Sluag Lair
Marie woke abruptly, completely disoriented. She was further startled to see that she was being carried by someone, tall and rather lanky. Her arms were thrown over the male figure’s shoulders and tied with rope at the wrists. She felt his surging strength. Realizing she was now awake, he lowered her to the hard ground and led her on by the rope. There was a musty odor about him as if he was part of an aged museum exhibit.
“Are you okay?” came Courinn’s voice from behind. She and Perion, also tied together were being led by a second male figure. Marie glanced back, relieved to see them unharmed.
“I think so. What happened? Did you hear the creepy singing in your head too?”
Courinn nodded. “That’s one way they can speak to us.”
They were being led through a cave-like tunnel, lit only by the torches their captors held. Something appeared out of the dark ahead. Marie gasped in fright as it flew and hovered about her, glaring. The thing was hideous: a demonic and savage face with only one red and black bulbous eye, sharp black fangs and talons. Its body resembled that of a decrepit, gnarled bat, though it was almost as big as Marie. With its spiked and clawed wings, spanning some six feet, the creature no doubt had great speed and strength.
Marie shuddered. The bat quickly darted around her as if assessing her own ability and vigor. Her captor remained perfectly still yet Marie saw his muscles tighten, making it obvious that he also was not very snug near this creature.
“It’s all right,” assured Perion from behind. “It won’t hurt you as long as you make no threatening movement.” The giant demon swung around, again facing Marie. It hovered very close to her face as she flinched away in terror.
“Dead, soon,” it hissed with a gruesome, forked tongue, its red eye appearing to salivate with pleasure. The demon creature flew back up the tunnel. Marie took a breath along with her tall captor. He began leading her on again. Perion and Courinn’s captor followed.
“We were taken in the swamp,” said Perion as they marched. “There was no fight to be had. Hundreds of them appeared out of nowhere. That was an hour ago. They herded us over to these two ... gentlemen, who led us to a cavern mouth in the hills.”
“What do you want from us?” asked Marie as she stepped up to face her captor. He merely tugged her along with him, none too gently. She turned back to her friends.
“Where are they taking us?” she asked. “What is this place?”
“The lair of the sluag,” answered Courinn. “This passage must lead straight to it.”
“Do you still have your nails and salt?” asked Marie.
“No,” replied Courinn. “These fellows took all we had. They would have been deadly weapons against the sluag.”
“They took everything? Even—”
“—Your charm, Marie,” answered Perion.
Anger now replaced Marie’s fear. She began taking careful note of the underground passage. It varied greatly in width and height as they went on. Through the flicker of torchlight, Marie also noticed parts of the tunnel were badly damaged. Stone and thick wood support structures had been erected one over another. Remnants of old collapses, mounds of piled earth and splintered rocks were clearly visible.
Marie remained silent for another fifteen minutes or so, when suddenly everything around them opened up. They stepped into a gargantuan chamber that stretched hundreds of feet up and across, like a coliseum. It was somewhat comforting for Marie to now be in a place without the walls and ceiling bearing down on her, but that sensation quickly gave way to skin-prickling dread.
Perched along slabs and outcrops of rock throughout the giant chamber were countless sluag. What Marie and her companions first noticed were the thousands of red eyes all bent on them as they entered— followed immediately by waves of delighted but terrifying shrieks. Through this, however, Marie’s attention was diverted by what stood directly ahead at the chamber’s far end.
Upon a hewn dais of massive stone, lit by sparse columns of torchlight providing the chamber’s dim illumination, was a sight Marie retained crystal clear in her memory for as long as she lived. It was the full skeletal remains of what once must have been a behemoth dragon. The bones, fully intact and in place, stood resembling a great shrine. Still more sluag, larger, seemingly more important than the others were seated among those bones— upon the long neck, head and snout, within its ribs and torso cavity and between the twisting vertebrae of its winding tail. High above, as if the ancient worm had perished in splendorous flight, more bats, looking like sentinels, were perched along the utmost reaches of its two mammoth wings in full span.
