Page 26 of Vasmora

“We could share,” the cellmate across from him rasped. “I could bite it off for ye an’ we could share.”

Irritated by his interruption, Kazhimyr frowned. “’The hell are you talking about old man?”

“Yer arm. Still healthy. Fresh.” His eyes were riveted on Kazhimyr’s arm, and like before, he licked his lips. “Lot of muscle in ye.”

“Come near me, and I’ll cut out your intestines to use as rope for my escape.”

“’The hell are you two worthless pricks doing down here?” The more sophisticated voice that Kazhimyr had learned belonged to the captain silenced his threat.

“Grindl asked us to check on the silver-haired prisoner, Sir. Said Loyce wanted to know if he’d died yet.”

“And did you?”

A loud chime rang out in Kazhimyr’s ear, like the strike of a bell vibrating across his skull. He squeezed his eyes shut, just catching the soldier’s response as an echo inside his mind.

“Was about to, just before you arrived. Bastard’s been down here a week. Can’t imagine.”

Gods be damned, that taste in his mouth. Like raw salt pork.

“Fucking hell!” he heard from above, and he opened his eyes to the glaring light of their lanterns, far too bright for the darkness to which he’d grown accustomed. One of the soldiers retched and gagged, and as Kazhimyr raised his hand to shield his eyes from that annoying brightness, he felt an unnatural weight in his grasp.

Captured in his loose grip was an arm, torn at the elbow. Strings of skin and half-macerated meat dangled from splintered bone. A black sparrow inked on the back of its palm.

A cold, branching panic expanded in his ribs as he trailed his gaze over the stony floor of the oubliette, where ropes of discarded entrails pooled around his feet. Half-hidden in the tangled strands of a web, slumped against the wall, lay his cellmate’s near-consumed carcass, his long, white beard matted red. The icy web funneled down to the floor, clustered around the dead body, as if the spiders had found a cozy home in the old man’s rotting husk.

Kazhimyr tossed the arm onto the mutilated corpse and shook his head. He dragged the back of his arm across his wet lips, that cold sensation in his chest sinking to his stomach when he caught sight of the thick blood smeared on his forearm.

“He ate him! The sick bastard ate him!” A hysterical laugh fell around Kazhimyr, churning the nausea in his gut. “I’ve never seen such a thing!”

“How long did you say he’s been down here?” The captain asked, their voices falling in and out of focus as Kazhimyr stumbled for balance, fingers gripping the wall.

“A week? Maybe longer?”

A week. It’d only been a couple days, by Kazhimyr’s estimates.

Thoughts danced aimlessly through his mind.

“We could share.” The other prisoner’s voice chimed through the chaos. “Yer arm … still fresh. Healthy.” The prisoner lunged for him. A stinging pain. Teeth sinking into his arm. Blackness.

Kazhimyr ran his fingers over the tracks of embedded teeth in his own flesh, as his memories filtered through the confusion. He dared himself to look back to his victim, whose milky white eyes and pale, bluish skin told him he’d been dead for a while.

Which meant he’d hallucinated the conversation with him moments ago.

His body pitched forward on its own, propelled by a torrent of fluid and chunks that poured from his mouth and spattered to the ground.

“Is that a web?” The guards’ voices went in and out, as he stared down at the meaty lumps in his vomit that had the acids climbing his throat again.

“Get him out of there. Clean him up,” Captain Drefan ordered overhead.

“What?”

“He’s going to be released.”

Kazhimyr froze. Released? It seemed unlikely.

“We’re letting that thing … that abomination go free?” one of the soldiers asked, echoing his confusion.

“Are you questioning my orders?”