by Kevin Potter
His eyes, though. Could those truly be his eyes?
He and Bal had both inherited a mixture of their sire and dam’s eye colors, though in direct opposite. Graayyy’s eyes were burnished copper within shimmering gold while Dauria’s were icy-blue within sea-green. Gravv had never been able to decide which he thought were more beautiful.
Bal, always the stronger of the two, had eyes of sea-green within shimmering gold, while Gravv’s were matte copper within pale, sky blue.
But no longer.
Now, looking at his reflection in his own blood, his eyes looked orange within a field of dull, storm-cloud gray and they drooped at the edges. It was as though he hadn’t slept in months.
Which may well be the case, he thought.
For several moments now, the sadistic wyrms behind him had been silent. What were they doing? The pain was beginning to dull. He almost breathed a sigh of relief, but stopped himself. The last thing he needed was to give these two an excuse to ramp up their torture.
Gravv tried to turn his head to see what they were doing, but he still could not move his head and they were beyond the limits of his vision.
The celestine dragon shuffled his way around Gravv on his way back to the alcove once more. He replaced the two instruments the pair had been using and rifled around in the alcove for several moments before coming up with another instrument. This one was much larger.
Without bothering to pull the entire device from the alcove, the celestine held the silvery handle in one claw and turned back to face Gravv with a wicked gleam in his black-within-purple eyes. He grinned, showing a huge mouth of sharp teeth, as he shuffled his way back around behind Gravv.
Trailing behind the celestine from the handle in his paw was what appeared to be a flexible strand of silvery metal about four claw-widths wide.
“Ah,” Kochelar said when the celestine passed beyond Gravv’s view. “The Dragon Whip. An excellent choice. Should we give him another moment of anticipation before we begin?”
The celestine snarled an inarticulate response. The keening whir of something slicing the air behind him made Gravv grit his teeth in anticipation. Nearly every muscle in his body clenched.
The Dragon Whip struck his back with an agony he had never guessed might exist. The simultaneous blasts of lightning, acid, and sonic force from the dragons’ breath weapons had been mere preamble to this.
The celestine was true to his word. Only now, with the introduction of the Dragon Whip, did his true pain begin.
His entire body shuddered, his paws and tail jerking back and forth against their bonds.
Beneath him, around the point of his tail, he guessed, blood poured from his body to form a second pool on the cavern floor beneath him.
Again and again the whip struck him, digging deep into the bare hide of his back. With each new strike, more blood poured forth to pool on the floor beneath him. For the first dozen strikes, the pain intensified with each successive blow. He no longer had words to describe such an intense level of pain.
Agony was having one’s scales and spikes excised. Excruciating agony was the first strike or two from the Dragon Whip. There was no word strong enough, not in the draconic tongue or any other, to describe what he felt now.
Somewhere between twelve and twenty strikes, he couldn’t be certain through the haze in his mind, the pain receded. It seemed to fade to the back of his awareness, as though his body simply couldn’t process it any longer.
A few more strikes came, though they seemed half-hearted, before they stopped and the azurite stepped back into his view. He carried the bloody whip back to the alcove, carefully replacing it.
The deep blue wyrm rummaged around in the alcove for several moments before he came up with something that seemed to satisfy him. Opening a wing, he placed several objects within it and furled the wing to carry them.
The dragon’s face was blank of any expression as he moved toward the back of the cavern once more. The celestine met him just within Gravv’s field of view. The celestine nodded and Kochelar returned the nod. No words passed, but the two seemed to understand each other.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Telepathy again, Gravv thought in disgust.
Kochelar handed two objects to the celestine and Gravv got a look at them for the first time. His eyes widened.
After this, he wasn’t sure he would have the capacity for shock any longer.
The celestine now held, one in each forepaw, a pair of immense wooden rods which seemed to Gravv very nearly the size of ancient tree trunks.
Will I even feel this? he wondered.
The two dragons moved back around behind Gravv. The azurite’s eyes were vacant, his expression blank. But the other, his eyes gleamed and his grin seemed to split his face in half.
After a moment, one of the rods whistled through the air to slam into Gravv’s flank. His mouth opened of its own accord to shriek with the new burst of agony, but as before, no sound came.
A second strike came from the other side to bash his other flank with a similar result. The wet squishing sound of the rods hitting his wounded flesh made him want to vomit.
Except there wasn’t anything in his stomach to lose. He didn’t know how long he’d been in this place, but however long it had been, his belly had been empty the entire time.
A few more slowly timed strikes came, as though they were being carefully aimed, each one more nauseating than the last.
Abruptly, the time between strikes ceased and his flesh was battered by a constant barrage of bludgeoning attacks from the wooden rods.
Although the pummeling didn’t seem to break any bones, the rods pulverized his flesh. Every last claw-width of his back and flanks took at least a dozen hits from each rod, and in a few places the bruises burst open to spray his silvery blood.
Although he couldn’t see any of it, he took perverse pleasure in imagining his blood splattered across the bodies of his torturers.
