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“My lord, please! Please, forgive me!”
Esidisi merely tossed the boy’s cloak and continued to drag him by his arm as a vein lashed at his welted back again, uncaring for fearful pleas echoing through the stone halls of the vast cavern system. “You brought this upon yourself, Wamuu. Now, quiet yourself and accept the punishment.”
“I'll do better, I swear! Please, forgive me!”
It all started with his introduction to his Divine Sandstorm training. It being the first time he’d ever attempted the technique, Wamuu would only be able to shuffle the dirt and dust on the cavern floor no matter how quick he spun his arms like how Esidisi had shown him.
As he frowned and struggled to spin harder, to produce the results he knew his watching master anticipated, a firm hand clasped his scruff.
“I expect better of you, Wamuu. How do you presume you’ll serve your Lord Kars and I with such shoddy results?”
He bowed his head, his face burning as much as his soul with the heat of shame. “I apologize, Lord Esidisi…”
“Don’t apologize. Do better.”
And yet, he could not. His efforts were only further sabotaged by his mounting anxiety, and soon he felt that hand come down on the back of his neck again, even rougher than before while a vein smoking with the heat of his master’s rage came streaking out from his finger.
Esidisi turned a corner, yanking the boy digging his heels in along with him. They began to descend a flight of stairs. “You had enough chances, Wamuu,” was all he said in reply.
Wamuu’s eyes widened when he realized where his lord intended to drag him, and he pulled desperately against the hand clamped around his arm. “Lord Esidisi, please, no! Not there, anywhere but in there!”
Esidisi stopped only to haul Wamuu back before throwing him down the stairs. The boy tumbled despite his efforts to right himself leaving deep grooves in the stone wall, and the weightlessness of free fall sent him sailing until gravity dragged him back down to slam into the stone steps; he toppled head over heels until he hit a sliding impact on the landing. When he moved to follow, Esidisi all of a sudden felt eyes on his back, and a cursory glance over his shoulder revealed the even younger child standing at the top of the stairs. Thick auburn hair cascaded over the boy’s ash brown face and down his shoulders, curling around a pair of nubby black horns.
“Go back to your chamber, Santana,” he snapped. “Now. Unless you wish to join him.”
With that, Esidisi marched down the stairs and yanked Wamuu back to his feet by a fistful of blonde hair, pulling him down another set of stairs and into the adjoining corridor, toward an arched door at the end of the hall. The boy grasped at the hand in his locks and continued his struggle as he kept on shouting.
“Please Lord Esidisi, let me try again! I'll do it right this time, I swear—!”
“No.”
Esidisi finally came to a stop in front of the door, a thick wooden thing braced with metal and secured by a sliding bolt lock. Esidisi shoved the door open, revealing an empty stone room, only ten feet by ten feet in size.
“Please…”
“Enough, Wamuu. This begging is unbecoming of a young warrior,” Esidisi said plainly before he threw the boy headlong inside the cell.
Wamuu landed with a harsh scrape and a grunt when the gritty floor tore up his elbows and knees — wounds which soon began to heal themselves. He scrambled to his feet and turned around desperately, only to be greeted by the door slamming shut in his face along with the sunder of the lock sliding into place and the tumblers fastening.
“No!” Wamuu cried out, and he slammed his small body against the wooden planks with all his strength, beating at it with his fists and kicking at it as he listened to his master’s footsteps retreat. “Lord Esidisi, let me out, please!”
The footsteps paused, and his heart soared, only for his lord’s next words to lance through it like a needle to a balloon.
“Quiet. If I have to hear any more of your crying, I'll leave you in there for even longer.”
And the footsteps receded, leaving Wamuu to stand alone in the dark. Still, he did what his master had ordered and stifled any more cries, lest he cause him any more trouble than he already had. He stepped back, wrapping his arms around himself while his eyes searched the consuming black around him, as though expecting anything to have changed since the last time he’d been trapped inside.
Through the gloom, he discerned a new carving on one of the walls — all four of which were covered in etchings; swirling branches which sprouted fanning leaves all stretching and dancing around trees stood in a rolling meadow, framed by a tall rocky wall spilling what Wamuu recognized was meant to be water. In the center of the carving was a long path framed by rounded pillars, which led to a sloping edifice in the center of the portrait.
Santana had been punished before him.