The two captors shoved Marie, Courinn and Perion further into the chamber, amidst the shrieking, mocking laughter. Marie got a better look at her captors in the light. They were pale-skinned, as if they had not enjoyed a sunny day in years. Both were thinner than Marie realized, almost emaciated. In their eyes was an empty, far-off stare and Marie guessed they did not move of their own will, but someone else’s.
The demon bats’ jeering continued as they moved along the chamber floor to the far side. Once they stood directly under the shrine of dragon bones, Marie noticed three very large sluag, more gnarled and decrepit than the others, sitting in honor between the shoulders and wing bones. The bats, whose hides looked to be covered by some natural, impenetrable leather, glared down at Marie and her friends. The laughter lessened, then stopped. Once again, the hideous singing that took Marie into unconsciousness, began.
This time she did not feel lightheaded. She turned to Perion and Courinn, who nodded, confirming they heard it as well. Then amidst the fiendish melody in her head, a loathsome voice spoke, clearly directed at Marie.
“A young mortal in mixed company?” it said. “Who are you?”
“And how have you come to wander here?” said a second voice, just as wicked sounding.
Marie stared up at the three sluag, rubbing her temples, doing her best to calmly accept this odd, new sensation. She was communing through their minds.
“We got lost,” she said aloud. “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to trespass on your land.”
As she spoke, Marie experienced a strange echo in her own mind— of her words being rendered into thoughts the sluag could understand.
“Lost is what you are,” said the first voice. “Each of you will never leave here again. You may live awhile as slaves if you are hardened enough. Otherwise, there will be no need of you.”
“You have nothing to gain keeping us imprisoned here,” exclaimed Perion, silently, using the sluag’s echoing telepathy which Marie also heard in her thoughts. “But you may have much to lose.”
The condescending jeers broke out again all around them as many sluag beat their wings and stamped their talons, greatly entertained.
The three sluag chieftains sat, unmoving. The first one spoke. “Take them.”
Their corpse-like captors tugged at their ropes. Marie vehemently yanked hers back.
“Wait!” she cried. “You took something from me— a globe charm on a silver necklace. I want it back now!”
Her words boomed throughout the chamber and it became silent. Each sluag waited to see how their chieftains would answer.
The middle sluag moved at last, and Marie then saw that its clawed wings had been held close and very tight to its head and body. It now spread them out, revealing her charm around its hairy, disgusting neck. The demon’s sinister red and black eye tightened in gloating scorn that seemed to bore straight into Marie’s heart.
The entire hall yet again erupted into thunderous laughter. The captors harshly yanked them away by their ropes.
Marie furiously tried to pull back, but she was no physical match. They made their way under the dragon shrine, where three side-by-side passages led out from the chamber. Their pale captors hauled them into the middle tunnel and they were once again thrust into darkness. Marie felt the tightening in her back and calves as they began clearly descending, going somewhere further down into the nightmare they had found themselves.
Marie tried turning on her side. It hurt. She then woke, finding herself sitting alone on the dank floor of a stone dungeon cell. Both her wrists were chained to an iron ring sunk deeply into a slimy wall. Marie yanked at it in vain. She stared up at a dripping ceiling.
“How are we gonna’ get out of this?” she spoke out loud.
“A little courage, a lot of luck,” replied a somewhat muffled voice in the dark.
Marie got up and was able to peek out of the small window in her cell door, crisscrossed with iron bars.
“Hello?” said Marie. “Who’s there? Perion?”
“Yes, it’s me.” He sounded as if he was just to the left of her.
“Me too!” came Courinn’s voice from off to her right.
Marie felt much relief that their captors had locked them up next to one another.
“No!” said another voice. “You’re all dead as dirt!”
Marie glanced across from her to another cell facing them. An old, tortured face with a mouth drooling of saliva was pressed hard against the bars, staring at them.
“Did you sleep well, Marie?” asked Perion.
“How long was I out? What time is it?”
“Some six hours,” answered Courinn. “I should say it’s near three in the morning. The sluag have sounded busy out there.”
“How do we escape them?” asked Marie skeptically.
“Well,” explained Perion, “I doubt we’re getting any supper, but they’ll soon come back for us. As they stated, we’re to be enslaved just like our captors.”
“They’re gonna make you into supper,” said the creepy prisoner across from them.
