Convict Fenix

by Alan Brickett

  Following the direction indicated by the tattoo, Fenix proceeded through the forest of hairs. Only a few feet further on from where the tattoo stopped flashing, having moved too far away from his presence, a new one lit up in the direction he was going.

  He followed these signs for three days, not stopping to sleep and with only short breaks to rest and examine the area for traps or anything misleading.

  The effort it had taken to build a set of directions like this was astounding, the time to put all of these tattoos into the skin of the creature. Marks were accounting for different routes of approach, from the north or south of the creature’s back, and probably from the west and east too, from the nose of the creature.

  His past self was as thorough and meticulous as Fenix was remembering himself to be.

  All these ways to consider myself, what an identity.

  The Echelon Prison may have been for the worst of the worst criminals and reduced them to shadows of their former selves, but, even they were not necessarily the brightest or most sound of mind.

  Some of these convicts might go insane with the memories and the actual current reality impacting on each other.

  Fenix had more than just one re4ality to work with, something in his psyche allowed him to reconcile these different versions of himself, and he did not think it was just pure luck.

  Even after I escape, I may take a lot of time to figure out what I really am. Assuming I get all of my memories back when I escape.

  That thought brought Fenix up short, one of the markers flaring up soundlessly just ten feet away.

  Memory, of everything his life was before, was now and what would decide what he could be. Without that he would be at risk outside the Prison. Not knowing who to talk to, who was an enemy, who was not an enemy.

  Who was a friend?

  No, there are no friends, there has only ever been Her, and everyone else aside from Aurelian could never be trusted.

  Which meant that he had no allies, would have allowed no allies, on the outside.

  His previous self must have regained his memories, surely, or these plans would have fallen apart.

  Fenix knew that this uncertainty came from not knowing how much time he had been in the Prison before. By the looks of the preparation, it had been a lot of time, enough to remember a lot of things.

  So the only unknown part of the preparation would have been if he, the Fenix now in the Prison this time around, would survive.

  Hence why his past self had prepared for the best chance of survival.

  Preparing Old Man Page, who must have played its own part in keeping him from being killed when he arrived. And Convenient who had helped him then and ever since.

  Fenix shook himself.

  I am back to thinking about Convenient, I need to focus on the task at hand.

  **

  The last mark was right in front of a worn path among the short hairs at the side of the creature’s head to the south.

  What made the path obvious was the lack of hair growing in a curving line up the slope of wrinkled skin behind what Fenix could assume was an ear of the creature. The hairs had gotten progressively shorter and more tightly packed together as he followed the trail signs over the spine at the back of the neck.

  South of the head made sense since this was where the waterfall provided the creature with liquid sustenance there was a constant supply of moving water.

  That would provide some significant protection from spells and magic looking for anything under that fall of water. Not immunity, since not all magic worked that way, but still an advantage.

  From a few hours, away, Fenix had noted the ear growing out of the side of the creatures head.

  Although it was more like an antenna than an ear since it was made from concentric rings in long segments of some sort of cartilage. There were smaller hairs all over it and along even-numbered sections some of these hairs would have fans of filmy skin.

  It was also possible that these were the only sensory organs the creature had, serving as eyes and ears at the same time.

  Who knew what kind of entity this creature that carried the Prison could be.

  What Fenix did know was that the size of the antenna meant that with some effort you could carve a home out of it, and the creature itself would feel nothing. The cartilage would not grow back, and the home would remain, hidden in a place that would not slough off from skin or tumble down like a cave.

  He might have been justifying the choice, but considering the options available in the Prison, this one was secure, out of the way and reliable.

  Which just left the path itself to follow.

  There were another set of problems to that next step, the entrance to the path was littered with bones and other evidence of dead things torn apart in fun and inventive ways.

  However long Fenix had been gone from the Prison, it had been long enough for convicts adventurous enough to simply go out and explore to find their way here. Enough of them to create a visible set of remains here at the path.

  Or perhaps one or two convicts had found the path and gone back for allies.

  Whatever the source, the result had been their deaths from whatever final set of protections Fenix would have placed there. His past self would have backup plans within backup plans, contingencies for eventualities only he had known about.

  And the rush for reasons only he had known about as well.

  The explanations would be at the end of the path, and despite wracking his brain and looking for any signs he may have left himself, Fenix found no indication of what obstacle there was here.

  So he started up the path.

  Nightmare shapes drew themselves onto the canvas of the mist wrapped night.

  They rose up around him, and he reacted by drawing on released memories of spells he had relearned. Then Fenix paused with glowing actinic blue fragments on each finger ready to press into the creatures facing him.

