Chapter 4: Practically Undead.
The wooden cage fell silent. Yuri’s outburst surprised Damien. As far as he was concerned, he had merely stated the obvious.
They were trapped deep within a region occupied by monsters. There was little room left for wishful thinking. The well-crafted cages alone suggested a level of intelligence. These creatures could organize themselves, utilize tools, and maintain prisoners. They were far more than mindless beasts.
Damien closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again.
"Right, I’m sorry..." he said flatly. "Your friend Andrea will definitely lead a rescue team to come save us."
Ahem
Chad coughed awkwardly. Things had gotten heated pretty fast. The cage was small, food and water were scarce, and everyone was on edge. Yuri had it worst of all. She hadn’t slept properly since their capture and fought the hardest whenever the creatures came to take someone away. Unfortunately, there was nothing Chad could do about it.
Time passed by quickly.
Damien still hadn’t had the honours of meeting his captors, although, from what Seris had told him, they were ugly freaks called Eidolons, and they were not the hospitable kind.
He also learned a lot about the place they were in, apparently they were a couple hundred people trapped in the frozen wastelands right outside the ruins of humanity, fully equipped with several communities and even a justice system.
Damien found it hard to believe, the world he just left barely had any life in it, well except for the spawns of hell that dwell in the cities destroyed by the emergence of the tower.
Seris pressed her lips together and swayed a little to the side. "How are you so unaffected?...".
Hmm
Damien glanced down at Seris, she was now sprawled on the ground, holding her tummy with a hazy glint in her eyes. He wondered what was wrong with her, she looked awful, then he sized up Chad and Yuri, they weren’t that different as well.
"What’s wrong, are you guys poisoned?". Damien asked with genuine concern.
Yuri glanced skeptically at Damien before looking away, Chad just smiled knowingly before his head fell backwards, Damien was genuinely concerned he might have just died, but eased up when he saw his chest rising and falling.
Seris pushed her heavy body up, Damien almost reached out to support her, with the way her body was shaking, he was concerned she was gonna fall back face first.
"Damien, the Eidolons haven’t brought us any food or water for the last two days, but you don’t seem any weaker than the day you were captured?".
Damien’s mind finally clicked, that explained why they looked like death, he even wondered if that was how he looked when he was starving alone in a ruined city, that definitely explained why the damn birds kept following him around for days.
"I don’t feel any different". He said softly.
What he said was the truth, Damien hadn’t even noticed the absence of food or water, and it wasn’t because he was used to starving, it was simply because he hadn’t felt hungry since he entered the black nebulous gate.
"It could be the effects of your status". Chad said between breaths, his head still bending backwards in a concerning debacle.
Seris fell on her back with a heated sigh. "What I would give to have a status effect like that".
Damien didn’t know what to say to that, nor did he completely understand what a status effect was, but he couldn’t exactly ask them, they looked deader than him, and his practically undead.
Yuri suddenly shot up and glared at the door of the wooden prison.
"They’re here".
Heavy footsteps approached slowly through the narrow gap between the wooden cages, the creatures they called Eidolons were bigger than Damien expected, and more frightening.
Each heated breath they exhaled came with frozen killing intent, their bodies were muscular and built for endurance, their heads were big and their eyes bright with ferocity.
There were three of them, and they held large iron cuffs covered in red rust. The cuffs must have been around for ages, and appear to be the iron work of medieval humans.
The wooden cage’s door opened with a pull from one of them. The moment the door opened, they stood still, almost stunned by the sight before them.
They looked at each other, then back at the four humans in the cage, especially at the thriving Damien.
"What?... never seen a good looking one before". He said with a smirk.
The Eidolons growled aggressively before one of them grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the cage, clamped its claws around his neck and lifted him in the direction of the other one.
The other Eidolon, probably the same one that brought his dead body to the cage, shrugged and waved for them to bring him as well.
The Eidolons foul breath suffocated Damien as Yuri, Chad and Seris were being cuffed, they only brought three cuffs, so the Eidolon could only restrain him by hanging him from its armpit.
The three Eidolons led them out of the prison chamber, the snow flakes were just as ceaseless as when he first came, the cold unforgiven, and the air sharp.
They were more Eidolons than Damien initially expected, sure thanks to Seris, he knew they lived in an organised community, but actually seeing it was more terrifying.
Some of these freakish creatures just came back from hunting, while the ones at the ruins had already prepared a fire and large amounts of firewood. The ones with larger antlers seem to be given more respect than the ones with much smaller antlers, it proves they have a caste system, just like some human societies.
Damien didn’t get much time to study them, they were quickly led deeper into the ruins and eventually dumped on a large circular platform, all would have been good. If above them there wasn’t a bloodied statue of a goat entity that resembled the Eidolons themselves.
"Are we gonna be sacrificed? Is that why they starved us". Seris said, in-between cold shivers.