A Dark Descent...

“Keep the damned bag over your head, prisoner.”
“Please…. Please! What have I done wrong?”
What had the man done wrong? Not even the cruel escort knew the answer to such a pertinent question. He was leading the man to a grim death, surely such information was necessary? No. Not in this case. Truth was as useful at this point as the broken cobbles the escort and his prisoner traversed. All that mattered was survival, and time was waning.
The prisoner shuffled forward, his elbow gripped tightly by his escort, begging with his captor for release. The nerve in his humerus was being pinched by the unnecessarily tightening grasp of his afflicter. The surges of pain caused him to stumble. The burlap sack upon his head shifted as he fell to one knee, coming loose as he scraped his cap against the jagged cobble.
The odd duo came to a thick, iron bound door. Beyond it laid yet another impenetrably dark corridor. The one in control spoke, “Still yourself, vermin. I’ll need to light the lamp.” As the man with the mask about his face stood, he could hardly keep still. The murky air of the corridors had begun to decline in temperature with every blind step. “Damn thing, light, won’t you?” The captor muttered as he struggled with the oil lamp in the damp place; it would only get worse.
The masked man tentatively reached up with his right arm to loosen the sack on his head ever so slightly. He had been doing this every time they had stopped on their descent. If he could only slip the cap off so as to see anything, anything at all, he might be able to escape. Testing his luck once again, he spoke:
“You still haven’t told me your name, boy. I can tell you’re a young fellow, by your voice that is.” His voice rattled as the words came out. The combination of exhaustion and a steadily progressing virus filling his lungs with fluid took their toll. He shivered audibly, perhaps, in some way, he might count on some good nature in the man that had yet to arise.
“Be silent, prisoner. My name is unimportant. You know Alexander and you know what you’ve done and that’s all you need to know.” The man’s demeanor was cold and unforgiving. He could have made things at least a little easier. “Listen to me very carefully now. We’re coming to a barred gate and beyond it is a ladder. The rungs are somewhat rotted, so you’ll need to step carefully. I will alert you when we come to the descent. Come.” The man jerked the helpless captive’s arm, the sign to move forward.
As they moved awkwardly through the corridor, the masked man spoke again, “Could I ask a question, sir? When in the baron’s prison, I walked, shackled, to an interrogation room. The haunting screams from the dark did not frighten me so much as… that light that seemed to pour forth from a crevice in the corner of the prison. I swear on my blessed mother that the baron carted a few of us downward with his elevator. The descent took minutes… there’s… no way light could come through so deep a place as this. How is it so?”
The rattling voice of the man seemed to drone on for an hour, its irritating bate bluntly stabbing the silence. What manner of question was it anyway? The two took a few more steps before stopping abruptly.
“The master’s secrets are with him alone. He is… very old.” The captor thought hard upon the question, like he had never done before. It seemed to escape him, but all he could think of in that moment was the orb. Sighing, he spoke up again, “It’s said that before the world…” he trailed off. “Let’s go, and don’t try anything funny; the master’s servants are close.”
At the mention of the word “servant” the man lurched with a wet gasp. Tears began to well in his covered eyes as awful memories flooded to his mind. Those noises. No voice of man could utter them. Perversions poured from their maws, yet no forms could stand upon such abstractions of sound. Not words, but guttural bellowing, a clarion of horrors; could they be close? Or was it simply a ruse to keep him in check?