Clown Wyrm - 3. Chapter 3 - Prisoners

The voice in the dark sounded drunk. “Who’re you?” it slurred.

Mercury and Periwinkle stared silently, trying to make out the figure.

“I’m talkin’ ta yous!” the voice managed, barely coherent.

“Who-who’s out there?” Periwinkle asked.

“Who’re you?”

Mercury and Periwinkle looked at each other. All was quiet for only a moment, and to their surprise, the voice began snoring.

“Did that person just fall back to sleep?” Mercury whispered.

“Let’s try not to wake whoever it is again,” Periwinkle added.

The pair spent the rest of the day exploring the small space as quietly as possible, but the clowns could find no means of egress from their imprisonment. When the tiny amount of daylight above had almost completely faded, and the dungeon was even darker, the drunkard awoke again.

“Bloody Norjia,” the person groaned, and the gruff voice sounded to Mercury and Periwinkle like that of a woman.

“They’re awake,” Periwinkle whispered.

The dungeon became deathly silent, as if the drunkard had heard him.

Mercury reached out and put her hand on Periwinkle’s forearm.

“I know someone’s there!” the stranger shouted in the dark.

Mercury squeezed Periwinkle’s arm and replied, “There’s two of us.” Her voice was weaker than she expected.

“Tell me your names,” the other prisoner demanded, “in the name of the king!”

Mercury and Periwinkle tried to look at each other in the gloom, and both of them were confused. “King?” Periwinkle repeated under his breath, but then the woman cackled and let out a dramatic scoff.

“Who’re you?” Mercury asked, her voice cracking.

There was another laugh. “You two have the honor of being in the presence of the preeminent female impersonator of Armonia! I am Mistress Violatia Fizzlestick!”

Silence followed.

“I’m accustomed to my introduction receiving some sort of applause, but I supposed these aren’t my normal surroundings.” She sighed. “You can call me Violatia. So go ahead; tell me your names.”

Periwinkle brought his hand to the outside of Mercury’s, which was still holding his forearm, and he answered. “Our names are Periwinkle and Mercury.”

Violatia cooed. “Oooh, how fun! Are you foreign? Where are you from?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mercury replied, “we’re not from that place you just named.”

“Armonia? But you’re in Armonia right now. This is Armonia.” Violatia scoffed again. “I mean, this stupid place is just my stupid sister’s stupid dungeon, but how do you two not know where you are?”

“Your sister is that knight?”

Violatia let out a wry laugh and said, “You mean,” and her voice took on an insulting pseudo-honorific tone as she continued loudly, “Norjia Tiligron, Knight of the Thirteenth Degree, Order of the Althraxion!” and she laughed in annoyance. “Yeah, we’re siblings.”

“Why’d she lock you in here?” Periwinkle asked.

“This isn’t the first time.” Violatia took a deep breath and let out a frustrated huff. “Norjia was part of a gala yesterday for other knights from around the region, and I confess, I may have been day-drinking, and maybe I made a joke about the king in front of some of the first guests, who were, as it happens, royal sympathizers, and maybe I spilled my drink right down one of their fronts, totally by accident, and Norjia locked me up so I couldn’t mess up the rest of her party.”

“Who is this king you’re talking about?” Mercury asked into the darkness.

Violatia fell silent again, and there was an awkward moment before she said, “Umm, the king… the king of Armonia… who are you two?”

Mercury squeezed Periwinkle’s arm again and stated, “We’re lost.”

“Huh, lost from where? Where’d you come from? You’re in western Armonia, and with the ban on ghlistick travel, it would have taken you almost a week to get here from the neighboring lands. How long have you been lost?”

Mercury and Periwinkle did not know what the word ghlistick meant.

“Well, come on,” Violatia insisted, “tell me your story. We’ve got all night.”

The two clowns began to whisper together in the darkness.

“What should we tell her?” Periwinkle asked.

“The truth?” Mercury replied.

“But what is the truth?” Periwinkle retorted. “Did we get sucked into the past?”

Mercury spoke up again to Violatia. “We don’t actually know where we are, even though you’ve just told us. We’re not sure how we got here, but it feels like we’ve gone back in time. I think we might be from the future. Can you tell us what year it is?”

The dungeon again fell into silence.

“Violatia?” Mercury said.

“Umm, it’s the year of our lord, seventy-seven-thirty-four.”

More silence followed.

“I’m sorry,” Periwinkle replied, “but what year is it?”

“Seventy-seven-thirty-four,” Violatia repeated, “why, what year do you think it should be?”

“Not in the seventy-sevens,” Mercury replied. “Is this Earth? Are we on Earth?”

Violatia cleared her throat. “Ahem, yes this is Earth, but what year do you two think we should be in? Are you from the future?”

“Erm, it doesn’t look like it, actually,” Periwinkle replied.

“Yeah,” Mercury agreed, “our year isn’t in the seventy-seventh century; it’s in the twentieth.”

“You’re from the past?” Violatia exclaimed.

Mercury and Periwinkle hesitated.

“It would seem so,” Periwinkle replied.

“Tell me everything!” Violatia declared. “Who are you, in detail? Where are you from? What is your time like? And what do you remember about getting here? What’s the last thing you remember from your time before you arrived in our time?”

The barrage of questions was confusing for the clowns, and they focused on the last one.

“We were enjoying wieners,” Mercury said.