Wamuu stepped closer to the landscape and trailed his fingers along engraved lines, almost afraid to press any harder than a ghost of a touch. His sandaled foot brushed over a pebble on the floor and he paused, bending down to paw for it; small, it barely filled the palm of his hand, its once sharp tip worn down to a dull point from ages of use.
He dropped the pebble before he slid down the wall to sit on the cold floor, and Wamuu winced when the rough stone dragged at the fresh welts on his back. He pressed his knees against his chest and swallowed the lump in his throat; warriors don’t cry, Kars and Esidisi alike had both told him as such for as far back as his memories reached. And so Wamuu swallowed it all despite how much it burned going back down, despite how much his heart and eyes screamed to let it out.
He wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his small face into his knees.
Warriors don’t cry…
-.-.-
With no windows to tell time through, Wamuu was left unsure how much exactly passed with him sitting there before he heard the footsteps, tiny and pattering. He looked up; even without being able to tell time he knew that not nearly enough had passed for his masters to spare him the mercy of releasing him from his prison. They always waited until the hunger came, until they were weak, pained messes crawling for the door, dignity crippled by the agony wracking their starving bodies while they clawed and knocked, begging to be let out.
A light knock at the door. “Wamuu?”
Wamuu immediately stood and ignored the pain from his shifting muscles tugging on his still raw back, and he rushed to the slab of wood between himself and his brother.
“Santana, what are you doing?” he whispered.
Instead of getting a response, Wamuu felt something bump his sandal. He looked down, and he spotted a small piece of white bone — shaped into a cone with a rounded tip and embellished with etched rings along with painted, embedded stones circling its diameter — rolling from under the crack of the door.
Wamuu recognized it instantly; his spinning top, carved for him by the hand of his Lord Kars himself.
Kars watched Wamuu sit on the floor of his room and spin the top, the barest hints of a smile on his face while the boy giggled and stared at it twirling in place. The top spun and spun until it petered to a halt and rolled across the cavern floor; Wamuu simply picked it back up and sent it spinning again. With a chuckle, Kars got down to lay a pat on the boy’s head.
His eyes went large with realization.
“Santana!” Wamuu hissed, and he quick kicked the top back under the door. “No! Return that! If Lord Kars and Lord Esidisi discover it missing…”
There came no response other than the toy being rolled into the cell again — and any further attempts to kick it back merely yielded similar results — so Wamuu finally bent to pick it up, hissing at the pain in his back. He cupped the top in his hands, almost gentle when he gazed at the only toy he would ever own, that he would only ever be allowed to play with if he did well during his training.
He had not done well today, he thought with a bittersweet sting. Not at all.
“Why do the lords do this to us?” Santana eventually asked him.
Wamuu looked up. “They just wish what’s best for us,” he replied without hesitation.
The other only scoffed. “Well, I hate them…”
“Santana, don’t say that!” Wamuu protested, shaking his head even when the other could not see the gesture. “You don’t believe it.”
“But I do!”
“They’re still our masters, brother.”
But the only response Wamuu heard from the other side of the door would be another scoff. With a sigh, he leaned against its wooden surface and shifted down into a sitting position, still clutching his top in his hands. Even with the other silent and angry with his refusal to see eye-to-eye, Wamuu found that having his presence there with him made his imprisonment inside the cell more tolerable. Just like all the times before, and he hoped that Santana felt the same whenever he was the one trapped inside and Wamuu the one slipping away from the watchful eyes of their masters to visit and whisper through the door.
“Santana!”
But as always, their masters were never far behind.
Wamuu jolted and stuffed the top into his loincloth. He could hear his brother being wrenched away from the door, the sound of flesh being struck followed by a little whimper, then two sets of footsteps retreating down the hall and up the stairs.
“How often must Esidisi and I teach you two this lesson?”
-.-.-
Passing the countless hours bleeding into days and weeks inside the cell, Wamuu found, came much quicker with the company of his spinning top. He’d sit on the floor, his back hunched to the door, and he forced all his focus to remain on the top twirling in place, not on the growing writhing in his empty stomach or the ache from his injuries which healed far too slowly now that he hadn’t been allowed to feed. Wamuu would stop and brave the pain only to quick hide the toy in his loincloth whenever he thought he heard the shuffle of approaching footsteps; no one ever came, however.
