The Four - Chapter Two

Chapter Two

In the darkness, Sam took deliberate breaths to slow her panic. 

Her hands were tightly bound by rope. She was unsure about the direction of her bare feet, but she was conscious of her naked figure, which only encouraged the anxiety behind the blindness. She felt her wings shudder in fright, but she inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, an attempt to subdue her emotions, which felt incredibly feeble and vulnerable.

Her hearing was intensified due to her lack of vision. She heard the hustling movements and the chirping chattering people, a lot of people, and she smelled a variety of fresh food. Her nose tickled in disgust at the rushed smell of raw fish, and she felt herself gag. Sam began to presume that she was being dragged through a town within the castle on a market day. However, silence soon deafened her ears in the town market in a short spell over time, but Sam could only estimate how much time had passed because, to her, it felt meaningless. 

Sam continued to inhale and exhale, but she knew the people she could not see could most certainly see her. ‘A dragon…’ Fearful whispering began to resound loudly in her senses, although the voices were hushed. 

‘Move creature.’ The captain pulled her forward by the neck when Sam’s bare feet started to dig into the ground and falter in the town’s fright.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Beat, beat, beat.

Sam was led from the stares that she could only feel, and she started to smell a trickle of dampness, accompanied by an intensifying rush of warmth and crackling wood. Sam felt the guards dropping away one by one as she was led further towards the warmth. Once the heat encompassed all her senses, even smothering her vision behind the fold, the captain’s abrupt grip upon her neck forced her to stop and stand still. Appreciative and intrigued tutting swept around Sam.

‘What little gift do you bring to my feast, my most loyal servant, dear Priest?’

‘Your Majesty,’ Sam’s right arm was gently brushed by the silky sweep of the captain’s cloak. By the longevity of the captain’s pause and rise, Sam assumed it had been a deep bow.

Beat, beat, beat.

Sam’s wings fluttered in anticipation as much as she attempted to hide them in the darkness behind her blindfold. 

‘Priest!’ The Majesty’s voice cried. ‘A dragon?! You would not dare!’

‘Your Greatness, please remain calm, she is but a creature from the wood. Most certainly not a dragon.’

‘Why do you lie?! Its hands are bound and I cannot see the eyes, nor the venom contained within its sight to turn me to stone!’

‘Your Majesty…’

‘Do not speak when I speak! It is forbidden! Why would you restrain this creature? If it is not a dragon, then prove it!’

A shuffle from the silk cloak beside Sam made her aware of the captain’s hesitant tension coming to light for the first time that day. However, a moment passed in the shuddering of the captain before it departed, and Sam sensed his composure calmly settle once again. ‘One movement creature and it’ll be your last.’ 

The captain unbound her hands first, followed by a regrettable sigh as he removed her blindfold. Her eyes quivered, and Sam thought she would remain blind until her golden irises slowly focused on the room. She looked at her hands, which were now unbound and slowly loosened her wrists with a crack. She threw a contemptuous glance at her captive, Priest, before she took in her surroundings. 

A throne room was presented to her which was suspiciously bare apart from emboldened four flags emblazoning the slits in stones for windows where the pink sky peeked through, all bearing golden dragons. Her instincts told her not to look at the King, but she found nothing inspiring in the dampened stone great hall, and found that he was the most imposing as he sat upon a golden throne. 

His hands were placed upon the throne armrests and delicately placed upon the dragon heads that decorated it. He did not have the darkened complexion of the natives, the elongated nose and the jutting jaws of nobility, but his skin was similar to hers in a past life. 

Sam narrowed her eyes.

The King responded and smiled a toothless grin at Sam, letting out a slow tutting sound.

Sam hissed.

Sam’s foreign hissing surprised the King, and he cautiously glanced at the captain. Priest clicked his fingers sharply, and guards were immediately present, surrounding Sam with bows aimed. One of the King’s guards let off a warning arrow, whizzing past Sam’s ear, narrowly missing her head.

‘One more move, creature!’ Priest shouted and held his hand high in the air, to which all of the King's guards lowered their bows, which had been threateningly aimed directly at her. Sam growled instinctively but lowered her tone in regretful defeat. 

She concluded that she could not fight the King’s guard, the town outside, the soldiers on the turrets, but she let out a low hiss as she glared at the King upon his dragon throne.

