Scene 3.4 – The Trial I

The slapping sounds of dozens of flat, webbed feet echoed from the meat dungeon’s only exit, and Darling Bhumi turned her head toward Cormick and smiled. She squeezed his hand. Her intonation was soft and musical, but there was still something of Gaya’s voice in it. “I’ve done the best I can for you now, Man. It is not much, but I’m certain it will be enough. For what is to come, you must trust me. And you must remember these things: Wound as many as you must, but aim to kill rather than maim – give these fish-men their martyrs. Be patient. It will be obvious when your time for freedom arrives. Will you trust me? Will you be my faithful consort?”

Cormick’s eyes searched her face. Whether it was the post-coital glow or something in her, he felt more peace than he should this deep in a Squishie hive. He felt the calm of the Zen, but outside him, surrounding him, instead of emanating from the crystal of focus in his belly. He was more his own master than ever, but he couldn’t help but nodd in answer to her questions. “I will.” His words were a whisper.

Her smile spread wide and glowed, and she turned her eyes back up to chamber’s ceiling.

A drove of Squishies spilled into the chamber, their feet slapping and their kits rattling with weapons and tight-fitting armor and the ceremonial chains that marked them as esteemed warriors. They drug heavy things – cross-shaped bars with winch-holes and fittings on the arms, that scuffed the stone behind them. About half the warriors peeled off toward where Cormick and Darling Bhumi lay, and they stopped when their dim-light lanterns fell on the spot where their cages should have been, where a bed of vines and flowers still twisted and stretched for meters in every direction to carpet the floor. Glittering insects flitted through the air, and from some corner came the clicking of a bat. The Squishie warriors eyed Cormick with suspicion and circled up to spit a quick-worded argument. It took them a moment to come to a consensus, but they seemed more worried than mollified that their human captives continued to lie quietly and watch them. Finally several Squishie warriors approached the two of them slowly, holding out long poles that ended in crooks and forks that crackled with static charge. They kept the poles between themselves and Cormick especially, using them both as weapon and shield. Though Cormick offered them no resistance, the warriors were savage in the way they hooked and held each of Cormick’s ankles and wrists, lassoing them and stretching his limbs tight while they drug him over to and across the ceramic cross. The lassos on his wrists were lashed to the arms of his cross, winched tight and double-checked, then the warriors began prodding at him and chirping until he understood he had to get to his feet. It was a struggle – an impossibility without the Squishie’s help – to flip to his belly, and still difficult to get to his feet. The leg of the cross stretched a quarter meter too long for him, and forced him to bow beneath the bar. Darling Bhumi had already risen to her feet, and the cross she was lashed to had already begun to bloom with oxidation and crystals and hints of a yellow-green moss. She held herself as straight and regally and calmly as if the cross had been her idea, and she shared her smile with the Squishies.

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