Below Pt. 4

Viewer discretion advised. If you are easily disturbed, find yourself easily triggered by reading about depression, suicides, or disturbing imagery, I would advise you to skip over this story and wait for a different story, as Below contains material that some may find disturbing or may cause relapses into self-destructive habits. 

 Above her, in the rafters, the hooded figure slipped silently into the room and took watch from the shadows above, soon she drifted off into sleep, as did the old man. The hooded figure dropped down quietly, his split robes splaying out beneath him as he crouched. He knelt beside the girls bed, and peeled back the blanket carefully, revealing her iron band. He gently took it in his hands and whispered words of a foreign tongue over it that created a soft purple and white glow on her arm. Her breathing became less labored immediately after that and, using the edge of his robe he wiped her blood from the shackle and her pale skin gently cleaning her. Then the hooded figure pulled the blanket back over her and leaned forward kissing her forehead gently feeling great sorrow for the fragile girl. With that the figure retreated into the shadows of the rafters where he too drifted into sleep soon after. 

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        As Aela and the stranger slept, Vlad and Daelin made their way through the muddy streets in silence. Daelin had been horrified listening to the screams of the girl, he had wanted to turn around and defend her but knew better than to try such a thing. The girl could only have been just over five feet tall and barely 100 pounds, she looked as if she weren't even in her twentieth year of life yet and already she had been punished in such a horrible way. Ask he and Vlad walk through the dark underworld, their boots sloshing through the mud, lanterns in the distance appearing as orange stars on a low horizon; Daelin thought more about the girl. 

       He tried to  justify what had happened, perhaps she was truly a hardened criminal responsible for some heinous act. Maybe she had gutted her entire family while they slumbered or had made a living stealing from the nobles. None of these made sense though, that shackle was meant for an inmate who would most likely be returning to the surface one day soon after spending a short span of time below. Besides that she had carried herself just as a frightened young girl would and not like a criminal.  

       So what could it have been? What could have been so horrible that this was necessary? As he pondered these things he continued to grow angrier, hearing her screams echoing in his mind. Daelins thoughts were interrupted by Vlad guiding him in to a vacant looking building. It was built in the same fashion as all the others, square and a few floors tall. It sagged slightly with age, just like everything else in the city, although the buildings below seemed to sag even more as if they had all sunken into a deep depression after being robbed from sunlight so long ago. They entered the building and found it sparsely furnished with tipped over rotting wood furniture. 

       When the door closed behind them Daelin burst and grabbed a startled Vlad by his coat and slammed him against the wall next to the door. "What in the Burning Hells was that?!" He nearly screamed with rage. Their faces were close together in the dark and Daelins breathing was heavy with anger. Vlad took a moment to gather his bearings after being caught so off guard, he gripped Daelins forearms and spoke as calmly as he could.

"What was what?" 

"You know what." Daelin shook him,"I signed up to fight bad guys, not abuse children!" 

"Daelin," Vlad said, "she was not a child. She was an inmate. A prisoner. And what we did was for her own protect--"

"What did she do?!" Daelin shouted. "What did she do that made it so she deserved to have a silver spike plunged into her wrist?" 

"I don't know." Vlad answered, his voice was low, trying to diffuse the situation "I don't know, what she did.... But I do know, that what was done to her was for her own protection." Daelin released his grip and stepped backwards slowly, his eyes pointing down and his breathing heavy. "What she went through tonight," Vlad continued, straightening his now wrinkled collar out,"will be the worst she has to go through if we do our job; which is to stop whoever is targeting protected prisoners." 

      Daelin had sat down with his back against the wall behind him. He was tired and angry. "Better rest up," Vlad said striding over to an old couch "we've got a long day ahead of us. You'll want to be as alert as possible come morning." With that he sprawled out on the decrepit old couch and slowly drifted off to sleep. Daelin simply sat and stared off into the darkness, he thought about what Vlad had said and what he had seen. His mind was still racing trying to figure out just what was what and why when he fell asleep.