Was it Grutas, bogs, or maybe Scarfell after another piece of me? The steps came closer until I felt this person's hand on my chest. 'You're alright,' he said, in a hurried manner. 'What a bloody mess!'
'Kat? Is that you? Look what he did to me…'
'I'll get you out,' he said, shocking my face with a sponge of some kind to clear the clotted blood. His voice was reassuring and kind, and the more I heard of it, the less of Kat I recognised. 'Tell me who you are?'
Suddenly, without a parting word, this man's steps crunched out of earshot and I was relieved finally to see the pale moonlight in my right eye. 'Hello?' I hissed. 'Are you there?'
'About time!' came Scarfell's abrupt and impatient bellow. 'They were expected five hours ago!'
I froze, fighting spasms, and through the opening slit of one eye, I saw flaming torches in the night and an anxious looking Scarfell hurrying down the temple steps, flanked by his constant giant and that lying bitch who led me here. 'Travelling has been difficult,' she explained to Scarfell, moving directly for the tall doors and the bogs before it. 'Your removal of his eye will not please them. Not one bit, wizard.'
'That was personal,' replied Scarfell, without regret.
Arriving at the tall doors, Grutas saw to the heavy wooden block used to fix them shut. The doors opened inwardly, and Scarfell threw up his arms to two new arrivals.
'Welcome ladies! Come! Rest yourselves!'
Two females entered the fort. Identical to the green-eyed woman, they were also dressed in similar dark and all too revealing gowns. These alluring triplets embraced one another with stiff hugs, whilst obedient bogs sealed the doors once more.
'Oh, you're for it now!' said a minuscule voice in my head.
'Who's there?' I whispered, as the women followed Grutas and Scarfell into the unassuming temple. At that time, I had no idea that a worm had just popped out of a crack in my post and propped itself inside my ear. It was an uncomfortable sensation, as if being tickled by the blunt end of a pencil. I shook my head to free it but the thing wouldn't budge.
'Relax mate,' it said. 'Promise I won't go any deeper than this. Say, this wax here would make for great insulation! Mind if I take some with?'
'Yes! No! What are you? What you want?'
'I'm a worm. And I can't lay eggs if that's what you're thinking? Was just like you mister… but now I'm a worm.'
Perhaps I'd flipped sometime during unconsciousness, on the wrong side of sanity? That seemed likely, until I remembered where I was, and how anything here was possible.
'Mind if I sleep here the night?' the worm asked. 'It's dead cosy, you know.'
'No!' I squirmed. 'What do you want worm? You can't stay there!'
'Come for the company mostly! Ain't had a yap in donkeys years, and she ain't eaten in as long a while! Starving she is!'
'She? Which one?'
'The three are one! And if you're tied up here you're sure enough on the menu! That wizard brings food here for her, like he did me. Promised me a wish he did!'
I listened intently now to the creepy crawly. 'Sometimes she hunts the food herself,' he added, enjoying my attention; 'but most scatter before she can get to changing.'
'Changing?'
'She a monster, mate!' it squealed, as if common knowledge. 'Wizard wants the whole Distinct Earth for himself, doesn’t he? Well that monster has lived in this forest for a thousand years — it's hers! They have an arrangement now though.'
'The Scurge!' I gasped, after another hot sting and cold spasm.
'So that's what they call it!” The worm said. “Better hope she bites the brain first, mate. That should send you out nice and quiet…'
Predators of the Under Realms — Scurge: female monstrosity that feeds on the marrow of men. She was a honey trap, luring victims with lusty promises before transforming and devouring those poor devils, a creature with an insatiable appetite and no known weakness: an immortal. The woman I met in the forest, the two who just entered this fort, together making the Scurge.
'Wizard provides her with a regular feeding,' said the worm, now dangling from my earlobe, 'and he can have the whole realm so long as her hunger is satisfied. She chewed on my guts a good while, let me tell you!'
'I need to get out of this!' I grimaced, tugging at my bonded wrists. 'Can you help me? Cut me out of these ropes!'
'Sorry mate — no teeth. Don't worry though, if you turn into a worm then there is plenty space in the post for both of us. But if you turn into a bird then forget we ever had this conversation! Name's Gus by the way!'
Gus returned to his hidey-hole in the post while I continued to struggle; but no amount of effort could set me free from this sacrificial post.
***
Dampness and melancholy had set throughout the cellblock. The Gorgon kept Harmony and Kat awake with her incessant sobbing; ignoring her was the only thing to be done. No others stirred, and the naked man hadn't woken since his last episode.
With his cheek pressed against bars, Kat scrutinized and smirked at the many freaks here, but his gaze always found its way back to a glum faced Harmony Valour. 'Can I ask a question?' he said, rousing her from boredom.
'Anything samurai, anything at all.'
Kat shuffled nearer her bars, and Harmony was open faced with curiosity. She waited intrigued, and Kat waited too, composing himself before asking this most important question: 'What,' he started, softly, 'is Heaven like?'
Harmony sighed, seemingly unsurprised. 'Have you someone waiting for you there?” she said. “A loved one?'
'That was not my question.'
Wearing a troubled expression, Harmony rubbed the skin at her elbow.
'Well?' Kat insisted. 'What is Heaven like?'
'The subject is not permitted to be discussed outside your own life support,' she replied. 'It is a question I have been asked countless times since my exile, from countless lost souls, and my answer is always the same — Heaven holds something for everyone, it will warm the coldest heart, and the view of the universe would humble the greatest man.' The angel then set her forehead against her knees. 'I wish to return so very much.'
Kat slunk, satisfied with the answer.
***
I was awake to see in the morning, and it seemed the whole fort was too. My left eye-socket had scabbed over again, and as I searched the crowd for the possible identity of last night's Samaritan, I saw only the unpleasant faces of Scarfell, Grutas, and numerous smears of bogs in preparation.
Suddenly, a great tribal symbol clashed from inside the temple, stirring the army into a practised drill. Starting at the bottom step of the temple, the bogs formed a circle stretching behind my post and to encompass most of the fort. This was rehearsed, precise, and I could only surmise how many times the Scurge had dined inside this black ring. Grutas loitered at the smoking temple door beside an impatient looking Scarfell. Once the wizard received word from inside that temple, he eventually turned to address his restless admirers. 'They are ready!' he announced to adoring snorts. 'May you all enjoy it! May you all survive it!'
Scarfell stepped aside to reveal the seductive triplets at the door, their chins held high and their barely covered bosoms causing bogs to rub their groins. As far as I could tell, the only apparent difference between these sisters was their eye colour: hypnotic green, sky blue, and startling scarlet.
***
A pensive Harmony watched the bright window at the far end of the cellblock, the light giving a gleam to her constricted wings. Kat's patience meanwhile was being tested by the crying Gorgon, still sobbing under her bagged head. 'Shut up!' he snapped. 'Shut your mouth or my sword will open your stomach!'
'Kat!' yelled Harmony, appalled. 'Not everyone is as strong as you!'