Madness was cast deeply into his eyes.
“When they come, Perion,” said Courinn, “you must be ready.”
“I will.”
This mysterious exchange once again prompted the same nagging questions Marie had about both her friends—and it appeared there was now some time.
“Perion,” she began ...
“Yes, Marie.”
“I’ve been thinking about Brage and Tybain. I really hope they’re okay.”
“If you knew them, you’d know they are far more concerned about us right now.”
“Especially you, I’ll bet.”
“Hmm. You’ve noticed, I see. To my friends, I suppose I’m ... the child of the group. Or something like that.”
“I’ve been wanting to ask,” said Marie. “Well ... Who are you? Where are you and Brage and the others from?”
A long silence followed. The deranged prisoners’ eyes danced wildly in his head; he seemed as curious as Marie for an answer.
“When you were asleep in the professor’s house,” Marie added, “I was watching you. I saw your ears. And when Tybain was bleeding— it wasn’t red, it was ... dark blue. And how did you make my bite heal like that?”
“That was Courinn’s doing,” said Perion. “But I am sorry that I haven’t been— is forthright the word?” There was a pause. “None of us are— human. We’re from somewhere else ... not just anyplace you can get in a truck and drive to.”
“Professor Mifflin kind of told me so. He said you were banished? That you couldn’t get back home?”
“We have been exiled here. Through a kind-of door, a secret passageway, hidden right in these woods.”
“A passageway?” repeated Marie.
“Many of the things that now dwell here within Spellhollow Wood,” said Courinn, “both good and bad, have journeyed or escaped through the enchanted gateway over the last several centuries.”
“I know where it is!” shrieked the prisoner. “I’ve seen the magic door!”
Marie turned toward Courinn’s voice, resting her chin between the bars of her cell window. “What about you, Courinn? How do you know so much about these woods?”
“My father, as I first explained,” answered Courinn. “He also came through the hidden gateway, from that Other Place many years ago. Up until he died, he took me throughout the wood where I learned a good many things.”
“But you were born here?” asked Marie.
“—Yes.”
“And you still live in the woods. You never were in school at all, even in Woldred?
“No.”
“But you found me somehow, after you came across my charm. You’re a detective too.”
“Once Courinn began making inquiries,” added Perion, “it was not hard to locate a young girl in town named Emily Marie, who lost her mother three years ago.”
“Perion found me first,” said Courinn, “lying alone, hurt, feverish in the mind. I was given up of all hope. I would not have lived without his help. He’s very special.”
“I know he is,” said Marie. She wondered how it must have felt to be forced away from everything you once knew. But he at least had his friends.
“How long have you been here, Perion?” she asked. “Away from home?”
Another beat of silence passed.
“I’m sorry, if you don’t want to talk about it—”
“—Two years now,” Perion answered. “I was six.”
Marie’s eyes grew wide in disbelief. Perion was now only eight years old? She was five years older? She assumed from his appearance and ability that he was at least her age.
“They appear much older than they are,” stated Courinn, reading Marie’s thoughts.
Marie felt foolish for pressing him to talk. “I’m sorry, Perion, I didn’t know—”
“—It’s all right,” he said, the raw emotion now present in his voice. “But it’s been so long. I miss home. I miss— my father and mother. Sometimes— sometimes, I can’t even remember what they look like.”
His voice trailed off and Marie heard strains of weeping. “Why did this happen?” she asked angrily. “Who did this to you?”
“They did nothing wrong,” replied Courinn, sparing Perion and letting him have a few moments to himself. “They were unjustly abducted and used as political leverage, by an enemy whose wicked power extends right to the boundaries of these woods.”
Marie didn’t quite understand what Courinn meant by political leverage, but she certainly knew the meaning of someone being used. She now had even more admiration and respect for Perion and his friends, who were so young, but seemed so full of heart, courage ... and faith.
“What’s that?” said Courinn with a hush.
There was a distant clanking and creaking sound as if an iron gate were being unlatched, followed by faint footsteps approaching.
“They’re coming!” screeched the prisoner. “To take you all away! To be torn apart and feasted on!”
