Mousetrap

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== Summary ==
== Full Text ==
The Warden: So many prisoners, so much entertainment. The warden of the dungeon was prowling her way down the hall again, ears flicking back and forth and fangs quirking in a sharp-toothed grin as the prisoners that she passed threw abuse at her. The lower levels held the most raucous inmates–and in the second-lowest cell, the most troublesome of them all. Humming darkly, she approached the dark cell, scraping her claws against a torch that sat bracketed against the wall, sending orange sparks scattering through the iron grill of the torch and showering the hallway–and the cell–with a strong amber light.
“How are we this morning, Your Majesty?”
King Haddock: His eyes automatically squinted against the light of the torch; so accustomed to dark was he that even this small light source burned his vision. But the King of the Wilderwest forced himself to widen his eyes and glare straight at the warden. 
“Much less well now that you have visited,” he spat.
The Warden: “Oh, such a shame you’re deciding to be uncivil today.” Tree’s hands drifted over a large pouch hanging over her shoulder. “I happen to have brought you a meal…a proper one, mind you. Something more fit for a king than the previous food has been.” She gave a sly smile. “My guards have been…neglectful.”
King Haddock: “Your guards follow your orders,” the king remarked sourly. “Any insufficiency, inadequacy, and inhumanity is traced directly back to you.”
The Warden: “Ohhh.” Tree pouted, sticking her lower lip out. Perhaps the face might have been more convincing if she had not looked so gaunt, so…hollow. The circles under her eyes were pronounced in the flickering firelight. “But I’ve come to make amends!” She looped the strap up over her head and held it out, the contents swinging back and forth. The faint smell of some cooked meat drifted from the satchel.
King Haddock: His eyes never left her face. “I don’t trust you.”
The Warden: “Come now, my King, whatever would make you distrust your loyal soldier?” She stepped forward, running a claw along one of the bars so that it made a grating scrape. She held the strap out closer, so that he could have grabbed it had he not been chained to the wall.
King Haddock: His eyebrows sunk even lower when she scraped her claw against the wall. With great disgust, Haddock intoned, “Perhaps because you stand on the other side of these bars.”
The Warden: The bag plopped to the floor and she slid it forward with a bare paw, almost black with the thousands of times she had treaded the dungeon floor. It was pushed underneath the bars and into the cell, almost within reach. “I’m keeping you safe, dear King, not trying to kill you. I do need everyone alive.” The smirk lit up her face again. “What for, who can say…”
King Haddock: “I don’t wish to hear it,” he huffed, turning his face away and staring at the wall to his left.
The Warden: “Then I won’t speak.” Another shove and the bag was within reach. She lifted her eyebrows, continuing to smirk. She tapped her claws in a cascade of ringing clicks on the bars and began to turn away nonchalantly.
King Haddock: Haddock huffed, nonplussed. He stared a moment more at the wall, glaring at it with particularly intense vehemence, before he slowly turned toward the bag. He grabbed at it and opened it to look at the contents. The entire time he muttered, dissatisfied, under his breath.
The Warden: “Ah-ah.”
The bag was yanked suddenly out of his hands as a cord that had been attached to the handle was pulled tight, and the food was once again outside of the cell. Tree turned back around, chuckling darkly and grinning. “I can’t let you have it that easy. You have to work for it, silly king.” It was child’s play; these rebels were so desperate. She hadn’t expected him to take it so easily.
King Haddock: “Don’t you have better things to be doing at your job?” he asked drily, but with irritation clearly seeping through every syllable he spoke.
The Warden: “This is my job.” The bag moved closer again. “Beg, Haddock.” Her tone had grown softer and more serious. Tree’s thin pupils were locked on Haddock’s.
King Haddock: “No,” he said. “If you need me alive, you’ll have to give me it eventually, whatever I do.”
The Warden: There was a trace of scarlet in her slanted green eyes. Perhaps just the firelight…and perhaps not. 
“Do I?”
A shriek suddenly rang through the halls, distant and echoing. A chorus of worried voices joined the wail of pain. “Halle! Halle, what’s wrong!? Talk to us!! Someone get to her!”
