BatIM Five Trials

Chapter Eleven

After a time which felt like forever, Jade finally was able to open her eyes. Her head ached with a pounding pain as she roused, her injured leg also burning like fire.

"Ugh. . . my head. . ." She murmured, her voice barely being any more than a whisper as she tried getting her blurry vision to clear. She suddenly felt something squeeze her lower section, and a bit of air was forced out of her system. Her eyes opened a bit more, and now she could get a better look at her surroundings.

"There we go now, nice and tight." Sammy's voice spoke, startling the teen out of her wits as she looked toward the sound. His mask was right there, within a foot of her face. She yelped quietly in fear, trying to back away from him. . . only to find she couldn't move.

What the heck is going on?! Her mind screamed in the panic of what was going on. She looked down at herself only to see she was tied to a wooden beam with a rope, stuck standing on top of a pentagram. The rope also pinned her arms to her sides, so there wasn't any hope on using those to fight back.

"We wouldn't want our sheep to roam away now, would we?" Sammy's voice broke Jade out of her thoughts as her gaze snapped back up to him, still at the right side of the beam. He was looking directly into her eyes. At first, it seemed to surprise him, startle him almost, but then he glared a bit at them. Jade suddenly cried out in pain as her gaze quickly turned to the left. She saw her axe, the blade coated in ink, cutting into her left arm through the sleeve. She could already feel the cold yet burning agony of the foreign substance entering the wound.

"No, we wouldn't." The masked figure of ink spoke as pulled the axe back out, running it through the wound and effectively coating the blade in a shiny red instead of the dark gray that had been on it before. Jade hissed in agony as it was run through her arm, and then looked to her injury once the blade had been removed.

"I must admit I am. . . honored. . . that you came all the way down here to visit me." Sammy examined the now blood coated blade as he walked away from her. "It about makes what I'm about to do seem. . . cruel."

The tone of the last word confused Jade. It almost sounded like it. . . pained him to say it.

". . . what are you going to do to me?" She asked almost hesitantly as if she feared the consequences of even making a sound.

He got closer to her again, and she leaned back, trying fruitlessly to get away with a bit of a fearful yelp.

"What am I going to do?" He spoke in a low voice once he got close enough to be satisfied. "I'm going to sacrifice you to our lord, so we can all be free." The way he said it, it sounded like a formal ceremony that only the rich could attend. . . but this wasn't something like that. Not at all.

". . . Sacrifice me?! Lord?" So many questions we're circling Jade's mind, joining in the storm of panic to form a hurricane of incoherent fears that she herself was struggling to understand.

Sammy made eye contact with her again, and glared a bit. This left Jade even more confused as he approached and got close to her face. "Not now, for our lord is calling to us, my little sheep. The time of sacrifice is at hand! And then, I'll be freed from this. . . prison. This. . . inky, dark, abyss! . . that I call a body."

Jade's entire body surged with a certain kind of dread. An icy dread that makes you fear every coming second, but being unable to stop time from passing by.

"Let us begin, the ritual must be completed. Soon, he will hear me! He will set us free." Sammy turned to leave the room.

"S-Sammy wait! Please! Can't we talk about this?!" Suddenly, confidence to speak had come to her as she tried to reason with him.