Chapter 43
The dungeon door banged open and a horrific looking man barged in. Ksenia did not want him looking her way. Jaxom let her go as she scooted to the corner to play touched in the head. It seemed to have kept the other guards away from her. She could only hope it worked with this monster, too.
The man looked like his face had turned to plastic that had melted and was dripping off his face. He looked disgusting, a monster flexing his claws. He sounded even worse. Whatever handsome Jaxom had done, this monster was furious with him.
She didn’t want to leave the bruised and beaten man, but he couldn’t protect her.
Obviously, he couldn’t defend himself. The swelling around his blue eyes had gone down after his nap.
But, the rest of his body was a battleground of wounds.
She couldn’t figure out how he wasn’t screaming in constantly pain.
The worst part was there was nothing she could do for him.
Cuddling for heat was the least bit of comfort she could hope to give.
He’d clung to her in sleep like she was a lifeline.
She only been too happy to share heat with him in this cold place.
She watched Jaxom out of the corner of her eye. One usually thought of a prisoner in a dungeon as the bad guy. He’d been nothing but nice to her as they’d shared heat through the night. She’d have been hypothermic without him to cuddle.
The monster had the guards drag Jaxom from the small cell.
They chained him up spread eagle. His head hung like he could barely lift it.
She wasn’t surprised. The cuts and blood spoke of horrors he was apparently still going through.
She shuddered as the monster got out a whip and started using it on Jaxom.
The poor guy was groaning and panting in pain with every slash of the whip.
Ksenia wanted to shout at them but had no idea what she’d do if she could just get them to stop.
Whatever Jaxom had done, he didn’t deserve this type of abuse.
The monster kept screaming a question at him, but Jaxom refused to answer.
If only she had a knife she could throw at the monster, kill him. Or at best, make him go away.
Thoughts of her dad’s knives pulled at her.
It was almost like she could feel them in her mind.
Flickers of flame burning in the shape of a throwing knife.
The heat invited her closer. She wanted to get warmed by the flames, bathe herself in it.
In her mind, Ksenia felt the flame knives. They were real to her.
Jaxom screamed, hoarse and rough, breaking Ksenia’s weird little vision. He was coughing up blood as the monster slowly pulled a dagger out of his lung. Ksenia screamed in horror as blood dripped from the point of the knife, splattering on the floor. Jaxom fainted in his bondage.
The monster growled something at the guard and pointed at her. She did her best impression of insane as she rocked hard into the corner. The grotesque man leaned against her cell and stared at her. She didn’t dare make eye contact.
The monster barked a few more orders and stomped back out the door. Ksenia was only too grateful she didn’t pee her pants. Being wet in this cold would be horrible. Well, not as horrible as being whipped and stabbed, but still.
The guard shoved Jaxom back in the cell and left this little slice of hell.
Her one friend in the world was bleeding and coughing up blood, trying to gasp in air.
Ksenia ripped a piece of her tank top off and scooted to Jaxom as close as she could get.
The badly wounded man was trying to sit back up so she reached through the bars and helped him as best she could.
He wheezed as she pressed the clothe to the stab wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
Without a doctor, he was probably going to die.
Who knew what kind of diseases ran rampant down here.
Tears slipped down her cheeks as she watched him struggle to breath.
Jaxom gasped as few more times, then fainted again.
She was relieved he wasn’t feeling the pain at the moment.
One of the clasps on the leather wrapped around his arm had come apart. Blood was seeping underneath it. Dried blood was caked on the leather around the edges. For being forced to be naked, she was surprised they hadn’t taken the leather off, too.
Ksenia ripped another piece of clothe off her tank top.
She took the leather off and started cleaning up his arm.
All of that blood just looked uncomfortable and it was the only thing she could do for him at the moment.
The blood wiped of easily, still fresh. The bits of dried blood flaked off onto the dirty floor.
Another flake of blood among so many other drops of blood.
She turned his forearm over and sucked in a breath at the tattoo there.
Part of it was in her language, ‘Enemy My End’.
The underlines made it look like it was incomplete, as if it was a knowledge puzzle in a newspaper.
If it was a riddle, it was either eight or nine words.
She was leaning more towards eight. One line was attached to the beginning of the word ‘end’.
End.
