The Boy in the Pit

[fshlkafhalkf;lkasdjflkasdj]

You are the child of the High Priest of Ophiuchus, the deity known as "The Serpent Bearer", he is shown in the heavens as restraining the great Serpentis with his bear hands, as his followers, you do the same on earth. Many years ago your parents captured one who was prophesied to lead the people of Serpentis, and confined the child. It is the solemn duty of your order to guard The Pit, it is a wonderous site, dug 100 meters into the earth, walled with ten concentric stone rings stacked on top of each other, the top ring measuring 100 meters across. Each ring itself is ten meters tall, and the sides are each inscribed with a different powerful sealing enchantment. In the center of the great site, bound by chains, each link weighing 10 kilograms, sits the boy, he has aged considerably since he was captured, but is still young, not too far aged from you. You are tasked with going into the pit each day to deliver food and water to the boy, but you are also warned that if you should give into any of his words, you shall be put to death. As you venture into the pit, will you befriend the boy, free him? Or perhaps you will spurn him and leave him in the pit?

 

[Coward]

Sarit’s blood was still running hot as she approached the gate, and she almost failed to feel the thrill it always instilled in her. It was a monstrous thing, stone stained black with age and carved with contorted, faceless creatures. Inside was the terrible thing that was her new charge.


One would think we had no servants, she thought, disgusted again. Her lack of practice meant she had spilled some of the gruel as she walked the uneven stairs of the temples. She had nearly thrown the tray at a wall. Instead, seething, she’d swept on past the beggars and servants, through increasingly dark and empty passages.


The guards stopped her, peering with black eyes from their black masks.


“What do you have there, little princess? Are you a waitress now?” one chuckled.


“I’m not above marking you for sacrifice, Mora, if the gods would accept your useless blood," she hissed, stepping closer until the man was backed up against the gate.


“It was only a joke!” Mora reached quickly for the wheel, wide eyed. Another two men went to help him, snickering between themselves. They put their shoulders to the spokes.


With painful groaning the gates swung open, letting out a bellow of cold air, stale and with a faint smell of decay. The sound drained from the air, even the guards suddenly falling silent. Inside there was only emptiness. The light of the afternoon sun seemed to fade quickly into the depths and a long, long darkness stretched out beneath her, pierced by a winding stair. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. Run, whispered a small voice inside of her.


“Close the gate behind me,” she tried to snap, but her voice sounded suddenly small. As she entered the smash of the gates closing sounded like the death rattle of a giant.


Trying to gather her wits, she rested the tray on a stone slab, smoothed down the rough wool of her tunic. For the tenth time, her hand went to the cool, small bottle inside the sash at her waist.


One drop, every day, her father had said. Mix it with his water.


She took it out, turned it over in her hands. Dark green glass, unmarked.


What is it? She’d asked him, and he’d said nothing, eyes hardening.


Do as you’re told, Sarit.


Biting her lip, she picked up the tin of water, and removed the stopper from the bottle. A single clear drop flashed as it fell. The bottle went back inside the silk sash, a hard bump against the small of her back. As she swirled the tin the water became a dark mote, the substance disappearing seamlessly. Gods forgive me.


Gathering the food she began her descent. With each step downward the air grew cooler and more damp, the stone slick under her feet. Soon she was panting from the effort of not sliding down the stairs. Runes as tall as her body stared out from the walls of the rings, seeming to shout with a harsh power. Finally she reached the edge of one of the rings and could just barely see to the bottom of the funnel.


A pale shape against the dark, and the flash of iron. It was human, or looked human. Her breath caught in her chest. She was still far away, too far to see him clearly. With her fingers digging into the handles of the tray she stepped closer.


“I brought your food, snake,” her voice rang out high and sharp against the emptiness. She waited.

 

[fshlkafhalkf;lkasdjflkasdj]

Matyas was pacing in the dirt at the base of his pit, clink clank, he gave his chains a shake and felt the links drag through the sandy earth. He wondered what he would do today, awhile ago he had shaken one priest so badly he no longer delivered his food, for the past week it had been nothing but weak-minded acolytes. clang clink. It was his hobby to make attempts to make his caretakers question their lives, their beliefs, their reality, it was easy in the surreal atmosphere of the pit. He held a surprising amount of sway over the feel of the pit, he could make the small dirt circle feel like a friendly campsite or the lion's den. He mulled over which to make the day's server experience. clang clack clink.


He looked up through the occulus of the crypt, a small stone portal that afforded the sole light in the room, at this moment the sky was shot through with pink. He bowed his head and reflected on place in the world, as his mentor had taught him to many years ago, cling clang.


