Story 2: Submissive Feminist

Chapter 18:

My eye detected a movement along the left side, unlike that of cascading dark gray mud. When I looked, I saw my lover. Laysan! I wanted to scream, but only a muffled grunt escaped my gag. Hide!!

She saw my cage. Her eyes were wild with fear and confusion like an scared puppy in a loud storm. Hide!

I heard a howling sound far above us, and as my body covered itself in goose-flesh, the howl was joined by a healthy chorus of others. Please hide, Laysan! She had obviously heard the sound as well. She was looking up, eyes wide. Her knees began to bend. Don't just stand there, Laysan! Move! I pulled at the chains that held my wrists and banged my head against the bars of my cage door. Hide!

That's when I noticed that Laysan's arms were also encircled in heavy cuffs. Thick linked chains extended from each cuff on each side of her, descending slightly before arcing up to places above her head where the chain was embedded into the rocky walls of the cliff. She could not move from where she stood.

A sickening sound of flapping, leathery wings joined the howls of the flying beasts. Distinct shadows began to pass over Laysan as she crouched. "No!" I screamed into my gag, pulling at the bars of my door.

The hellish beasts began to land on the cliff wall around Laysan. She stood boldly as they grew near to her and began to swing her arms. Her chains flipped out and heavy links fell upon bald heads and cragged beaks. Still the Etheryords kept swooping in. One even held a Doll Monster on its back, whooping and corralling.

How could she have any hope with the onslaught of demons as they clawed their way across the cliff wall towards her, biting and scratching and shrieking as the scampered.

Soon she was swamped and my heart blackened. She was looking towards me in my last glimpse of her with such a look of pleading and fear and confusion in her eyes. And still, the Etheryord's advance was relentless. Rocks tumbled around the swarm and Laysan's chains were torn from their anchors.

My descent continued until I could no longer see where she had been, but around me a constant rain of rocks and mud and links of chain fell from the activity above.

I collapsed to the floor of my cage too spent to weep any more. Too spent to move or even close my eyes.

I passed through a gap not much bigger than my cage and into a dark subterranean chamber. Sounds of wind and howling and falling rain and rocks died away.

The only sense that I had that my descent continued came from the vibrations I felt in the cage, but with a hard lurch and and heavy clunk far, far above me, even that sensation stopped.

In here, in my darkness, the silence began to grow and the black began to eat me. I hung somewhere, bloodied and scraped and bruised. A moan from my throat fell away from the cage into the inky thickness around, never to be heard again.

I lay there chewing on my gag, trying to curse. Laysan! They have gotten her! Laysan, my love!

I howled into the emptiness.