by Toby Bennett
The monster tore into him and Akna imagined the scene unfolding in the room beyond the veil, where the torturers worked in tandem with the monster to carve up his soul. The cardinal sat unmoving in a comfortable chair that had somehow escaped any of the dark stains that marred the room around it. In front of him, on a low table, a variety of polished crystals winked in the torchlight. It was in crystal that the energies he stole would be stored, tamed. Once the right rituals had been performed, part of him would live on forever summoned and banished at the whim of whoever owned those crystals. They were the prisons into which his soul would be butchered. Pain lanced through his being on every level, hot iron and sharp psychic claws tore away his defences. There would be no need for him to break and tell them of Gilash or his House, soon they would know everything and he would do anything they asked.
“Though your confession will make it easier for me to bring Gilash’s crime out into the open.” The monster next to him whispered, “He might deny you but no one will believe him when you tell everything you know. Don’t worry, boy, you won’t die yet, you have work to do.”
‘He will not stop even if you do confess.’ Akna reminded himself frantically.
More red hot iron seared onto the sole of his foot and despite the cardinal’s grip, he opened his eyes to see that the image he had of the torture chamber was not just his imagination. Perhaps his eyes had opened earlier and he had been seeing the room without even knowing it. Now his consciousness hovered between the veil and the world of flesh. He could hear the cardinal’s voice in his ear and he could see the torturer reaching for another poker. Time dilated as he hung in that limbo and the most primitive part of him weighed the situation with animal cunning.
They could not have anticipated that he might find his way back to consciousness. The cardinal clearly thought that he would be able to hold him under. ‘He can’, a part of his fractured mind confirmed, ‘to break free you would have to let him have much of what he wants, just abandon so many dreams.’
‘He’s tearing me apart already,’ Akna reminded himself.
‘We don’t have the strength to break free,’ another voice whined
‘We’re dead if we don’t, dead or worse. If we could get free, there is only one person awake in this room.’
“Confess your sins, boy, open yourself to me.” The cardinal’s voice resounded through him, almost indistinguishable from the cacophony of his own fractured soul.
‘Just tell him, give up and it will be over.’
‘You were trained better. Where is your loyalty?’
‘Forget loyalty. He will never stop. We must get away!’
‘Gilash used you, risked you before you were ready.’
‘I wanted the cowl.’
‘There is only one man awake here.’
‘How can you fight? You’re broken.’
‘Not tied down.’
‘You can’t even move your finger and trying to wake would tear us into pieces.’
The poker came free of the brazier, its tip glowing almost white as it came closer to his face.
‘Your eyes, if that touches you…’
‘You have to…’ another voice became silent as the cardinal tore it from him. The clear crystal he held flashed again as it absorbed more of Akna’s essence. There was very little left now that was human. What was left was ruthless, cold and utterly bent on survival. There were no more screams, no more confusion. What was left of him spoke with one voice. The glowing metal descended towards his face and he tore himself in half. Like a lizard sacrificing its tale, he abandoned the parts of himself that the cardinal already had a grip on and surged back into the world of flesh.
No one noticed the boy’s finger twitch nor the sudden feral purpose that entered his glassy eyes. An animal snarl escaped cracked lips and before the torturer could react, he found the poker in his hand slapped to the side. A perfectly timed twist snapped the bones in the man’s wrist, at the same time as transferring ownership of the poker to Anka. The torturer had less than a second to scream, before Akna jammed the hissing iron down his throat, silencing him forever. Instinct controlled what was left of Anka’s consciousness, his body’s pain and his soul’s hollowness were being kept at a distance by a desperate need to survive. For a moment he froze like a startled animal, waiting to hear any response to his victim’s cut off cries. When he was sure that there had been no response, he turned his attention to the fat man in the chair and the crystal that glowed between his swollen fingers. It was hard to think straight, to remember what he was doing here, he felt no fear now, he was numb, retaining only enough urgency to keep him moving from second to second. On some abstract level, he knew the crystal was important, as important as the fat man perhaps. He had to kill the fat man, he recalled, but that should be easy since he was asleep. Akna cast his eyes over the chamber looking for a weapon. There were pokers and blunt instruments aplenty, but he was drawn to one of the piles in the corner, where all manner of items that had once belonged to the cardinal’s victims had been discarded for later examination. There was nothing too valuable there, gold or silver didn’t get left lying around in dungeons, but the stiletto that he had brought with him lay on top of the pile and he could see the brass hilt of a heavier blade.
