Chapter 1: The Posh Prison

Light beckons me to the window, though I cannot go outside. I peer between the cascading black-out curtains with anxiety and longing, the heat radiating off the coarse fabric seems to thicken the air around it.  I press it against my face despite the angry texture of the fabric, simply to absorb some of the warmth my body is unable to make for itself. We are locked in this place of perpetual light, the suns forever suspended directly overhead, on the opposite side of the planet where sentient life walks outside freely, a place called The Cloak. It is the only safety from the incessant blistering suns presently roasting our prison oasis.     

Harsh white concrete, warping and waggling behind the heat waves billowing skyward, burn images into my retinas with each glance. All I can see between my aggressive blinks is the surrounding desert sand which blows serenely over the pavement. My sigh cuts through the air, and likely sounds more like a huff of annoyance to the other inhabitant in the room, Pevlok. 

“What is it now Caro? Still planning that mad dash to the nonexistent brush?” he says snidely in his silky deep voice. I see through his comment, he’s concerned. 

“No.” I responded bluntly. I’ve never been much for sharing my thoughts. He looks at me expectantly from his cozy reading corner, as though he were waiting for me to elaborate. I sigh. He scowls slightly but says nothing as he returns to the pompous book with ornate binding. Not too long ago he would have pushed me to tell him what’s on my mind, but he’s resigned to my so-called “loud brooding” over the course of several months. I assume it’s been months but we have no way of telling how much time passes except by how often we sleep, an unreliable marker. I could swear the others were asleep longer than they were awake. I abruptly left the window and slunk into the main room. Most of us have become restless in our posh prison. Mettii, an imp with black hair almost as big as her chimp sized body, sat in front of the imposing double-doors where our “warden” frequents. She has an uncannily accurate knack for knowing when and where her food is coming from, and a dozen others are grumpily side eyeing the doors as well.

Every so often, the warden came with meager supplies and occasionally more prisoners. They’d unceremoniously dump a few large crates into the wide front room, and leave without a word. In the time I’ve been here, however, they have not supplied anything to sustain my dietary needs. I suspect they hope I will hunt in these halls. Add an element of horror to our boring imprisonment. I will not abide by that plot, but I don’t blame the others for leaving a wide berth around me. Mettii is one of the few exceptions to the rule, we get along very nicely. 

“Any idea what it might be this time?” I ask, standing beside her looking up at the geometric patterns carved into the black door frame.

“I’m not psychic, silly Caro.” She smiles, flashing many sharp teeth up at me like a particularly charming piranha. “Instincts. And! Lucky guessing.” Her voice is breathy and light. The others take the general brevity of her speech to mean she’s thick headed, but they are mistaken.

“But if you had to guess…” I press, a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth. I’ve never heard of instinct like hers before. 

She thought for a moment, furrowing her brow in adorable concentration, “Meat? Dry, I'm sure. They’re depriving your sorry ass.” She hisses her odd little laugh cynically. 

I can feel the general discomfort of the eavesdropping room. The others regard me as a ticking time bomb; only a matter of when before thirst gets to me and I snap. My thirst is no different than their hunger, though. I may get cranky but I don’t turn into a wild beast from it. I’ll just get crankier, weaken and rot. At a certain point of weakness I’ll just be a heap of flesh in the corner of the room, staring hungrily at the mortals as they pass. I don’t look forward to that outcome, obviously, which is why I’m looking for another out. I don’t need sustenance nearly as often as the others, thankfully, so I do have time. 

“Hmph.” I respond in a light tone, as if it’s only a moderate annoyance. “Thanks for humoring me, anyway.” I smile softly.

