The reason why I took so long to update? I was deliberating on rewriting this whole thing, since I feel as if I'm just stumbling around in the dark, trying to hold onto a semblance of the plot and the story I'm actually trying to tell. Personally, I think that it'll be better if I rewrite it, same characters, some of the scenes the same but different presentation, especially Malcolm and the others. Felt like the only one I got right was Varel.

What do you think? Oh yeah, viewer discretion is advised.

She Who Fell from the Stone

888 T.E.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Although she had been in a deep sleep, the soft sounds were enough to wake the slumbering dwarva. Bloodshot eyes snapped open and her body immediately tensed. Though hunger and dehydration had long clouded her thoughts, one question was still rang crystal clear inside her addled brain shining as brilliantly as a diamond among the ashes of her once-sane mind.

Is this it?

Is this it?

Is this it?

Hesiah was the only one left, after all. There was no one else for them to take except her.

The monsters had taken Fran hours—or was it days? Did it matter?—ago. The dwarva remembered how Fran had screamed and clung to Hesiah's hand as soon as she heard the monster's footsteps echoing across the Deep Tunnels. Had she known then, mere minutes from the actual event, that she was the one who was going to be dragged away and not Hesiah?

Hesiah's stomach clenched painfully as she remembered how she did not squeeze Fran's hand back to comfort her as the thick metal doors swung to reveal the silhouette of the monsters. Because she too, knew—though she did not know how—that it was Fran who was going to be taken and not her.

But instead of horror or pity or fear or protectiveness for Fran, Hesiah felt…relieved. She was relieved that it was not her who was going to a Fate worse than death. She wished she could even feel horror. Or pity. Or disgust.

But in this new Stone-forsaken prison that she has been thrown into, there was no room for such things. Hesiah felt as if all emotions have been burned away. There was only room for one thing in this hell and that was survival instinct.

The dwarva had a fleeting memory of her actually kicking Fran away from her as the monsters dragged her away.

Or was that a hallucination too?

She sifted through her thoughts, no, it wasn't a hallucination. It was real. Fran was taken away.

Hesiah was safe, at least for a little while. She had noticed how the monsters took a long time to come back after they had taken one of their group.

Time enough for the chosen girl's screams to sink into her nightmares…

Drip.

Drip.

Oh yes, the dripping. She had to focus on the dripping. That was why she came awake, after all. Hesiah squinted, trying to see, in the dim light what it was exactly that was making that awful noise. The dimly lit prison was the same as ever, half-eaten littered all over the room, dried blood seeping into the cracks on the floor.

Drip. The sound was making Hesiah's head feel like it was being crushed between two boulders. She rose to her feet but hunger and exhaustion drove her to her knees.

The pain in her stomach caused her to tremble violently and she curled around it, hoping that it will bring some measure of relief. How long has it been since she's last eaten? But the memory of her last meal was enough to kill her appetite

Drip.

Stone blast whatever made that sound!

On hands and knees, Hesiah crawled around the room, whimpering and trying to find what it was the sought to torment her. Finally, she found herself at the far edge of the prison, staring at one of the monsters' corpse. Vaguely, she remembered that Fran had fought one of the monsters and how one of them fell and cracked their head upon the floor.

A brief smile touched her lips. Served them right, the stinking bleeders.

For lack of anything else to do, she studied the corpse. It was already old, smelling of rot and that foul, unique stench the dwarva had learned to associate with the monsters. Its skin looked like it had been patched together from the skins of corpses and its eyes stared back at Hesiah as if, even in death, the monster could see her.

Bile rose to her throat, threatening to choke her. She fought to keep it down.

Then, a horrible thing happened.

Her stomach started growling. Hesiah was actually hungry. For the meat of this Stone-knows-how-long dead corpse.

The idea didn't repel her as much as it should have. Hesiah had done it before, after all, when the hunger and the thirst got so bad that the only choice was eating a corpse or death. It was the same back then as it was now; she did what she had to so that she'd survive.

Her shaky fingers found themselves undoing the straps of the monster's armor, she barely had enough strength to lift the breastplate and when she did, the stench nearly overwhelmed her. Mayhap this thing had been dead longer than she thought, but Hesiah didn't think of it.There was, after all, only survival instinct left, and it dictated that she eat the corpse if she wanted to eat. She plugged her nose and cleared her mind, the dwarva wanted no thoughts about the wrongness of what she was doing. Hesiah had no knife or dagger to cut through the flesh or even a fire to cook it in, so she merely plunged her teeth deep into the soft belly of the dead creature.Thick blood burst against her tongue, threatening to choke her, to drown her, but her thirst was stronger than the flow and soon, she was sucking at it greedily as if it was mother's milk.