  Each fragment was a specifically design spell with an energy matrix large enough to start the process of disintegration. When one of these shards touched any material, the spell would release the destructive forces, breaking down the material at a molecular level then consume the energy of the broken molecules and use that energy to continue the reaction

  The resulting cascade would spread outward from the initial point of contact, breaking down and destroying the material until all of its mass was converted to energy.

  Supernatural regeneration would not stop this process, only slow it down. Armor and high defense were irrelevant because the disintegration did not care what form of matter it dissolved. A far as offensive spells went it was simple and effective, if slow.

  Fenix had enough stamina and reflexes to survive while the process came to its inevitable, terminal end. Only other magic could dispel the effect of his arcane construct, and his first assumption that these creatures were constructs of various materials without the magic to stop him was confirmed.

  With that confirmation came the reason for him to pause before releasing the spells in a flurry of aggressive action.

  The creatures all bowed low, in their own ways, showing him respect and in most cases, satisfying servility. They moved soundlessly, golems of flesh and sinew, tendon and pure muscle. Their bodies were an alchemical combination of magic and substance that refueled themselves with the skin lice and other entities living on the creature.

  And with the bodies of the convicts.

  Fenix saw that one of the creatures had a grafted on limb, what had been an arm before the bone was ejected, with a tattoo entirely out of place here.

  His retinue of self-made monsters parted before him, and Fenix made his way up the path to his sanctuary.

  **

  Fenix must have been in the Prison for years.

  The number of notes in the laboratory alone was marked with days over four years in the counting. Then the days continued in notes in other rooms.

  The sanctuary carved into the cartilage of the an
tenna consisted of five rooms, one of which was the laboratory. A big room lined in carved shelves that held ingredients as well as notes. Somewhere his past self had acquired glass bottles and jars to keep things in.

  Most of them were now empty, although the labels and notes which referred to their contents told Fenix what they were used for.

  The remaining compounds, mixtures, and exotic ingredients were there for the purpose of aiding his escape now, this time around.

  There was a room which had been modified for training, a long corridor for archery with targets at one end, with another five other smaller connected conduits in different angles and one straight up. Aside from jury-rigged weights, counterweighted complex pulley systems to manipulate them in and heavy resting bars. There were also malleable lumps which proved to be leather wraps filled with sand.

  The whole room was to exercise, train, and practice anything from bodybuilding to endurance and the weapon skills he possessed.

  The third room served the same purpose as the second but for arcane practice, magical exercise in multiple angles with multiple means to test his limits and improve upon them. The devices and arcane runes on that room were only half understood by Fenix as he was now.

  Who he had been must have made good use of these two training rooms, because they had undergone noticeable wear and tear.

  The notes he found detailed how to use the rooms if he desired to, but they also pushed that he must not tarry. All of the notes started with the caution that he may not have as much time as he thought he did, which was odd since he should have all the time he needed, nothing much changed in the Prison.

  Unless the escape was somehow time dependent.

  The fourth room had been used to build the creatures protecting the sanctuary, the remains of fleshy components and the metal instruments used to take apart and reconstruct bodies remained there.

  The fifth and last room was some sort of lounge, the smallest room, and filled with comfortable seating. The shelves there had more notes and journals, these, however, were focused on instructing Fenix on how to escape this time around.

  None of the journals contained information on what had happened to Fenix, the journal noted as the first he should read explained that the memories must integrate through the Prison mechanism and not be put to paper.

  Frustrating, but understandable, since integrated memories carried their skills and knowledge while reading something would impart only that he had known something.

  Fenix stayed in the sanctuary for a week, read all of the notes, reread what he needed to do and how to do it and then left, equipped with some items his past self had already constructed for him.

  There was a need to hurry, not because the escape was time-dependent but because the leverage for his escape was Old Man Page. And the longer Fenix took, the more powerful Old Man Page could become, making it much harder to use him as the sacrifice he needed.

  That explained his encounters with the blue being, and why Old Man Page expected something from him. Fenix now needed to make good on his past self’s promise, and complete the betrayal.

  Something he would typically feel no concern over, betrayal was part of survival. Fenix did not feel concern over the betrayal, rather it was a sense of expectation that this was his way out.

  The sense of expectation may also have been tempered with other feelings relating to the second chair in the relaxing and reading room.

  A second chair where Fenix would have needed none, and that chair which had a particular shape worn into it where armor had scraped the leather smooth.

  A Memory of the Prison…

  Anger.

  That was the first overwhelming sensation that he felt, and yet somehow there was nothing else to associate to it. Why was he angry, no furious, and at what?

  There was no reason for it, no explanation, it was like he had only a black hole in his mind where the source if this sheer outrage stemmed. The root of the intense emotion was missing but did not diminish the feeling one iota.

  He looked around through the mist of blinding rage, steadily pushing it aside, not letting it go, but managing it, focusing it. Bringing his mind to bear on the situation around him, survival dictated it.

