Former Edgebury - ruins and remains

The woman Viessa proved to be troublesome up until she finally clocked out and went to hit the floor inside the Edgebury barn. The task was near complete.

When Viessa would finally come to, likely after a few hours, she would find herself still relatively disoriented but more some from a very unfamiliar surrounding - namely, the cramped and dark hole she was in. She would feel her body curled up yet pressing against solid walls of wood, composed of wide planks with only slivers of space between them that allowed in a very filtered light that did almost nothing to illuminate this dark place. Her arms would be pulled behind her back and wrists roughly tied, as well as her ankles together. And the entire space rattled and bumped and swayed along with the sound of worn wheels rolling along a dirt road from beyond her predicament.

There was little that could be done while she rocked around in the darkness. She would remain cramped for a while longer.

Then the sound of the wheels rattling on cobblestone roads announced a change. It became more apparent that she was inside a wooden crate as it bounced along. The movement continued for just a few more minutes before it slowed to a stop and the sounds of travel ceased, as well. Viessa would feel the crate shift as it was dragged a very short distance, and then there was a series of wooden pops before one of the walls before her eyes fell away and firelight poured into the tiny crate.

There were two men in red standing at the box that had just opened, apparently up on an elevated plane that brought her balled figured to their waist level. They were different from the two she had seen before, but still very much of the same group from the red cloth and iron armor plates and imposing masks. They reached in to grab her at her arms and drag her out, looking to toss her over a shoulder and take her away - namely down a tall but narrow corridor wrought of stone and decorated in ruined tapestries, hardly lit from the flickering torches along the walls.

When their captive tossed her cookies over the man's shoulder he faltered with a disgusted groan - even though her head was at his back that didn't stop her from staining his robes with the foul stench of her stomach contents.

"That is wretched," he snarled, resuming his pace up the corridor as his companion carefully tip toed around the mess she left and kept a safe distance from the pair of them - not looking to have her vomit on him next.

Fortunately the hall didn't continue on much farther, hopefully with fewer accidents from Viessa as she was carried. It opened into a sprawling chamber that was almost sweltering despite the space. It was almost rounded with a high platform almost dead center of the roughly build chamber, standing perhaps four or five feet from the ground and reached via a single staircase. At the top of the platform was a single standing slab decorated at the base all the way around with a number of skulls and heavy chains and shackles hanging off from the corners. The level floor and altar was only half the chamber - the other half was a massive pool of fiery, bubbling magma with several pillars of blackened stone jutting out from beneath the surface. This was clearly the source of the heat.

Their destination was the steps leading up to the altar.

The dead weight on the man's shoulder became infuriating but he took the steps one at a time with the woman still slung over said shoulder. When he reached the top he flopped her unceremoniously on the slab. While she was presumably unconscious he made quick work to slap the pair of heavy, chained wrist shackles from the head of the slab into a single one around her neck while leaving her wrists and ankles tied.

Then he wanted her awake. To accomplish this? He gave her a hard slap to the side of her face - venting some aggression in the strike to maybe bruise around her eye over time. The action, however, was met quickly afterwards as the second man in his company leapt up the stairs three at a time before the first considered a second blow - latching a hand to his wrist and yanking him around to initiate a feud between them. He was clearly displeased with harming her, mentioning that someone "did not want a single mark on the sacrifice".

After the short, heated discussion between them they both descended the steps and left her lying alone on the stone to sweat and rattle around in her own mind. Meanwhile, several men in red and steel were beginning to trickle into the sweltering chamber and line up with faces to the altar and kneeling on one knee with their masked eyes to the floor.

The two atop the steps turned to descend, the second one that spared her another hit lingering his masked gaze on her for a second longer before he left. The place was quiet save for her own struggles that dragged the heavy manacles on the stone and her body softly thudding on the altar.

The molten creature narrowed the glowing eyes upon the panicking woman upon the altar, though it was impossible to see whether it was a glare or a gentle look - the face seemed carved from stone and features that would give expressions seemed unmoving. It leaned forward to hover just above Viessa, and carefully extended its free hand with pointed fingers to tentatively stroke through the dark strands of the woman's hair - bringing an almost uncomfortable warmth from bringing so close to her skin.

But then the beast made a subtle tug with a handful of the hair, exposing the woman's ear. Something clearly upset the fiery creature and the stiff brows upon her smooth face shifted to sharp arches. It let the locks slide between the fingers and completely removed itself from interest of Viessa. Then, in a sudden motion, it made a quick, slithering circle around the base and rose up high again - now with the eyes staring wide over the bowed heads of the men on the floor far below.

"YOU!" The voice boomed with the tenor of a woman, but strong and bold as if shouted in an empty theater to reverb back threefold. "You moronic, weak, miserable pond scum!" With this sentence the cloaked, masked servants lowered their heads closer to the stone floor and groveled lower - trying to carefully shuffle back away from her between the moments of silence. "I gave you one task when I took you into my midst and gave you my strength! ONE! I THOUGHT that perhaps your miserable existence might be competent enough to complete that task without fail, and yet here you have brought me more of your pathetic kind in place of the Elves I demanded!"

There was a sudden crack and crunch of stone as the massive, serpentine body coiled tightly with a twist of the beast's pronounced hips, and the single supporting leg of the stone altar crumbled to near dust in its grip - sending the slab crashing down off the rounded body and then making a very rough and uneven slide down the stone steps with Viessa's helpless form still bound to it by that heavy chain. When it finally crashed to the ground floor it would crack into several large fragments, the manacle still chained to one.