Chapter 69

69 The Dark Dungeon

‘Ugh! The corners of these stairs have piles of dust. They never cleaned this place, did they?’ Tilla was rambling in her mind as she scrubbed the corners with extra force.

She was slowly climbing downstairs while cleaning one stair at a time.

When she reached the end of the stairs, she had thought that she would reach a room. However, with the help of the dim light that came in through the door that she had left open, she could tell that she was standing in a corridor and not a room.

‘Umm... I should have brought a lantern with me,’ she thought to herself as she squinted her eyes and tried to make sense of what this place was.

She got an unsettling feeling in her heart as she took some more steps. ‘Er... I think I should clean this place up later. I can’t clean properly without seeing anyth-‘

Tilla drew in a sharp breath, and she clasped the mop and the bucket tightly when she suddenly heard a clanking noise.

“Who’s there?” Tilla turned to face the dark area from where she heard the noise.

However, instead of getting an answer, she heard some more rattling noises.

Tilla slowly started to step back while threatening whoever was trying to scare her, “I am t-the handmaid of t-the Queen. If you d-dare to do anything stupid to me then, you’ll f-face the consequences.”

.....

Tilla inhaled sharply again when her back was pressed against some cold iron rods. She quickly turned around and tried to see past the iron bars that were right up her face.

She faintly saw something moving behind the bars. She wanted to run away that instant. However, before she could act, something suddenly grabbed her leg and startled her to her core.

“Haahhhh!” Tilla screamed, dropped the bucket, and randomly moved the stick of the mop to scare off whatever was grabbing her. “Leave me! Leave!”

However, she stopped trying to beat and poke the owner of the hand when she suddenly heard a frail voice of a woman, “Please don’t shout. I just want to ask you a favor.”

Tilla finally stopped screaming. She covered her mouth with her shaky palm and took a moment to calm her breath.

She crouched down, or rather, she dropped down because her shaken knees couldn’t hold on anymore. She looked behind the bars and she could finally see a silhouette of a woman.

The woman took the chance to hold Tilla’s hand and she whispered cautiously, “I see that you don’t have red eyes. So I am assuming that you are a human.”

Tilla also replied in a whisper, “Yes, I am a human. And... so are you?”

“Yes,” that woman gulped and shifted closer to the bars. And she asked in a desperate whisper, “Listen, I have a 5-year-old daughter, Daisy Wilson. Please tell her that her mother is sorry. Please tell her that I loved her.”

Tilla already had several thoughts running in her mind when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she slowly started to see silhouettes of other humans far in the corners.

Some humans were chained to the walls, some were crouching down on the floor, some were sleeping, while some were swaying back and forth as if they had already lost their sanity.

Tilla could finally tell that she was not in some basement, but this was a dungeon. And she was looking at the prison cells.

Tilla gulped in fear and asked that woman who was still grabbing her hand, “What is this place? Why are all of you locked up here?”

That woman suddenly shouted, “Can’t you see? We are the damned food for those red eyes! They are going to devour us all! We will all die.”

She gripped Tilla’s hand even tightly, pressed her face in between the bars, and glared at Tilla. And she gave a piece of advice to Tilla with a shaken breath, “You also better run from here before they lock you up as well.”

Tilla was stunned when that woman confirmed the fear in her mind. She always had a question as to how all these vampires survived, and where they would get their daily share of blood from. Finally, all of her questions were answered.

‘They are keeping all these humans as pigs waiting to be slaughtered,’ Tilla thought to herself as she shivered in fear.

“Run from here. And find my daughter. My home is in Silver Keep. My daughter must be all alone and scared. Please, tell her I love her! Please, please, please...” that woman whimpered and pleaded to Tilla.

Tilla felt nauseous after realizing how these vampires were treating the poor humans – locking them up in the dark and cold dungeon and making them wait for their death.

Tilla hurriedly pulled her hand away from that woman and got up. She rummaged her hands on the bars. She found a huge lock on the door. She tried pulling it to see if that would also come off, however, it did not.

She held the bars and thought hard about what she could do to help all the humans here. ‘If I tell Anastasia everything that’s going on down here, she might be able to do something, right? Yes, let’s do that.’

She crouched back down and consolingly patted that woman’s hand. And she whispered to her, “Don’t worry. I will try to find some solutions, and I will try to set you all free. Then you can tell your daughter on your own, tell her how much you love her.”

Out of the blue, a burst of maniacal laughter filled the dungeon.

Tilla was barely hanging on the last bit of her courage here by staying inside the dungeon that was probably meant to be a secret from all the humans residing in the castle. And that loud cackle from one of the prisoners wasn’t helpful at all.

“Shhh... keep it down, please! The vampires might hear you! I am trying to help you here,” Tilla asked in a panicked whisper.

However, that woman who was chained in the same cell as the pleading woman spoke monotonously, “I don’t know why you’re acting to be so brave, but you cannot help us escape this hell. There is only one way to escape from here, and that is death.”

The pleading woman crawled closer to the chained woman and tried to make her shut up, “But there’s no harm in trying! Let her try. She might be able to sneak us out!”

The chained woman grabbed that pleading woman by her hair, slammed her down on the ground, and made her cry in pain and bleed.

Tilla watched everything unfold in horror. She wanted to stop them from fighting each other. However, they were at the far corner of the cell.

The chained woman then aggressively whispered at that wailing and wounded woman, “We cannot sneak out of here unless we can run faster than those vampires.”

She spat on that wounded woman and pushed her away. She gave an angry glare to Tilla and scolded her, “And you, don’t give hope to these pathetic fools when your own life is in danger, you wretched little bitch!”

After she said that, her gaze shifted behind Tilla. She started to chuckle, and that chuckle slowly turned into a maniacal cackle.

Tilla, on the other hand, was still crouching down. However, her body was trembling in fear. She could sense someone standing behind her. And from the way that woman laughed at her, she was sure that it wasn’t another human maid.

Tilla felt her heart drop when she heard a deep voice from right behind her.

“May I know what you are doing here, little kitten?”