He spun the top again, and rising from his mouth came a quiet hum. He sang softly to himself, a lullaby from the furthest reaches of his memories he had to strain to reach. He remembered it; a lullaby from his earliest years, before these caverns, before even Kars and Esidisi, from a time where he remembered warmth and a soft embrace and that voice always just beyond his reach singing to him.
In the time he spent trapped, Wamuu thought up a plan; he would hide his toy in his loincloth when Lord Esidisi eventually came to let him out, hiding it on his person until he could put it back in his chambers, and his masters would be none the wiser to Santana’s act of defiance. Wamuu could only hope that they had not noticed it missing while he was being punished.
If they had perhaps they would believe him if he tried to convince them that they had simply misplaced it, Wamuu thought to himself when he spun the top again.
Finally, he could hear the scraping of approaching footsteps and he once again stuffed the top into his sparse clothing before standing to face the door. It rattled, then swung open with the shrill note of squealing hinges to reveal the imposing figure of his white-haired master, always so much larger than his own growing body.
“You may come out now.”
Wamuu bit back a sigh of relief and stepped forward, obediently walking out of the room and to his lord’s side as he tried to ignore how his top shifted against his skin, to not let it affect his gait lest Esidisi suspect something untoward.
Esidisi placed that hand on his scruff again, almost gentle this time, like a mother cat guiding a kitten. “You did well this time, Wamuu. No pathetic begging to end your punishment. I expect to see more behavior like that in the future,” he said.
“Thank you, Lord Esidisi.”
“Now, we’ll be picking up where we left off,” Esidisi just continued on. “You will get it right this time, Wamuu.”
“Yes, my lord, I will.”
They neared the stairs, and Wamuu bit his lip. He would not be able to return to his chambers immediately. But, he thought, if he could at least please his master and prove to him that he knew how to perform a Divine Sandstorm, perhaps then he would be allowed to retire. Perhaps he could even play with it again, this time under his lords’ sanction…
This thought process would come to a halt when Wamuu raised a leg to rise onto the first step, and the top slipped out of his loincloth to drop onto the floor with a hollow clack that seemed to deafen him.
His first wish was that Esidisi simply would not notice. When the hand on his neck clamped down however and its owner bent down to snatch up the toy, Wamuu could only hope that he would be lenient.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded. “Why is it down here?”
“I…” Wamuu faltered over honor and guilt waging equal war in his mind. “I-I took it.”
Esidisi narrowed his eyes at him, and he tucked the top into a pocket. For a fleeting moment Wamuu allowed himself to hope that his master believed him; this would be dashed however when his hand twitched, sending Wamuu slamming to the side and into the wall. Before he could fall to his knees his neck was seized, forcing him up and back against unyielding stone with Esidisi towering over him.
“Don’t attempt to deceive me, worm. Now tell me, how did you get this?!”
“I took it myself, I swear!”
Esidisi’s other hand, now red and heated, came down and struck the boy across the face with a harsh clap that rang through the cavern like the crack of a whip, leaving behind a raw red burn.
“You continue to lie!” he bellowed. “I know that you didn’t bring this down here with you, you lying wretch! Tell me who brought it to you! Was it Santana?!”
Wamuu stiffened in his master’s grasp, and an eerie smile crossed Esidisi’s face.
“So, it was him then. I see.”
“No! No, I truly—”
Wamuu would be cut off by a vein, pumping blood so hot it sent the tissue steaming, streaking out from under Esidisi’s fingernail to smack across Wamuu’s face, spraying him with boiling blood that seared his flesh.
“My lord, please, I—”
As the vein swung around the other side of the boy’s head, it hooked around the hoop in Wamuu’s ear and it pulled, stretching the lobe until cartilage tore and the earring was ripped out with a fleshy tear along with a trickle of blood. A shrill shriek escaped the boy and his hands reached up to cup his bleeding, split earlobe.
“I’m sorry! Please, I’m sorry!”
“Say it, Wamuu.”
“H-He only brought it to me because I told him to, I—”
The vein, still holding Wamuu’s bloody earring, again whipped him across his face — reddening and blistered from the hot liquid being smeared across his skin — and cut open his cheek.
“Tell me the truth, Wamuu,” Esidisi told him, voice so much softer, nearly loving this time.
The boy almost sobbed to himself, and finally, he spoke. “Santana brought it for me to play with… I told him to put it back, I swear…”
Esidisi released his neck and Wamuu forced himself to remain upright, to not fall before his lord and disappoint him even more. Still, he held his ear that continued to bleed and fought to ignore the pain in his face.
