Page 57 of Cursed By Gold

My steely tone seems to penetrate the man's bestial haze; he blinks and, realizing my presence, hastily backs away from the unconscious prisoner with a curt nod.

"M'lord King," he rumbles out in brusque greeting. "My men and I have been...questioning the prisoner, as you instructed. Just havin' a bit o'trouble getting her to divulge her tongue, is all."

As he steps aside, I get my first clear look at his detainee - the would-be thief from Everton's ill-fated revel. Young, painfully so, her slight form looking dwarfed and fragile amidst the cruel confines of the rack. Tattered remnants of her silk gown cling to her battered skin, ribbons of crimson streaking her thighs and abdomen. One eye is already swollen grotesquely shut, her split lip caked with drying blood.

Revulsion curls in the pit of my belly at the excessive display of brutality. This is no hardened criminal or assassin...just a starry-eyed girl who likely wanted to earn a few coins for an idle heist. One poorly considered but hardly deserving of such wanton sadism.

"What of her accomplices? Any details she may have revealed before..." My gaze cuts to the blood-flecked whip and other unspeakable instruments laid out on the side table, "...before more forceful measures were required?"

Karrack's beefy shoulders rise and fall in an indelicate shrug. "Aye, she did let slip a name when we started getting...persuasive." A nasty leer twists his features. "Mind you, the little wench tried to bite off her tongue after spouting it, the foolish quim. Had to give her a few lashes to keep her from doing herself further harm."

Her rasped, hitching breaths seem to echo louder in the dank space as I regard the trembling girl. A sense of implacable dread creeps over me, my instincts screaming out a warning of things far more foreboding than simple thievery afoot.

"Well?" I snap, impatience transmuting to a slow ember of anger. "Out with this precious name you extracted, Karrack, and quickly!"

The guard captain sneers, crossing his thick arms over his chest as he issues me an insufferably smug look. "Aye, m'lord. 'Course you'll be wanting to know that."

He leans back and takes an ostentatious breath. "The wee thing hollered out somethin' in a language I didn't recognize. Sounded a bit like...'Smarshtrooz Garrakooleen...'"

The guard trails off with a baffled look as he completely mangles the string of fluid syllables into a butchered tongue-twister. He clears his throat and tries again, the sounds becoming even more fractured.

"No, wait - 'Scloshturian Garghoudian...'"

A mounting sense of disquiet prickles along my nape as the captain continues vainly trying to reproduce what was likely thename of the shadowy thief collective. A different unintelligible stream of indecipherable syllables trips from his thick tongue each time, compounding the dread pooling in the pit of my stomach.

It couldn’t be. But it would make sense. Could it be that the reason the name of this guild has remained obscured all these years is that some form of enchantment guards its identity, twisting the tongues of those who dare utter it aloud into incomprehensible jumbles?

Even under the most brutal torture, it seems this girl cannot give up its true name. A fresh gout of rage surges through me at that realization, quickly metamorphosing into bitter resignation. Of course nefarious sorcery is at play - why would it not be?

"Enough." I growl out the command, holding up a peremptory hand. Karrack grinds his teeth together but obeys, falling blessedly silent.

As I turn away from the interrogation rack, my eye catches on an odd pattern of markings spread across the reddened expanse of the prisoner's back, peeking through the scandalously rent remains of her dress. Leaning closer, I let out an involuntary hiss of dismay.

A gnarled emblem mars the unblemished flesh there, the shape of a snake biting its own tail, creating a stylized letter 'g' that appears to slither and shift eerily beneath the flickering torchlight. But there's something off about the design - flecks of gold seem to shimmer within the ink, almost like they're calling out to my cursed touch. Blots of crimson seep from where its raised tendrils bisect the raw meat of her savaged skin, lending the brand an essence of sheer malignancy.

A chill runs down my spine as I realize this is no ordinary tattoo. There's magic worked into those inky coils, I can feel it trying to tug at the power within me. This girl has been boundby some kind of spell or ritual, marked as a vessel to contain secrets.

No wonder she couldn't just blurt out the guild's name - that sigil has enchanted her very essence to stay silent, no matter how much pain they inflict. Brutality won't make her talk when wicked magic is sealing her lips.

I step back from the tortured prisoner, fighting to keep my expression neutral despite the unease prickling over me. This is more than just a gaggle of street thieves - there are powerful, dark forces at play here that I've been naive to overlook.

"That will be enough for tonight, Captain," I grit out, each word dropping like lead ingot onto the filthy stone floor. "Have the prisoner unbound and placed into one of the isolation cells. Given the...unique protections she's been granted," my lip twists in distaste at having to reference the obscene branding, "more conventional interrogation tactics will prove useless against her. For now, she can remain confined while we determine alternate methods of extracting information."

Karrack fixes me with a look of sullen disbelief, but I slice him with a chilling stare before he can voice any objections. Reluctantly, he signals for two burly guards to retrieve the girl's unconscious, blood-streaked form from the rack. My stomach turns as the crude manacles bite into her already raw wrists, but I force myself to remain impassive.

Turning on my heel, I sweep from the chamber and back down the dank hallway, pausing only long enough to toss a curt order over my shoulder.

"See that she receives basic care for her injuries and is fed before being transferred to the cell. I'll not have the girl expiring needlessly before we determine her relevance."

Unease prickles along my nape as the guards murmur acknowledgement in my wake. There is a far more malignantforce at work here than simple thievery or material greed - a truth I have willfully turned a blind eye to for far too long.

Tonight's grim discoveries in the dungeon have shaken me out of my naive delusions. I can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the dark forces controlling this twisted thieves' guild. Whether I want to face it or not, I have to confront their malicious influences head-on before they smother what little light remains in my kingdom.

Squaring my shoulders, I stride back towards the palace and my private study. In the solitude of those secure walls, I can finally dive into the reports and records detailing suspected guild crimes over the past years. Analyzing the patterns may reveal their true agenda and who could be orchestrating it all from the shadows. Only then can I gather the knowledge to dismantle this collective piece by piece

After all, to combat the dark, one must first forge themself a candle to light the way.

Chaotic Tarot

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