The King, The Burglar and The Guardian

Chapter Two

Word count - 1,254

Ch - 2 

The girl was awoken by a loud bang, and a thud. Opening her eyes, she had to blink a few times to rid herself of the blur. She was lying on the ground in her dirty overalls. Only one of the knees was ripped. She had felt a pain in her side, and sat up to look at it. She found one of her mothers teeth stuck in her clothing... she put it in her pocket, only to find the little rocks still left in them. She wanted to cry. Why wasn't her mother there? She was just with her.

She was cold, alone, and in the dark, surrounded by iron bars. Those weird rotted looking creatures were watching her from outside her cage. They stood near other, empty cages. The walls were stone, the floor the same. Though her cage has some liquid in a puddle at the back of the cage. She didn't have to see it. She knew blood when she smelt it. She had many past experiences with scratches, bumps and bruises. Seems as though she was quite prone to injury.

Down one of the tunnels exiting the room, there was a light from a torch.
When the visitors approached, they held Adelaide's father in their arms. He was no longer in bear form, but his beaten and battered human form. His head lulled to each side as the creatures carried her father. His feet were dragging behind him, getting skin tearing off in the process. They dropped him into the cage, to the left of Adelaide. She immediately ran to the bars and tried to wake her father, but got no response.

She was afraid he was sleeping the same as her mother. She tried one more idea. Taking the tooth and her little rocks, she hid them at the back of the cage.
She shifted into her furry form. Her clothes ripped away from her body as they were constricting her movement. They laid on the mucky ground. The coldness around her was immediately forgotten. The beings around her watched her, seemingly happy to see her shift. The girl stamped her big paws to the ground, making loose gravel and dust fly around, then she roared. Not nearly as mighty as her fathers, but it was loud either way. After trying a few times, she yelped at the sudden pain in her shoulder. Looking towards the source of the pain, she saw those ugly creatures holding a sharp, red hot metal stick. They must've wanted her to keep quiet. She went to the back corner of her cage, closest to her father, opposite the blood stain.

Feeling it would be safer to stay looking as a bear, she laid her snout on her paws out in front of her. She shifted her weight and winced and looked to where the creatures poked her. She tried to make it stop bleeding, but there wasn't much she could really do. Slowly, she began to fall back into unconsciousness.

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Her time asleep felt very abrupt as she was soon awoken. By what, she didn't know, until a large hand threaded its fingers through her fur. Looking up, she saw her father pressed up against his bars reaching his arm through to be closer to his only child. He smiled at her when their eyes met. His gaze faltered slightly, as he realised how similar his child's eyes were to.. hers. The same beautiful brown. In the light, her eyes looked like buckets of honey. They could be the most caring doe eyes he's gazed into. They could be the most fierce looking irises he's dared look back at. He found himself slipping into memories of his beloved, forgetting his daughter was there, in need of comforting.

What broke him of his thoughts was a loud screech. He realised his palm wasn't warm, but was left cold by the air around. Beorn looked around for his daughter, only to realise orcs were pulling her down a tunnel with a wire around her neck. She pulled back with all her might, but it was all for not. If she pulled too far back she'd get poked by the hot bar again. When she didn't back away any further they tried to pull her again.

Beorn was yelling and cursing at the orcs for so much as breathing in the same room as his daughter, but it only seemed to bring joy to the orcs, to see the weakness of the mighty skin changer. One orc signalled to another with the flick of his wrist. The orc nodded to his commander and jabbed the hot stick into the young cub's leg. A loud whimper of pain sounded through the cave, and Beorn saw red. He threw himself against the iron bars hoping to break them down. He threw gruesome threats at the orcs, but they must've been getting bored. They finally just pulled the girl into a new room. It was quite a way away from the room she was first kept in.

The new area was filled with other people. Her people. Those who stood taller than man, with the rough look no elf could possess. As some of the adults saw the orcs with the young cub, they started an uproar as well. The young girl was terrified to say the least. Why were there so many skin changers here? Why are they all in cages? Why are they bare? They must've not been given clothes.

She didn't get the chance to think about it much as she was thrown into a cage with another child laying in it. Sniffing the air for a moment, Adelaide recognized the shifter must've taken the form of a mountain lion. Adelaide shifted back to her human form, and crumpled to the ground as the pain from her leg flared up. She had forgotten her clothes in her cage, she laid bare in the tiny cage but calmed down when she realised the boy was looking the other way. She didn't know what she did wrong to get that thing to stab her with the metal pole, but she'll try to do better next time.

The other child in the cage was a little boy. He had curly red hair and big green eyes. His red cheeks were covered in dirt, and from what Adelaide could tell, he already had a few injuries of his own. Only these looked different from hers. They were bite marks... What could have bitten the boy from in the cage? Adelaide went to go closer to the boy, but he lashed out and slapped her arm away. Not finding this a deterrent, little Adelaide was determined to make a friend.

"Hello, I'm Adelaide." she waited with her hands clasped in front of her for a response. After she got none, she tried again, only to get yelled at.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

The boy's voice was scratchy and coarse. She couldn't tell if he sounded angry or sad. Either way she didn't have time to ponder and a different door than the one she was thrown through opened. Two giant creatures, Adelaide heard a few changers call them 'Orcs', came into her cage. They threw the wire around her and the boys' necks and pulled them out into the light. It wasn't literal sunlight, mind you. It was a ring of torches, and up above where the torches stood, was a crowd of orcs and goblins in the like.