Tension continued to rise in the atmosphere until the King cocked his head at an angle, and then spontaneously cackled madly. ‘You see the fear she holds?’ He cackled. ‘The fear the dragon-kind holds for me, your King!’

Sam cast her eyes downwards, but the guards all laughed in unified agreement with the King. The guards smiled and falsely laughed at the King’s words, most likely to please him, apart from Priest, who remained tight-lipped and watched Sam warily.

‘Now, now,’ the King’s laughter subsided to a gasped chuckle, and he lowered his hand in command for the great hall to return to silence, and for the guards to relax their weapons.  

‘Priest, can you understand her language or where she has come from?’

‘No, your Highness,’ Priest kept his cautious and suspicious stare directed at Sam. ‘But, I perceive that she understands ours.’ The King’s mad humour flickered slightly, like a lightbulb dimming, as he perched further forward on the throne and narrowed his eyes at Sam. ‘Well, well…’ 

He uttered and frowned at the creature before him. 

‘Bring me my pipe!’ The King ordered with a click of his fingers. ‘Only the pipe can provide me with the answers we seek about the dragon creature.’

A door curtained by a black veil to the left-hand side of the throne, at the back of the throne room, unseen from Sam’s position near the grand entrance, shimmered and then creaked slightly ajar. A dripping black cloaked hood slipped from behind the barely open veiled door. It starkly contrasted the King’s guards’ deep, rich navy blue, yet it was so similar. 

‘Jack…?’ 

Sam’s eyes widened in hope, which made the hood halt. Sam’s whisper caught the attention of the Priest, who placed a firm grip around her neck again in fear of another outburst. The King read her hopefulness with clarity, and his toothless smile widened. ‘What is this foreign name she speaks of?’ 

The King frowned slightly again, but the room all shrugged in response. 

'Walk forward further to my throne, Slave, I did not command you to stop,’ the King ushered the hood’s approach to his side, threateningly, all the while keeping his eyes on Sam. 

Slave approached the King’s side and fell to their knees, holding up an ivory pipe in a dragon design, to the King, displaying only the highest honour to the King on his throne. Sam’s nose tickled at the essence sizzling in the pipe.

‘Jack?’ Sam asked the room again, the confusion flickered and danced across her face as she watched the strange and honouring display despite it being, most definitely, a crackpipe in Slave’s hands. 

‘I think she wishes to see your face, Slave.’ The King chuckled menacingly, which was met by pleasing laughter from the guard. The King took the dragon crackpipe from Slave’s upheld grasp and commanded Slave to stand. 

The black hood shook in despair, but choiceless, Slave rose unsteadily to their feet to reveal the face hidden underneath the black hood. The hood lowered, Sam’s eyes blinked fearfully, and the King’s guard laughed alongside the King’s mad cackling. 

Only Sam and Priest remained silent. 

Priest turned his face away from the sight of Slave’s face and hid his expression from the King, but Sam did not notice, for she could only behold Slave’s scarred and tortured cast-down eyes. Under the hood, Slave bore deep and bruised lashes across their cheeks, and mutilated, burned lips, so much so that their face was not human and unrecognisable to be either a man or woman. 

Sam raised her horrified glance upwards to Slave’s head to see the colour of their hair, but there was not a strand of hair left but white ashes on their scalp. 

‘My god!’ Sam gasped. ‘What have you done?!’

Slave kept their eyes facing the grand hall floor, but there was just a glimmer of a glisten that could only be a tear.

‘Go! Get out of my sight, Slave!’ The King rolled his eyes at Sam’s contemptuous hissing language, to which Slave pulled their hood up immediately and gladly slipped behind the veiled door. Priest turned his expressionless face to the King and finally loosened his tight grip on Sam’s neck. 

‘You never appreciate Slave to their full extent,’ the King waved his hand towards Priest, who remained tactfully silent. 

‘Now, for the pipe, solely for deep contemplation of course,’ the King’s eyes glazed over in sheer delight, as he held the smoking crack pipe in his hand with a long inhale.

The pipe sizzled and the essence drifted poisonously around the throne room, as the King’s eyes rolled backwards in an addictive appreciation.

‘It’s time for us to leave now, creature.’ Priest pulled Sam from the throne room but cast a doubtful glance at the King as they, and the King’s guard, departed and the wooden throne room doors clattered shut.