Valka
Vise-like grips crush my arms as I'm dragged forward into the black mouth of the dungeons.
The air hits me first--thick, wet, and alive with the decay of a festering wound. My slippers skid through the filth, vomit and urine pooling in the grooves of the stone, something soft and wet bursting under my heel. My stomach lurches. My eyes water from the stench.
I look left. Then right.
Women. Scores of them. Unclothed, covered in bruises. Some heavy and nearly due for birth. Others bent over half eaten crumbs of stale bread, rats gnawing on feet missing nails. There is no light in their eyes. No life.
No one looks up. Not when the guards pass. Not when I stumble by. There's not a splinter of hope left that they may ever leave those walls.
I stare at their arched ears. Faces that might have once been considered beautiful, but not dried and hollow, skin sagging and grey.
The horror of it brings tears to my eyes.
And further down, they take me.