“How do I know you don't lie again?” Esidisi asked him, almost teasing in tone.
“I don’t, I promise…”
The vein retreated and the earring dropped to the floor with the almost inaudible tinkle of metal against stone. “Then, I suppose all that is left is to decide what to do with you and Santana.”
Wamuu’s eyes widened. “My lord, please, just punish me, don’t harm Santana because of me, please—!”
Esidisi simply started to drag the boy by his arm back up the stairs.
-.-.-
With only the masters’ masks and the occasional insect to keep him company in this musty chamber, often Santana would be forced to find his entertainment within himself; between using his own mind to imbue life into the masks he was endlessly tasked with guarding and giving voices to the shadows through his hands. Things that for so long went as neglected as him, muted and stuffed into dark, lonely corners.
The masks and the shadows have a lot to say, if you just give them a voice.
As he morphed a shadow into the head of a horned bull with curling fingers and positioned hands, Santana heard footsteps approaching from down the hall and he hurriedly jumped to his feet, standing at attention before the pillar of masks like he had been taught, sure to not be caught being negligent in his task.
Resentment curdled the boy’s stomach when the footsteps drew closer. They were too heavy and strong to be Wamuu, who as far as he knew remained trapped in the barren cell their masters used for punishment. What reasons could they possibly have to visit his chamber? Did they have some other menial task for him?
It would be Kars who entered, glaring at him with stony eyes and a tight mouth. Before Santana could question what could have possibly invoked such a look from him his arm was being seized and he was pulled out of the room, his master silent as ever as he tugged him along. Santana dared not speak up to ask where Kars planned to take him; he knew of his sour moods, and that the best method to avoid provoking them would be to simply keep quiet.
Kars all but dragged Santana out of the tunnel, into a junction where he turned, away from the passage that led to the training chamber and instead down the adjacent corridor, deeper into the caverns. The boy’s growing suspicions would be merely confirmed when he saw Wamuu waiting for him, raw-faced and bleeding and still in the grasp of Esidisi, who held a dreadfully familiar spinning top between his fingers.
“Santana, how did Wamuu get this?” Esidisi asked him.
He did not respond.
“Santana. How. Did he. Get. This?”
Still, Santana said nothing, and his eyes darted to Wamuu — who looked at him with a face that pleaded for forgiveness — before they averted to glare down at the floor.
Traitor…
Kars snapped the boy from his broodings with an abrupt shove towards his partner that sent him stumbling. “Do as you will, Esidisi.”
Esidisi released Wamuu and caught the boy in his large hands, holding him in place with one while a sizzling hot vein snaked out from under a fingernail on the other. Esidisi looped the vein in his hand, holding it like a father would a belt, and he turned Santana around to force him on his chest against the wall.
“Lord Esidisi, stop!” Wamuu pleaded.
He tried to run at his master, interrupted only by Kars hooking an arm around his chest. Wamuu struggled in his grasp, grabbing at the confining appendage while he kicked his legs futilely.
“You ungrateful worm,” Esidisi hissed into Santana’s ear, and he began to lash at his back and thighs with the smoking vein, rending scorching flesh and raising welts underneath its arching punishment.
Wamuu gagged against the reek of burning flesh that slithered its way up his nose like a pair of invading fingers and moved to look away, only to feel Kars’s hand on his chin, manicured nails digging into his skin and forcing his head frontward, to face Santana as he squirmed against the wall in a sad attempt to dodge the swinging organ.
“Now Wamuu, don’t try to turn away from the consequences of your actions. Look at what your negligence has caused.”
Blood trickled down Santana’s neck from his Master’s fingers piercing his skin and the fleshy whip continued to welt his back; with Wamuu incapacitated from interfering for him, there would be no mercy, no one to help him.
“We do everything for you!” Esidisi ranted. “We feed you, we clothe you, we picked you to continue be part of this race, and this is how you thank us! By sneaking behind our backs and undermining us!”
Despite all the horror, the noise and the danger, Santana told himself that he would not let any of it defeat him. Esidisi wanted to beat him until he broke, until he greeted their neglect and their cold stares with a smile, until he grew numb to their cruelty and watched it continue with that same smile. Let them beat him! Just let them try! Santana thought all of this through his smoldering fury.
“Santana!” the vein came down again, across one of his welts, cutting open raw flesh. “Are you listening to me?!”
