III
Adahra
The ledge she stood on was perhaps 1.2 meters at it's widest point, and just over 1.4 meters long, a badly formed outcrop of warped stone on an otherwise smooth wall. Off center by 1/3 meter was a cave about the size of her foot, making it just right for the rats that lived inside the cave wall. The stone itself was a lifeless gray, streaked with veins some other kind of beige colored rock, perhaps sandstone. Not that it mettered. She was stuck on the ledge; she could not go up or down because the walls were just smooth enough that she couldn't get a grip anywhere in order to climb up.
The screaming and insane babbling from below no longer bothered her. She'd learned to tune it out, just like she'd gotten used to the nightmares that afflicted her every time she closed her eyes.
They were all dead except her. A Zythrian Necromancer and his company of Zagahss Raiders took the complex in 1/4 of one day, killing every other Warmaedyn in the complex and bringing them back as ghouls. How long ago that had happened, she couldn't say. To her it seemed like a lifetime.
Inside the foot sized cave was a rat was just as hungry as she was. She knew this because ever since she'd been trapped on the ledge she'd had nothing better to do but study the rats inside thier little cave. They stuck thier heads out about every 2 - 3 hours, but this was just to sniff the air, and then they'd go back into thier cave. But she'd come up with ways to lure them out.
Like her they were slowly starving to death.
She took her sword out of it's scabard and cut off a piece of her belt, and then cut her hand, letting the blood flow onto the piece of belt. She then placed it about 10 centimeters from the cave entrance and waited, sword at the ready.
When the rat stuck it's head out to investigate she struck, decapitating it with one quick move. She'd gotten very good at it; Very fast and very precise.
At first when she ate them she could not hold them down, and the disgusting, raw meat would come back up again. It took her 5 tries before she could eat them without throwing them back up. Now she didn't even taste them anymore.
An eternity ago she'd been a vegetarian, something that had struck her superiors as odd at the time. That had been when she'd had superiors. Now they and everyone else were at the bottom of the pit, making a cacaphony of gibberish, old songs, mad laughter and nonsense phrases that might have been them trying to talk.
The worst by far was the sound of her betrothed, Zebydiya Hoset. After her last rotation -- a 60 day shift -- she'd planned on quitting and marrying him. She was to bear his children and they were going to grow old together. Her life would have been complete then -- she would grow old surrounded by children and grandchildren.
She could hear him singing off-key to her -- an unliving mockery of the man who'd sworn his eternal love only a year ago.
"My Dahri, my flower, my spring rains, my love..."
She'd give her right arm for a bow, to end his misery and hers once and for all.
And then the Fiend appeared.
Every day -- perhaps 1/2 day he would come into the room and on the opposite side of the chasm weave his spell. An unnameable, primitive terror would overcome her and she would scramble up the wall in a vain attempt to get away. But she would slip and fall, landing painfully back on the ledge.
