Chapter 83: The Abyss
The chamber was a tableau of hell.
In front of me, a scene of such profound, abject horror unfolded that my mind, the mind of Kai from a world of sterile comforts and distant tragedies, simply refused to process it. People, dozens of them, were scattered across the cavern floor. Some were dead, their bodies torn and broken in ways that defied imagination. Others were barely breathing, their whimpers a faint, ghostly chorus in the suffocating silence. And the women... some were pregnant, their bellies grotesquely large, their eyes wide with a madness born from a suffering I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. They were screaming, not for help, but to be killed, to be granted the mercy of an end to their torment. The air was thick and heavy with the coppery tang of blood and the foul, cloying stench of death and filth.
I vomited. A violent, retching heave that emptied the contents of my stomach onto the cold, damp stone.
There were no male villagers alive. A few naked women, their bodies a canvas of bruises and cuts, were chained to the walls, their eyes vacant, their spirits broken. One of the pregnant women, her face a mask of tear-streaked grime, looked at the shadow sword that had just materialized in my hand. "Please," she whispered, her voice a raw, broken thing. "Kill me. I beg of you."
I moved, my own body feeling clumsy and useless, and cut the ropes that bound her. "You’re fine now," I said, my voice trembling. "We’ll save you. We’ll get you out of here."
"No," she sobbed, shaking her head, her matted hair falling across her face. "I don’t want to be saved. I can’t live with this."
"No, you can," I insisted, my own voice a desperate, pleading thing. "You just have to endure for a little while longer. You’ll be fine."
"My husband," she whispered, her gaze distant, lost in a world of pain I could never know. "He will never take me back. Even if I am saved, even if I manage to cope with this... this..." She pointed a trembling hand to her swollen belly.
"But there will always be someone who will love you," I said, the words feeling hollow and naive even as I spoke them.
And then, another scream, sharp and piercing, ripped through the cavern from a tunnel just ahead. I dashed forward, my heart a frantic, panicked drum in my chest. The scene that greeted me was one of pure, unadulterated evil. A group of goblins, their faces twisted in a leering, sadistic glee, were forcing themselves upon a woman, her own cries a weak, pathetic whimper. And beside her, a small child, a girl no older than four, was huddled against the wall, her small body shaking violently, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. She was scared to death.
The moment I entered, the goblins’ attention shifted. They left the woman, their cruel, beady eyes fixing on me, and began to walk toward me, their movements slow, deliberate, confident.