Clown Wyrm - 2. Chapter 2 - New World

Mercury and Periwinkle sat upright and looked at each other. They were on the floor in the cellar of Unholy Mead. Bright light was shining down the stairs from above, and the air felt warmer than it had the evening before.

“It’s morning?” Periwinkle asked the world at large.

Mercury rose to her feet and looked down at herself. “Oh, what the hell? Where’s my tutu… and my purse?!” She glanced at Periwinkle.

“My phone and wallet are gone.”

“And where’s your hat?” Mercury added. “How long were we unconscious?” She headed around the shelves toward the bottom of the stairs.

Periwinkle followed, but he suddenly bumped into her. “Hey, what the heck? Why’d you stop?”

“Where’s the mead?” Mercury asked.

“What are you…” Periwinkle paused as he realized she was right.

There were no bottles on the shelves.

“Did Domino move them all out of here this morning,” Mercury ventured, “and somehow manage not to wake us up?”

Periwinkle was uncomfortable with the incongruity. “Where are all the bottles?” he asked in dismay. “And why the hell were we asleep?”

Mercury was focused on other things. “Do you remember what happened after we went to Raunchy’s?” She continued around the shelves to the bottom of the stairs and began to climb, but she stopped again, and Periwinkle heard her whisper, “What the hell?”

“What is it?” he asked under his breath.

“What the hell?” Mercury repeated, and she slowly made her way to the top of the stairs.

Periwinkle was going to ask what again, but then he saw. “Where… where’s Unholy Mead?” he said weakly to the space above, which was not the meadery they were expecting.

They ascended into a deserted building. It was rustic, with beams of raw wood and an earthen floor beneath a faded and well-trodden carpet. There was a bar to one side, but the shelves behind it were bare and dust covered everything.

Mercury and Periwinkle suddenly heard shouting from outside, and they slunk to one of the windows to see what was happening. There were two people arguing, and the voices sounded like a man and a woman, but both people were entirely encapsulated in medieval-style armor, including their heads and faces. One of their plate mail was accented in flashes of green, and the other with purple.

The green knight charged, drawing a sword and slashing, but the blow was deflected by the purple knight, who jabbed the green knight in the armpit and quickly stepped away. In the purple knight’s hand was a bloody dagger. The green knight fell to the earth, and the sword clanged down as a gush of blood squirted out from beneath the knight’s arm.

“Oh, what the fuck?” Mercury murmured in a quavering voice. “Is this real? Is that real blood?”

The injured warrior clutched at the wound, but blood was pouring from it. The purple knight rushed forward and thrust the dagger in the gap between the bottom of the opponent’s helmet and shoulder guard, and the green knight collapsed to the dirt. Then to the clowns’ horror, the purple knight yanked the wicked blade out of the other’s neck, pulled the dying warrior’s head back to expose the soft flesh protected beneath, and the purple knight slit the green knight’s throat. The body inside the armor convulsed and gurgled as its blood painted the dirt red, and a hideous pool began to form.

Inside the old building, Mercury and Periwinkle were in shock. He had his hands over his mouth, and he whispered, “We need to hide!”

Mercury nodded, and the two snuck back to the top of the stairs. They descended as quietly as they could, rounded the shelves, and hid themselves beneath the steps.

The pair of clowns listened hard in the silence, but they could not hear anything, even the chirping birds outside. Their ears ached from trying to listen, but they heard nothing.

“M-maybe whoever that was has gone away,” Periwinkle said at barely a breath.

Then the door upstairs opened, and Mercury and Periwinkle’s blood ran cold as the old hinges creaked. The terrified clowns could tell that whoever opened the door did not close it again.

Mercury and Periwinkle stared at each other, their eyes wide with fear. Much of Mercury’s makeup was smeared, and some of her skin was showing through her base layer of foundation. Her boots were scuffed and dirty, and her wig was flat on one side. Periwinkle was shaking and sweating. His temples were streaked with runny makeup.

A gruff voice above shouted, “Who’s down there?”

Tears began to well in Mercury’s eyes. “I don’t want to die,” she breathed.

“I saw you through the window!” the voice added at a yell. “Come upstairs; don’t bother hiding!”

Periwinkle mouthed the words what do we do, and Mercury shook her head again in panic.

“Come on up,” the voice ordered. “Let’s go!”

“I don’t w-want to die,” Mercury repeated at a whisper. “I d-d-don’t want to die.”

With no other option, the pair of clowns tentatively approached the bottom of the stairs.

Silhouetted at the top was the killer. The sunlight gleamed off the purple-accented armor, and the sight of the brutal individual with the bloody knife filled the clowns with dread.

“I don’t want to die,” Mercury breathed again.

Periwinkle grabbed her hand, and she could feel that he was trembling.

“Get up here,” the knight growled.

The warrior turned and walked out of view, and Mercury and Periwinkle climbed the stairs with their knees barely supporting them. Their legs shook, and their hearts quaked.

“I don’t want to… to die…” Mercury continued saying. “I don’t want…” She dry-heaved and brought her hands to her mouth, and she repeated, “I don’t want to die.” Her stomach lurched, and she leaned over the railing of the stairs, vomiting into the cellar beneath. She groaned, wiped her mouth, and managed to whimper once more, “I don’t want to die.”