I hear muffled noises beyond the heavy door, and take a couple steps backward before it swings outward, drowning the room with domineering light. Three enormous crates are wheeled in by heavily armored Desert Orcs. The thick material covering their prominent muscled bodies shimmers with its electrified deterrent as usual. A few of my fellow captives converge on the crates as the orcs finish unloading their weathered supply truck parked close to the doors under the awning. The warden stands in the doorway, in that ridiculous I-just-got-out-of-boot-camp pose; legs wide apart, hands folded rigidly behind back, chin high, stoney faced twat. He’s a short and stout little man, and eyes me unabashedly. He looks for signs of thirst, I’m sure, but I doubt he even knows what to look for..

“PRISONERS!” He shouts suddenly, startling us all. He’s hardly said a word before now. A smirk slips out from behind his mask of sternness.

“LINE AGAINST THE BACK WALL.” He bellows at the unmoving audience. His face quickly reddens, a vein in his bald head throbs as he sucks in another breath to bellow again, “NOW, FUCKERS, OR HEADS ROLL! LET'S MOVE” he kicks Mettii towards the wall and she scrambles, hissing angrily. His eyes are locked on me as I move with exaggerated slowness towards the wall. 3 of the 4 orcs start to move towards me, so I take one final elongated step to the wall, lean my shoulder against it with my back to the door as the only act of defiance I know I can get away with. In a low voice, the warden orders the Orcs to search the house and bring all residents here. After a few minutes of stomping orcs and muffled yelps around the manor, all are present. The warden paces along our line, clearly counting. 17 of 17. Once he’s finished, he walks back through the line slowly, glowering and looking over each of the mortals. He glances at me accusingly. I side eye him with a gentle smile. They thought they left a rabid wolf in a cage full of bunnies. No bunnies missing. 

“Waste of my damn time!” He snarls to himself, motioning the orcs to load up. Once the door shuts, most everyone rushes forward to the crates. Pevlok comes to my side and raises a brow.

“Well, well. I believe they were expecting you to be more... ambitious.”

“It seems I’m not meeting expectations.” I say in mock humility.

“Don’t take it to heart, my dear.” He consoles as he makes his way over to the crates. Curious if Mettii was right about dried meats, I follow.

“Just as foretold!” I smile smugly as I look at the many servings of jerky, along with a few bags of dried fruit and astronaut style goop. I know talent when I see it. 

“Now use some of your clairvoyance on something useful to us, like when the bloodsucker plans to kill.” Barked the largest man, who looked quite imposing, and fairly pale, standing beside little blue-gray Mettii. The smile fell off my face. His arms folded across his lean, muscular chest. Not too long ago he was unsettlingly bulky, but with his significantly limited diet he looks less like a bear and more like a jungle cat. He glared at me, but I can see genuine fear behind it. The room was quiet except for the awkward shuffling of foods. To be fair, the atmosphere is always tense when I’m around.

“You needn’t worry about me.” I say quietly. Those seem to be the wrong words however, because the man erupted in anger at the words.

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“Needn’t worry?! NEEDN’T WORRY OF A HUNGRY BEAST LOCKED IN A HOUSE WITH MY FAMILY? If you’re trying to convince me to be an easier target, you’re gonna have to work a little harder than that! Needn’t worry.” Scoffing, he turns away from me in disgust and looks instead at Pevlok “I don’t care if you trust this demon, it’s your own neck on the line. But you cannot expect the rest of us to sit tight with it stalking the halls. It should be locked in a closet if not thrown into the sun!” 

“Enough Rodrik! You know not of what you speak. If she is truly the monster you believe her to be, then why has she refrained from attacking? Have you thought even once on that?” questioned Pevlok with a calm authority. Rodrik scowled.

“How should I know what it’s thinking? Maybe it’s a sick fetish to build suspense.” He spits, allowing himself another spiteful glance at me.

“I do not think you believe that. She is trapped here as much as us, she clearly does not-“

“Pevlok.” I interrupt. This wasn’t the first time he’s tried to defend me, maybe it will be better coming from me than him. I pull in an uneasy breath. Pevlok nods encouragingly with a gleam in his eyes, he was hoping I would speak up.

