Untrue

Chapter 5

There was a humongous boulder on top of Artemis' chest, crashing her with its large weight. She was finding it hard to breathe. With every passing moment, the load became heavier. She could not see it, but she knew it there, pressing down, trying to force the wind out of her.

Artemis woke up covered in sweat and out of breath. Oddly, the huge mass on her chest did not disappear. Someone was obviously sitting on top of her. But who was sitting on top of her? Could it possibly be that sick individual who had tortured her? Had he come for another session?

She opened her eyes slowly, all the while praying that she was alone in that dusty cell. The first thing that Artemis noticed was that the door was wide open, allowing plenty of torch light to come in. Artemis also noticed that nothing and nobody was sitting on her chest, which made the weight she was feeling seem very strange and ominous. She looked around the room, wondering why the hell the door was open. And the she spotted him, hiding in the shadows, his face invisible as always. That's definitely not a good sign, thought Artemis.

"Get up," he said in a deadpan voice.

Oh Lord, not again!

"I am not going to hurt you," the man said in the same tone of voice he had previously used.

Yeah, right! Artemis thought.

And then, something unbelievable happened. The strange man bent down and lifted her up, letting her support herself on the wall. Artemis thought he looked distressed. Maybe the police have come close to finding him and that's why he's taking me away. Oh no! Artemis never really entertained fantasies of being rescued by the police, but the knowledge that now there was even less hope of her making it out of this situation alive, a feeling of complete and utter hopelessness consumed her.

It was maybe because of this despair and depression that she failed to notice that the man had slowly led her out of the cell and into the brightly lit corridor. As soon as his hands were withdrawn, however, Artemis lost her balance and was only saved from a nasty fall by a nearby torch, which she desperately clutched as if her life depended on it. Even when she had steadied herself somewhat she refused to let go of it.

What if he's taking me to be sacrificed, she thought, feeling slightly panicky and with good reason. The man was obviously a member of some kind of cult, Artemis was sure of it. He was able to do all sorts of weird things, like levitate her with the power of his mind and cause her serious bodily harm without even touching her. It all led there, even that ridiculous but all the while scary outfit he was wearing, black robes, a hood and an appalling skeleton mask.

Out of nowhere, the man raised his right arm holding the wooden stick and pointed at the spot where the corridor appeared to come to an abrupt stop.

"Move!" he said, still no emotion evident in his deep voice.

Artemis was confused. Why did this man want her to go down this dead-end corridor? What use could she possibly be, standing there? And then it dawned on her causing her eyes to bulge significantly. He was going to execute her, simple as that. She stood perfectly still for a minute, staring at wall in front of which she was going to die.

I'm too young to die! she thought, which was perfectly understandable. She had always hoped that her death would be a little more dignified than that. She did not want to die and be found four months later, her decomposed body floating on a river and discovered by a petrified shepherd sitting on the riverbank.

The ridiculously but scarily dressed man, seeing that she was making no move to leave, pushed her. Artemis had trouble categorizing the push as gentle or rough. That was odd! Last time she had seen him he had not minded kicking her, throwing her on walls and slashing her chest open.

Speaking of which, Artemis wondered how it was healing. Not that it mattered because she was soon going to die anyway, but she was curious as to what it looked like. She risked a glance inside her torn and bloody shirt and was disgusted by the sight. Her chest was mauled and still bleeding a bit. She repressed the urge to vomit.

"Go. Now!" the man said urgently, but in her mental state, Artemis failed to register the bizarreness of the situation.

A small part of her brain that had managed to escape the effects of shock was quick to oblige to the man's request. When she reached the end of the corridor, Artemis turned to face her fate, still under the effects of shock. The man looked irritated even though his face was covered by a mask. He was still pointing his stick on the wall, only now Artemis was in front of it.

"Do you want to die?" he asked. Artemis really did not want her life to end because of someone so repetitive. How's about something original for a change?

"No," she answered, her answer as unoriginal as his question.

"Then go! Hurry!"

Is this some kind of sick game, so they can have fun before they murder me?

Artemis decided that whatever it was, she really had no choice anyway, so she started walking towards the stone wall, still facing the man standing ahead of her. Then her back touched the cold wall and she stumbled on something and fell backwards to the ground. When she got up she encountered solid rock in front of her. The man was nowhere to be seen. Naturally, since she was now in a different corridor, this one very dimly lit. It took her eyes a couple of minutes to adjust to the much darker environment.

