The Stormwind Stockades was in more of an uproar than usual, the guards finding their ‘charges’ to be even more desperate than before in trying to escape. News of a disease spread like wildfire among the brigands and thieves, and many already had succumbed, fighting off phantom shadows in their cramped cells. The mentally afflicted were rounded up, dragged out of their cells forcibly, their feet rapping against the stone, the dirt, the grout. Some begged to be left in their cells, while others begged to be carried away to die. It was a circus of chaos.
A pair of eyes looked up from the iron grate the prisoners were dragged over, creeping to spy upon the prisoners above her. Rats scurried out between the prison bars in her trap door, finding freedom. She was so quiet, most of the Guard had forgotten about her, forgotten to feed her, forgotten that she was there as the months went by. Long had they forgotten her little rat-bodied presents, impaled upon sharp rocks or rubble. Yet, she was there, all the same.
A forgotten killer.
(Two days later)
The murderess curled at the back of her underground cell, all too used to the smell of rotting rat bodies, of urine. She spent the whole of the day there searching the darkness with her eyes, trying to track the flickering rats that slipped in along the walls. They were getting good at hiding in those flickers of shadow. A wiggling shade danced on a ledge of particularly sharp rock, and she dashed her hand out to capture the rat, only to scrape her hand hard against the stone. She drew back, huddling back into her corner, and gave a small whimper of pain as she licked at the smidgeon of blood on the back of her hand.
They would come back. They always came back.
(Two more days)
She twitched out of a dreamless sleep, feverish. Something had woken her. What was it? A constant, thrumming sound. No….thumps. A thumping against the wall she rested against. Shifting in the dank darkness, she put her ear to the wall the thump-thump-thumping sound came from.
From within the rock, the mortar, she could hear it, and it made her tremble.
A heartbeat…
(A week…)
Her eyes ached from sleeplessness, but she ignored it as she ignored the stinging pain of her bleeding fingertips. She had to have it in her hands, had to rip it out of the rocky cavity it was trapped in, as she had done with so many others. It would be a worthy sacrifice to the Voice, and yes, oh yes, how her brethren would take her back into their circle. She would have a window’s view of the world on fire! A glorious death!
Yet, no matter how much she scratched at the stone and dirt, she was no closer to the heartbeat trapped within.
Ignored were the snickering shadowy apparitions around her. They could not stop her from trying.
(A week and a half)
There was no sound above her. No sound below her. The heavy, monotonous heartbeat was all she could hear, filling her ears. She stared unblinking upon the ebon black, shriveled heart that floated in the middle of the dungeon, now sharing her prison. It was roughly half her size, and it’s flesh rippled with each pump. It was a masterpiece.
And now, the moment of truth. The heart began to shrivel, and then expand. And there, there in the very center of the black flesh, an eyelid opened. A milky film covered the great eye, staring out into nothing at first. The prisoner’s hands squeezed so tightly around her body, feeling the dirt caking the fingers, the sediment ground into her skin. Anticipation rose in her, seeing the milky eye begin to clear, the wild unearthly iris beginning to focus, to see.
The scream begin to rise in her throat, malevolent laughter filling her head in place of steady, droning heartbeat.
‘I SEEEEEEEEEEE YOOUUUUUU…..’
Anisse bolted for the trap door, her scream ripping through the first few halves of the Stockades. She’d clawed the rough wood until her fingernails cracked before she was dragged out of the pit by a surprised guard, and still, her screaming would not cease.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Shaddap!” the guard bellowed, and threw her in with the others that were suffering the same mental disturbance.
“The darknesss knows my naaaameeee…..knows my nammmmme…..” the prisoner wailed back in retort, over and over, in different increments of tone and pitch.
“Get the mage down here to transport these rats to Dalaran! Pronto! Got to contain whatever this is now….nngh….” the barking guard held his carton mask close to his face, staring at the young woman as she began to return to shrieking.
“Which one is that one! What’s her name?” another guard asked, trying to talk over her screaming. The larger guard ended her endless vocal tirade with a heavy kick to the head.
“Hell if I know?! Get them out of here!”
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