“I understand there is not much I can say that will convince you I will ignore my baser instincts. I can only prove this with time. However, I can tell you this; I do not plan to be used as a pawn for our captors. They want us to dissolve into chaos. I will take no part in it.” I finish my short speech and look around the room, the tension unchanged. Rodrik makes a peculiar expression. A mixture between a scowl, uncertainty and stress, I would guess. He opens his mouth to speak but Mettii cuts him off.

“Caro, drink my blood?” She offers politely, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to offer. Saying I was taken aback would be an understatement. The room erupts with horrified gasps and whispering dissent.

“Wha- Mettii do you have a death wish?!“

“I have extra! And make more all the time!” She laughs mischievously.

“No! Even If I took less than enough to… it would hardly even delay the time before-! Damn near pointless suffering! No. I can’t even stand to humor the idea. To use you like that… it-it-it would be just...repugnant. ” My fingertips were prickling and my head was spinning, I could hardly get an argument out. The fact that I was needing to argue against it was unsettling.

“Ah I had considered the same, perhaps from multiple donors we could sustain you? I wouldn’t be opposed to volunteering.” Pevlok added with a slight upturn of his lips and a sad smile in his eyes as he looked into mine. My horror was mounting.

“NO! Hell no! I won’t even consider it, so put it out of your heads.” I say resolutely through my gritted teeth. I am viscerally reminded of the history of my kind, where whole towns of people were converted to cattle with promises of divine immortality or protection from their enemies. They’d drink the people close to death, only to revive the poor souls to be drunk from again. It was rare for their mortal bodies to survive even 3 times going through this, but often enough some were resilient enough to be “rewarded” with decades of the torture. I shudder at the thought. It's understandable why Rodrik despises me, I am of the same disposition. I turn my face away from the others in shame, allowing my thick white hair to obscure my face.

“I’m calling another meeting. You will join us this time” Rodrik says gruffly to me. Pevlok turns to him, mirroring my own surprise. I had suspected I was being left out of the escape planning, but I wasn’t too put off by it given the circumstances. I was more preoccupied with my own scheming. 

It seems this conversation has changed his mind about keeping me out of the loop. Rodrik raises an eyebrow and frowns thoughtfully at my look of surprise. 

“I didn’t expect you to keep the secret from it, Pevs,” He remarks in bemusement.

He guffaws indignantly “I like to believe I am somewhat trustworthy. Of course I respected your request. Just as I would respect if you didn’t refer to my friend as an ‘it’.” Pevlok responded, diplomatic as always. Rodrik grunted curtly with a scarcely concealed scowl, and walked from the room. Others followed behind, food and drink in tow. Mettii skipped merrily forth to join, looking very pleased.  

I sigh in relief as all but Pevlok have left the room to attend the meeting. I have only a moment to gather myself before being thrust back into the thick of things. No doubt I will have to play catch up if they have been meeting regularly all this time. Suddenly I recall a word Rodrik used earlier in his outburst. “Family”. I had not paid very much attention to the others, I’ve tried to keep my head low and only occasionally pick up on names. I hadn’t noticed a family in our company. Short, youthful looking species are not all that uncommon, but thinking back there was a very short boyish one in the lineup between Rodrik and a tall, dark skinned woman.

“Are you joining? I would not blame you for declining, given how abhorrent his outbursts are.” Pevlok asked quietly as he hovered by the door. For whatever reason, he has put his trust in me and seems to think I am worthy of respect. 

“I’m coming. Just need a moment to collect myself…” I pause and add, “I don’t blame Rodrik for his feelings toward me. Would you blame a rabbit for hating a wolf?” I laugh uncomfortably. This has been more social interaction all at once than I’ve had in a century. 

“You are no wolf, Caro. A wolf is not empathetic to its prey. At least not any wolf I’ve met” He says in a gentle tone, offering me his arm. I awkwardly loop mine in his, the first human contact I’ve had since I turned that wasn’t to feed. I tried not to dwell on that thought as we left the room of empty crates behind.

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