Episode LXXXIV - Dungeon/Keeper

            The dungeons of Fracture aren't all they're cracked up to be, Siren thought sardonically as she stared around her 'cell'.  It wasn't really a cell at all and in truth the word dungeon really was more accurate than prison in this instance.  She had been chucked into the darkness, the gate behind her sealed shut, and then another, and another, locking away most of the light, nevermind any obvious means of escape, and leaving her in a large chamber, the other side of which was lost in gloom.  The room was lit only by the rippling light coming through a series of thick-plated glass portholes which pierced the murky darkness at intervals.  Encouragingly, water could be heard dripping somewhere in the distance and occasionally there was a faint moan, as of someone in pain or distress.

Siren ran her fingers through her hair and tried to think what she should do next.  None of this was going according to plan.  She was supposed to scout out whatever Marveille had going on down here, report back to Harker and then decide what they were going to do about it.  Getting captured and imprisoned in a leaky dungeon leagues beneath the ocean's surface hadn't figured at all.  There was no next step, no backup plan.  They simply could not have foreseen the engineering marvel and social nightmare that was Fracture.

"This might just be the end," she said to the cold, damp air, hoping to glean some comfort from the sound of her own, slightly flippant voice.  It echoed a little, then faded back into gloomy silence.  "Great," she added and listened to hear it do the same.

Except it didn’t.  Instead the soft groaning noise she had heard before came again and louder this time, almost as if it were calling for attention.

"Hello?" Siren called back, "is someone there?  Do you need help?"

There came another, slightly larger groan in answer and Siren began to make her way across the uneven stones of the dungeon floor towards the sound, trying very hard not to stumble in the darkness.  Eventually she found herself approaching another small porthole, complete with rippling blue-green glow from the spot lamps and algae on the other side; beneath it, a huddled shadow.  It moved slightly and groaned again as she approached.

“Hello?” she tried again, “can I help you?”

The shadow rolled over and a face emerged; a young face, female and perhaps once quite pretty, but now she looked slightly sunken and malnourished.  “I’m beyond help,” she replied in a miserable, small voice.

Siren knelt down and tentatively reached out a hand towards the girl.  There was a flurry of rags as she recoiled rapidly into her little bundle.  “No one is beyond help,” Siren said, “not unless they choose to be.  Have you made that choice?”

There was silence for a moment and then the girl sat forward again and shook her head.

“Good,” Siren replied with a genuine smile.  “Now let’s start afresh, shall we?  My name’s Siren and I’m a… well, I’m  a pirate, but a nice one, I think.  Who are you?”

“My name is… Annabella,” the girl replied, leaning forward a little more so that her long, curly black hair began to fall out of the cloth it had been hidden behind.  “Annabella Durante.”

“And how come you’re locked away down here, Annabella?”

“My parents were Philosophers helping on some project for the Nobel Society, but I think they didn’t like something they were doing down here.  They said they wanted to go back to the surface, but when the Society said no they tried to escape.  They tried to start a riot as a cover,” she began to sniffle, “but they got caught and then the Noble Society took me away from them as punishment.  They told them that they wouldn’t harm me so long as they kept working to build the city and make it better.

“M. Marveille kept me for a while, I think he liked to show me off to the others in the Society and he said he was going to give me to Doctor Barkham when she got back, but he got bored of me, I think, and then Doctor Barkham went missing for a while and so he threw me down here and I guess he forgot about me... 

“Someone comes by once a day to make sure I have food and water but otherwise my only companions are the rats... and the monsters.”

“Why are there no other prisoners down here?”

The girl shrugged.  “There were, for a while.  They went deeper into the dungeons and I haven’t seen or heard any of them since.”

“Well, Annabella, I know I’ve only just arrived, but I don’t intend staying here for very long, so, would you like to help me escape?”

There was another silence, longer than before, and Siren was close to stepping away and trying something else when the girl shuffled forward a bit more, let the rags fall completely away from her head and nodded.

“Yes,” she said, “that would be… that would nice.”

She is pretty, Siren realised, now that she could see the girl properly, beautiful even.  She had perfect black curls which even several weeks lack of washing could not truly disguise, and it was clear that, were she outside and eating healthily she would have been quite stunning.  A proper little noblewoman.

Siren stood and held out her hand again.  This time Annabella reached out her own in reciprocation and let Siren haul her up to her feet.  The rags she had been using as blankets dropped to the floor and the girl stood, shy, feet shuffling, in a stained dress of purple velvet and lace.

“So, I guess there’s only one way to go, isn’t there?” Siren said with, what she hoped sounded like confidence.  “That way!” she pointed into the gloom away from where she’d just been.

Annabella looked in that direction and shivered a little.

“I don’t go that way,” she said.

“No?  Well, then we have no idea what we might find, do we?”

“I’d be too far from the door when food came and… the monsters are that way.”

“Well, monsters usually only hang about an area if they have a particular reason to be there, like keeping people out of places other people don’t want them to go, or keeping people in places other people don’t want them to leave, so you see the monsters mean that there could be another exit that way if we look hard enough.”

“But they are still monsters!”

“I can deal with monsters, Annabella.  I’ve fought them before and, sure, I don’t have my usual arsenal of weapons, but what I lack in the way of steel I more than make up for in good looks and panache.”  She put on a stupid grin and was pleased to see something resembling a smile creeping across Annabella’s face.  “So, come on, lets see if we can’t talk those monsters to death, eh?”

“I don’t know…  we should maybe try the door again.”

Siren knelt down beside her, then, and looked Annabella in the eye.  “Honey,” she said as softly and calmly as she could muster, “they aren’t going to just let us out the front door.  We have to find our own way out and to do that we need to know everything we can about these dungeons and to do that we need to go exploring.”  She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder.  Annabella flinched slightly, then settled still.  “Now, are you ready to trust me and stick with me and see what we can find?”

“I… yes… Siren.”

“Perfect,” she stood and held out her hand, “then are we going?”

Annabella’s small, pale hand slid into Siren’s so neatly that the pirate and slayer was momentarily stunned into silence.  She’d never held a child’s hand like that before and it awoke something she hadn’t expected.  She looked down at the dirty, pretty little girl and realised how much she suddenly wanted to protect her.  It was alien and… not unpleasant.

“We’re going to be just fine, you and me,” she said, “you just see if we’re not.”

And then they walked on into the rippling gloom.

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