Chapter 333
Hadjar was very familiar with dungeons as well as darkness. Probably because the former naturally came with the latter. He was in a dark dungeon once again.
Hadjar had woken up in all kinds of beds: thanks to the Bedouins, he’d even once woken up in a bed full of nude girls ready to please him; but he’d also woken up on hard mats and stones; on the bare ground; in dungeons and torture chambers; in a cave with a dragon; and in a village hunter’s home.
And yet, never before had Hadjar woken up lying on some kind of thick, viscous fluid. Why did he think this was a ‘dungeon’? Because he was completely naked and couldn’t move a finger. The substance around him was so dense that he seemed to be stuck inside it. As if someone with a bad sense of humor had shoved him in a bathtub full of foul-smelling glue.
“Azrea,” Hadjar called out.
His eyes gradually got used to the darkness. He wasn’t able to turn his head, so he couldn’t see a lot: just the distant ceiling, illuminated by a green light coming through some cracks. Wherever he was, it must’ve been huge.
“They tried to trap her in the liquid,” a familiar voice explained. Judging by where it had come from, Einen was somewhere nearby, “but your tigress was... uncooperative. She bit them, scratched their faces, and then disappeared.”
“Azrea,” Hadjar repeated in a completely different tone of voice.
He had no doubt that his furry, four-legged friend felt safe here and could probably even-
“That was three weeks ago.”
His train of thought abruptly ground to a halt. Three weeks ago? It felt like they’d reached the entrance to Underworld City only yesterday. And now he was in a dungeon. Why did it feel like he couldn’t avoid ending up in one?
“It happened right after I woke up,” Einen said.
“It’s unlikely that they spent a lot of time dealing with Azrea,” Hadjar realized. “You most likely woke up almost immediately.”
“I agree.”
Silence reigned in the cave, disturbed only by the flapping of bat wings. Hidden in the darkness, they watched the two immobilized creatures, but didn’t attack them.
“What happened while I was unconscious?” Hadjar asked.
From personal experience, he knew that the worst thing in any prison was the silence. It was better to avoid it by talking to anyone who would listen to you. Even a rat, or, in Hadjar’s case, a rat’s corpse.
“Nothing too terrible.” Einen answered. “A couple of times, someone that looked like a healer came down. I’ll be honest, Northerner, I envied you in those moments. I wish I’d been unconscious, just like you.”
“Was he that handsome?” Hadjar tried to joke.
“It was that painful.” Hadjar felt the bald man grimace.
Hadjar grunted and looked at the ceiling again. He’d often imagined his first visit to Underworld City. Of course, he hadn’t expected the royal treatment or a red carpet, but he hadn’t expected to be thrown in a dungeon for the umpteenth time.
“Do you have an escape plan?”
“A few, in fact,” Einen answered. After his friend let out a sigh of relief, he added: “But I need at least one of my fingers to be free for each of them.”
Hadjar cursed up a storm. He spent the next few hours brainstorming about their current situation. In his desperation, he even turned to the neural network, only to be greeted by the following message:
Computing module is currently rebooting…
Approximate time until completion is 3 years, 4 months, 12 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes, 45 seconds…
... 44
... 43
...
There was no way out.
“What if-”
“Already thought about it.”
“Maybe-”
“That too.”
“We could-”
“Not very likely.”
“Well at least I’m trying!” Hadjar declared indignantly.
“Northerner, I’ve been here for three weeks, playing chess with bats. You want to know what scares me the most? I lost a few times! Therefore, no matter what you end up proposing, I’ve already thought it over several times.”
Hadjar couldn’t tell if Einen was joking or not. He sincerely hoped that the islander was still managing to mock him, even in such a stressful situation. Six hours later, Hadjar realized that Einen wasn’t joking. He’d also lost to a bat. The animal looked at him with its scarlet, beady eyes, inspiring slight trepidation and a considerable amount of envy.
Ten hours later, Einen and Hadjar started arguing, accusing each other of being the cause of the unenviable situation. They even tried to crawl into each other’s ‘bath’-cells, but the glue held them in place.
Then the days started dragging on lazily, like a grazing buffalo that didn’t have a care in the world. Einen and Hadjar talked less and less. They silently indulged in deep meditation more often than not.
The substance in which they lay possessed not only immobilizing properties, but also a strange ability to absorb energy. When they tried to free themselves with the help of their energy, the liquid began to glow and power flowed away from their bodies and cores. It was a creepy dungeon, much more horrific than a simple slave collar with poisonous spikes. At least the latter was easy to understand and even familiar in a way.
“Hadjar,” Einen said.
He didn’t really want to talk, but his lips and tongue were the only muscles that he could actually use.
“I’m still here, don’t worry. I haven’t gone anywhere,” Hadjar joked dryly.
In all this time, no one had ever visited them. Not even that red-haired witch who’d obviously wanted to kill Hadjar. Surprisingly, they didn’t need food. Apparently, after processing their energy, the glue would feed them in some strange way. To be perfectly honest, Hadjar wanted to believe that it was processing their energy and not their excrement...
“What was that thing you ate when the dragon attacked us?”
Hadjar had been waiting for this question. Surprisingly, Einen had decided to ask it after almost a month and a half of them being imprisoned... Okay, admittedly, he hadn’t been able to get any answers from Hadjar during those first three weeks.
For some time, Hadjar had pondered whether to answer honestly or not. After Nero, Einen had become the first person whom he could call a friend. They’d fought shoulder to shoulder and watched each other’s back, but something in their relationship was different. There was no sincere recklessness or a readiness to charge after one’s friend, even into the abyss or a hopeless fight.
“A fairy’s body,” he answered finally.
There was utter silence. Then Einen said, “What? What’s a fairy?”
Now it was Hadjar’s turn to look incredulous.
“What do you mean — what’s a fairy?”
“I mean… What is a fairy, Northerner? The secret elixir of your royal family? A mystical potion of some kind? An artifact?”
“That sounds like a joke, Einen. However, your previous one about bats and chess was better.”
Hadjar noticed a gurgle like the one he’d heard when they’d quarreled and Einen had tried to break free from the glue in order to strangle him.
“If I could, I would challenge you to a duel,” the islander growled, continuing to make the gurgling noise.