Before the Warrior
Chapter Seven: The Cage
"You poor, sweet, innocent thing.
Dry your eyes and testify.
You know you live to break me.
Don't deny, sweet sacrifice."
-Evanescence.
The beast's lair was exactly what Seven and the other stitchpunks had believed it to be: the three menacing shapes that had stood out on the horizon. She now understood that this place was an old war machine warehouse. The beast carried her past a store of walker machines and further into the darkness, its red eye casting horrific shadows in this palace of horror.
Seven struggled with all her might, but questioned the monster as her futile flailing continued.
Why hasn't it killed me yet? she thought to herself.
At last the beast reached its resting chamber, the largest and most illuminated of all. Sunlight flooded into this room, shining on a huge red curtain. Seven was not inclined to know what that curtain was hiding at the moment, though anything having to do with the beast couldn't be good.
The beast dug through the piles of debris that decorated the ground at its feet before emitting a pleased growl. Seven cringed as the teeth of the monster dug deeper into her wound.
What the creature had found was an old birdcage. It used its precise claws to flip the latch and open the cage door. It then dropped its prey inside the tiny prison.
Seven was too tired and in shock to fight back as the monster slammed the cage door closed behind her. She groaned as she slowly attempted to stand back up, only to fall down again.
Though her body demanded rest, the beast wouldn't allow her to have any. The great cat bit down on the handle of the cage and sent it flying across the factory floor, jarring the little stitchpunk inside too.
"Ohh…" the pale doll groaned. Her pain sensors were firing out of control now.
The beast seemed to snicker and soon enough it had the cage in its teeth once more. This time the beast tossed the birdcage in the air and deftly caught it in its teeth, causing Seven to cry out again.
And as she recovered from the second blow, Seven understood why the beast had kept her alive: It wanted to enjoy killing her.
The beast prepared to toss her again, but this time, Seven clung tight to the bars of the cage. The cage went flying again but her body stayed put, and she was not injured.
The beast didn't like its prey being so smart, and snapped at her tiny metal hands. The doll flinched just as the monster sent the cage falling off a ledge made of cinder blocks and she fell forward with it.
The torture continued for hours. The beast would occasionally find something else to do aside from slowly kill its prey. Seven would catch a break at those times, but soon after it would return and toss the cage around some more. The beast methodically broke the stitchpunk down. Instead of finishing her off when she was weak, it would wait for her to put up a fight before striking again.
Seven was exhausted from the continuous assault, but she still tried to keep her wits about her as she slowly but surely weakened. She learned how to jump in tune with the tossing of the cage and when to hold onto the bars for dear life. Unfortunately during the struggle she lost her makeshift spear–not that she knew how to use it anyway.
Death was the only full-proof way out of her torture, but she wouldn't take that offer no matter how much it seemed to be a better prospect.
And then another blow weakened her further. And another. And another…
The beast growled as it watched the soulbeing lying still in her prison. The beast may not have killed very much prey in the past (a few of the human resistance that it had encountered, but they had been far less fun to kill), but it knew that the soulbeing had not shown the key signs of death. She hadn't convulsed or uttered the last screams of pain as dying prey usually did.
As a lasting measure, the beast threw the cage across the room again, this time making sure that it hit the wall with the greatest force it could generate. If the doll had survived that blow, she was an unusually strong soulbeing indeed.
The beast's red eye scanned over the pale body lying in the middle of the cage for a sign of life. Nothing. Death had come at last to one of the little abominations! The beast roared in triumph.
Satisfied for the day, the monster curled its mechanical body around the cage. It was time to recharge after all that work.
The moon glowed brightly through the large crack in the ceiling, and all objects in the beast's lair glowed a pale green color. The cage, clutched in its terrifying claws, glimmered faintly as the latch on the door slowly turned and the door opened with the tiniest creaking noise. The metal hands that had pushed the door open shook as Seven, barely alive, pulled herself up and out of her cell.
She paused and let her legs dangle in the cage to keep quiet and reserve energy, then emerged completely and slid down the bars with a small "thump" as her weakened body hit the ground. The beast's red eye flickered for a moment, hearing the sound, and searching for movement as it recharged. Seven stayed perfectly still lying on the ground, and soon the beast went back to sleep. Slowly she got to her feet and began to make her way out of the horrible place. The debris everywhere provided a continuous wave of obstacles, but she slowly pushed through. There was a pipe on the far away wall where a faint amount of the moonlight snuck in, and she knew that she had to make it through if she was going to survive.
As she made her way through the hell factory, Seven thought she heard a scraping sound behind her. She didn't dare look back, for the beast could very well have reawakened and was about to kill her. It could have also been a product of sheer paranoia, imagined by her troubled mind.
The sound followed her though, even as she headed through the narrow pipe. She stopped in realization. The beast could never fit into the tiny pipe.
Putting her hand behind her back, she found what had been making the noise. A lone, striped feather somehow had gotten caught between her body and the rope that was tied around her waist, and trailed along on the ground behind her. She picked it up and stared at the object the moonlight.
I am the bird that flew away, she thought, stroking the edge of the feather briefly.
She clutched the feather tightly to her chest as she walked through the pipe and into the night. Her freedom didn't sink in yet, as she knew that she had to travel further into the emptiness to hide from the creature that would wake at dawn. The need to survive kept her from giving into the pain from her back, though she felt weaker with each new step she made.
Her feet touched the cobblestones as she made her way through an old courtyard. Suddenly, everything felt light and weightless. It was as if she was caught in a total eclipse of the moon and its peaceful darkness was overtaking her.
She almost smiled before she blacked out, thinking, I am the bird that flew away…
Author's Note: I feel that this chapter is very powerful. It's all about Seven's endurance and courage. Once again, this revised edition doesn't have very much revision for this chapter, though I tried to be careful about focusing on Seven rather than the beast. Of course the point of view still shifts for dramatic effect, but it's Seven's survival that is important. Also, the Evanescence quote is entirely new. The original quote was, believe it or not, a Ghandi quote.
