The Forgotten Princess

A Tortured Lover

The next vision Lessien had was the most unclear. There was so much blackness. Darkness and silence wrapped her up in freezing cold. Yet, sometimes it was loud. It was loud with screams of terror and whispers of fear and threatenings and a powerful hissing that could be heard above the rest.

Orcs and Necromancers and Demons and Foes of power beyond measure dwelled here.

And then again Lessien was herself once again.

Grubby, tatters of rags the only thing on her back sticking on because of perspiration and the stinging, familiar warmness of blood. Her face was bloody and and bruised, no longer even the pretty face it had once been. Her lip twisted up and her eyelids swelled together. Her hair was partially hewn off and tears welled up, stinging her swollen eye before it dripped out.

Lessien's wrists were shackled with heavy black metal, so full with evil it burnt her skin. Her wrists formed red welts on them, blackening some places where they were fatally infected, and some places were cut so deep she could see bone. All of her fingernails had been ripped off and brandings covered her body. The shackles were chained above her head, holding her arms exactly the right way to cut off a lot of blood circulation but not enough to fall off.

Her ankles were bruised the same way as her wrists. In front of her a faint, ever so faint, light could be seen coming into view through black bars.

Shuffling feet headed her way. Bearing a torch, a disfigured monster came into view, his sneer growing wider as he unlocked the cell with a claw. "All you have to do is say yes," he chuckled as another smaller Orc followed in his wake with a cart stacked with an array of torturing devices.

"Never," Lessien rasped. "Kill me. You're wasting your time."

"I'm enjoying my time," the torturer remarked.

Lessien shuttered, her body so empty and broken it could not be described with words. No longer was she afraid, just so tired. She had
been restrained so that she couldn't kill herself.

Everyday she had been tortured in some way. Some of these torturing methods were unspeakable, every inch of her body had been explored by disgusting Orcs and with different blades. She bled everywhere. Everyday she managed to say no.

But today. Today she couldn't take it. She began to wretch. She threw up the small amount of was called food by Orcs: rancid meat and water from the poisoned rivers of Mordor.

"Oh? You think these little playthings are for you? Stop wretching up your skin and bones, I'm not using these on you."

Down the hall, the shuffling of feet was heard again and the sounds of protest came from something human.

Lessien began to sob at he idea of some human company. Anything but the darkness. Anything but her tormentor.

Then, when she saw who the protests belonged to, she started to yell.

"Kill me!" she cried.

"Never!" she screamed.

These were the words that she had proclaimed for the last couple of months. It made sense she hardly ever spoke, for her vocal cords had been good as hacked away when she screamed as they did the unspeakable to her.

"Legolas, no! No! Anyone, anyone but him! Get out! Go back!"

This was the human they brought to keep her company. Her beloved Legolas.

He was choked by a piece of leather so he couldn't reply, just look at her with sorry eyes.

Lessien began to sob harder and harder. She was insane. She was utterly insane and as soon as they started to beat them, she rubbed her wrists against her shackles as to cut her hands off.

"No! No!" she screamed. Her voice wasn't pretty anymore either. "Kill me! Kill me! Let me out of these so I can kill myself! Stop this!"

Too soon did she pass out.

Visions of the Great Eye overcame her and he began to torment her with visions of her dying friends. Now the thought of her newly-captured lover that would be tortured in front of her hung over her.

Legolas, who she would never be able to speak to or touch. Just see suffer.

What had happened to her?