I slowly regained consciousness, momentarily surprised to find myself face-down on the cold cement floor.
I slowly regained consciousness, momentarily surprised to find myself face-down on the cold cement floor.
It took several moments for me to shake the fog and try to get my bearings. I pushed myself up by my briar-knit hands, noticing the faint glow of torchlight shining illuminating the woven plant matter from not one, but several different directions above me.
“Welcome back to the world of the living, love,” a gruff voice called out.
A thick glob of dried blood had formed on my lip. I picked at it with my tongue briefly before my flesh knit itself back together, popping the scab off and sending it fluttering down to the floor below. “Thanks,” I muttered, my voice hoarse.
Sharp pain radiated from my temple. I reached up and touched it gingerly, noting that instead of pale flesh, I felt a small stone that had somehow found itself embedded in my head. I casually picked at it once or twice, but gave up after it showed no signs of peeling off like the crusted blood had. “What the hell is this thing,” I asked the voice.
A second one answered, “Think of it as our own little snare.”
“Snare?” I rose to my knees, my vision still blurred from what transpired moments (minutes? Hours? Days?) ago. I looked down at my hands, my arms, and waved them around in the air. My movements felt just a little bit sluggish, as if I had been drugged. Which was impossible, of course. My biology made it impossible to poison me with any known substance. “I'm not sure that's the word you should be using. I seem to be moving just fine.”
I rose to my feet, and the man with the gruff voice approached me, the dull light of his torch giving his rough features definition in the darkness that surrounded us. A malicious grin slowly formed on his heavily scarred face, the unnerving gap between his stained front teeth visible in the fiery glow of the light.
“Not a snare in the traditional sense, Freebird. One far more magical in nature.” The man turned his head and spat out a glob of dark tobacco juice out, a couple flecks catching in his unkempt, bushy mustache.
I simply stood there. “Enlighten me, then.”
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