Tears of the Moon

Grievous Realizations

~Haiden~

Wails of woe and moans of mournfulness echoed distantly through the darkness, muddling my mind with a harrowing cacophony of anguish. A putrid unearthly stench like some sort of unnatural decay and brimstone burned at my nostrils, while I slowly began to become aware of a scathing pain enwrapping my neck like a molten rope of lava. I strenuously pried my aching eyes open, finding that I was uncomfortably laying with my cheek pressed against a filthy stone floor and surrounded by a cage of solid silver bars.

Where is Isabelle? And where the fuck am I?

A thick silver chain rattled next to my disoriented naked body as I weakly pushed myself up to my knees, realizing that it was attached to a silver collar around my neck, tethering me to the floor. I growled in pain and began tugging at the unbearable collar, desperately trying to get the wretched thing off.

"Oh, goodie! Looks like my dog's awake!" An unsettlingly familiar feminine voice sang out with a malevolent cackle. 

...Dog!?

With a furious snarl, my russet eyes immediately snapped up and peered through the bars. I appeared to be in some sort of deathly throne room built within a ghastly grey underground cavern, eerily set aglow with the withered blue light of sickly iron torches. Sharp stalactites and stalagmites created labyrinthine columns and pillars throughout the area. They crept across the walls and menacingly enshrouded the rough dome-shaped ceiling like the pointed teeth of some unutterable beast. A few pale mangled skeletons laid helplessly impaled upon the upward-pointing stalagmites, forever trapped in their place of death. As my gaze frantically shifted around the oddly familiar-seeming cavern, I noticed a heinously resplendent throne of bones resting upon a neatly stacked pile of skulls. It overlooked a mighty underground precipice, dropping off into a sea of decaying, writhing bodies trapped within what appeared to be endless darkness.

And lazily seated upon that grim throne rested a deathly yet beautiful goddess. Her plump blood-red lips twisted up into a sadistic grin upon catching my gaze, and malice danced in her deathly dark, fogged-over eyes. "Welcome back, Hadeon" She sardonically cooed with an innocent-seeming finger-wiggling wave.

A vicious snarl tore from my throat as I launched myself up toward her, going right up to the bars. "Who the fuck are you and where am I?" I growled, not bothering to address that she didn't say my name correctly.

She pouted in satirical disappointment. "You really don't remember me? I would have thought the last five and a half centuries you've spent being my pet would've been better embedded into that thick skull of yours." Her face twisted into a maniacal grin as she spoke, and her voice grew more vicious with each word. I seethingly watched as she stiffly stood up, taking odd gangly steps down her stairway of skulls. 

"I am not your fucking pet! And I am certainly not a dog!" I thrashed at my restraints, only causing the silver to sear me further. "Release me at once!"

Shadowy floor-length hair twisted around her like eldritch spirits while she twirled across the room with stiff eerie movements, laughing sadistically at my pain. Her silky tattered dress fluttered to her bare feet, fanning out each time she spun to reveal thin pallid calves.

"Oh, funny Hadeon, how I've missed having you here." Her pale spindly fingers wound around the silver bars as she wickedly peered in at me. I growled and tried to bite them, but the chain was abruptly shortened by some magical force, violently yanking me back. She laughed all the more, with the ghastly sound echoing ominously through each crevice of the cavern.

"Where the fuck am I?" I lowly drawled in anger while regaining my footing, glaring up at her through the hair dangling wildly in my snarling face.