashi — not to mention my short sword, special dagger, and shield with a centaur's embossed seal.
"We will need all hands to get out of here," he added. "Our friend Danny boy is strapped to a post outside."
"Is he okay?" asked Harmony. "Alive?"
"The wizard removed one of his eyes, madam. I cleaned the wound myself last night and can assure you that he is still with us."
"One of his eyes?" she considered with horror; Kat also appeared disturbed.
"The cell keys are hanging near the door, Godwin," Harmony said. "Bring them to my hand at once."
"My good woman!" he tittered. "It is simply not safe out there for a lady. Yes I admire your courage and orientation, but I strongly suggest-" Harmony stretched through the bars, snatched a chink in Eddinray's armor then yanked the lanky man at her. "I strongly suggest… that you fetch the keys this instant!"
Kat grinned as the knight scurried off for the keys, pausing suddenly down the corridor — recalling something. "Kat?" he said, holding up one bare pink hand. "Have you seen my other glove?"
***
The three black beauties paraded before me at the post, licking a shine over their lips. The immortal Scurge would arrive shortly, and there was nothing on this realm to stop it. Fear of being devoured took my mind from the agony in my eye — even the gentlest breeze was like a searing iron prodding the vacant socket — nevertheless I much preferred living with it than joining Gus in the post.
The fort fell silent all of a sudden, an eerie, ghostly hush. Scarfell and Grutas watched the scene amidst the bog formation, anticipation growing as the women came side by side, linking their little hands. Their eyes were hungry as they ogled me over, and like the wolf before, a bizarre transformation now got under-way. The fingertips began to fuse, a sensation that appeared to tickle the women with a chill; the green, the blue and the scarlet eyes rolling back in orgasmic sync until hands were nothing but lumps of connected flesh.
With a clanging of keys, Eddinray released the angel and samurai from their cages. Immediately, Kat grappled the katana from the bag and rushed to the cellblock door. There, he waited with a cross face and a mind to slaughter any prying bog. None came, so he signalled the others to join him. "Go on ahead!" he ordered once they reached the door.
"But why?" frowned Harmony.
"Wait upstairs!" he insisted. "Do not take a foot from the temple without me. Now go!"
Eddinray ushered Harmony out of the cellblock; and the minute Kat was alone, he returned, twirling his sword down the narrow corridor. He removed the keys from his cage lock and continued toward the bright window, and the putrid cell underneath it. There, a naked man slept in a pool of his own bile and hair. Kat unlocked that cage, and with a single, downward thrust of his katana, he put the wolf out of its misery.