"Hey, if i catch you coming near my skeever or any of them that go near it, I'll eat you for dinner instead," Jaxx frowned, but responded out of instinct. "Nyvis didn't cook me well enough, but... oh she's gone..." Since the girl was busy doing some sort of orgy with the guy that was raping the other one, Jaxx couldn't finish his annoying answer, forcing his eyes to turn back to the darkness, away from the skeevers that were eating that chick's prey. He wasn't paying attention to the details of what was happening behind him, nor how many customers the hooker had already taken, nor how many shivs there were under ther tallest orc's long rags, as he approached a dark elf suspiciously and silently. With his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, the breton peeked everywhere away from that Carina's area, but her bait seemed to be luring all the skeevers nearby.
After moments of fruitless, despairing searches, Jaxx heard a scream, as well as probably all the prisoners in that floor. He turned around to find the rapist being the victim, drowning a bedroll in his blood. His breathing was loud and disturbed the silence in the floor, being the only noise that surpassed it the girls' angry orders and the chittering skeevers. With a penis in their hands, as well as a shiv, each, they forced the man to leap to his death by the pile of bones which had just served a meal to the other rats, without eyes, blood, testicles and perhaps other organs. His screams were loud, like the previous, but this time, brief. Once their meal was consumed, the small critters dispersed around multiple areas, allowing Jaxx to track one to its small cave. He stretched his hand inside the hole and clawed the ground he would find, trying to find a prey. Finally, he caught a tail between his fingers. "Aha!" After a few pulls to the surprisingly heavy skeever, Jaxx would be able to see the tip of its furry tail, peeking out of the rat hole. He pulled harder, and realized he hadn't dragged one, but five skeevers, tangled around each other. Their red eyes soon would blossom out of their grey bodies, all eying the man who dared to disturb their slumber. With quick jumps, they jumped out of each other's grasps and surrounded Jaxx as he held his rusty shiv pointing towards the one he had grabbed first. One bit his leg from behind, the other was kicked by his left foot, another jumped on his back and tried to take him to the ground, craving for another human prey. Jaxx rolled to his right, hurting the skeever on his back and causing it to shy away back inside its cave. After quickly standing up, he sprinted towards the prisoners, with a faded plan sketched in his mind. One of the remaining four rats was nibbling on his arm, something of which Jaxx became aware of when the pain slowed him down during the jog. His right hand, used to quick weapons like daggers, was capable of killing the skeever with no big issues, giving Jaxx his dinner right there. Once the breton found the guts to turn around and find his enemies, to his amazement, he found none. The prisoners, once the rats came near them, were allowed to hunt with no big effort, and therefore got themselves a dinner for saving Jaxx's ass.
Thurayah shook her head in some disapproval when he returned, hinting that she could have watched the whole scene. "Hey, I brought dinner, didn't I?" Thurayah nodded and stretched a torch she had taken from the wall, offering help to cook his catch. After handing the fat mammal to his friend, Jaxx sat on his bedroll and awaited for the flesh to actually gain taste, as well as lose all its possible microbes.
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Another night, another battle for Nyvis. "I must rest! I have to!" She would need to rest, innevitably. As she took off her armor, she tried to muster some courage to actually dive in her bed and let sleep take care of her. After a deep breath, she allowed her nude skin to touch the soft silk, and closed her eyes. Soon her dreams would drag her away from Drahonnal.
Once she opened her eyes, Nyvis would find herself in a familiar room. Dolls on shelves, small, but comfortable bed, a cup of tea half filled, always waiting on the bedside table and a large wooden wardrobe with roses carved on the wooden knobs. It was her room from her childhood. For the first time in a long time, Nyvis felt like she was actually having a pleasant dream.
One doll fell out of the shelf, rolling to under her bed. The thought about picking it up frightened Nyvis. Possibly Vaermina had hidden something horrific under it, waiting to charge at Nyvis to punish her mind cruelly. But it wasn't her choice whether she would go or not after the doll. Nyvis' eyes half closed as she knelt down and lifted the sheets to pick the doll up. She only opened them again after a few idle seconds on that position. Nothing happened. With a sigh of relief, Nyvis smiled and put the doll back on the shelf. But before she could turn around, all the dolls fell from their place. This time she figured out why they had fallen: the ground was shaking.
The furniture moved around the room, and the tea would soon be spilled on the ground, where Nyvis tried to remain on her feet with a lot of trouble, all thanks to the tremors. The earthquake would soon become powerful enough to form cracks on the walls and cause pieces of the blue ceiling to fall. The imperial rushed to open the door and walk down the familiar wooden stairs as they were quickly chewed by the tightening fissure below them.
