Page 3 of Chained to the Horned God

BARSOK

T he human girl’s still here. Still alive. That alone makes her interesting.

She doesn’t sit like prey. She perches, back to the wall, knees pulled up, hands pressed against the grime-coated floor like she owns it. Most break by the second hour. Cry. Plead. Shiver so hard I can hear it over my own chains.

She doesn’t. Not her.

Valoa, she said last night. In a voice rough with salt and death and stubbornness. She’d bled all over the floor by the time she told me, but there was steel under it, not rust.

I glance over as she shifts. Her lip’s split worse now, crusted and black at the edges. Her eye’s going purple fast. But she drinks from the cistern again, both hands cradling the stone bowl like it’s sacred.

“You rationing that water?” she asks, voice low.

“Always.”

She nods like that makes sense. She wipes her mouth on the back of her wrist and stares at the moss above the trickle. “You know,” she says, “I used to dream of waterfalls.”

I grunt, tapping the side of my shard against the stone. “You’ll find a lot of things don’t make it into dreams anymore.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

She doesn’t ask for my name again. Already got it. Doesn’t ask what I am. That’s what they usually start with. What are you? How many men have you killed? Is it true you eat the bodies?

No. And if I did, I’d be fatter.

She watches me as I drag the blade across the floor, each stroke ringing out through the dark like it’s marking time.

That little shard’s more than a weapon. It’s a reminder.

Of when I stopped waiting to be saved. When I carved through a cell door with one arm busted and two ribs broken just to get one swing at the elf who broke my ship.

Didn’t kill him.

Got thrown in here instead.

“You ever used that?” she asks, gesturing to the blade.

I nod.

She doesn’t look away. “On who?”

“Elves. Mostly.”

She snorts. “Can’t say I feel bad about that.”

“Wouldn’t make a difference if you did.”

She frowns. “Do you ever talk like a person? Or is brooding your whole vocabulary?”

I raise an eyebrow. “You prefer screaming?”

“I prefer not dying.”

“You’re already ahead of the curve then.”

Her face softens, just slightly. “You always like this with strangers?”

“You’re not a stranger anymore.”

She considers that, turning it over like a coin between her fingers. “That supposed to be comforting?”

“It’s supposed to mean I haven’t killed you.”

“Yet.”

“Yet.”

She leans her head back against the wall, blinking slow.

The bruise on her cheek’s worse than last night.

Probably cracked something in the fall. I could reset it if they’d let me out of these damn chains, but they won’t.

I only get freedom when there’s a crowd screaming for my blood. Or someone else’s.

She shifts again, gritting her teeth. “I think they cracked a rib.”

“Probably.”

“I’ll need to wrap it.”

“You’ll need to stay alive first.”

She grunts. “Thanks for the medical advice, Doctor Horns.”

I snort. Can’t help it. “You got a sharp mouth for someone in a cage.”

“Better than having a dull knife.”

I hold up my shard. “I’ve got both.”

She stretches out a leg, testing the range of her movement. Her ankle’s twisted, but she’s doing her best not to limp. I watch her as she inspects the cell—like she might find a secret exit no one’s noticed for decades. There isn’t one. Just stone, sweat, and the slow rot of forgotten prisoners.

“You used to be a healer, right?” I ask, surprising even myself.

Her head snaps toward me. “How do you know that?”

“You don’t shake when people bleed. You didn’t panic when you saw my hands.”

“You think I’m scared of big hands?”

“No. But most people are.”

She smirks. “Well, I’m not most people.”

“No. You’re not.”

The silence returns, but it’s not sharp like before. It settles between us like a blanket. Thin. Frayed. But warmer than nothing.

She tilts her head. “Barsok?”

“What.”

“Thanks. For not being what they said you were.”

I stare at her for a long time before answering.

“They always say we’re monsters,” I mutter. “Because it makes it easier to throw us in cages.”

Valoa drinks from the cistern again, slower this time, like she trusts it won’t vanish between gulps. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and glances at me, her expression unreadable.

“You’re not what I expected,” she murmurs, voice low but steady.

I don’t respond. Let her fill the air with words. Let her think this cell is less than what it is. Talking’s a bad habit. Makes you remember things. Faces. Homes. Smiles you won’t ever see again.

