The Dungeon Master’s Pet

CHAPTER ONE

            As my captors chain me back to the wall by my wrists, locking my ankles in iron manacles, I’m too weak to fight.  My clothes hang in tatters; breeches filled with holes, shirt nothing but a few strips of fabric down my front barely protecting my modesty. 

                Not that it matters in this place.

                My back is completely without cloth, my skin covered in scarlet stripes left by the dungeon master’s whip.  In some places the bones of my spine show ivory through the blood.  If you look carefully at my sides you can count every rib in my body, even in the dank gloom of this leaky dungeon.  They have starved me, beaten me, and chained me, what more can they do?  I can’t fight, my wrists and ankles are rubbed raw, and so is my back.  My long black hair is matted into a sort of blanket, and my once flashing green eyes are now dull.  They won’t let me sleep (well, technically it’s relaxing meditation), and now they must have a guard carry me to whatever torture awaits me.  By my pointy elven ears, if my training master could see me now!  Bound like one of the human farm cows led to slaughter, and not even trying to fight like they do.

                I pull myself up by grabbing my chains as the healer comes in.  She’s the only even slightly sympathetic one in this accursed place. 

                “Elyria, come now.  The only one you have to fear here is the dungeon master.  I’m the mage who heals you remember?”

                “Yeah,” I reply my voice saturated with sarcasm, “this coming from the woman who lends her magic to the man who nearly kills me everyday.”  Her face turns stony.

                “You know I have no choice in the matter.”  she says in a low, chilling voice.  I try to scoff at her fakey intimidation techniques, but wind up gasping.  I see her hand, slowly turning into a fist and rotating towards herself.  She’s choking me!  As my eyes rim with black, I see hers have turned a lucid orange.  He’s in her, HE’S controlling her! 

                “Very good deduction my pet,” the dungeon master drawls, “no more healing for you.  I need a more cooperative spring of secret information.”  I leer at him while drawing deep breaths as he releases the healer‘s hold on me,

                “I will never give you information.  I don’t need sleep, and you’re forgetting the fact that I’m an elf.  We have our own magic.”

                “And are you forgetting, my pet, (I hate it when he calls me that) that my magic is stronger than yours?  And the fact that I have had this hold on you for nearly a year now?  If you are so strong, why have you not escaped by now?” 

                Shit.  He’s right.  I hate it when he’s right. 

                “I see from your silence that I am correct.  Come Khani,” he says to the healer, placing a hand on her shoulder “it is time to go.” 

                Did I mention I hate it when he’s right?

                As the door slams behind them, I slouch down from the pain racking my short frame.  What I didn’t tell that bastard was that my magic was long ago used up, fighting the men of his who finally succeeded in catching me by shooting my horse as I tried to flee.  I hope Nir is ok… she’s my Animagus friend who offered to help me on my mission. She transforms into a pure white warhorse mare, and she was the horse shot out from under me. 

‘Oh, Nir, I’m so sorry…’  I think to myself.  ‘I swore that I would protect you.  I tried…’ silent sobs shake my emaciated body.  ‘If you’re dead I will never forgive myself…’ 

‘Elyria?  Is that you?’  a small voice in my head whispers.  I catch my breath in the middle of a sob.  I dare to hope…

                ‘Nir?  Nir, is that you!?  Where are you!?’

                ‘I don’t know!  I… I… oh…’

                ‘Nir! Hang on!  Are you still there?  Nir!!!’  I call and call but I don’t get anything back in answer.  This time my sobs are audible and echo throughout my prison cell.