These were the palace dungeons. Salas could only watch with distilling horror as the birds were grouped into cells, the cages rolled down from the ceiling, and guards pushed the Susconian prisoners into the various entrapments. 

Salas tried to step to the side, in the hopes of being grouped into a floor cell, but he must have run out of luck when the beasts had decided not to kill him earlier that day, as he was pushed towards one of the hanging cages instead.

He hesitated as he approached it, his body tensing to fight, though he’d never raised a hand to someone before, nor someone else to him. That changed when the guard, impatient, slapped him across the face when he failed to maintain haste.

The slap stung, though not as much as his own shock as he worked to reorient himself, his frozen fingers dappling at the prickling skin. 

“Go!” The guard demanded.

Salas looked at the cage, which had been lowered on its chain to waste-level. It was much too small. Far too small. There was no way he would fit.

“Go!” the guard repeated, shoving him towards the cage.

In the dungeon, there were similar fusses surrounding them as the birds struggled to come to terms with their new confinements. 

“It’s too small!” Salas pleaded. “Please, there must be some other arrangement! This can’t-”

Something was pulled out of the cage, first. Something thin and stiff with leather skin and a crackly construction, draped with moth-eaten clothing. An aged corpse. Someone who’d been in this same cage, and who had not made it out.

Salas gasped in fear, struggling with all he could. He was, of course, no burden to the mountainous Northern men, who held him still in their solid grips.

The guard who’d humiliated him took away the binds at his hands, grabbed him and lifted him from the numbing ground. Feet first, he was pressed into the entrance of the cage, his body folding as it was made to fit inside the compact space. Drawing up his knees to his chest, the folded position was the only one that allowed him to keep all of his body mass within the enclosure, his back and knees digging against the chapped iron.

The vision of the forgotten, dead body in his mind, he heard himself rambling, begging, perhaps attempting once more to make some type of bargain. Not even he could fully make heads or tails of what he offered freedom, most likely naming things he had no way of giving.

“Please! And jewels! In the Susconian Palace!” he was saying. “Please, I know where Eldron has them hidden. Only I know! Please, take me to the king and he’ll want-Please, just let us out. I will make you feel good. Oh, so good, please. I can-” The guard, the one who’d led Salas down the path here, grabbed a fistful of Salas’ hair and yanked it so his head hit the bars of the cage.

The world spun, the darkness of the dungeon clouding together and never seemed to fully sharpen once more. When Salas refocused, he found the guard’s eyes on him, hand still fisted within the scarlet locks. He was staring Salas with an odd glimmer to his gaze, something similar to satisfaction when Salas’ head had struck the iron. Like a child watching a natural disaster with delight and wonder at the destruction.

The guards behind him started speaking to the one who held him, and the man turned to them, finally dropping Salas’ hair. They seemed to be making some type of decision, but every once in a while, their eyes moved to Salas, igniting both hope and fear. Was their discussion working in favor of him, or against him?

At the moment, he didn’t get to know, as once whatever decision was made, they started making their way out of the dungeon. With the Susconians locked up, they left.

Long moments of silence followed. The lapse in conversation was replaced with the moans that came with tears as the prisoners wept to themselves, self-placation failing with the list of torments they’d gathered.

Salas put his hands to his lips and attempted to breathe warmth to them, pushing away the image of the dead-caged-man who must have suffered by such callous means before his body cared to cease its functioning. Salas would not allow himself to see that as his fate.

Only five of the other birds had been placed in the hanging cages. The remaining birds on the ground cells had, quite obviously, far more room. He couldn’t help the spark of jealousy that softly ignited through him at the thought of stretching his legs.

Because already, they were beginning to grow stiff and numb. And he doubted five minutes was the maximum length of time of his imprisonment. 

He thought about the despairing events of the day. The only people he had truly known were dead. Eldron was dead. The man who had given Salas his home, his comforts, and his education. Only a quaking emptiness was there, now. Everyone was gone, save for Jovack.

Jovack. The traitor. 

Salas thought about all of the political meetings he’d attended, as well as all of the times Suscon’s neighboring nations had been discussed. Had Jovack ever hinted of an insurrection, placed between words like one of his ill-humored jokes? Perhaps. Salas couldn’t remember. Perhaps this had been his plan from the start.

