A/N: Hey guys! Its been a while, hasn't it? Sry, yah no, school, soccer and more school… anyways, I wrote this over break. Hope ya like it!
Disclaimer: uh…I don't own anything that appears in GCL's Ella Enchanted.
…Eric…
I barely had time to ponder what I should do now that I was free. All of a sudden light poured in the passage as more guards rushed in, who proceeded to seize me roughly and marched me out in the brilliant sun. There, in that courtyard I got my first glimpse of someone I soon became very familiar with. The General.
As guards bound my wrists I studied the man in front of me. Compared to ogre-sized guards around him, he was small, human sized. Despite his size, each guard stood rigid, organized and at attention. I felt a pang of homesickness wash over me as squinted at the guards who stood very like my pompous butler. Taylor and I used to snicker about his stiff manner back home. However, I felt no such amusement at the sight of these stiff backs.
"So, look who finally decided to wake up." He said mockingly, in my native tongue. "I trust my twin guards were as civil as appropriate to our little princling?" He emanated disdain from the twisted sneer to his strolling gate as he approached me. In his left hand he held a sparkling blade that he casually tweaked with his right thumb.
"Ah yes. Blood." He whispered, brushing cold fingers across my chest. I flinched and the guards holding me cackled.
"Now for a few questions for our hostage. Do tell, you will sincerely regret silence." The soldiers tightened their grip for emphasis.
"First, does your family possess an amber stone set in a pure gold ring?" My silence was rewarded with a slap from the General.
"Look at me, boy." He growled, shoving the sword at a tender area. The guards chuckled again as I gulped and stared into piercing blue eyes. The General sneered and said, "Answer me or one goes."
"No." I said shortly, answering his question.
"Are you sure?" He said, pushing the point deeper into my trousers. "Liars are forced to eat what we cut off," he continued, savagely. Unable to step back, I nodded with force.
His blade dropped and I let out the air trapped in my lungs.
"Alright, next. Have you ever associated with this woman?" One of the twins handed him a tightly rolled up scrolled. Unfurling it roughly, he exposed a large poster reading:
WANTED:
ELVIN MOTHER, 10 HANDS TALL, BROWN EYES, HAIR.
HALF ELVIN, HALF HUMAN DAUGHTER, UNKNOWN APPEARANCE
Below the curling script there was a picture of the mother, a delicate featured woman with large, somber eyes shaped like tear drops. Full lips, set close underneath her button nose, opened slightly to display pointy teeth. A frame of chocolate curls brought her small face forward. Her expression in the picture was one of utter defiance, tinted with regal pride and an obvious flair of protectiveness.
Déjà vu hit me over the head like a tumult of icy rain. The shape of her face looked so…familiar. And the feisty look, I just couldn't quite place it. All the while I had been staring open-mouthed at the drawing.
"So…?" The blade flew to my jaw and snapped it shut. Jolted back to reality, I hesitated. I must play this out right, I thought, I need more information.
Putting on a fake, glazed look, I said in aw, "She's so beautiful."
"Whatever turns you on. This bitch escaped some years ago, then died right when my men finally found her seven years later. Her kid escaped and was never seen." He explained.
"I'd remember someone that stunning." I continued convincingly. My acting skills had been sharpened to a point at the many balls my mother made me attend. I was especially accomplished at faking interest.
"Yah, yah. Not like we thought you would." The knife was still pointed at my chest, but had retreated to two hand lengths away.
"Next. Do you know anyone with special healing powers, powers to raise persons from a cold grave, truth seeing, mind reading, invisibility, etc? Tell my boy." He increased his intensity that had wavered as the sword returned to kissing my navel.
"No." I half squeaked as the pound ground into my flesh. I sucked in my stomach and held my breath. As scared for my life as I was, these questions intrigued me and I took careful notes in my head.
"You know, my prince, I haven't given you a correct display of our methods here. We aren't usually as quick to chop. No," he said sonically. "We like to go slowly." His thin lips spread into a manic grin, identical to the expressions surrounding me. His sword brushed up my thigh and along the pads of muscle on my chest. He motioned lazily with two fingers and the twin guards spin me around. The sea of possessed grins marched on all sides of me as we returned to the dingy corridor. "So, I'd like you to meet your new companion. Mr. Prisc Lassh," the General added.
(A/N: pronounced 'pris-ck laus-sh')
A figure I hadn't noticed slunk out of the shadows, bent over. The dim, dirty light that managed to penetrate the evilness revealed a grotesquely thin man so tall that even hunched, he reached the height of the tallest, burliest guard. A thin, long scar ran down his forehead, over a knobby temple and across his protruding cheekbone. Like a trickle of blood. I gulped and shrunk against the guards.
His eyes were murky black holes: empty. Those mysterious orbs focused on the General and a quick pulse of recoil flashed through the blackness.
Then he looked at me. And smiled. His eyes roamed over my bare, golden chest, hesitating on my chiseled torso and the peek of fuzz from my waistband that faded into my navel. His craving, anticipating glare instinctively made me cover myself with my hands. His thin, white fingers twitched suggestively. Pleasure, like nothing I had ever seen, filled the space in those pupils like a flame.
You will take this prisoner to the cage. Let him meet his other new companion, the Apron." The General ordered Prisc Lassh. Again I saw the dull frightened look assume the torturer's expression.
Child abuse. I hypothesized. Maybe by the General himself, or some other high-ranking officer. He feels lonely, an outsider because of his height and vents through torture. My stomach clenched.
I should have been focusing on the General's words and the matter at hand. What was the Apron? Some kind of torture machine? Why were they interrogating me about some elf? But I had always had a knack for reading people's pasts from emotions. It had become a habit after years of guessing games I played with myself during monotonous council meetings.
And from my analyzation of Prisc, I came to feel sorry for him. Very backwards considering the situation, I know.
Prisc Lassh nodded, head down. The guards jostled me along the corridor, in front of the torturer and the General. All the way through the maze I felt those black eyes drilling into my bare back like barbs.
We came to a thick wooden door, which swung open easily. They pushed me inside and it closed easily behind my new "friend". I doubted it would be so easy getting out.
A/N: I kno, im a tad rusty, but what did u think? ppls tell!