The repetition of her words was like icicles stabbing into Periwinkle’s heart, and he could not stop the urine that began to trickle down his leg. He clutched at his crotch, but there was no stopping the fearful flow. “Dammit,” he groaned.

The pair of soiled clowns eventually emerged at the top of the stairs, but the knight was no longer inside the abandoned building and was standing in front on a dirt path. Mercury led the way to the entrance, and the clowns both stepped out into the sunshine. It was much warmer than they expected.

“Jesters?” the knight asked in an incredulous tone. Now that the clowns could hear the voice more clearly, it sounded to them like a woman. “Why do you two look like that, and what are you doing here?” she added, and she began to unfasten her helmet.

Mercury and Periwinkle did not know how to answer. They were even more confused than she was. The pair of clowns found themselves not standing on pavement, and there were no businesses stretching along the main street of what should have been a bustling neighborhood. There was a dirt track leading in the direction they expected the street to extend, but it cut through a dense forest, and trees grew where there had been stores, cafés, and restaurants the night before. The corpse of the green knight and the puddle of blood was also very distracting to the clowns.

“Where are we?” Mercury asked weakly.

The knight removed her helmet. She was a striking woman with very dark skin and thick dreadlocks. She shook out her hair and declared, “You are my prisoners.”

“What? No…” Periwinkle began, but the powerful woman stepped up and punched him in the guts with a fist like a battering ram, knocking the wind from him. The skinny clown crumpled over the blow and collapsed.

“Stop!” Mercury squeaked. “Please, don’t hurt him!” She dropped to her knees beside Periwinkle. “We don’t know where we are! We don’t know how we got here! Please, have mercy on us. We didn’t mean to be here, and we’re just trying…”

“I am Norjia Tiligron, Knight of the Thirteenth Degree, Order of the Althraxion, and you jesters are my prisoners.” She tossed two pairs of cuffs in front of Mercury. “Bind your wrists and those of your companion,” Norjia commanded. “You’re coming back to the keep.”

“What’s the keep?” Mercury asked as she obeyed the powerful woman and locked her own wrists in one set of cuffs.

“Bind his as well,” Norjia ordered.

Periwinkle was coughing and struggling to catch his breath, but he reached toward Mercury with his wrists close together, and he nodded for her not to resist the warrior woman.

Mercury had no intention of resisting, and with her hands already bound, she secured the cuffs around Periwinkle’s wrists as well.

Norjia then brought one end of a very long rope to each set of the cuffs, and she tied it to them. “Get him up,” she demanded, “and march.” Norjia grabbed the rope in its middle, and she began to walk. The coils at Mercury and Periwinkle’s feet slid along the earth away from them, and Mercury encouraged him up and forward as Norjia began hauling the pair along the rough path.

Both of the clowns struggled to keep pace with the powerful woman’s long stride, but in less than ten minutes, the trio arrived at an imposing grey stone building. The trees of the forest flanked it on either side, and there were only a few small windows set high in the front wall. It did not look inviting. Without a word, Norjia dropped the rope and unlocked the front entrance of the keep. She pushed the door open, stepped back for her prisoners to enter, and she untied the rope from the cuffs as both clowns passed, but she left their wrists bound. Norjia escorted them to a set of stairs that led down to a very dark dungeon.

“Please, don’t do this,” Mercury tried again as the cell door locked. She could barely see. “We’re not your enemies.”

Norjia scoffed. “Enemies? No, a pair of fools are not my enemies. You two are no match for me.”

“Then why lock us up?” Mercury pleaded.

“Because you’re my prisoners,” Norjia stated flatly. “Give me your hands.”

“Our hands?” Periwinkle questioned.

The knight shot them both a scathing look and said with halting forced calm, “So I can take the cuffs off.”

“Why are you doing this?” Mercury squeaked. “Why are you locking us up?”

Norjia’s eyes bored into Mercury’s as she released the cuffs from around her wrists. She focused on Periwinkle. “Put your hands through the bars.”

He approached, and Norjia removed his bindings as well. She then turned and ascended toward the building’s main level, leaving the clowns in the darkness.

“Please!” Mercury cried after her. “Don’t leave us down here!”

The door at the top of the stairs closed, and the clowns heard a lock click.

“Dammit!” Mercury shrieked, turning to Periwinkle. She could barely see him. “Are you okay?”

“My stomach hurts,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, I bet. Sorry she slugged you. At least it’s not freezing in here.”

The ambient temperature from outside seeped down from above and kept the dungeon from being cold.

Periwinkle looked up toward the locked door above. “How are we supposed to get out of here?”

“Aren’t you more curious as to where we are?” Mercury countered. “Or even maybe… when?”

“Mercury, those are less pressing matters compared to getting out of this dungeon.” Periwinkle looked around, trying to get his eyes used to the gloom. “From hiding in the cellar beneath what we thought was Unholy Mead, to a dungeon in some isolated prison is a bit of a step in the wrong direction,” he complained.

“But Periwinkle, how did we even get here?”

Another voice from a different shadowy corner rattled out of the darkness. “Who’s there?”

Mercury and Periwinkle realized they were not alone.