The thought disturbed him. What was this doing to his mind? Was it possible to suffer so much pain and so much horror that one simply lost his mind to it? Would he eventually lose himself entirely and become a being of personified agony?
Again, before long he stopped feeling the pain of the strikes, simply noting the fact of another strike to his flesh as though it were an item on a checklist. As before, only a few more strikes came before they stopped.
A stomping claw gouged into the stone behind him. “Hisss flesshh numbss much more quickly than mossst,” the celestine hissed.
A grunt was the azurite’s only response.
After a moment, the two dragons moved forward and replaced their bloody rods in the alcove.
The celestine looked at the azurite, his gaze flicking back to Gravv, then spoke in a whisper too soft for Gravv to make it out. The wyrm’s eyes seemed to glow.
Kochelar shook his head.
The celestine whispered again, seeming more urgent this time.
The azurite shook his head again.
With a soft growl, the celestine tried again, speaking at length.
The azurite hung his head. He stood motionless for a long moment, then gave a slight nod.
The celestine grinned.
Rifling through the alcove, the celestine handed an object to Kochelar and took one for himself. The two locked eyes, something seeming to pass between them once more in the instant before they turned to face Gravv.
Although he’d thought himself beyond all surprise, beyond all fear, the objects in the wyrms’ hands proved him wrong.
By all the gods, tell me they aren’t going to strike me with those!
The implements were much like the Dragon Whip, but far more devastating. Each one consisted of at least a dozen thick metal strands, thicker than the strand of the Dragon Whip, but attached to the end of each one was a large chunk of raw, unworked metal with irregular sides and sharp edges.
After a brief pause in which Kochelar looked
almost apologetic, and the celestine grinned his wicked grin, the pair stepped around behind him. They seemed to swing the implements in a few practice swings, the wires whipping through the air with a high whirring sound.
After the fourth such swing, the sounds stopped and Gravv imagined them drawing the implements back in preparation to swing at his unprotected back. He cringed, but tried not to clench his muscles against the coming blows.
“Well would you look at that,” Kochelar said, as though he were seeing something truly awe inspiring. “Looks like we’re done for the day. Pleasant dreams, mystery dragon. We’ll see you again in the morning.”
Gravv was too numb to rejoice in his temporary respite. He waited for their echoing footsteps to recede then breathed a shuddering sigh of relief which pained him almost as much as another whip strike might have.
With horror, he processed what the azurite wyrm had said. Done for the day! That means this has been going for less than a day! Oh, dear gods! How am I going to survive even one more day of this?
With the cessation of blows, the agony suffusing his body dulled to a deep ache, making rational thought a bit easier.
I need to get out of this, he thought, and looked around the chamber without much hope of finding anything useful. But how? What can I possibly do?
Reality struck him such a blow then, he almost wondered if his sadistic torturers were back. He tried to twist his mind around it, but no matter how he attacked the problem, he kept coming back to the same issue.
The only way out of this was to regain the power of speech and put these sadistic dragons in their places. If they knew he was related to their master, they would have to let him go. Wouldn’t they?
But how can I manage it?
Exhausted, he let his eyes settle, staring straight down into the puddle of his silvery-red tears on the floor. Now that he saw it, it seemed the celestine had been correct in assessing the state of Gravv’s jaw. Either it was broken or his mandible has become detached during the initial onslaught.
Or perhaps both.
In either case, though, what could he do about it? Healing magic was far beyond his reach, wasn’t it?
Well, he thought, there’s only one way to find out.
In desperation, he reached for his dimly glittering Apex.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For hours Gravv worked at his Apex, struggling to coax out as much power as he could.
He understood the theory behind healing magic, his dam had explained it many times. Bal had even mastered its basics, and that more than a century ago. Gravv, however, like so much else in matters of the arcane, had never managed it. He couldn’t cure so much as a cracked scale.
It seemed to him that he lacked the raw power to make it work.
Fruitless though it was likely be, he tried anyway. He pushed and pulled his tiny spark of arcane power in every way he knew how. He pulled from his Apex in desperation, hanging onto every scrap of power he could. He reached into the tiny spot of light and yanked with all his metaphysical might until his muscles trembled and his eyelids drooped.
With his Apex drained of nearly all trace of light, he sent the power forth into his jaw to knit the pieces back together. Warmth spread through his face and jaw, his body flushed with excitement.
It was really going to work! He couldn’t believe it.
After all this, he thought in a daze. It seems all I needed was proper motivation!
His muscles trembled as the power did its work. He strained to keep the arcane energy flowing from his Apex, to provide enough fuel for the magic to heal his jaw.
Then his arcane strength gave out and his muscles slackened, the power expended. Suspiciously, Gravv opened his maw.
Or he tried to, at least.
Glancing down to the mirror-like finish of his silvery blood dried on the cavern floor, he found the damage was still present. His lower jaw still hung akimbo with an odd shape pressing against the flesh from inside.
Perhaps a single strand of the tissue attaching the mandible to his skull had reattached, but it wasn’t nearly enough to allow proper articulation of his jaw.