And now Suscon would be written as another fallen kingdom. The great marble halls of Suscon, would he ever return to them? Would they tear down the statues? Would the floors crack under the unrest of the retribution of the beasts?

The only light within the dungeon came from a shaft of pale, dim moonlight that bled through an iron grate. Soon, the light warmed as morning approached, allowing fractional warmth. 

The bed-servants around and below him were speaking, now, attempting to pick up their spirits. Salas joined them, craving any distraction from the uncomfortable position he’d been left in. 

Some of the birds he knew, but he learned a few more names as they spoke. The newer one who had attended him just the other morning was called ‘Lio.’ Salas warmed to him immediately when Lio expressed concern at Salas’ position, allowing Salas to complain openly. The sympathies crooned back to him soothed him.

Eventually, though, it was quiet once more.

Salas was blinking in and out of a fitful sleep when the keys behind the locked dungeon door rattled, signalling the approach of the guards. Three of them walked in, led by the guard that had handled Salas. When they glanced up at him, he felt his spine stiffen. They wordlessly moved as a team to work the pulley system that lowered his cage on its chain.

His cage was unlocked and he was unceremoniously pulled out, his feet dragging when his unsteady legs failed to hold him. Then they began to lead him back up the staircase while the other birds looked on, murmuring their confusion and concern. 

“Don’t worry!” Salas called, despite his unawareness of the guards’ intent for him, and before he could think better of it. “I shall find a way to release you all. I-” He was hit in the same way he had been hit the other night. Obviously, the guards did not like speaking. 

He was pulled up and through the maze of the palace. The halls became warmer when they approached what must have been residential wings. 

Salas didn’t notice many people in the halls, save for a few freakishly tall handmaids and other servants, who stared openly at the procession. Salas wondered if the residents were all at Suscon, destroying his home, or if they had returned and were sleeping. Did the beasts plan to live in the kingdom they’d claimed?

Eventually, they stopped in front of a set of oak doors adorned with ornamental iron hinges and intricately-carved panels. By that time, the pain in Salas’ lower body from being cramped in such a small place had somewhat diminished. The doors looked as though they opened to a place of importance, so he straightened and held his head high.

Without knocking, the guards opened the doors and shoved him through.

The room Salas found himself in was a bedroom of spacious expanse, its upholstery draped with pelts from a variety of beastly predators, strung out like the trophies they most likely were. Tapestries depicting crude, perhaps senseless executions hung on the walls. Moldings carved with perpetually screaming faces. It was a barbaric, garish dwelling and Salas wanted nothing more than to turn around and make his escape, a repeating instinct in this kingdom. But Salas was learning that, however distasteful the kingdom may be, these instincts must be quelled if he was to survive.

A man stood by the flame-filled hearth, his back towards Salas as he towered in front of the fire’s cage. His figure nearly halted Salas in his tracks. It was a giant of a man—taller still than even the looming guards. Black, ink waves curled over broad shoulders draped in a fur robe. He stood rod-straight, absent of gestures, as though he had not heard the door open. 

But then he said, in solid Diagorian, “Leave us,” as though speaking to the fire. His voice was loud and stern, and the authority within it carried across the room like an arrow, stiffening Salas’ spine as it pierced the silence.

The two guards who had escorted Salas quickly left and shut the doors behind them. They were the ones to leave, which meant Salas had been included in the ‘us.’ 

Salas looked at the man’s towering figure, wondering who was now in his presence. A small, hopeful smile lit his face when he thought he recognized the figure from the mural that depicted the curse of this winter kingdom; it had been Eldron’s favorite mural in the Susconian Palace. The dark hair. The strong frame. This man had been a prince at the time the mural had been stitched. Thought to be dead, perhaps. This man was human, though. Something he wasn’t expecting. Perhaps the beasts took on a human form when it pleased them. That would explain the size of the men and the other residents of the castle.

Once a prince. Perhaps a beast. Now a king.

Salas, in his rambling down in the dungeon, had requested an audience with the king, and this was the acquiesce. 

This man, then, could only be the King of Diagor—King Jareth.