“Ooh lala, a trip to the brothels?” Violatia replied. “I used to work at a brothel, in my younger and cuter days.”

Mercury and Periwinkle were both caught off guard by the misunderstanding.

“Oh, no, sorry,” Mercury quickly added, “hotdogs, we were eating hotdogs… erm, sausages.”

“I see, not nearly as much fun as wiener wieners. Please, go on.”

“We had been at our friend’s mead tavern” Periwinkle explained. “It was a special opening ceremony.”

“Opening ceremony?” Violatia repeated. “Is that a type of spellcraft? Are you royalists?”

Now Periwinkle repeated Violatia. “Spellcraft?”

Another silence fell.

Violatia was the first to speak. “We are obviously not understanding each other. I’ll do my best not to interrupt, and why don’t you two start from the beginning? How did you go from eating sausages, to being locked in my sister’s dungeon?”

Mercury and Periwinkle both suddenly remembered the second knight, and she blurted out, “She killed someone!”

“Another knight,” Periwinkle added.

“What are you talking about? Who did she kill?”

“Another knight,” Mercury repeated.

“Yeah,” Periwinkle continued, “I think it was a man in the armor, oh, which had green marks on it.”

Violatia made a little noise of surprise. “She killed him.”

“Killed who?!” Mercury squeaked. “Who was that man?”

“Her partner,” Violatia answered. “They were lovers, but they didn’t get approved to reproduce, and Norjia wanted out of the relationship. She wants a child of her own.”

Mercury and Periwinkle were more confused.

“What do you mean approved to reproduce?” Periwinkle asked.

Violatia caught herself. “We’re getting off track. It’s clear that our different times are indeed very different. Please continue. What happened before my stupid sister killed her stupid man?”

Periwinkle went on, “I don’t remember much between eating hotdogs, and then being here. We thought we were still in the basement of the meadery, but when we went upstairs, well…”

“Everything was gone,” Mercury continued. “The old church with the pub in it, the street, even the town we expected to see outside was gone. There were just the two knights, and we saw Norjia kill the other knight, and we hid, but she found us and brought us here.”

“Ugh, my sister can be so ugly,” Violatia groaned.

“Are we really in the distant future?” Mercury asked quietly.

The three prisoners did not speak for much of the rest of the night, and despite hearing more snores coming from the cell where Violatia was locked, neither Mercury nor Periwinkle got any sleep.

When the upstairs began to glow with a little light from the morning, Norjia returned. The prisoners heard her footsteps above them before she opened the door to the basement. Both Mercury and Periwinkle jumped to their feet and clutched the bars of their cell. It was still very dark in the prison, but Norjia’s purple-accented armor gleamed as she appeared at the top of the stairs. She descended, set a pair of large canteens down outside the bars of the cell holding Mercury and Periwinkle, and she unlocked the door to the cell with Violatia.

“Get up,” she ordered her sister.

Violatia did not move. She was lying with her back facing the cell door.

“Get… up!” Norjia repeated more forcefully.

Mercury and Periwinkle heard Violatia mumble, “Good morning, sweet sister,” in a very dismissive tone.

“Get out of that cell this instant!” Norjia commanded.

“Funny,” Violatia replied without even turning to face Norjia, “you couldn’t wait to lock me in here.”

“The party’s over, and you’re sober, so get out.”

“You’re such a charmer,” Violatia replied, finally pushing herself up to a seated position. “What are your plans for those two?” she asked, nodding toward Mercury and Periwinkle.

Norjia did not reply and stared at her sister.

“Alright, alright,” Violatia conceded, “I’m coming.” She rose, stepped up to her sister at the door to the cell, and feinted to kiss her on the cheek.

Norjia scowled and pulled away from the gesture, especially since it was insincere. “Move it!” she snapped.

Violatia approached the bars behind which Mercury and Periwinkle were trapped, and they were surprised to realize she was a man. Violatia was very effeminate, but neither of the clowns had focused on the fact that she had informed them she was a drag queen. Violatia was also surprised by their appearances now with the faint light shining down from above.

“Jesters?! You didn’t tell me you were jesters.” She eyed them both, scrunching her nose. “Well,” she continued in a haughty voice, “I can see why you two are fools where you’re from.” Violatia focused on Periwinkle and declared, “You’re too scrawny,” and her eyes turned to Mercury as she added, “and you’re too paunchy.”

They both gawked at her.

“That’s rude!” Mercury retorted. “There’s nothing wrong with either of us.”

Violatia screwed up her face. “Obviously both of your genetic makeup was lacking when it was assembled.”

Mercury and Periwinkle were aghast.

“Hey fuck you, you fucking toad!” Mercury barked. “Who the fuck do you think you are commenting on our genetics?!”

Violatia was taken aback. “I beg your pardon.”

“You heard me, fucker!” Mercury squawked. She then enunciated very clearly. “You’re… a… fuckin’… toad.”

Violatia smirked. “I’m better looking than either of you.” She turned to Norjia. “Come, sister, let us be gone from this dungeon.”

Norjia scowled and began to climb the flight of stairs.

“Wait, what about us?!” Periwinkle cried out, but they closed the door and were gone.

“Dammit!” Mercury grunted.

Periwinkle was confused. “What the hell was she saying about our genetic material being assembled?”

“Oh, who knows?!” Mercury replied angrily. She crossed her arms. “I don’t like either of them one bit.”