  Where had that thought come from?

  He was on a black marble slab jutting out over a coruscating sky with a vortex of magic closing up above him. Ectoplasm had liquefied and stained the surrounding rock, in it, he caught a glimpse of what he looked like, the impressive physique and gray skin dressed in sackcloth. And he wasn’t the only one; around him were two dozen or so other beings, among them humanoids that were mammalian and other root species.

  But the real activity was just slowing down about fifty feet to one side where three giant beings had completed stomping the ground on another part of the platform. Each of them was five times his height, giants dressed in makeshift bone plates.

  Each one had a tough hide of a different color, one was red, the other a deep blue, both so dark they bordered on black, while the third seemed a combination of the two, a dark purple.

  Beneath their stumpy feet, he caught a glimpse of black and white mist slewing away from a bloodied bundle of orange cloth. Whatever being had been there was now bludgeoned out of existence.

  There might even have been more than one, he could see a few sleeves or pant legs, it depended whether only humanoids would arrive here or not.

  The momentary disorientation would prove a fatal weakness, as it had affected him, catching anyone by surprise.

  The three beings then rounded on the crowd of sackcloth beings, with flattened faces and sawed-off tusks they resembled ignorant monsters. But when the first one spoke he quickly revised that assumption, these were no dumb creatures only out to flatten whatever they came across.

  “You lot, if you would please order yourselves into a line so that we can inspect you.”

  Despite the burning fury filtering through his thoughts, he was able to observe the scene dispassionately.

  More strange beings of different shapes and sizes waited a bit further back behind the giants; they seemed to be anticipating their chance at something. Other than that there was no one else around, the promontory of rock bare and broken away over the gap, while in the other direction stood the monolith with its strange writings, some of which he could read.

  Although every language said the same thing, and it did not bode well, even without an associated memory.

  The other convicts around him scrabbled about to get into a line, so he slowly stood up to join them, concentrating on getting his body to move and work as it should. Whatever it was that was going on it had to do with now being a prisoner, and he would be damned if he was going to subjugate himself to these other creatures.

  The anger within him threatened to explode, and he nurtured that feeling, built on it, the power came to the fore of his thoughts in a flurry of understanding. Even in its purest form, he knew he could fight, somehow the skills were there, if primal and basic.

  But he wasn’t being entirely rational, he wasn’t going to go down without a fight, and he fully intended to take advantage of the underestimation provided for him by whatever circumstances had dropped him in with these others.

  The red giant spoke up. “Right you lot, some of you, those that we choose, are going to come with us. The rest of you get picked by that lot.”

  He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the other beings waiting further away.

  “Anyone not taken gets to fend for themselves. Got it?” The giant smirked, which was obvious with such swollen lips and the overlarge face.

  “Any of you lumps who want a choice in the matter are welcome to speak up. You’ll find your visit to be brief and painful.”

  Perhaps it was the lack of memory preventing him from being less conspicuous, or it could have been the anger clouding his judgment, or even a combination of the two. He put his hand up to get the giant’s attention, for all the world looking like a schoolchild at an assembly.


  The purple giant noticed first and elbowed the blue one then pointed.

  “Oho! What’s this then?” He asked, stomping closer to get a good look at the impudent wretch.

  “What do you have to say for yourself then? Speak up while you still can.”

  “I wish to have a choice,” he said, putting his hand back down at his side and drawing on the great rage, the depths of his being stirring in response.

  The red giant came over to join his brothers. “Did this thing say what I think it just said?”

  “It did brother,” the blue giant said. “I think we have a volunteer to show our dreadful intentions, don’t you?”

  The red and purple giants leered down at him in response.

  He noticed the slight puzzlement and small amount of doubt which entered their eyes when he smiled back, completely happy to have them all so helpful and close.

  He had no concept of the kind of force he was about to expel, but it was a pleasant surprise to find it was potent indeed. An explosion of sapphire light edged in silver white flurries went off, centered on where he stood it blasted across the black marble in every direction. Power roared through him, force, heat, and flame burned away the nearest convicts who went up like brief candles.

  The giants themselves were flung backward, scorched and singed from the intensity of the heat.

  The blue giant had been closest, what amounted for facial hair and tufts from its nostrils and ears burned away, filling the area with the strong musky smell. His face, arms, and chest were all badly burned, while his legs got away with a mild charring.

  The other two got blackened and injured, but they were far from out of the fight when they landed together in a heap.

  Even as he slued more furious energy into his next attack they were getting up; the red one summoned a massive scythe of bone that appeared in his hands from out of nowhere. The purple one pushed a hand into thin air and then withdrew it holding on to a glowing spear with a double-edged tip.

  The blast of fire he threw at them was blocked by their weapons, tendrils whipping about from a magical shield they each employed.