“Be quiet, old one!” snapped Courinn, impatiently. “Watch and see what a bit of courage and skill is worth.”
The footsteps quickly grew closer as one of the captors appeared, the one who had taken Marie. He carefully inspected each door and cell, moving past them not once, but twice. As he passed a second time, Perion cried out in pain.
“I can’t stand it!” he shouted. “Take me out of here, I beg you, I’ll do whatever you wish! I’ll be a slave for as long as you desire, but please, unlock me from this cell!”
The captor studied Perion closely through the cell-door window. Perion played the part as best he could, and it intrigued the captor enough to lean in closer. Perion’s forearm shot between the window bars and grabbed the captor by his collar. The pallid jailor reacted immediately, raising a large, machete-like blade. Perion rigidly locked eyes with him as he held his breath. He knew the captor intended to sever his arm straight off. The sharp blade swung up, but the blow was never dealt.
Young Perion, standing on a propped up rock next to his cell door, held the captor’s stare like a magnet. Struck by a profound paralysis, his far taller and stronger adversary froze. Perion leaned in, his face flush against the bars. The captor’s pupils swelled wide open as if in pitch dark; gone now was his blank, empty stare. Perion’s eyes shone bright, overwhelming the captor’s will and his concentration in a swirl of hypnotic focus. His weapon arm fell limply to his side.
As if borne upon an unstoppable tide, Perion’s mind searched and probed, seeking to find something buried in what was left of this man, to then be torn away and smashed back through the windows of his soul. With a bizarre thrum starting in his throat, the captor’s jaw clenched as he fought the deep-rooted vestiges of what had so long kept him poisoned. Emotion flooded into his eyes and face now, along with tears of anguish and sorrow. With a furious cry, he leapt back from the cell door, landing in a toppled heap. There he lay for long minutes, gasping and sobbing, but breathing and living again as himself, for himself, as he once was— uncontrolled, un-enslaved, broken at last of a nightmarish bewitchment.
Marie and the others watched the captor writhing on the ground, struggling free of his former self. In spite of his treatment toward her, Marie wanted to reach out and help him. She easily sensed now that he was not at all what he appeared to have been.
“Perion, are you hurt?” asked Courinn.
“No,” he answered. “But it was a powerful spell to break. These creatures are formidable.”
“Will he be okay?” asked Marie.
“I don’t know. I reached deep down into what he was.”
“You killed him!” barked the deranged prisoner. “You’re a witch! Witch!”
But the captor at last caught his breath and took hold of himself. To their alarm, his hand lunged out for the long knife he had dropped. When he rose, no longer zombie-like, he held its sharp blade pointed out. Now appearing to be middle-aged, he wiped the sweat and tears from his face and again approached Perion’s cell.
With no warning, his knife arm swung up and came down hard. Perion leapt back from his cell door. The blade was buried deeply between the cell door and the thick slab of wood racked across it that kept each door unmovable and locked.
“Perion!” shouted Marie, unable to see what was happening. “Are you okay?”
The captor pried the wood slab away, then pulled it up. Perion’s cell door swung open. The captor entered.
Perion was ready, taking a defensive stance against the jailor, who then lowered his knife. A wave of sadness and sympathy crept over him. He halted.
“A boy,” he said. “You’re just a boy. There ain’t no bounds to who’ll they’ll take!”
Perion relaxed a bit, unsure. “Campbell. Your name is Campbell, isn’t it?” he asked, verbalizing what little he learned from the mind-lock they shared.
The former slave blinked, having to think a moment. He nodded.
“When did they take you?” asked Perion. “How long have you been here?”
Campbell shook his head. “Don’t know. What day is it?”
“Never mind,” said Perion. “We’re getting out of here. Will you help us?”
“As long as I’m coming too.”
Marie was much relieved to see Perion and Courinn unharmed as her cell door swung open. When she stepped out, Campbell gently racked the wood slab back in front of her door, making it appear she was still inside.
“Thank you, sir,” said Marie sincerely. Now seeing Campbell with his wits about him, she knew her initial feeling about this man was true to heart. She took an immediate liking to him.
“Just children, you’re all so young,” said Campbell. “They’re monsters, these things, to take children too.”