It was in this tortured bitterness that Santana finally screamed. “I HATE YOU!”
In that single sentence was all the contempt that rose up within him. All the hurt and all the wrath from every time his masters stared at him with sneers on those disgusting faces, those cold eyes mocking the expectations that Santana knew he could never live up to and throwing them back in his face. It boiled inside him to form that damning sentence and carried it through the air like a bullet, shooting through his body to release the years of a childhood wasted in these walls buried in the sweltering heat.
And for that moment, Esidisi paused.
“You hate us?”
Energized by his shout, fueled by its suggestion, the whipping vein began anew, coming down on his lower back — just above the seam of his loincloth — next; another wound added, then another, again and again, harder and harder.
“You hate us?! I’ll give you a reason to hate us, you wretch!”
Santana’s limbs scrambled against the wall while he fought to push himself away and duck from the vessel tearing and charring his back.
“You don’t mean that! Say that you didn’t mean it, now!”
“I did! I did, I hate all of you! I hate you and your masks!”
Esidisi’s hand only clamped tighter around his neck to spill more blood. “You don’t seem to remember just how privileged you’ve been, worm, so allow me to demonstrate,” he said, and he began to pull Santana by his neck towards the staircase, the stairs that led down. “We picked you to be one of us and continue to keep you alive, Santana; such a mercy can always be taken back.”
“I didn’t want to come here!” Santana protested. “You took me!”
“We did, and you should be grateful.”
In a split second decision fueled by the injustice of it all, the boy yanked himself back and turned his head to sink his teeth into Esidisi’s arm. The Pillarman let out a hiss of surprise and his hold on Santana loosened, just enough for him to free himself; turning, he ran, darting past Kars, still occupied with keeping hold of Wamuu, and he ducked under the hand that moved to try and grab him, away from their yelling voices and Esidisi’s chasing footsteps.
“SANTANA! GET BACK HERE!”
Santana did not stop. Instead, he continued to run; even with Esidisi quickly gaining, he had time to prove a point to them. And so, he turned and darted down the tunnel to his chamber with the masks, bursting inside with Esidisi mere inches behind. He snatched a mask from the pillar it was set in, brandishing it at his master like a blade.
“Stay away, or I’ll break it!”
Though Esidisi stopped, he just glared down at the boy. “I know that you wouldn’t dare, worm.”
“I will!” Santana snapped back, and the relic shook in his hand when Kars also appeared in the doorway, silent and glaring at him still holding one of the masks he loved so.
Esidisi stormed at him, a hand reaching out to grab him, and with a cry of rage Santana flung his arm down and dashed the mask against the floor. It smashed against hardened flags and the force burst it into pieces with the stony cry of shattering rock.
Silence filled the air like a poison, dripping down Santana’s throat and rotting into his heart when the severity of what he’d just done dawned on him along with the expression of fury on Kars’s once impassive face. The look appeared completely alien on him, and yet it was one Santana already knew to fear even more than he already did the man himself. Esidisi meanwhile stared at the broken remains of the mask, then looked between his partner and Santana before he sat on the floor to burst into a fit of tears.
This prompted Kars to surge forward as that expression only deepened even more into a irate snarl and eyes that looked down on Santana as though he were nothing more than a worm wriggling in the dirt; the boy staggered backwards in small, uneasy steps.
“I-I’m sorry—”
He would be cut short by Kars’s hand snapping toward him along with the celestial shine of a blade sliding out of his forearm.
-.-.-
Esidisi smiled as dust and stones whipped about the room in a vicious whirlwind; the boy’s arms spun even faster, and the cyclone only increased in ferocity in howling galeforce winds which blurred together into one savage effort. Surely, Esidisi thought, any foe who dared get caught in the cyclone would be torn asunder.
“Much better, Wamuu,” he praised, and he placed a pat on Wamuu’s head while the boy continued to spin his arms.
“My lord?” he dared ask. “When can Santana come out?”
Esidisi’s smile merely tightened.
Wamuu almost shivered at the sensation of Esidisi’s hands on his back, rubbing his blood — cooled to a mere simmer — across welted skin. The blood sank into the boy’s flesh, like a sponge absorbing water, and the red marks vanished, receding into his skin as though they’d never been inflicted. And as Wamuu absorbed the hog he’d been given, more of his wounds healed themselves.