“I can’t, she’s in a cell by herself! HALLE!!” 
The tortured scream continued on regardless. Tree rested her chin in her hand while leaning on the bars, the smirk looking more like a menacing snarl now. “I wonder what that could be.”
King Haddock: Haddock’s anger burst forth unrestrained. “Stop that immediately, you beast!”
The Warden: “Stop what?” she said languidly. 
The scream pitched higher for a moment, vocal cords cracking and scraping, and a mess of words joined the note of agony. “STOP! MAKE IT STOP!”
“Halle, what the Hel is going on!?”
“IT HURTS–!!”
Inspecting her claws, the half-breed said boredly, “Oh, if only there was someone who could appease me.”
King Haddock: Haddock stood to his feet and yanked on his chain, shouting, “STOP IT NOW. What do you want, you devil?!!”
The Warden: She finally looked up and met his gaze, smile still playing over her lips. The scream died down to a hysterical gasping. The bag slid all the way through the bars, no strings attached. “Show me you know your place in this dungeon. Beg.” She towered over him, her oversized shadow cast completely over his figure from the position of the torch. “Bow down.”
King Haddock: Haddock grit his teeth. “Monster.” With fists still clenched at his sides, he pulled his head down. He bowed his torso down, not too much, but enough to be considered a bow. “End this.”
The Warden: “Hmm…that doesn’t look low enough.”
Another yell started up in a different part of the dungeon, this time a young man’s voice. Fewer voices responded, and the agonized noise was fainter, as though it were higher up and more secluded. The other voices shouted in horror faintly, but he did not respond. His scream was intersected with words as well.
“Tree!! Where–where are you!? I–I can’t–TREE!”
“What was that boy’s name again?” Treepelt mused. “Rhymed with ‘box’…”
King Haddock: It was a hasty, lower bow this time, not very long, but certainly lower, and with angered eyes overcoated in fear.
The Warden: “Thaaat’s more like it!”
All sounds of torture faded away, leaving only the prisoners’ confused cries to bounce across the stone hallways. “Maybe next time we won’t be so difficult?” Tree cocked her head sideways, looking at him with an expression of expectation. 
King Haddock: “Leave them out of this,” Haddock said. 
The Warden: “I will when you do. You’re so attached to them, king. And as such, you are linked. Subject to ruler. What affects one affects all. Keep that in mind so long as you continueto care for them.”
She turned around with finality and paced down the hall, tail swishing back and forth in an agitated manner. She suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the hall and whirled around, staring wildly around the hallway with almost unseeing eyes. A look of terror overcame her features and she whispered, “V-vox…”
King Haddock: “That’s your own fault, cat!” Haddock snarled, not at all sympathetic to her terror. He shook his hands, causing chains to rattle angrily behind his words.
The Warden: The wide green cat’s eyes jumped over to his cell at the noise and gazed into the dimness. “King Haddock?” she whispered.
Then her head jerked sideways and she glared back at him with a snarl, turning on her heel. “None of you will best me!” she yelled, clenching her fists. “Not one of you will ever escape this dungeon! I shall never allow it!!”
King Haddock: Haddock felt… puzzled… by what he had seen of Treepelt. What was she doing? Why was she acting like this? Yet his anger still frothed, and so he simply snorted, “Jailbreaks are rarely ‘allowed’ by the warden. Doesn’t mean they don’t happen.” He rattled his chains, allowing them to clank heavily on the floor. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll be in these a few days from now.”
The Warden: Tree’s fist slammed into the wall in another fit of rage and the stones actually trembled, sending dust floating from the ceiling to the ground. 
“You seal your doom.”
King Haddock: “Do I? Pray tell me what that entails.” 
The Warden: Treepelt panted, shaking her head and growing more irritated and panicked by the second. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up–”
King Haddock: “Shut up?” Haddock snorted, half-wondering if she were talking to him. “You wish.”
The Warden: The half-breed stiffened her back, ears twitching backwards, and then she finally stalked off, tail thrashing, forgetting to extinguish the torch as she left.
Category:Season 1
Category:The Warden
Category:Gareth Ragnar Haddock the Second
Category:Treepelt Halfpaw
Category:BOTGD