life could get any worse - or any better, for that matter. It seemed to her that existence had become something of a slow and tedious torture whether it took place in the dungeons or not.
In Naxus’ dungeons, every prisoner was tortured for several hours a week. Sometimes the torture was so terrible they would not survive it, other times it was simply menial labor. It all depended on the torturer and his mood.
Iris had been down in the depths of the royal palace dungeons for an indeterminate period of time. There were no day or night cycles down here, there was only the volume and duration of screaming, moaning, and general misery from her fellow prisoners.
A surprising number of women had been incarcerated by Naxus. There were at least two dozen in the cell Iris shared. There were men too, of course, but they were kept separately so that no comfort might be found in the sexes lying together.
“Did I hear what?”
Thalia smiled and wrapped her damaged arm with a dirty scrap of fabric. “I heard that king is back - and General Naxus is dead.”
“What king?” It was a stupid question, but dungeon imprisonment wasn’t conducive to having the quickest mental reaction time. The dungeons were lit with greasy torches, so the entire place smelled like barbecue the entire time but without almost any food to eat. Sometimes a prisoner would snuff out a torch and they would take turns sucking on the grease soaked wrappings which were the richest source of calories in the awful place.
“Archon. He's come back to rule over us all.”
Iris felt her stomach start to do flip-flops of extreme nervousness. Archon had returned. Why? Was she being arrogant if she thought it was on her account?
It barely seemed to matter. From the cell in which she had been thrown, beaten and bloodied, it was an irrelevance. The king didn’t know where she was, unless the general had told him, and that seemed unlikely.
“Come on then! Out you all come! It’s your lucky day!” The guards started hollering at the lot of them, confirming Thalia’s words.
“They’re letting us go! The king is pardoning all prisoners!”
The cry was taken up by all the ladies, and what ensued was best described as a stampede from the dungeons. Iris let the others go first. She assumed that she would still be put to death. No doubt the king they were referring to was Naxus. He had the bearing of a male who would declare himself king just to make the peasants bow.
Shuffling toward the end of the line, Iris tried not to get her hopes up. If she did somehow get out of here alive, she was going to keep her head down for the rest of her life. Better have a head down than no head at all. She had not enjoyed her incarceration even a little, and facing inevitable execution had not been any easier on her sanity.
Ahead of her, the women had all formed something like a receiving line, and were going past thanking the one who had set them free. When Iris looked in his direction, she thoroughly expected Naxus.
But it wasn’t Naxus.
It was Archon. He was standing handsome as ever, wearing the most astonishing gold scale armor which gleamed more brightly than the sun she had not seen in a long time. He was there to take credit for his alleged act of mercy. He was there, perhaps, to look for her.
Iris pulled her cloak up over her head and kept her face bowed. She was indistinguishable among the stinking wretched women who emerged from the dungeon. Or at least, so she thought. They all passed by the king, bowing, scraping, crying their gratitude.
“Thank you, thank you so much! I will forever be in your debt!” Thalia wailed in front of Iris.
It occurred to Iris that she shouldn’t stay silent. Some noise should emerge from her, even if she didn’t mean the words, or even if the words weren’t the same as the others words.
“Oh thank you wonderful dick bag king whose fault this all is,” she gasped, putting emphasis on the nice words and muttering the not so nice ones under her breath. It gave her a certain satisfaction to defy Archon one more time.
A large, scaled hand closed around her arm. She was yanked from the line, roughly and with urgency. Her cry of horror was matched with the king’s roar of discovery as the other hand ripped the cloak