The blood was thicker, more difficult to swallow than that of the last monster she ate, but swallow she did. The liquid burned her throat like fire and she could feel the fever-shakes beginning.

And suddenly, she was back in Gurmak, the dwarven kingdom from which she hailed from, dining in one of its bars. Laughter and the warmth of other dwarvas surrounded her. Some making lewd jokes while others merely making pleasant conversation, Hesiah didn't care so long as she was there, surrounded by friends and not trapped inside stone cold prison.

She laughed at some crude joke one of the regular customers and took a long pull from the tankard in her hand, the strong taste lichen ale swirling inside her mouth. When she was finished, she banged the tankard on the counter for more.

A barmaid came and refilled it for her and then, at Hesiah's order, set a plate of roast nug in front of her. Hesiah's mouth watered at the smell of the spices and the sight of the golden brown skin just waiting for her to sink her teeth into.

And then…and then…the dream of her dwarven kingdom snapped like a piece of thread and she was back in her prison cell, away from the bar and the food and the ale and the laughter of other dwarvas surrounding her…

One of the creatures was coming to open her cell and drag her away. It was of the smaller variety that she had seen, the one that reminded her of dwarvas who should be dead and rotting in the Stone's embrace.

Hesiah didn't know how she knew, but she did. When that steel door swings open, Hesiah could do nothing to stop the dwarva-monster from dragging her away, to that place where they had taken Fran and so many others.

Now, it would be her screams that would echo across the Deep Tunnels, and there would be no one to hear her. Almost as if on cue, the great door swung open, creaking noisily as it did so.

Hesiah's eyes watched fearfully as the creature swaggered over to the dark corner of her cell, not a care in the world. Milky white eyes stared at her hungrily, its claws stretching out to grab her.

Is this it?

A thin, keening wail escaped her. The dwarva then realized that, after all she'd been through, she wanted to live damn it. She wanted to live long enough to see all these creatures destroyed.

A roar rose from somewhere in the vicinity of the door and Hesiah saw, no hallucinated—she was sure of it, a beardless dwarva sprinting across the room with a greatsword in his hands.

His eyes were alight with a fire that Hesiah herself had not seen in a long time.

"Don't you dare touch her, you scum!" the dwarva screamed and the dwarva-monster turned in his adversary's direction in time for Hesiah's hallucination to ram the hilt of his sword in the monster's stomach.

Amazingly, the monster fell to the floor. But that wasn't right.

Hallucinations can't touch the monsters.

But this one did, and it did more than touch. The beardless dwarva raised its greatsword high and brought it down with a sickening crunch against the monster stomach. Blood spattered their faces. Unconsciously, Hesiah licked the warm blood that flowed down her face.

The dwarva-monster didn't get up.

The beardless dwarva turned to her and he paled when he saw her face. For the first time, fear crossed his face. "Ancestors have mercy," he whispered and his weapon slipped through his shaking fingers. It clattered noisily to the floor.

"What happened to you?" he asked. But Hesiah was barely listening, for she knew now that this dwarva was no cruel trick of her imagination. No phantasm, no matter how powerful, could have downed the monster.

He was real.

In that moment, Hesiah didn't see the fear in her rescuers eyes as he looked down on her or the exhausted slump of his shoulders.

No, Hesiah saw none of these things. All she saw on her savior's face was something that she thought would never see again, something that her survival instinct told her to give up on but was now being handed to her in the form of this beardless dwarva.

In this dwarva's face, she saw hope.

Urk! I can't believe I wrote the eating-the-corpse scene. Yuck! Sorry I put you guys through that but rest assured that this is relevant to the plot and not just the product of watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre too many times. :/

Oh, and I'll probably be rewriting some scenes to make the story flow better, if I do, the chapter I replaced or edited would have the sign [edited] on the dropdown table of contents.

Or I'll simply post updates telling you guys which chapter I edited. I'm still thinking.

Oh, one last thing, on pronounciation:

Hesiah is pronounced Heh-say-ah not Hes-ya