The sound of the drips of water falling from the ceiling echoed through the dark empty cells. Forgotten for years and buried underground. They at least used to be empty for many years but now a new prisoner found himself locked in one of them.
Kass was waking up. He didn’t know where he was but the air was cool and it felt stale. He was sitting on a rough dirt floor. He didn’t know how he got here but it didn’t feel like he was in his mining settlement where they were going.
The last thing he remembered was that he and his warriors were traveling through the deep wild forests at the edge of the Drevov Mountains. A fierce battle broke out at night between them and the undead.
He couldn’t recall exactly what happened but he knew that his men were dying way too fast to the inhuman creatures. Some of the undead wielded rusted weapons and armor and others had strange small cages on them.
The last things he remembered were unnatural animal growls quickly getting near from behind and out of nowhere a blue light flashed in front of him. He tried to swing his sword at it but it disappeared and everything had gone black.
He finally opened his eyes. He was in a small dark cell the only light was from the fires burning somewhere in the corridor behind the door made of black iron bars. His head hurt as something hit him before he passed out.
Soon he realized that the iron bars weren’t the only thing restricting his freedom. There was something heavy and cold on his arms. Heavy iron cuffs were locked around his hands and chained to the wall.
Everything was silent except the drips of water that were constantly falling from the ceiling on the cobbled floor outside the cell and in the small puddles on the ground.
There were so many questions on his mind. “Where I am? Who captured me?” And the most important question was. What do they intend to do with him? He was a quite rich man running a mining and lumbering company. He was sure that he could come to an agreement with whoever captured him at least if they were human. If not it could be a slight complication, but he stayed calm for now.
He tried to look outside the cell but the chains rattled loudly as he moved and they didn’t allow him to get too far. There were other cells on the other sides of the corridor but it looked like they were all empty and the only source of light was a candle on a stand hanging from the wall.
From what he saw he deduced that he was underground and the wetness that was everywhere gave him a hint of where he was. “I must be in the Abandoned Prison,” he thought to himself.
The prison was flooded ten years ago and it was a ruin ever since then. It was destroyed by the water and the lighting. It was a storm so strong that some people thought that it was the wrath of the God of Justice punishing the sinful souls imprisoned here.
Since he wasn’t sure if he was the only prisoner, he called out “Hello is someone here?” But no answer came. He tried it again after a minute but the answer was the same.
He thought that no one answered him but suddenly he froze in place and his heart started beating fast. A woman made of transparent blue light appeared in front of his cell. Her eyes were cold and her face bared no emotions. She was flowing slightly above the ground and calmly observing him.
He instinctively crawled back and pressed himself against the wall. The creature was still looking at him and he didn’t even dare to breathe. There was no way of seeing what it thought or if it could even think like a human. It was a ghost. They were usually summoned by necromancers. They were powerful beings that one human alone usually couldn’t challenge.
The woman was young about ten years younger than him, probably in her twenties. She had chain mail armor with a shield and a sword. All he could do was just look at her with no escape. He didn’t dare to move to provoke her. Luckily she turned around after a few tense seconds and Kass let out a relieved breath but his heart still didn’t calm down.
He decided that he will not call anymore to don’t invite the ghost to come back. She looked like a guard. The fact that a ghost was guarding the prison meant that either the ghost awakened because of a magical anomaly from the drowned guards or they were summoned by necromancers.
It didn’t seem possible that the undead would capture him on their own because they didn’t have too much intelligence so he was probably a prisoner of a group of necromancers or some other being that could raise undead.
He thought that the best thing to do now was just to wait until some of his captors would come so he could negotiate his freedom. He decided just to lean on a wall and stare at the drips of water falling in the puddle on the ground until someone would come.
Kass wasn’t sure how much time passed but suddenly he heard footsteps coming through the corridor. He sat straight, tried to look confident, and show no signs of fear to make a good impression upon his captors and have better negotiating conditions.
Two women have appeared in front of his cell. One of them looked like she could have been a couple of years younger than Kass. Dark brown hair was failing under her shoulders and she was wearing a brown robe that reached barely above her ankles.
The other woman was older than him her hair was light brown but unlike her companion, her robe was black and reached all the way to the ground.
The older woman looked strict and she was carefully measuring him. The younger woman’s expression was cold so he couldn’t guess what she was thinking. “Look this one is awake,” said the older woman with a strict dominant voice. The younger woman didn’t answer, she just kept looking at him.
