Free NovaForge by Scott Toney

she were to stand.
    “Move or you get no food!” an unnatural voice shouted beyond her cell.
    She peered out of the cell carefully. Twenty or so shirtless men and women pulled at a massive stone with ropes, slowly dragging it across the cavern base a distance below her. Several long-nosed, doglike beasts prodded the people with pikes and whipped their backs if they faltered. The beasts’ backs were hunched with the bones of their spines stretching their skin.
    One man fell to the ground in exhaustion, his knees quaking as he struggled to stand.
    “You dare slow the construction of the master’s temple!” A beast near the man shouted in its guttural voice. The beast cracked the man’s back with his whip, blood splicing where the weapon hit, and the man shrieked in pain. “What are you looking at?” The beast glared at the slaves. “Pull, or you will be next!” As the worn people continued to pull the stone slab onward the beast walked to the fallen man.
    “Please, please have mercy.” Julieth heard the elderly man plead. Blood streamed down his back.
    “There is no mercy for slaves.” The beast lifted a clawed foot and struck it down in the man’s legs.
    Crack! The sound of his bones breaking echoed around them.
    Julieth watched in horror as the beast continued onward.
    It grabbed one of the man’s arms, dragging him across the cavern floor. A trail of blood covered the underground road, the man screaming in pain and convulsing as he was pulled.
    Bile churned in Julieth’s throat as she lay immobile in the cell. It burned in her chest. Who are these creatures? Do they serve Samuel? She would have to escape before the answers to any of her questions would matter.
    As she eyed the rust-coated bars she realized that a shard of metal protruded slightly away from one of them. Over time it must have separated, she thought. Will it be enough to free me?
    Julieth waited a few moments, and then eyed as far as she could down the red illuminated passageway. Others in cells across from her had begun to move. She pushed slowly with her legs, angling her back towards the bars. It was cramped and she had to curl into the fetal position to get near them. Her bound wings scraped against the bars, the feathers cutting and pulling against the rust flecks peeling off of them. She felt the feathers pulling loose of her wings and her wings rejuvenating and creating new feathers as they healed.
    With another thrust she was in position. She could not come right up against the bars because of her wings, but she extended her arms and thrust them against the extended metal shard. She sawed the braids of the rope binding her, praying to loose her arms before one of the beasts came to open her cell.
    “Julieth? Julieth, is that you?” Bayne’s hushed voice came from somewhere above her.
    “Sh!” she hushed him, taking a second to make sure the voice was his. It was. “Yes. Be quiet. Do not draw attention.”
    “They are gone. They will not return for some time. I have been watching them for a good while now.” Bayne still spoke quietly, obviously not willing to keep silent.
    Moans and other hushed voices echoed around the comb of cells she was stacked in.
    Julieth decided to trust the boy’s opinion. “Did you see what happened? I remember a sensation much like what I felt when I blacked out in Kaskal. Did you cause this as well?”
    “I could not help it. I was afraid.” Were those tears she heard in his voice? “The energy pulsed out of me. My brother, Ivanus and Riad all were unconscious then and you thrashed down into the water beside us, but the beasts were not affected. They came for me. Their eyes glowed and steam roiled from their nostrils as they came to the water’s edge, reaching in and dragging me out. Their claws drew my blood. I do not know where they took the others, but after they scaled the cells to cage me I remained alert and eventually thought I saw one of the beasts bringing you below.” Bayne was