Once she was able to make out the ground beneath her feet she started walking drunkenly down the corridor, having no idea where she was going. For some reason everything was blurred and moving around wildly. Artemis attributed it to the fever which was now so high she could feel the heat coming off her if she placed her hand anywhere near her skin. Right at this moment she was so confused and feverish that she did not even question the man's actions, so she just kept walking and walking and walking, until the corridor came to another end. Artemis sincerely hoped that this wall was transparent as well. She outstretched her hand and touched it.

To her horror, the stone turned out to be definitely solid. She turned around to see if the man had followed her all this way to execute her. There was no one there. She was alone.

What now?

Artemis placed a hand on the wall again, this time pushing it ever so lightly. No results. She pushed harder. Still nothing. Finally, she pushed with all her might, using her left, less injured shoulder to hit it like she would have done to break a door. To her immense relief she found herself stumbling once again past the transparent wall.

When she hit the ground, however, her relief evaporated. She cursed in three different languages and gave several grunts of pain. What kind of idiotic entity put these stairs behind a transparent wall? She sat for a second in order to estimate the extent of the damage. She thought she had sprained her ankle but she wasn't certain. Maybe it was just broken. Either way, she still was unable to put even the tiniest bit of pressure on it, which left her in the rather difficult position of climbing up the extremely large flight of stairs on one leg. She had not actually tried this before but she guessed it would probably be fairly demanding. Add to that a high fever, burning and malfunctioning lungs, a slashed thorax, the world's worst migraine and a finely bruised body and you could safely predict that the only way she would be able to ascent the stairs was by a miracle in which she did not believe. But Artemis decided to endeavour it nonetheless.

Unfortunately, there were no railing for her to grab and the walls proved rather useless now that she was skipping. In the end, she discovered the best way to reach the top. Crawling. It proved a lot easier albeit time consuming. As soon as she reached the top she got up -a remarkable feat- and opened the old, wooden door that was there.

The room to which the stairs led smelled as if it had been closed for centuries. Numerous spiders had woven webs and cockroaches were thriving. It looked very much like a storage room and definitely smelled like it. There were a few shelves on the walls, on top of which lay a large collection of tiny bottles filled with green and blue goo-ish substances. Artemis wondered how long they had been laying there, left to decompose.

She heard something running to hide behind a monstrous, moth-eaten, green armchair. She assumed it was a rat but she did not care. For as long as it remained hidden that was.

Exactly opposite the old wooden door was another one, equally old and wooden. Only this one did not open when Artemis turned the doorknob, nor when she threw herself on it trying to break it. She searched the room for something sharp to smash a hole into it but found nothing.

Great! Now I'm trapped.

Outside she could hear people talking, laughing, shouting... That wasn't right! People were not supposed to be screaming and shouting at this time of day... Whatever time of day it was.

Artemis ran -or walked as fast as she could- to the only window in the small room. She could see nothing. She realized it was because of the dust covering most of the window's surface. With her sleeve she wiped away a considerable amount of it and ventured another look.

There, a few feet away from her, were the cult members, about a dozen of them. They were using their special powers of telekinesis to attack some innocent passersby. Artemis thought that was a complete waste. If she had powers like these, she would use them to save people, not torture them and wreak havoc.

Artemis was now glad that the door would not open. If it had, she would be out there right now, getting the crap kicked out of her by some robe-wearing, skeleton-masked, deranged fanatics.

Above the noise going on outside, Artemis heard the sound of tiny feet teetering on rotten wood under the armchair. She turned her head to locate the rat but she only got a glimpse of it as it run past her, under the door and out of the storage room where a battle was waging. She felt the hairs at the back of her neck rise. When she heard the sound of footsteps coming from the stairs from the other door and turned around to see who it was, all the other hairs on her body rose as well.

At the door, dressed in the familiar outfit, stood the familiar cult member who had brought her to the terrible state she was in. At some point she found it disturbing to be able to recognize him even without having seen his face, just by the way he always stood, perfectly straight with his hands clenched in fists to his sides and his head tilted slightly backwards in what Artemis liked to think was a superior sneer. Or maybe she was just biased.

The man in the robes threw something at her and she instinctively reached out to catch it. A split moment later she regretted that action as she felt a highly unpleasant tug to her navel and the world started spinning out of control. Seconds later her feet touched ground again and she fell down clutching her sprained or broken ankle. She was back in the prison, she assumed, because the room she was in was made of stone as well.

Before she knew it a short, plump woman was forcing a bitter liquid down her throat which she gulped in her surprise.

Poison!

But it was already too late. She had swallowed it and it soon took effect. At first the images started to blur even more than they were before and she felt her limbs go numb. Soon after that she lost her sight and not long after that her consciousness. She was glad that the poison was painless. Though it did seem kind of strange to be given a poison after all that trouble they went through to torture her. And why was this woman wearing a white outfit instead of the trademark black one?