“Do you remember how to get out of here?” asked Perion.
Again, Campbell had to think hard. He nodded again. “Yeah. And I know a way that’ll bypass having to go back through the main hall too. It’ll take a bit more time—”
“—No,” said Marie. “We have to go back there.”
“You don’t wanna’ do that, lassie,” argued Campbell. “Every last one of ‘em is in that chamber. One bite from them and you’re done for sure.”
Perion and Courinn studied Marie, both understanding. Marie checked their glances.“I’m taking the globe back,” she said. “There’s no point going on if I don’t.”
“Campbell,” said Perion. “I’m afraid you need to get us in and out of that chamber.”
“Take me too!” screamed the crazed prisoner. “I can get you out, just as easy!”
“Ignore that one,” said Campbell. “There’s no hope left for him, he’s as daft as they’ve ever been.”
Another distant sound rang out, of clanking metal coming from somewhere above them, followed by a scream of anguish: a sobering reminder they were not alone.
“Lead the way, then,” said Perion. “We need to move.”
“Wait,” interjected Marie, eyeing the mad captive. “We can’t just leave him here.”Perion and Courinn turned to Campbell, who shook his head.
“No, lass, he’s a dangerous lunatic. I know too well, I’ve guarded over him for—” He stopped, unsure of any time frame. “For a long time. He’ll ruin whatever chance we might have.”
“But he deserves to live too,” said Courinn, agreeing with Marie.
“Do you wanna’ then go and free every psychotic prisoner in these caves?” asked Campbell. “And have us all die?”
“Whatever he is, he’s somebody and I just can’t leave him here now,” said Marie. She looked to Perion as if the final decision was his. Maybe, she thought, it should be.
Perion sighed. “Let him out, Campbell. We’ll watch him close. But we have to go now, while we can.”
Campbell exhaled hard through his teeth. With his long knife, he pried the mad prisoner’s cell door away. He then handed his knife to Perion with a troubled glance— as if to say, “this is a mistake”— before lifting the wooden barrier.
The bony old man leaped out with a howl of delight. He immediately dove for Marie’s feet and began wildly groveling. Perion warned him away, quickly pushing the point of Campbell’s knife to his throat.
“Thank you, thank you, mercy to you,” clamored the old man, repeatedly. Campbell had to drag him away from Marie, then pick him up to his feet and push him forward. Doing so, the old prisoner, far stronger and lithe than he appeared, dove sideways and grabbed a watermelon-sized rock from the ground. He then rushed Marie, with the rock held up and aimed for her head. In his eyes was only deranged bloodlust.
Perion dove, but was not close enough. Campbell was, tackling the prisoner full on, seizing the rock in his hands as both crashed to the ground. When Campbell got up, the old man was motionless. His neck was broken with the rock lying under him.
Campbell shook his head, picking up his limp body and dragging it back into his cell. As Perion slid the wood slab back over the door, Campbell walked by Marie, placing a gentle, reassuring hand on her shoulder. She did not know what to say.
“If none of us wanna’ end up like that,” said Campbell, “then follow me.”
Without any torchlight, Campbell led them down several dark passageways, always knowing when to stay right or left at a fork or tunnel division. Twice they had to dash for cover when they heard approaching sounds, one of which Campbell was sure were several sluag fighting amongst each another, a horrible mix of shrieking and hissing and torn teeth gnashing.
At one point, Campbell unexpectedly halted along a tunnel wall, in front of several wooden doorways. He motioned to remain quiet. With a light shove, he pushed one of the doors inward and entered. From what Marie could see inside, it looked like a storeroom of some type.
When he emerged a minute later, Campbell held four cylinders, roughly about the length of a forearm. He gave one to each of them. “The poor fellow we just left was secretly making these to escape,” he whispered. “Once I discovered what he was hiding in his cell, I never destroyed them for some reason, like I was supposed to. They will help us now. That is, if they still work.”
Marie inspected her cylinder, not at all sure what it was as Campbell made certain the door was shut securely. He turned and continued ahead.
