Chapter II: A Moment’s Sanctuary (Cont)

Adelia scrambled to her feet, “I don’t actually.” Adelia looked back and forth through the city’s crowded buildings and up at the glistening stars that filled the sky. “It’s a beautiful night. It’s always so hard to see the stars at night because of all the damn torchlight…” Adelia trailed off. She glanced back towards the street where the light had been. It was gone. She raced quickly to Blackheart, “Hurry! We’ve got to get out of here, he’s coming!”

Blackheart looked up from inside the fountain, “Who’s coming? What are you talking about?”

“The torch is out!!” Adelia pointed and as Kiki suddenly sniffed the air heavily and gurgled menacingly. “Well, that’s not going to intimidate him,” Adelia scorned.

“I do believe that was humor, bestill my heart,” replied Blackheart. He brushed some more sand from the bottom of the fountain, revealing the marble tiles long abandoned. “Get in the fountain.”

Adelia’s eyes opened wider, “What?!”

Blackheart looked up at her, “You afraid of getting wet? Don’t worry, there’s no water if you hadn’t noticed.” Blackheart’s words were filled with a heavy scorn, his patience was running thin.

Adelia stepped in the fountain as Blackheart pressed the tile down with his hand, and then, they were gone.

Kiki gurgled softly to herself and then curled up in the corner of the alley across the way. She could smell the creature as it seemed to slide along all the walls and begin to gather around the fountain, and then, it waited.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Adelia woke up in a pile of sand, the grains filling her cloak and her gold-banded tunic. “Where are we?”

Blackheart lit a small lantern in the center of the room. Light danced across the old stone walls full of small scratches and knicks from stone. The walls were featureless other than those little marks, except for a small portion of the wall where broken gates blocked the way into the dark. The gates were made of steel she could see, broken and cobwebbed. “This,” Blackheart whispered as he waved his arms to address the room, “is the old execution pit. It’s been sealed up for a long time, though you can still reach it by a long and roundabout way.”

Adelia stood up, brushing herself off as she walked over to the slime-webbed gates. “They used to keep people in here?”

Blackheart took a deep breath, “Well, it used to have no ceiling and through those gates is the abandoned feralite stables. That’s how I knew about it of course, my people used to rob the stables of their feralites, that’s how I acquired one. There’s a sewage runoff from the stables that leads out into the desert that you can easily crawl through to get in or out of the stables. The feralites were used to execute the prisoners. All feralites go crazy when someone screams at em, so they had guards and watches cheer from up there and the feralites butchered the prisoners, there was no leftovers when they were through, so it was a very expedient way of getting things done.” Blackheart nodded knowledgeably.

Adelia ran a finger along the broken gates and turned, “Your people?”

Blackheart walked to a nearby wall, where a makeshift sword rack had been built. He drew a sword and slung it on his back, hooking a hand-scythe to his belt. “Enough about that,” he replied quickly, “let’s talk about what the hell was up there that had you scared and why it’s snuffing out all the torches.

Adelia looked up at the ceiling, slimy-green webs ran all the way along it. They were as thick as robe and woven in an intricate design. “He doesn’t want to be seen,” she said mesmerized.

“Thanks for stating the obvious,” Blackheart snorted.

“What are those webs?”

Blackheart looked up for a moment as if noticing them for the first time, “You know much about Garmuts?”

Adelia closed her eyes, searching her bank of knowledge, “Shrubbery that grows underground where there is no light, usually by a spring or some water source, but known to exist in extremely dry places due to symbiotic relationships with other animals.”

Blackheart chuckled with respect, “Not other animals. Garmuts breed little nasty buggers called Garms, four legs on their back to crawl along and two nasty little sucker arms that suck you dry. They’re spiny bastards, too, with a nice sucker on their main body and if you get caught in their spines kiss your ass goodbye,” Blackheart noted, gesturing to make the point. “These Garms suck your body fluids, the water in you, and they travel back along those web-like tubes to the main shrub. That webbing up there is from several little bastards who found out that this place was off limits.”

Adelia, always a future-minded person looked back into the darkness beyond the gate, “Where’s the shrub?”

Blackheart followed her gaze, “You’re right. It’s somewhere in the stables, along with a host of damn Garms. I got lazy and started using the fountain entrance so much, I didn’t keep up with my hedging,” Blackheart joked. “Not to worry, I doubt we’ll have to go through the stables.” He felt a sort of jolt in time once more and coughed as it passed.