Her voice lingers, though. It doesn’t scrape like most do. It’s jagged, yeah, but not cruel. Wounded, but not hollow. She sounds like someone who bled but didn’t break. That’s rare.

She turns slightly to face me. “Do you ever stop sharpening that thing?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I tilt my head. “Would you rather I stopped?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I just want to hear something besides that damn drip for once.”

“Then talk louder.”

She does. “What’s your name again?”

I sigh through my nose. “Barsok.”

“Barsok…” Her eyes narrow, mouth parting slightly as the name rolls through her mind. “Wait. You’re the minotaur who killed five miou in the pit last week?”

I shrug. “They bled easy.”

She barks out a laugh—sharp and sudden, like it surprises her as much as me. She claps a hand over her mouth like she wasn’t supposed to make that sound, like laughter might draw the wrong kind of attention even here, under rock and rot.

I watch her laugh, and something shifts inside me. It isn’t rage. It’s not that beast that claws its way out when the gates open and the crowd screams for violence.

It’s something smaller. Warmer. It unsettles me more than any blade ever has.

I grunt, shake my head, and go back to the blade. The scraping steadies me. It grounds me in this filth. In this cage that smells like blood and mold and old bones no one bothered burying.

She moves closer. Not much. Just enough to break her own rules. Close enough I can see the glint of intelligence behind the grime on her face. She’s watching me now, not like I’m an animal, but like I’m a puzzle missing a few pieces.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Waste of breath.”

She makes a face. “What, talking to me’s a waste of breath?”

“No. Talking to most people.”

She leans her head against the wall and exhales. “Well, I’ll take it as a compliment, then.”

I don’t correct her.

The cistern trickles on, the only constant rhythm in this damn place. The sound of dripping water echoes between us, more alive than the rest of the dungeon combined.

She scratches at her wrist, winces, then glances at me. “You know how to reset a finger?”

“Maybe.”

“Mine’s jammed, I think.” She holds up her hand, showing me her pinky—swollen and turning a shade of purple that shouldn’t belong on skin.

I reach out and take it gently between thumb and forefinger. She doesn’t flinch. That alone says more than any words could.

“You sure?” I ask.

“I’ve had worse.”

I snap it back into place before she finishes that sentence.

She lets out a choked grunt, eyes watering. But she doesn’t curse me. Doesn’t scream. She flexes the hand with a hiss and nods once, satisfied.

“You’re better than half the butchers I’ve met,” she mutters.

I sit back. “That’s not high praise.”

“Still true.”

We sit in silence again. But this one’s not thick or dangerous. It’s the kind you could fall asleep inside if you weren’t careful.

“I thought you’d be bigger,” she says after a while.

I raise an eyebrow. “You’re the first to say that.”

“I mean, you’re big. Obviously. Just not… what I imagined when the guards said you ate a guy’s heart after the fight.”

I sigh. “I didn’t eat it.”

“Good.”

“I just held it up.”

She grins. “That’s somehow worse.”

“Not my fault they scare easy.”

She shifts again, tucking her legs under her. Her body’s a map of bruises, each one telling a different story. Some purple. Some green. A few so fresh the skin still glistens.

“They’re gonna throw me in the pit,” she says. “Soon.”

I nod. “Probably.”

“Think I’ll die?”

“Maybe.”

She stares at the floor, her voice soft. “Comforting.”

I scratch at the scar on my chest, the one that never healed right. “You won’t die easy.”

“That’s not the same as not dying.”

“No. But it’s something.”

She smiles, small and tired. “You always this optimistic?”

I let that one hang. No point lying. She knows.

Eventually, her eyes drift shut. She leans against the wall, her body slumping in exhaustion.

Before she goes under, I hear her whisper, “Thanks, Barsok. For not being a monster.”

Too late. Already am.

Valoa leans against the opposite wall, her arms wrapped around her knees like they’re the only thing holding her together.

Her breathing has evened out some since she drank.

Her face still looks like it went a round with a mace handle, but there’s a glint behind her lashes now.

Something alive. Something that pisses off the kind of people who like to keep their boots on your neck.

That’s probably why she’s still breathing.

We start talking when the drip of the cistern gets too loud to ignore.

When you’ve stared at the same crack in the same wall for enough days to count the flecks of mold by taste, words start to sound less dangerous and more like the only weapon you’ve got left.

She asks about the pit, of course, but not the way most do.