He guided them a good distance further, through several more tunnel twists and turns until they came to the end of a narrow passage, where Campbell halted them. He motioned around the corner. When he and Perion silently stuck their heads out, they saw a wider passage with a short bridge spanning an open pit below. But perched along the bridge there were three sluag, as if guarding its entrance. Campbell and Perion fell back to Marie and Courinn.
“It must still be night,” whispered Campbell. “The demons are awake. We’ll never get anywhere near the main hall until daybreak, when they gather there and sleep. ‘Till then, we have to stay put and wait.”
“I hope they don’t find our empty cells first,” worried Courinn aloud. Marie nodded, obviously thinking the same thing.
Campbell had them retreat some into the darkness of the narrow passage. There they sat and waited quietly for some time.
“I wanna’ thank you,” said Campbell softly to Perion, breaking their silence, “for doing whatever you did.”
“I’m glad it worked, for all of us,” said Perion.
“But how in the heck did you kids get caught in here? And what were you doing out alone in these woods?”
“We got lost,” admitted Courinn.
“Easy to do, if you enter Spookyhollow Woods,” said Campbell.
Marie grinned, thinking about this. “It’s so hard to believe,” she mused, “that only a few days ago, I was back home in the normal world. That seems far away now.”
“Normal world?” said Campbell. “I can’t wait to get back there. To my wife and sons. But I guess things have changed a bit from the looks of ya’,” he added, motioning to Marie and Courinn’s hair and clothes. “What about the war, still going?”
“Yes,” said Marie. “For so many years now.”
“Both my boys are fighting, I pray they’re all right”.
“How did you find yourself here, Campbell?” asked the ever-curious Courinn. “Where are you from?”
“Like I said, too easy to get lost in the woods, though I never thought much of the stories. Lived my whole life up in Lanasink. Went out hunting one early morning and I guess I wandered too far. Got really lost, crossed some river as I remember, kept going where I thought was the right way. Wound up in a messy swamp and had to spend the night. That’s when they came. Took me here, where I’ve been ever since.”
“Campbell, can you tell us more about these sluag bat monsters?” asked Marie.
“That what they’re called? I only know they sleep all day in the main hall; they kill and eat most of their prisoners. Some others like me are kept as slaves.”
“Has anyone ever escaped?” wondered Courinn.
“Nah, can’t see how they could. That’s gonna’ be our problem. Even if we escape the caves, once they know they’ll be on us like frogs on lilies.” He held up the cylinder he was carrying. “These will only buy us a bit of time. We won’t get very far from the swamp and they fly as fast as a Thunderbolt P-47.”
“Then we have to find a way to stop them from coming after us,” said Courinn.
“Somehow cut off their pursuit,” added Perion. As he said this, Marie blinked as something clicked in her head.
“Can’t see how you’re gonna’ stop a thousand riled up bat demons from chasing—”
“—That’s it, Perion!” interjected Marie. “Campbell, I remember while you took us through the first tunnel there were places where it looked like the walls had caved in, but were repaired.”
Campbell chuckled, shaking his head as if recalling something that he should have easily remembered. “Oh, you’re a clever one, lass, with a quick eye. I darn well know every spot that was repaired, ‘cause I was the lackey that repaired ‘em!”
“Do you think you know a spot near the main hall entrance?” asked Marie excitedly.
“Ha!” Campbell laughed aloud and then covered his mouth from his outburst. “You’re in luck,” he whispered. “There’s a section of rock wall that I can’t keep from bustin’ apart!”
“But is there any other way they might still come after us?” wondered Courinn, “through these tunnels here?”
“The tunnels we’re in now don’t lead back to the front gateway,” explained Campbell. “They head deep into the caverns for over a mile, ending in the torture pits of some very bad place, which I’ve never been. We’d be a long way away, if all goes well. The passage ahead is our only chance.”
Marie saw that something else occurred to Campbell as he stared down at the cylinder he held. “Now that you got me thinking,” he said, “we’re gonna need a little extra help if we really wanna’ bring the place down. Wait here. I’ve got to go back to that storage area we just left.”
“Please be careful,” said Marie.
“I’ll be back in a snap, don’t you worry.”
Marie began to grow anxious after some length of time, when at last Campbell returned. Over his shoulder an old rifle was perched. In his hands, he car