"Each day you must contemplate your place in the world, if you do not you will be blind when you seek to enact your will upon the world. If you are to make the world move for you, you must see your part in it." The wizened old woman had told him many of these duties, and other pearls of wisdom over the years he had lived as her charge.


Next, he then rolled his shoulders and stretched his back, opening his malnourished form, he took a deep breath inwards and then began to speak on the exhale.


"In the beginning there was nothing but meaningless sound and fury..." he preached the ancient history of the world as he had been taught many years ago, the Poetic Edda of his people. "Until these forces produced a great spiraling form," clank clang "this form became Serpentis. He with his endless form commanded the meaningless forces into a single layer of scales to cement himself in the world." clack clink "As he extended forever upwards new scales formed while old scales fell from his head, these scales fell and became the world as we see it, and in addition we formed from these pieces of divinity." clang crash "It is the will of all and the will of one that moves this world forever skyward. The first creations to form were th-..." He stopped short when he heard the distant crash of the gate, that meant his new server was coming. Clack clink. He sat down in the dirt, he decided to unnerve the server when they came down. At last the server appeared, strangely she wasn't dressed as an acolyte, not that it would change his plans.


"Ah yes, thank the ever-merciful heavens," he said in the politest of manners, "Please, bring it here, these chains prohibit my access to the edge of the circle."

 

[Coward]

Sarit scuff the toe of her sandle in the dust, trying not to look away. As the strange sing-song recitation faded she knew she'd been heard, and she found herself completely unwilling to take another single step forward.


"Please, bring it here.."


His manner was civilized, gentle even. But she'd been warned about this, and even common sense dictated that a trapped creature will do anything to escape.


If she didn't go closer, the snake would go hungry and eventually starve, or die of thirst. Would that be so bad? What if she just turned around right now? Even though she could see a clear circle of blue sky overhead, the stone walls seemed to crush in around her. She felt a stab of unreasonable pity, that even this creature would be forced to live here forever. When I am high priestess, she vowed, I will execute him instead. She had learned about mercy killing from the temple guards, that sometimes it was the right thing to do. Father will probably whip me if he starves.


Finally she let out a small sigh of futility, and stepped closer. As she reached the edge of the ring her eyes grew wider, because what she'd thought was a trick of the light was the creatures actual appearance. His skin really was milk pale, a sickly colour she had never seen on a live human, and his hair was red, like the bottom of a fire pit. The chains binding him made a terrible sound as they ran over each other - every tiny motion setting up metallic ringing that echoed in the stone pit.


Finally she stopped in front of him, staring unashamedly with ink-dark eyes. His face seemed very young, for a monster, maybe around her own age, but he stood a head taller than her, easily as tall as a grown man.


"But, you're just a boy," she muttered, surprised.


After a second she seemed to remember why she was here, extended the tray. By pure force of will she kept her arms from shaking, but she couldn't help biting her lip.


"Go on, then, I haven't got all day," the imperious words were automatic, but in this place rang completely hollow.

 

[fshlkafhalkf;lkasdjflkasdj]

"Ah, yes, many thanks." Matyas took the tray of gruel and water and as he did he tried to decode the girl's presence, she seemed to emanate a sort of authority, even behind her apparent off guarded reaction it seemed to push forward like the rays of the sun, powerful, oppressive even. His sense of smell had become very acute in the absence of sufficient light, as had his ears and sense of taste and touch, he used these to figure each server's place in the cult of his captors. She spoke as if her words were meant to be listened to and acted upon, and she smelled of the sort of incense the monks who came from meditation smelled of, but she was clearly not a monk. She was in power then, or, was related to one in power. As far as he knew the average priests were celibate, they all smelled like it, it must have been a part of their training, and only once they attained a certain level did they leave the monastery and were allowed to have families, a smile spread across his face as an idea came into his head, at that moment he knew what sort of game to play.


"So then, how is your daddy the high priest doing?" he spoke conversationally, as to further unbalance the scenario. "Or is he your father? Some of the acolytes have told me funny rumors, and the last time he came to visit it seemed like he hadn't been with a woman for ages."

 

[Coward]

Despite herself she flinched, glanced away. How did he know? Someone must have told him, but why would they have? How would he even have known who she was? That particular accusation followed her wherever she went, but it seemed impossible that some acolyte would have been down here gossiping with the devil. To cover her uncertainty to pushed a dark lock of hair out of her eyes, watching him.


"My father," she started, a little too quickly, "is just fine. As is my mother. In fact they're together right now."


Normally she was a good liar, but this place had thrown her completely. Her eyes flickered away from his face. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her father and mother in the same room apart from ceremonies - they seemed to be actively avoiding each other at this point.


Her heart was beating painfully fast, and she considered turning around and just leaving. What would he do about it, after all? But now she needed to know how he'd found out anything about her.


"Who told you who I was?"