With his Apex now fully spent, exhaustion claimed him. Though it was dreamless, fitful, and almost useless, he slept.
He woke to the sounds of sharp tail-plates dragging on the rough floor of the cavern. His eyes shot open and the two dragons, celestine and azurite, crossed in front of him to reclaim their ghastly, torturous implements.
His face instinctively tried to cringe, but all he managed was to narrow his eyes. The azurite noticed his expression and snickered.
“Keep glaring, little mystery dragon, and I’ll use some of these tails to sew your hide back together before the next round. Lots of torn stitches that way. Vastly more painful.”
Gravv cleared his expression and had to consciously stop himself from trying to smile. That’s it! he thought. I can’t repair the damage myself, but I can use those wires to stitch the muscles back together! That should give me enough control to be able to speak clearly.
Clearly enough, at least.
Right?
The only problem left was whether he could do the work while being beaten mercilessly with those horrible devices. He didn’t worry about the pair noticing anything he did, surely they would be too involved in his torture to pay any mind to anything else.
As the pair stepped back behind him, Gravv focused his mind on his Apex, stoking the tiny fires within. He funneled out the power in haste. He couldn’t be certain of just how bad this round of torture would be, but thought it unlikely he would have the focus for coherent thought, much less the delicate work of funneling power from his Apex. Manipulating that power into something useful was going to be challenging enough.
With a final, desperate yank he drew out most of the power housed within his Apex. With a mental cringe, doing his best to brace himself for the agony to come, he offered a silent prayer of thanks to Ryujin. Fitful as his sleep had been, it had restored what little power his Apex could hold.
The wires whirred and the first impact came. He tried to grit his teeth against the agony as it hiked another degree upward. The pain fueled his rage ever-higher, and he yanked still-more power from his Apex in a rush.
His Apex was now so dark, it seemed completely empty.
Isn’t that supposed to be impossible? he thought, but his speculation was cut short by another strike to his back.
The impact came, even more intense this time. It was as though a boulder had lodged itself in the muscles of his back. Fighting with all his might to ignore the agony in his back, Gravv put his power into the one spell he had ever mastered: telekinesis. With it, he pulled one of the smaller Dragon Whips from the alcove and pulled it through the air toward him, keeping it as near to the cavern floor as he could. All the while, one of the wyrms behind him yanked on the implement lodged in his back.
When the whip was about halfway to him, the wyrm yanked the boulder from Gravv’s back and he shrieked in inarticulate horror.
The wyrms behind him laughed in a mixture of raspy cackling and deep, throaty chuckling.
With the agony, he lost his focus and the spell faltered. The Dragon Whip fell toward the floor and Gravv’s blood surged in panic.
This, he had not considered. This, he had not foreseen. The sound of that metal whip clattering on the stone floor would certainly alert his captors!
Reaching inward in terror, Gravv clamped down on his Apex to reconnect with his arcane power. Furiously, he yanked the small strand of power forth to renew his spell. Snapping out with his mind, he grabbed at the heavy handle of the whip which was now scarcely more than a claw-width from the cavern floor.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gravv breathed a sigh of relief. He doubted if there was even half a claw-width between the lower end of the whip handle and the cavern floor, but what little space remained was enough.
He had prevented the clatter which would have alerte
d his captors, and that was all that mattered.
He gave another silent prayer of thanks to Ryujin and pulled the whip toward him once more.
The laughing behind him eased, slowed, then stopped.
“Have you ever ssseen that happen before?” asked the raspy, hissing voice.
“Never,” the other replied, his tone somber.
“Think you could do it again?” The voice sounded gleeful.
The deeper voice growled, the sound humming powerfully, as though it came from deep in the wyrm’s chest.
Finally, the whip reached him. But along with it came another blow, this one with even greater force than the two before. Only with considerable effort did Gravv find the strength to block out the agony in his back and separate the wire from the handle.
Wasting no time, he plunged the thick wire into the side of his head. Trusting in the magic, he allowed it to guide the wire to penetrate the necessary muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones.
Ancestors, he thought. Please let this work. I only need to communicate for a minute to get out of this mess.
Another blow came and several chunks of metal embedded in his flesh this time. He clenched his eyes tight and took several deep breaths to center himself and focus his mind.
Opening his eyes again, vision once more blurred by reddish-silver tears, he continued the work in his jaw.
In spite of everything, he almost laughed. Perhaps his sanity was beginning to ebb, but he couldn’t escape the thought that while under normal circumstances continually stabbing a massive wire into his jaw would have had him wailing and begging for it to end, at this moment that pain was little more than a single drop of rainwater into the storm-tossed ocean of his agony.
An excruciating yank pulled at the muscles of his back, but the irregular shape remained embedded in his flesh. He whimpered and the two behind him laughed. On the next yank, the implement was freed from his muscle and he breathed again.
Even the breathing pained him now, his lungs burning as though he were breathing in the acidic fumes from the breath of an agate.