Eleanor sat back."But why? Why won"t you help me?" She asked, her voice shaking.
The gnoll sighed bitterly. He said nothing for a long moment, but finally dropped his bag on the cave floor and sat down beside her. He looked at her sadly.
"Look, my brother didn"t send me, alright? He doesn"t know I"m here. I"m only doing what I have done because it"s the right thing to do. But it"s as much as I can help you. I can justify keeping you from being a cripple because I can appeal to his worse instincts by doing so. But if I remove these chains from you, even if I was able to, there would be no chance of me hiding that I was the one responsible." He said.
When he saw her start to cry again, he continued.
"Look, I clearly want to help, otherwise I wouldn"t be here. You can at least be grateful I"ve given you a chance to walk again."
"But I.... I...."
There was nothing she could say. Her words failed her, and all she could do was slump down against the pole and sob helplessly to herself.
The gnoll sat with her for a long moment in silence. Finally, spoke up again.
"What am I supposed to do? I can"t carry you out of here. I"m not strong enough for that. There"s no one in this camp that will help me help you. Your leg is broken so you can"t run, which means even if I did get you out you wouldn"t make it to the end of the hall before you either got caught or pa.s.sed out from the pain." He said.
He sighed.
"Don"t think I don"t want to get you out of here. I want to free everyone held captive in this place. But I can"t. Pretty much all of them are even worse off than you are." He said, casting a gaze across Eleanor"s battered, barely clothed form. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes.
"So what do you expect me to do?" He asked. He sounded genuine, though his face looked grim and resigned.
She didn"t know what she wanted him to do. Save her. Rescue her. Take her far away from this horrible place and these horrible monsters who treated her like meat for their pleasure. Do anything he could to get her out. But she couldn"t ask that of him, and he couldn"t grant it even if she did. She didn"t even know his name. But if this was real, and she wasn"t dreaming or having her reality bent and twisted again, then this creature next to her would be the first one to have genuinely extended some kind of kindness to her since she"d been taken prisoner.
"Please, anything... anything you can." She said. " Please... I just want it all to stop."
The gnoll man look at her, emotion twisting the corners of his mouth. After seeming to fight with himself for a moment, he gently placed his hand on her leg, careful to place it over a part covered by the remains of her dress.
"I can tend to your pain and your injuries. As I do so, I may be able to bring you things you can use. You"re a wizard, right? What is it you need to be able to make it out of here?" He asked.
Another pang of memory from her delusions shot through her head as he said this, and a sudden sense of mistrust flared up in her. This all seemed just a little too familiar, and she found herself instinctively pulling away from him as he said this.
He appraised her, then sighed heavily and nodded in recognition.
"In the visions he gave you, you escaped by being brought spell supplies from an unexpected ally, I take it?" He said more as a statement of fact than a question.
Eleanor looked at him and nodded. Having the truth spoken so plainly to her had the stange effect of calming her nerves a bit.
"I see. That explains the reaction." He said, sitting back. He crossed his arms.
"Well, I don"t expect you to find this any more trustworthy, considering that, but that"s what I can do. It"s all I can do." He said, shrugging.
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Ellie looked at him, wiping away the tears in the corners of her eyes.
"How do I know you"re not just another illusion he"s using to make me have hope again?" She asked.
The gnoll snorted.
"You don"t. That"s why he does things like that. He"s trying to break your will to leave by making you distrust everyone who could help you." He said.
He grabbed a chunk of flesh on his face and pulled so the cheek lifted away from the gums and showed a few of his teeth, before dropping it again.
"I can"t prove it to you, but, I"m real. Well, unless we"re both stuck in an illusion together and both think we"re real when we"re both each others dreams or something." He said, then shrugged. "But I doubt it."
He looked at Eleanor.
"So, you can believe I"m real or not, but I"m currently the only one here to help. So tell me what will help you get out of here, and I will do what I can to bring it to you." He said.
Eleanor looked at him with mistrust. He seemed genuine enough, but there was something a bit too convenient about the situation for her to lower her guard completely. If he was telling the truth, she would lose nothing and gain eveything by trusting him. If he was just another deception, however, then escaping twice and finding out it was all a lie twice would be enough to break her.
But what choice did she have? If she refused his help after just asking for it, she"d be pa.s.sing up any chance of escape. She couldn"t even tell how long she"d been captive anymore. It could have been a few days, or weeks, or months. If she had any hope of Rose and Jack and Madeleine coming for her, it was all but gone.
They weren"t coming for her. Or if they had, they"d never made it.
She was all she had left. And this was her final chance.