The new weapon turned out to be a sabre, only slightly curved but sharp and made of good steel that had not rusted despite the conditions in which it had been left. With a weapon in either hand, Akna advanced on his target. Raw emotion swelled in his damaged mind, this man had hurt him, taken something from him though there was no way of telling what. It hurt too much to try to think of it, he simply knew he had to kill the man and take back some token to his master. No, not just the token, he had to take back something else, something that had been taken from him. Akna knew he had to kill the sleeping man before he woke, even though his inclination was to simply run from this terrible place where he had felt so much pain, he knew he must finish what he had started. Akna had advanced halfway back across the room, when his keen senses picked up the slither behind him. He had thought that the cardinal had come to watch the torture alone but he was wrong. The memory of the creatures that attended the cardinal flashed through his reeling mind. He knew without turning around what was rearing up behind him. It would not be easy to kill the old man after all.
A tentacled monstrosity rushed out of the shadows, the child’s clothing it had been wearing torn to shreds. Thick, scaled limbs whipped out, curling in dangerous arcs towards him. Akna’s naked body was still marked by the many barbs that had sprouted from the other nightmare’s tentacles. Bright memories of pain and being quickly immobilised by other creatures like this one, warned him that he must avoid being touched by the twisting limbs. He danced to the side of the lead tentacle, snarling his hatred as he was forced to quickly transfer his weight onto his burnt foot. The second tentacle met the sweep of his sword and erupted into a fountain of purple blood, it also temporarily brought his weapon off line providing an opportunity for the next tentacle to try to curl around his wrist. Akna stabbed his stiletto through the entangling limb before its wicked barbs could do more than break the skin. Even that small injury cost him, since a disturbing numbness began to seep through his wrist, warning him that even a nick could be disastrous. Akna’s body twisted like a dancer’s as he avoided any further entanglements and drove home his own attacks on the cardinal’s creature. His sword was fast despite his numb wrist and he was soon hacking at the trunk of the nightmare creature’s strange body.
The flesh of nightmares is more resilient to damage than any creature birthed in the corporeal world. The sword bit deep, sheering through scale and pale cartilage, ruining organs that have no parallel in any creature thrown up by the natural world but it was exactly the strangeness of its body that allowed the monster to keep fighting despite the damage. The thing was alien to life and death and neither kingdom claimed it willingly. Akna aimed a stroke at what he thought might be the head, at the centre of the writhing
mass of flesh and was rewarded by another fountain of purple gore. His target sheered away and went rolling across the stone floor. The lamplight revealed the angelic face of a child. Even without its head, the nightmare creature battled on but the rules of reality were working against it; the damage its improbable body had sustained made its continued existence increasingly difficult and it began to slow. Akna noticed that it had started to become transparent and that its attacks were no longer focused but he kept slicing the thing long after it had ceased to be a threat.
Poisoned and insane, it was a wonder that Akna was able to reign himself in. As it was he only regained some semblance of control at the sound of the door to the torture chamber opening. Akna spun, snarling at the sound but by then it was too late. Lothar, having accurately gauged that the madman hacking up one of his creations in the middle of the torture chamber, was best left to his guards, had slipped out into the corridor. Akna made to follow but there were already cries of alarm echoing back to him down the stone passage. Apparently Lothar was not so over confident that he had not stationed a few mortal guards close by. The bloodlust now governing so much of Akna’s mind, urged him to stay and fight, to hack down whatever stood in his way and claim the life of the man who had done all this to him but Asemutt’s training was not easily shaken. It was not a fight he could win, certainly not while poisoned, scared and burned. Only the need to survive at all costs was holding him upright. He had torn his soul in two in order to live, he could not betray that sacrifice.