The exit door was where it had always been, at the end of the corridor, next to the family portrait, in which Nyvis still hadn't her braid. Nyvis opened the door and noticed a new horror speechlessly. The house was everything there was. Outside the door, there was nothing but a dark abyss, a door to nothingness, the end of everything. Nyvis turned around again, to find another way out, just in time to see her house being torn apart by the mysterious force that crushed every room and every piece of furniture.
She was about to take a few steps towards the kitchen, but was stopped by a large hole, growing on the ground, flames coming from the inside. A skinny man, with rotten flesh was trying to crawl out of it. By looking at its green eyes, brown hair, funny looking goatee and unique ring in the right hand, Nyvis realized with shock that it was her dead father, raising again in front of her eyes. Failing to rid himself of the burden of the flames, the skinny man pointed at Nyvis. "Down here, there's still room for you!"
Nyvis was too frightened to reply, and was strong enough to jump above the hellish pit and dodging her father's claws. As she thought, she found her family portrait burning in the wall, completely away from her grasp, making the imperial powerless to save it.
A window was still in sight. Its glass was broken, but Nyvis would be able to avoid being crushed to death if she managed to go through. As the floor opened behind her, the jailmaster grabbed a plank above the window from the other side, placed a boot on the parapet, and proceeded to climb to the top of her former house. "See. Nyvis?" The same dying voice from all her nightmares whispered. "You're still a little girl. Powerless about the fate of anything, including yourself..."
Still ignoring her mysterious foe, Nyvis kept climbing the loosening planks, all the way to the iron roaster at the top of the roof, despite the taunts of the voice. "Getting tired yet?" "You're alone..." "No escape."
Finally, she was able of tangling her fingers around the pole that held the roaster proudly at the top of the house, looking around as all the planks flew in different directions, reducing her room every second. It didn't take long before all she had room for was her right foot, and not soon after, she would be falling into the abyss herself, unable of screaming, or breathing.
Nyvis fell in a familiar dusty location. A few glances around were enough to know. She was just outside of Drahonnal. "Stay down, whore!" An ebony armored man said, as he kicked her to the ground with his tough and cold boot. Him and another man grabbed her arms and dragged her all the way to a wooden cross, lying on the ground. They didn't waste any time to get four ebony made nails through her wrists, and then her feet. "Aaargh!" A paranoidically familiar voice silenced her. "Enough, slut! Its your fault that you are here, never defy Drahonnal!" Nyvis' dying brown eyes looked up, only to find another version of herself, with orange ones, staring at her, while she bled to death. Her other self's smile was both maddening and annoying, because of her being powerless to fight back. A familiar hole opened below her cross, and Nyvis fell once again.
During the fall, her cross and nails vanished in orange sparks, leaving behind only the wounds. Once she landed, tiredly, Nyvis looked around again, her eyes sad like an old dog's, expecting nothing but pain and fear. She was at the chopping block, in Solitude, on her knees, being watched by all the prisoners she had as guests in her prison, including the new bloods. Their voices were unanimous and clear. "Kill! Kill! Kill!" A cold boot behind her back forced Nyvis to put her neck resting on the block, as the prisoners demanded death at an increasingly quicker rhythm. Unsurprisingly, Nyvis' headsman was, by no other means, herself. Her other self. She wore her revealing set of executioner's armor and was preparing to chop her own head off. She raised her axe while the crowd was at blazes, and dropped it at full speed, killing herself off and thus ending the nightmare.
Nyvis had fallen from her bed when she woke up, tears falling down her eyes. After wiping them away, she stood up and put her armor back on. "I can't rest... There's no way!" She resigned. Having nothing better to do, Nyvis chose to go downstairs and see herself how the brave little elf was doing in the cross. Surprisingly, another person was there as well, turned to his corpse, tied to a pole. Being watched by the two regular guards that patrolled the fortress inside it. "The elf died quickly? I've had prisoners that took twelve days in a cross to die..." The guards snapped out of their conversation and looked a lot more serious in her presence once it was known. "Oh, good night boss! Erm... Yes, he is dead... Elves aren't exactly tough, Miss Nyvis." She then stood in front of the newest member of Drahonnal and asked. "And who is this?" The guards, not being them the ones who had caught her, didn't know, but they answered what they could. "Uhm... Targon and Sleyan said she and another man had broken the perimeter, and offered resistence." Nyvis lifted the girl's chin, thinking she was falling asleep, with two fingers. "Is this true? What's your name?"
