The Desecration

A desperate young man commits an unthinkable sacrilege and pays the price

The two hulking guards in plate armor carried the young man down the dark cobbled tunnel towards what would become his permanent residence in the Northern Dungeon’s premium, ensuite accommodation. Premium in the sense that the rats that resided in the prison gorged themselves on the dead bodies of the city graveyard under which the dungeon was built and were therefore not desperate enough to nibble on prisoner’s unsuspecting genitals as they slept below (which could not be said of the Southern Dungeon). Ensuite in the sense that prisoners were permitted to shit in their bedrolls with no additional surcharge of beatings (beyond the mandated twice-daily beatings of course).

“Please! I thought it was a pheasant! I swear I thought it was a pheasant!” cried the young man, tears running down his cheeks and snot running down his chin. His pleas were met with a swift and decisive punch to the gut by the larger of the two very large guards. “Shut your mouth you fucking animal,” he replied, with typical dungeon guardsman wit. The punch was very effective, the young man would not recover enough breath to resume his whining for at least a few minutes.

The dungeon was built on several levels, with each floor darker and colder than the one before it, as the structure delved deeper and deeper towards the belly of the earth. Prisoners were situated according to the severity of their crimes such that the thieves, for instance would enjoy only mild frostbite on the upper levels, whereas murderers and traitors to the crown would suffer the devastating mental and physical effects of prolonged seclusion in the frozen cells of the lower levels.

The guards had carried the young man down the spiral staircase, past the thieves and the wife-beaters, then past the rapists and the wife-killers and so on. They had stopped on the seventh level, which was home to pedophiles, necromancers and one pedophile necromancer, when one of the guards turned to his esteemed colleague as a look of sad compassion flashed across his otherwise perpetually furrowed brow. “Hold on mate, this just doesn’t feel right. Look at him,” he said, nodding his head at the poor, wretched farmer’s boy they had dragged into this hellhole. The other guard…

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