Blend.
Send.
Friend.
Friend, she slowed down in thought.
The enemy of a friend.
Enemy?
Sun Tzu, maybe? She’d heard something about enemies and friends in a movie, or maybe read it in a book.
‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’. That filled in all the lines and included ‘end’ as part of the last word. There was a weird feeling of rightness in that quote. She’d never felt anything like it before, as if something outside of her was reassuring her about the current line of thought.
Was that a Sun Tzu quote from his book ‘Art of War’?
Ksenia had never read that book. But why would that quote, or proverb, or whatever, be partially written on Jaxom’s arm? He didn’t even speak her language. Unless, that script underneath could be a translation in his language?
There was a permanent ink marker in her bag, if she could get to the damn bag and her dad’s knives. She carefully put the leather wrap back on Jaxom’s forearm. The thought of the knives made them burn in the back of her mind again, like they were waiting to come out and play. So weird.
For some reason, in this new existence, Ksenia knew that tattoo needed the rest of the words written on it.
Maybe it was just whimsy. Regardless, Ksenia was absolutely certain she needed her knives.
Fuck watching anyone get abused like that again.
Her mom would slap her if she heard Ksenia use that language, she smiled to herself.
The table in the corner across from Jaxom and her L shaped cells was covered in knives, whips, and other instruments of torture.
Broken blades, and their shards, were dumped in a wooden bucket by the legs of the table.
The knives winked at her. Bright little flames.
The ones that were plain metal were much stronger, shined brighter than the wooden handled knives.
Ksenia focused on the brightest one. It popped up to the front, outshining the rest. Even though it was all in her head, she made a come hither motion.
The knife lurched on the table an inch. Ksenia jumped in surprise.
This world was definitely different. There was no way she could have done that at home.
The knife still burned bright. It was almost waiting for her to try again. She leaned towards the knife and wrapped an imaginary hand around it. The feel of the metal flooded her mind. She gestured again and the knife jumped and fell to the floor.
Dancing in victory was not appropriate at this moment in time, she reminded herself. She was not any good in a knife fight. This was just step one.
She took a deep breath. A firm hold of the flame knife in her head and a very firm tug.
Ksenia screamed and jumped as the knife flew by her feet and slammed against the wall behind her. She picked the knife up and looked at the bent tip. Still sharp and the blade still usable. Just couldn’t stab the sadistic monster the next time he graced them with his unwanted presence.
She sat back on the mattress and looked up to see Jaxom staring at her. He looked at the knife in her hand and back in her eyes. She could see the question but had no idea how to answer. She gave him a chipper smile and handed him the knife.
The poor guy looked like he was feeling a little better. There was more color in his face. Maybe these wolf people had faster healing. At least he wasn’t gurgling blood out of his mouth.
The dungeon door burst open and Jaxom shoved the knife behind him in a crack in the wall.
A woman in red leather came in like she owned the place.
A guard opened Jaxom’s cage. The lady got a gross looking gray vial out of a pocket.
Jaxom looked at her with what Ksenia would say was a fair bit of hate.
It didn’t bother the woman. She said something. Jaxom opened his mouth and let her pour the stuff down his throat. He gagged as he swallowed. His body seized as he clutched where he’d been stabbed with the monster’s knife.
The woman turned to look at Ksenia as she tried to hide behind her hair. These people scared the shit out of her. What was this place?
The woman said something to a guard as she stepped out of Jaxom’s cage. He opened Ksenia’s and gestured at her come to him. If she was truly mentally unstable, that certainly not going to happen. Even mentally stable, that wasn’t going to happen.
The woman came in and grabbed Ksenia by her throat. The lady must have lifted weights. She picked Ksenia up and forced her to stand back against the wall. She clutched the woman’s hand as she squeezed her throat.
The woman yelled something at her but there was no legit response. They were speaking outside her known languages of Hindi, English, and Russian. All the rest was gibberish. Anyway, they didn’t deserve niceties from her. Fucking assholes.
The woman threw Ksenia to the floor and stomped out of the dungeon. She felt tears pouring down her cheeks as she sucked air into unhappy lungs. Her only consolation was crawling to Jaxom as he tried to take deep breathes. At least, whatever the woman had given him had stopped the bleeding.