Akna scanned the room trying to decide on his options. It was all very well to decide he could not fight but what choices did he have? His gaze darted over the room, but faltered when he tried to turn round and look back towards the table where they had tortured him. Try as he might he could not look back there, whatever he was now had been born there and it tore at him to even think of the pain he had felt when he had re-entered the world of flesh. There was no need for him to go back, he realised, his salvation lay ahead in the form of a grating set in the floor. No doubt the purpose of the drain was to ensure that any blood could be easily sluiced away, for Akna it represented the chance to leave the way he had come, through the sewers.
There could be no guarantee that these pipes would lead him back to the main pipes he had crawled through to reach the cardinal’s apartments but Akna was no longer a deep thinker; what was left of him functioned at an instinctual level and having a way forward, from second to second, was far more important than where his course might ultimately lead him. He leapt forward, ignoring the pain from his burned feet and the heaviness of the poison in his veins and slammed the heavy door shut in the faces of Lothar’s guards. Akna dropped the bar across the door, seconds before heavy blows rained down on the stubborn wood. One danger, at least temporarily, dealt with, he turned his attention to the rusty grating in the floor.
The opening was surprisingly wide and Akna guessed that more than blood had left the room through the gory shaft. He pried the creaking metal up with one of the heavy pokers that had been left scattered around the room and stared down into the darkness. There was no telling how far down it went. Shouts and pounding from outside urged him to hurry but he managed to override the animal panic that was driving him for long enough to realise that he was going to need some light. He crossed to the nearest torch and drew it out from the bracket. As he did so, he noticed something flash on the floor at his feet. He bent down to retrieve a small yellow crystal pierced at one end by a fine loop of silver chain. Akna looked around for any more of the crystals that Lothar had been using but the cardinal had only missed one when he rushed from the room. Although it would not affect his chances of survival now, Akna instinctively knew that the stone was important. In fact, as he held it, he felt an unfathomable hunger to hold the rest of the stones that held his stolen dreams and memories. He had to force himself to walk back to the drainage shaft rather than charging into the hall to pursue the rest of the gems in which so much of his mind had been trapped.
Despite the urgency of his situation Akna took the time to look through the rest of the discarded items where he had found his weapons. He scooped up a pair of soft leather boots and pulled on an old tunic, which made his wounded side itch terribly. He ignored his discomfort and slid a heavy leather belt around his waist. The belt provided somewhere to keep his weapons while he climbed down the shaft and the pouch that had been sown into it, would ensure that he did not lose the precious yellow stone. He would need his toes to climb, so for now he looped the boot laces over his neck, leaving the boots dangling against his chest. His hurried preparations complete, Akna crossed to the nearest brassier and teased a coal onto the end of a poker, he quickly crossed to the hole, stirring the ember to yellow brilliance with the speed of his passage. A flick of the wrist sent the glowing coal tumbling down the shaft. It quickly faded to a tiny point of red before extinguishing with a hiss in the unseen depths below. Whatever was down there, Akna doubted that it could be as dangerous as what waited for him when the door of the torture chamber gave way.
Chapter 3:
“What dreams may rest in winding darkness,
Beneath unknowing stone.
What mind will not recoil from their starkness,
When at last their shape is known?”
Akna was more than halfway down the shaft before the door in the room above gave way. He had taken care to replace the grating, so that the confusion as to where the prisoner might have gone bought him a few more minutes of climbing before anyone thought to lift the rusted metal to peer down the narrow shaft.