Kars rubbed Esidisi’s shoulder while he worked, his hand traveling down, down his arm until it too reached Wamuu’s back. “You know we only do these things to make you better. You understand that, don’t you, Wamuu?” he stated.
“Yes, my lord.” Wamuu only said.
“Good,” Kars replied. “I know that you wouldn’t act as foolishly as Santana.”
Wamuu ducked his head. “No, my lord…”
The aftercare was the most important part of their process.
“That was very good, Wamuu. You may return to your chamber now.”
As the boy walked the halls back to the room he called his own with the expertise of a lifelong resident, he suddenly stopped, pausing at the severed arm laying on the floor, next to that stairwell. From the abyss at the other end of their stony descent, Wamuu could hear a voice.
“I will be good!” the voice pleaded. “I promise I’ll be good! So please, let me out!”
The boy stared down the corridor, past the arm and down the stairs when he sensed eyes on him. Looking up, Wamuu spotted his master, glaring at him in warning.
He ran in the direction of his chamber, like the coward he knew in his heart he was.
-.-.-
Santana stood at the door, no longer even able to lap up the blood from the floor where it splattered from his ragged stump — his shoulder had long since clotted itself. A small hand reached up, tattered fingertips dragging down the door’s bloody, grooved surface as his yells continued.
“Please, let me out! I’m sorry, please!”
And yet, no matter how many times Santana said it, how much his lip trembled and his mouth soured with anger, no matter how he many times he lowered himself to staggering to the door to shout and plead like the scared child he was, he knew that, even if his masters found it in their hearts to forgive and release him, that there would be nowhere else for him to go but here, this place. The outside world did not welcome creatures like them, Kars and Esidisi had made no mistake of reminding Santana of that, in maintaining their strong grasp on him, for he was not strong like Wamuu. He could not bend the air to his whim, nor could he expand his nubby little horns to pierce through his enemies like they were nothing more than rent clay.
This would be his fate, Santana knew; ensnared in chains forged in bitter rage and cooled in his doubt, forming a path down his life, forever and always.
“You can stay in here until I decide to have you in my sight again.”
Kars spoke this poison as he dropped Santana’s bleeding, wailing self onto the cell’s floor, and after a quick walk around the tiny room he stormed out of it, slamming and locking the door behind him.
With a sniffle the boy sat up, and he clutched at the bleeding stump where his arm had been severed as he started to scoot away from the door. Santana dared pull his bloodied hand away from his wound to paw around the back wall, leaving red smears in his wake as he searched. When his search still came fruitless, Santana realized; Kars had taken his drawing pebble.
He took his only lifeline in this place.
Santana sat against the back wall, dark-adjusted eyes surveying the walls around him. In the early days of his punishment he’d tried using his fingernails, scraping them against the rough-hewn stone in an attempt to form the shapes and patterns he needed to take himself away from here. Even when his fingernails were worn to their pads, he kept going. He kept going even as his fingertips became his only paintbrush on his rocky canvas. And when they scabbed over and ran out of his red paint, he used his fingers to worm his way inside the stump at his shoulder to get more.
He drew death, for the most part. His masters, kneeling under the merciless sun and their faces twisted in agony as their bodies burned and disintegrated to dust before its neverending rays. Indeed, in one or two of these scattered illustrations, even Wamuu the favorite the traitor had suffered such a fate. Let him join them, he’d thought in bitter resentment. Let him die at the sides of the masters he loved more than anything, than anyone.
Just as he would be left to die down here—
The door’s lock suddenly rattled; it opened.
Esidisi glared down at him, and Santana stared back — he dared not move. Esidisi raised his hand, smirking when Santana flinched, and he gestured with his finger for the boy to approach as he revealed his arm in his other hand.
“Come here.”
Santana got up and approached, his footsteps slow, hesitant. Esidisi just scoffed and yanked him closer once he was within his arm’s reach, then placed the arm against his stump. Biting off his own thumb, Esidisi pressed the wound gushing blood against the seam.
“Are you ready to behave?” he asked while Santana’s arm worked on reattaching itself.
“Yes, Lord Esidisi…”
Esidisi just hummed in satisfaction, and his hand had just fallen on the scruff of Santana’s neck to lead him back up those stairs when he all of a sudden stopped, craning his head on his neck to peer back into the cell’s interior.
“What are these?” he demanded.
At the walls, Santana realized with a spike of dread.