The dungeon cobbles reeked like the mange-covered arse of something that had been dead for days. Mold, sweat, blood, and and far less desirable fluids had amalgamated over years of use to form a slimy film that was tacky underfoot. It was far less pleasant for those without shoes.
As the storm raged outside, squalls of driving rain whipped down through the windows. Streams of water found purchase in the grout lines and mixed with the floor paste, jostling the more fresh layers of it loose to swirl about the ground in fetid soup. The water was cold, but it did little to mask the choking stench.
And in one cell toward the back of the hall, Maeve Byrne of Pradus sat kneeling in it. The woman had slumped into a crumpled position against the grated wall, ignoring the fact that her legs had long fallen asleep against the chill of the ground. Her fingers reached through the bars into the adjacent cell, clinging with white knuckles to the hand of a blonde woman in a similar position on the other side. Their faces were pressed close, pale lips separated from fully touching by a layer of rough iron.
“Elaine,” Maeve said, stroking the woman’s hand as best as she could, “Lainey. Have faith, love.”
Elaine sniffled, shaking her head. She stiffed her hold on Maeve’s fingers as the dungeon door screeched open and the black-cloaked figure of an inquisitor appeared in the doorway. “You don’t have to go. We can find another way— work this out somehow. Maybe I can make a deal, or… Or—“
Maeve’s eyes clenched shut, leaning her forehead into Elaine’s so that the bars left an impression on her own face. “This is the deal, Lainey,” she replied, lowering her voice as the Inquisitor began her morbid roll call. “This is what I have to do.”
Lainey shook her head again, and tears that she had long thought were dry began to fall. She opened her mouth to speak, only to be cut short by the Inquisitor’s demanding tone.
“Maeve Byrne of Pradus,” the robed figure said.
Elaine let out a wailing, unintelligible sob and Maeve leaned forward to try and catch some semblance of an embrace from her spouse. Her hands stretched forward to brush Elaine’s bloodless cheek. Her mouth parted to try and steal a final kiss.
The guards were quicker.
They seized the called prisoner and yanked her to her feet before she could take her closure, and she brought back her head of fiery hair to knock one in the chin. “I just want to say goodbye!” she yelled, but the two men dragged her toward the door, “Lemme say my goodbyes, you bloody sacks of taint grease!”
They slammed her shoulders against the wall on the way out, all the while ignoring Elaine’s increasingly louder pleas.
Maeve spat as the wind was knocked out of her.
“Mite jealous of my wife, are you? Ugly bruiser.”
Maeve was dragged forward with such force that her feet lifted off of the ground, and she gave a kick at someone’s passing ankle. “I love you, Lainey girl!” she hollered back down the hall, even as the door was slammed shut behind her.
She was dragged in a similarly degrading fashion all the way down to the courtyard, though her struggles ebbed the further she was led from the dungeon. By the time the guards left her to stand in the pouring rain within view of the Mid Gate, Maeve offered no more resistance than a high-held chin and a look like murder in her eyes.
“Maeve Byrne of Pradus,” said the guard dispensing equipment, and Maeve nodded. He handed her a thin, light pack of prisoner’s rations and then, with a look of disgust, a saber and belted sheath.
She took the latter with an obvious look of pride, and promptly fastened it about her waist. Her gaze skimmed over the party around her, noting several other prisoners of various nationalities before settling on a short Mage in a pretentious cloak. “Can you appreciate a good bit of equipment, Mage?” Maeve shouted over the rain, taking a long moment to look the shorter woman up and down with a hungry stare. From what Maeve understood about such expeditions, the girl was likely to be the Yulian scum coming with the party to keep the lot of them in line.
If Maeve had to be afraid of what lie behind the walls, she was going to make sure their new “supervisor” was doubly worried for her own bodily safety.