The sound of a chute opening in their cell woke Chawsess… Charlie?
Charlie blinked awake, his head hurting massively. He groaned and rubbed his scaly head. Gods, why did he drink so much last night?
Wait.
Scaly head?
Charlie paused, staring at the scaled, clawed hand and the hugely muscled arm it was attached to.
Oh shit.
The others stirred to life as well, staring at each other. Three near-identical and hulking lizardmen. They only had a moment to inspect themselves before the sunstones above them flickered.
“Eat your meal or I shut yer lights off.” A rough voice growled from beyond the cell.
Charlie turned to see an even bigger grizzly bear jailer standing just outside the cell menacingly, glowering down at the three confused reptiles.
“What, are ya thick headed?!” The bear growled. “Eat or I report ya. Ya heard what the Mayor said. Any incidents and yer mine forever!”
The three lizards glanced at each other and dove for the food.
As they hungrily devoured it all, Charlie tasted that strange flavor in the gruel. That intoxicating mix of a warm, sun-baked stone and sharp musk. He felt woozy all of a sudden. When he blinked again, the bear had moved away from the cell.
Chawsess wondered why the bear had been so insistent that they eat such gruel. Jailers usually only cared that their charges didn’t die. But while Charlie’s mind tried to analyze his current situation, his lizardman body hungrily devoured his bowl of slop.
Charlie tried to stop, but his body just kept sucking down every last morsel in the bowl. For all of his mental awareness, he could barely control the actions of his body – being forced into the position of a mere observer as he licked his scaly lips with a forked tongue and waited by the cell door.
“Why head hurt?” Hissorias rasped.
“Me think bad now,” Gesesseks agreed.
Chawsess’ head throbbed lightly as well.
Maybe the warm-bloods poisoned them? But Chawsess was immune to poisons. There was a fleeting, elusive thought that maybe they laced their food with something, but it was too big for his mind to grasp and before he could think about it, the thought was gone.
The cell doors opened and the lizards filed out quietly, walking up the gravel path to the lumbermill.
What followed were the most grueling and intensive twelve hours of Chawsess life - not that his primitive brain could recall much of it. The lumbermill had a few sunstones in the ceilings that kept the lizardmen energized, but only just so. The creeping coolness of Diamond Hollow’s air was steadily sapping their strength as they worked.
Chawsess found himself separated from his brothers. They had been sent to other parts of the mill to keep them from ‘collaborating’ which must have been some strange warm-blood term. It was hard work, hauling stack of logs to the giant spinning wheel and turning it into even planks.
Uneven planks got you whipped.
A massive bear was watching them, and when Chawsess slipped up, he felt the bite of the lash on his muscular back. He hissed, and that bought himself another across his face. Chawsess kept his indignation to himself after that, especially since other guards were watching.
By the time the lunch bell rang, his entire body ached with exhaustion.
An older lizardman, Rakser, shakily served them gruel. He had half-regenerated hands, the fingers tiny little nubs. Other lizards thanked him, some raising their crests in respect. Chawsess wondered what the lizard had done to deserve it.
“Why his hands bad?” Chawsess asked while they slurped down the foul gruel.
“He try escaping. Cut off hands and feet,” One of the lizardmen whispered.
Only now, looking at the lizard, did Chawsess realized he was not sitting down to ladle the gruel. His torso was propped up on a stool. Chawsess shivered.
“When?”
“Years ago,” The lizard replied.
“Years?”
“They not feed him enough to grow back,” the other lizard replied. “Fat wolf say he a living lesson.”
Chawsess felt his crest rise and his throat inflate with anger.
“No!” the lizard slapped his face sharply with his claws, “No threat display! They hurt-”
“What do we have here?” A bear growled behind Chawsess. “You one of those uppity lizardmen? Want to raise your crest to me, boy??”
Chawsess jumped in his seat as a vague memory of an old lashing shot through his head, “Me no angry, sir bear! Chawsess hear scary story, could not help self!
“Oh ho, and what might that be?”
“Noises in dark.” Chawsess said hastily.
