With great discomfort he managed to turn his head but couldn't see any figures in the dim of the room. He was truly alone. Left on the table, or whatever he lay on. No matter how he tried to pull his hands free he couldn't. As his foggy mind began to clear he came to realize he had been strapped to the table. The material of his bindings seemed like leather, dark and thick in the dim lighting. Tight enough to make sure he wouldn't escape.
What have you gotten yourself in this time, Trent?
The silence was getting on his nerves. And he had been used to silence on his journeys, traveling through the nights and avoiding his enemies. Silence was a part of what he did - rather than having a world filled with noise he chose the silence. But there was something in this silence tht disturbed him tremendously. It wasn't relieving like he had always thought silence to be. The very essence of the silence surrounding him was tormenting like the air itself had whispered in his ear about a nearing doom. Something that lay only days or hours away.
Every second that passed him by in his silent prison increased his agony. The pain that was not physical kept on embracing him, tighter and tighter. And the butterflies in his stomach had turned into mosquitoes for quite a while ago.
When he least expected it, silent humming broke the silence. The tune was melancholy - every note carried intense sadness as they floated through the air to meet his ears. He knew they would've broken down from a single touch had they been made of something solid. As fragile as they might be they still tore into him, increasing the fear already attempting to boil over. The tones of the humming choir gave a total new meaning to dolour. The depressing tunes reached a new level of intensity as new voices emerged from the depths of the caverns.
Dim light filled the corridor as the humming grew closer. One after another figures robed in crimson cloaks emerged from the doorway. Every figure but the first one held a torch in tight grip but the flames themselves seemed to be dying as if they, too, sensed the dreadful silence floating around. Slow steps carried their seemingly weightless bodies across the room as they positioned themselves around the table Kurtis lay on.
Damn, seems like shit to me...
As the humming died the figures stood in the shared silence, their heads bowed. Kurtis couldn't see their faces as their hoods offered them a refuge, an anonymity. As the silence continued the fear inside him grew. And he knew nothing good could come out of a situation like this. He thought being hooded, not showing their own face, was a way of the cowards. The way of someone who couldn't watch something they did or didn't want to know about it. Like that way it would never come back and haunt them. That they would never have to see the faces of their victims, or the eyes, again. And he knew how eyes could come back to haunt one's soul. He knew the pleading look when a people were begging for their lives knowing that no one would answer their prayers. Knowing that the blade or the bullet would soon tear through them. But he also knew how one stopped caring after too many pairs of pleading eyes.
Perhaps they were past caring.
Not being able to handle the silence anymore Kurtis again tried to release himself from his bindings, only finding the sheer attempt futile. The person who had tied him to whatever he lay on knew their job well.
Whatever he did seemed to have no effect on the cloaked figures. They stood still as if they were waiting for a signal to act and to Kurtis it seemed they had a shared consciousness, that they all were creatures of the same mind. Mental slaves of someone or something that had not yet made an appearance. Something they all followed blindly not questioning its orders and not seeing anything wrong in them.
"What do you want of me?" Kurtis tried to mask the fear in his voice with anger but found it infeasible. It was like trying to hide your head in a bush wishing no one'd see you that way. And he knew they knew even though they did nothing to answer him. Silence was almost worse than a spoken reply. At least a reply would give a hint, you could try and understand the other's feelings through the tones but if one remained silent when question like that was spoken it didn't promise much good.