The Deep Prison

The cells lined the underground in rows after rows. The dingy air smelled only of deep soil and stagnant water, and the only light were small torches, weakened by both the cold damp air and the ravages of time on them, kept alight only by the small magics placed on them an eon ago. The cells bars were as thick as a man's arm, and rusted heavily. Despite this however, they were as sturdy as the day long forgotten when they were created. The earth the doors were set into was the color of rust and blood and innards, a sickening red and brown that made you wonder if it were rock or the packed remains of the once living. Beside every single cell, two hulking figures carrying armaments and covered in armor stood silently at the ready, stone-still as if statues carved from the very earth around them. Maybe they were statues. So far as anyone knew, they were. They had never been seen to move, since if they were set here to protect what was trapped, nothing had ever found the cells to begin with, and nothing in them had ever attempted to get out.

Each cell had beside it a small name plate. Most were worn flat with time, whatever name had been carved erased by the passages of year uncountable by men and unknowable by beast. The halls of cells stretched down seemingly without end, the lines of doors, nameplates, and guards like looking in a mirror reflecting another, an unending corridor of repeating shapes. In some corridor, past many doors and with many doors past it still, sat a cell, a new looking nameplate beside it, still with the name carved perfectly readable to any soul who might pass by it, though none had ever. On that plate was printed, "Daras."