Kass didn’t like to waste his time so he immediately said “I would like to ask why am I imprisoned here, and what do you intend to do with me?” The older woman just looked in his eyes and said, “You will soon find out what awaits you here. We need humans like you for our experiments.”
That was surely a fate that he didn’t want to go through, but he was relieved that those who captured him were humans that he could reason with even though they seemed quite cold. “You are necromancers, are you going to turn me into undead?” he asked.
The woman slightly smiled. “Well, that is not nearly the end of things that we can do here, turning you into an undead just means showing mercy here. There are a lot more interesting ways to use experiment material.”
He was surprised with the ease that the woman spoke about things like that and he felt very uncomfortable when he imagined what could happen to him. But in spite of the worrying things that might await him he kept his composure.
“What happened with my warriors. Are they all dead?” he asked. “No, we are keeping some other men alive here like you. The rest is stored below. Don’t worry we did not leave any corpse to rot there they are all too useful for us to do that.” she said with a calm but dismissive voice.
She talked about his men like objects that they owned and could use them for whatever they wanted. He didn’t want to become one of them so he decided to propose a deal. ” I think that we could make an agreement.” He tried to sound as confident and as calm as he could.
“I am a rich man and I have a lot of influence in Grengrod. I can pay you how much you want, or bring any ingredients you need from the market if you let me go. And of course, you can keep all the other men. It’s just a price for my release,” he added.
He thought that he said it quite well so the deal should pass without a problem if they were reasonable people.
Suddenly an upset expression appeared on the younger woman’s face and she yelled at him. “You think we would stay here if we wanted anything from the city or from people like you? You will stay here no matter what you say. We don’t need anything from anyone.”
He was surprised by the sudden angered reaction but he saw that the older woman’s face didn’t change and she didn’t react in any way. Maybe she was used to her companion’s sudden outbursts of rage.
“Surely you must be a reasonable woman. I am sure that we can make a deal.” Kass looked at the older woman and hoped that she was able to realize how good his deal was for her.
“Guard come here,” she said calmly. A slight smile appeared on his face as he got ready to get his freedom back and he was counting in his head how much money it would cost him, he might not have been the most honest trader in Grengrod, sometimes even breaking the law to save profit but he always kept the deal.
The ghost guard that he had seen before flew in front of the cell. She picked up an iron circle with a couple of keys hanging from it from her pocket. The lock clicked and she opened the door. He felt cold when she was coming near. Her touch was freezing and as she unchained him from the wall he pulled away from her.
To his surprise, the ghost cuffed his hands behind his back. He couldn’t do anything about it, her grip was too strong even for someone with combat training like him.
He looked with an upset on his face at the older woman and said “What? You don’t understand. Did you even consider my deal?” The woman was completely calm and she just looked at him with contempt. “I think you are talking too much, but don’t worry it will pass after a day here.”
Kass was angered by the sudden turn of the situation but he didn’t have any other option than to do what they tell him because he knew that he doesn’t have any chance of escaping from the ghost.
When his feet were stepping on the wet cobbled floor of the corridor he noticed that there was a small stream of water flowing through the spaces between the cobbles and flowing down the stairs on the other side of the corridor. “This place really is a ruin,” he thought to himself.
He followed the two women through the corridor and he felt the cold air coming from the ghost behind which made him quite nervous. Most of the cells were empty but to his surprise, there were some of his warriors imprisoned here as well. He realized they didn’t answer him because they were still sleeping.
They also walked past a second ghost that was guarding the other half of the prison. He shivered when they walked past her and he felt like his chance of escape lowered a lot when there were two ghosts to deal with.
They led him up the stairs to an upper floor. The air was a bit fresher but there were no windows so they were still probably underground. The entire floor was one large corridor with several doors on every side.
They entered one of them. It was a quite small room with a big table made of dark wood in the middle a desk by the wall a couple of cupboards and the smell of burned wood entered his nose from the fireplace in the room.
There were many different jars on the desk some of them had liquids of many strange colors and others had even dead bugs, other insects, or mushrooms that he never saw before.
What was even scarier was the second desk at the other end of the room. There were many big and small thongs, knives, saws, iron rods, and other small tools.
His heart started beating faster and he stopped just at the edge of the room like he didn’t want to get any closer to the desk with the tools and he felt the pain as he imagined what they could do to him with them. Suddenly the ghost pushed him in with her freezing touch and the doors shut behind him.