“Down there!” a guard shouted above. Akna squirmed further down, ignoring the protest from his aching shoulders and burning side. In the confines of the drain, he was an easy target for anything they chose to throw down after him. A crossbow bolt would be the end of it. More shadows leaned over the hole above him. Seconds passed and it became clear the guards didn’t have easy access to a bow, but they were prepared to improvise. One of them raised his arm and sent something tumbling down the shaft. Akna watched helplessly as the dagger careened off of the walls, drawing sparks as it fell towards him. There was a painful impact as the hilt struck his forearm and the blade tipped to the side spending the last of its momentum on a slice that cut through the cloth of his tunic and left a nasty cut in his wrist.
Akna knew he had been lucky; he was taking up most of the shaft and made an easy target. If the guard had simply thought to drop the dagger point first rather than trying to throw it, he could hardly have missed. Akna came to this conclusion only seconds before the guards above did.
“The brazier!” He heard one of them cry out, at the same moment as he scraped his shin on the lip of stone where the shaft met the wider passage below. There was no way for him to tell how high the adjoining passage was or how deep the water filling it might be. If he’d had the choice he would have slid as far as possible down the shaft before allowing himself to fall but there was simply no time. He would have to risk it if he was to survive.
Above him a galaxy of flame burst over the lip of the drainage shaft. Coals flared and sparked like stars as they fell, fed by the rushing air. They were joined by red glowing metal implements, pokers and pliers that hissed and spun in the halting seconds that passed like hours as Akna raised his arms over his head and allowed gravity to drag him over the slick stones and down into the unknown.
Cold greasy water closed over Akna’s head, he tried to keep his arm up to protect the torch in his left hand but the first falling coal on the back of his hand caused him to flinch, sending the torch flying into the water. Akna’s back hit the floor of the flooded passage at the same time as the first blazing sparks hissed into the water. Through the chaos of the churned water, he looked up at the scattered points of light as they tumbled towards him. Then, abruptly, the churning water robbed the flames of their life. Something hit the water hard next to his head. Akna rolled away through the knee deep water, scrabbling to get any purchase on the slimy floor of the
passage.
When he was out from under the drainage shaft, he risked standing up. So much for the shoes and the clothes, he thought to himself ruefully as he wrinkled his nose in the stale air. The torch had been his worst loss, the only light he had in the passage came from the flickering radiance of the torches far above him. Outside the halo of dim light dancing on the water in front of him, there was nothing but dripping dark stretching out all around him. He couldn’t know which way to go nor could he tarry long. Akna gritted his teeth against the pain and felt for the wall with trembling fingers. He chose to walk in the direction that did not force him to re-cross beneath the drainage shaft. With any luck the guards would think he had fallen to his death. One way or another it was not worth risking any further missiles being thrown from above.
He followed the irregular stones of the passage for an indeterminate amount of time, plodding through the darkness, closed to physical discomfort or the worry of being lost. The darkness was soothing and echo of the emptiness within his mind. With his initial ferocity abating Akna was keenly aware that there was something missing from himself. He strove to discover some clue of what the cardinal might have stolen but it was impossible to know what had been taken. Whatever dreams he had lost had been taken completely and he could only worry at the rough edges in his mind where they had once existed.
The passage opened up into a chamber of indeterminate dimension. He paused at the corner of the wall unwilling to give up his only spacial reference. He listened for any sound of pursuit from behind him but the guards had either decided the fall had killed him or were loath to follow. The larger chamber was quite unexpected, if anything he had thought that the passage would narrow or merge into the drainage systems that wormed their way through the Asylum. With no way to go back it looked as though he would have to brave the chamber but with no light to guide him, there was no knowing what dangers he might go stumbling into. His mind was still reeling but a terrible suspicion was beginning to make itself known. The cardinal used his torture chamber to steal the valuable dreams of his victims, but what of the chaff that would be the inevitable by-product? Take a man to the edge of his sanity and draw forth all his dreams, those he creates and those he shares with the rest of his race, in the depths beyond the veil it would be almost inevitable that you would raise some phantasms that were either without value or beyond control.