The sight of those dungeons...
It appeared plucked from my darkest nightmares.
The intrusive thoughts even *my depraved brain* did not want to entertain.
And now, I was the intruder. Breaking into the very image of my own fear.
Stains of brown and crimson caked every surface, dried into the walls, the floors the ceilings.
The iron bars rusty and jagged like thorns, reflecting the dim flickering torchlight placed sparingly ever so often. Light that hardly reached the cells themselves.
I stepped forward, treading carefully. Fearing that some infection or disease would pass through my boot as I entered this tomb of filth.
My ears caught the squelch of several cockroaches and bugs I had stepped on, as the pungent scent of urine and manure clawed it's way through my nose and mouth.
Walking through this dungeon was as if I was being strung up. My stomach open, my arms and legs restrained...
And stuffed full of shit.
Then I noticed my kin.
Dark silhouettes in their cells. Hardly moving, hardly even breathing. I inched closer.
Green statues. Carved by futility. Or perhaps they chose to chip away at themselves?
Perhaps that was how they survived...
I crept even further.
Their faces wore no expression. Apart from the eyes which I could read.
A more harrowing sight than the cells themselves.
If reading souls were likened to reading a book...
The ink was smeared. Not one word became legible as I squinted and tilted in the darkness.
And in the midst of the smudged writing... one word remained.
No.
It was scribbled over all the rest.
Stamped over it like a footprint in mud.
The only word left in this codex of enslaved souls...
*"Serve."*
A head snapped towards me in the shadows.
"Ah... sorry, m'lord! Is there more work for us?"
I froze in place.
*He thinks I'm a lord?*
Of course, it made sense. There was no way a Gimen could be walking out freely in the castle, and I was wearing a scarf specifically to hide the fact that I was one.
"...I'm not your lord. I'm here to free you. I need to know where the guards keep their keys."
The slave stared at me blankly. This was not a response he was trained to handle.
"...M'lord? I'm sorry if I upset you! Please... if there's anything you need, I'll do it! Please, have mercy on me!"
He continued apologising as I tried to shush him and explain. He would not listen, only growing more and more loud, upset, confused.
His reality was set in stone. And I was an anomaly in that reality he could not comprehend.
This was the state the humans of this castle left him in. Shattering minds into bits and pieces in their charge of destruction.
This is what they did to Gimen.
Yet still... I managed to make them flee the castle, eventually.
Finding the guard bearing the keys and bringing him to his knees was the easy part.
The hardest part was trying to convince these slaves they were truly free.
In a world where they were taught freedom cannot exist.
And so I told them to run as far as possible away from the castle. That it was an order from the king themselves.
*They'll be happy to serve him. I hope they will be happy again to not.*
I watched from afar, in the shadows, as they stampeded from the castle double doors.
The disgust and fear on the citizen's faces.
The soldiers chasing after them once they had swiped their jaws from the floor.
Bellowing commands at their backs.
The loathsome slaves, the monsters they warned their children to stay far from...
Were now running amok in the street.
I smiled at the sight of all the chaos.
Their system... their rules...
Crumbling to dust in their hands.
*I did this.*
*This was me*.
My portrait of the human world became ever clearer.
I believed more than ever that I had to destroy it.
And so I turned, and bolted towards my next objective in the castle.
To confront *him*.
The one who stole everything from me.
The one who gave me options of one or two.
I merely wanted to see the look on his face...
When he learned that there was a third.