“Noises?” The bear’s face turned murderous, “Who told you?”
With a sinking feeling, Chawsess realized he’d somehow made things worse.
“Nobody told!” Chawsess exclaimed, before lowering his voice to a hushed whisper “Me heard it last night.”
The bear’s rage intensified, “You like making up stories, eh?”
Lizardmen cringed away from Chawsess and he realized he’d erred, again. He had a vague understanding that he’d been someone else not too long ago. That he’d been someone a lot smarter, who would be able to think his way out of this situation. But his lizard brain was too slow, as much as he tried to think ahead, to anticipate the bear’s next question, by the time he’d even realized there was going to be a next question to anticipate, the bear had already asked it.
Chawsess felt a calloused paw grab onto his arm as the massive bear hauled him out of his seat and dragged him down the hall.
“Telling lies gets ya punished around here,” The bear snarled, kicking Chawsess in the gut.
“Me no lie!” Chawsess wheezed and tried to wrest his arm out of the bear’s grip, but the uncaring guard just kicked him in the gut again, doubling the lizard over.
He was dragged to a moving sawblade. The bear snarled and hauled the hulking lizardman over to it. With a thump, Chawsess found his arm outstretched by the saw.
“You’ll learn we don’t take rumormongers lightly hear, boy!” The bear spat and dragged Chawsess’ arm towards the moving saw.
“Please stop! Chawsess not want make guard mad!” Chawsess pleaded as his arm came closer and closer to the whirling blade.
“Please just tell Chawsess what he do bad and Chawsess won’t -”
There was a rip of pain, and a warm liquid splattered Chawsess scaled face, shortly before a heavy thud emanated from the floor next to him. Chawsess screamed in agony as more rolling pain shot up his arm. The guard tossed him to the floor and handed him a rag.
“Bandage yourself up and get back to work. Your lunch break is over!”
“Fuck you!” Chawsess spat.
“What?!” The bear roared, swinging a paw towards the lizard, who was cradling his bloody stump in one hand.
Chawsess threw his blood into the grizzly’s eyes and took the blow straight to his chin. His head rocked back, but he braced his tail against the floor, recovering quick enough to kick the bear backwards. The grizzly staggered, then slipped on Chawsess’ severed hand and fell backwards, impaling himself on the spinning saw.
The saw was spinning quickly, and in less than a second it had already sunk deeply into the bear’s body. By the time the bear even realized he should be screaming, his lungs were already so full of blood that all he managed was a muffled gurgle.
Chawsess staggered to his feet and glanced around. None of the slaves… erm, ‘employed lizardmen’ were around. Any who weren’t already in the canteen must have made themselves scarce as soon as they saw the guard hauling Chawsess in here.
With no witnesses to what had just transpired, Chawsess managed to kick the bear’s remains down a chute and into the sawdust chocked waters of the river that ran below the mill. It wasn’t perfect – there was a lot more blood than there should be from Chawsess severed hand.
Still, the lizardmen that worked here weren’t likely to question it, given both their limited intellect and fear of losing their own hand for speaking up. But with the bear’s body disposed of, Chawsess’ similarly limited intellect wasn’t sufficient to understand the problem that the blood could pose if someone more intelligent than a lizardman happened by this scene.
So with bear seemingly dealt with, the former assassin staggered back to the mess hall to finish lunch.
The rest of the day was much harder with only one arm. And Chawsess couldn’t help but notice the lizardmen who ran the saw cleaning it up when they returned from lunch. Which was fortunate for him since by the end of the day, the grizzly had been reported missing, but everyone thought he’d gone to a bar to get drunk and hadn’t bothered searching for him.
Chawsess was humming as he carried a plank of wood past the spot where he’d lost his arm and the guard had lost his life.
“Why you hum?” A lizardman asked.
Chawsess realized it was the other lizardman who’d spoken to him in the mess hall.
“This job easy, humming help keep mind busy,” Chawsess replied.
“You lost arm!” the lizardman insisted.
Chawsess smiled, “It grow back.”
He resumed humming.