Not with awe or fear. Just curiosity, like she’s pulling stitches through scar tissue, careful not to snag.

I tell her about the ship before the chains.

Before the pit. Before I was Barsok the Beast, the Bull, the Bloody-Handed.

I speak slow, almost forgetting how my own voice sounds when it isn’t grunting through broken teeth or roars meant to please the sadistic bastards watching from above.

I tell her I used to sail the Crescent Reaches, a merchant captain with a silver-streaked horn and a ship that could outrun any storm.

My crew was tight. My coin was clean. My rage was dormant.

She listens like it matters. Not like she’s taking notes for gossip or barter, but like she wants to hold on to something that isn’t this rot-stinking cell and the fear crawling under her skin.

She tells me she was trained by her father, a surgeon from some quiet little town on Prazh that doesn’t exist anymore.

She doesn’t weep when she says it, which makes the pain in her voice cut deeper than any scream.

Her hands move when she talks, as if remembering the weight of scalpels, of twine, of pressing a palm against a wound to keep someone’s insides from spilling onto the floor.

She asks questions no one’s bothered with in years.

About my shoulder, about the way I breathe when I move, about the scar that stretches across my left rib like a brand.

She scoots closer as we talk, her voice low, her movements careful.

When she reaches out and lays her fingers on my shoulder, I don’t flinch.

I don’t growl or bare my teeth. I let her touch me like I’m not something to be feared, like I’m not the horror story whispered between guards over mugs of fermented slimewater.

Her fingers are cold, but not timid. She traces the edge of a fresh gash I didn’t know was still bleeding, clotted halfway and crusted with filth.

“This one needs cleaning,” she murmurs, leaning close, inspecting it like it’s just another puzzle to solve.

“You let it sit, it’ll rot from the inside.

You’ll start feeling fevers in your bones. ”

I grunt, but don’t move. “Didn’t notice.”

“That’s the problem,” she says, brushing some of the caked dirt away with the hem of her sleeve. “You’ve stopped noticing when you’re in pain. That’s a bad sign.”

“Means I’m used to it.”

“No,” she says, her voice sharper than before. “Means you’ve let them take more than they had a right to.”

I don’t know what to say to that. No one’s talked to me about rights in years. Not without laughing after.

She sits back, hands in her lap, eyes fixed on my chest like she’s waiting for another wound to announce itself. Her gaze isn’t afraid. It’s searching, like she’s trying to map the shape of the man under the monster.

“You should sleep,” I mutter.

“So should you.”

“I don’t.”

She tilts her head. “Why?”

“Because sleep lets the ghosts in.”

She doesn’t argue. Just leans against the same wall I’m backed into, close enough now that I can feel the warmth of her skin bleeding into mine.

She doesn’t curl into me, doesn’t press, doesn’t ask permission.

She just lets herself rest in the same air I’m breathing.

Her presence is quiet, respectful, as if acknowledging a kind of trust neither of us is willing to say aloud yet.

The cell is quiet, save for the hiss of water trickling down the stone and the distant roar of a crowd somewhere above us.

They’re probably watching a kill. Maybe a spectacle, something with fangs and a lot of screaming.

Valoa’s breathing deepens beside me, soft and rhythmic. She’s not asleep yet, but she’s close.

The space between us feels less like a void and more like a barrier broken.

“You ever kill anyone outside the pit?” she asks suddenly, her voice just above a whisper, barely brushing the air.

“Once.”

“Did they deserve it?”

“More than most.”

She exhales slowly, like that answer gives her something she didn’t know she needed.

I glance at her, studying the curve of her jaw, the dirt smudged across her collarbone, the dried blood at the corner of her mouth.

She’s a mess, and still, she looks… right.

Like she’s carved from something older than this place, tougher than the filth clinging to our skin.

I shift, easing my weight so I don’t brush against her. She notices, and her hand moves to rest just shy of my arm. Not touching, just near. A promise, maybe. Or a question.

I say nothing.

The silence stretches long again, not uncomfortable, just full.

I breathe it in. The stale, copper-heavy stink of the dungeon fades for a moment.

The memory of chains pressing into bone goes quiet.

I feel the warmth of her body beside mine and forget, for just a moment, that we’re waiting for a dragon to tear us limb from limb tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever the guards get bored enough to feed it.

In the stillness, I let my eyes close.