***
In the cells where the presume alive people are incarcerated and left for the time when they will be used as a dish, Mircea is sitting on the chair, he looks at his friend Timmy who is not feeling too well. While Mircea looks at Timmy with water on his eyes, he grasps his hand on the knees of him, and he commemorate the last memory he had while he was conscious.
He and with Timmy were coming from a successful hunt where they managed to secure and kill a few rabbits. With these dead animals, they were about to sell them to a merchant they knew very well over the months they lived in a small village from the kingdom and worked as a hunters and helpers, but something has happened to that village they lived. It was raided, but by not anyone, by a tribe of cannibals.
On this attack, Mircea and Timmy armed themselves with swords, bows and arrows, then they attack the tribe of cannibals. Mircea has made an impressive kill count for a boy with almost zero combat instruction. He got dropped as a squire when he was on his third month because the knight he worked for it was a wuss who killed himself because of a noble who rapped and impregnated his gold digger girlfriend.
But Timmy, who was using arrows and his trusty bow, he made some impressive shots that ended the strongest cannibals lives. Still, these two were not able to put down all the one thousand cannibal members of the tribe, and so, they fled from this village of theirs with a few more people who are also at this moment incarcerated with them. As they ran away from the tribe, Timmy got shot by an arrow from the cannibal tribe. The arrow pierced his body, and made him fell on the knees.
But even with an arrow in his back, Timmy was still able to run away from that village.
After a while, the survivor of that village have managed to lure the cannibals away from them by hiding into a cave while they weren't looking. And in that cave, Mircea was looking at Timmy's wounds, and he saw he got a poisonous arrow on his back.
Mircea was feeling nervous and agitated because of Timmy's state. He needs urgent medical assistance because of a poisonous arrow it is very mortal. Even wizards or mages are not able to make this deadly effect disappear not even with a most powerful heal spell. He takes a look at the other survivors, and he saw them in a much worse situation than Timmy. Mircea, being almost the only one with a few small cuts around his body.
He hears a carriage noise outside the cave, so Mircea, decides to leave the cave. As he left the cave and looked at the cave, he saw there are a huge cage, empty, and at the driver seats there were Thornosian Father and the driver of the carriage. The carriage stops, the driver with Thornosian Father are looking at Mircea, who blindly walking at them and demanding help from them. But the people of that carriage, with a grin on his face, they take out daggers and goes after Mircea whom later he locks in a cage with the people in the other cave.
Originally, there were more people in the cave, but due to the fact hat most of them were poisoned, the two huge men have killed the other twelve people without any mercy. There were kids, women and elderly. These cold people did not care about them, they saw they are infected with poisons from the arrows used by cannibals. After they minimize the number of infected meat, the people have moved in their carriage, and told Mircea a thing he will remember in his nightmares.
"I will enjoy your human meat, boy."
***
"Ngh..." makes Timmy the noise. "I-it burns..."
"Timmy..." says Mircea worried. "How did your wound at the back did not close up by Judah's healing magic?"
"The magic i-is ineffective on poisonous effects." says Timmy sweating bullets. "My squire told me a while ago when she was still alive."
"N-No. You cannot die. Not there, Timmy!"
"I-I wi-will not die here, Mircea." says Timmy looking at Mircea. "Look. I w-will not die. Not here. Not now."
"...You need something?" asks Mircea looking worried at the body of Timmy.
"Water. Need water. Please..."
Mircea leave the body of Timmy, resting on the cold ground. The boy goes at the cages bars, and observes a big bowl with water who was put there by Fiona a few moments ago when she came to fed the people from here. As Mircea walked closer to the bowl, he hears the door getting opened. He couldn't see the person who was coming here because the entire room was still dark, but Mircea could distinguish there is not a single person steps, there are multiple steps coming toward his cell. It resembles the steps of two people.
Then, the room gets illuminated by a torch who was lighted by the breath of the Thornosian father who reveals his true identity as a human-demon to the poor people who would become part of the feast tonight. He looks at the people of Mircea cage. He is disappointed to see two people dead and one injured from the eight people stored in that cage.
Thornosian Father looks at Mircea with a grin on his face, and he tells the demon, his order which he have to obey.
"Take the small kid. And the rest of five people from the cage. They will serve as a good a meal for tonight feast."
The man enters the cage, he approaches Mircea, and he knocks him back with the backside of the sword that demon is carrying with him. That hit was strong enough to put Mircea into an unconscious state for good. When he will wake up, it will be late for him to do anything.