by GM Gambrell
Thirty One
The first thing Duncan noticed about the dungeon was how hot it was. As soon as he materialized, he began to sweat, and within seconds had drenched his shirt. It was so hot even the rock walls of the room sweated and the iron bars were wet to the touch. There was very little light and everything stank. He nearly gagged after his first breath. Before he could gather himself, Jessica ran to him and hugged him.
“I thought they killed you,” she said, tears running down her cheeks mixing with the sweat. “I thought I’d lost you, again.”
“No, it was worse,” Duncan said, still trying to ignore the power running through his body. He didn’t want to tell her about what had happened and was afraid that if she knew he now had magical abilities, even if they were temporary, she’d want nothing to do with him.
“What happened?” she asked, concern splashed across her face.
“I…” He was still hesitant, but didn’t get a chance to answer as a Magistrate guard interrupted from the other side of the bars.
The guard was even larger than the usual Magistrate goon and his muscles bulged through his armor. He wore no helmet, though, and his face was twisted and dark, a caricature of a normal face. He looked evil and grinned at them through dirty, broken teeth.
“I see I got me two new morsels for my table. What do you think about that, Simon?”
Duncan just noticed the third person in the cell. The man crouched in the corner, his wild, gray, dirty hair sticking out at odd angles, and Duncan could just barely make out his eyes through all the hair and the beard, but they were bright blue, with a dim glow about them. They made eye contact and the wild man, older than anyone Duncan remembered, looked away. There was something there, a spark he just wasn’t familiar with.
“Simon won’t talk much. I think I ate his tongue,” the Magistrate laughed out loud and the walls reverberated. The dungeon was filled with the sounds of miserable screams and wails, crying and pain.
“You don’t frighten us,” Duncan said coldly, the bars between them making him braver.
“No?” the Magistrate choked out, putting his hand out as if he were gripping Duncan’s neck. The boy shot up into the air, the phantom hand tight on his throat. He began choking for air, struggling to breathe. The Magistrate’s magic was much more powerful than anything he’d sensed before. It was like the man was bristling with power, even more power than the Lord Probate. “I think you might need to reconsider that.”
The guard released him and he fell to the floor with a thump, Jessica coming straight to his side.
“This is my Dungeon, ain’t that right, Simon? I’m Felix, executioner, guard, and judge. I am your god here. You will do as you are told, when I tell you, and you will be happy about it. There will be no unauthorized use of magic in my dungeon, either, and if I detect any, I will put you in stasis.”
There was that word again, and Duncan wished he had access to a dictionary to find out exactly what it meant. He had an idea, but was not certain.
“Can we get some water?” Jessica asked.
“You can have what you can conjure. If you conjure something besides food and water, though, its stasis for you.”
“We can’t do magic,” Jessica pleaded. “Please, just water.”
The powerful Magistrate laughed aloud as if he’d heard the greatest joke ever. He snapped his fingers and the cell was filled with water like they were in a fish tank. Duncan floated up, still not recovered from being choked. Jessica screamed, but he couldn’t hear her. The old man, Simon, smiled and swam as if he were one of the tourists out on the beach. Duncan swam to the bars and reached though. The water ended at the bars and he could feel the warm air on the other side, the magic holding it in the cell. The Magistrate Felix grabbed his arm and pulled him to the bars, laughing hysterically. Jessica struggled to pull him back but she was choking on the water. He felt her growing weaker and then finally letting go, floating lifelessly in the water. He turned to Simon, the wild man, and watched as the man conjured a bubble of air around his head.
Though he couldn’t hear it, the Magistrate outside the cell was laughing hysterically at their misery. Just as Duncan couldn’t hold his breath anymore and was about to swallow a lungful of water, the guard winked and the water disappeared.
He leaned in, grinning, and said, “Tell your little lass to be careful what she asks for, aye?”
Duncan gasped for air, again, and rushed to Jessica’s side. She was coughing and spitting up water, but she was all right. Simon returned to his corner and resumed his crouched position, rocking back and forth as the water dripped from his head.
“You are in a new world, boy,” the Magistrate spat. “You are mine.”
He stomped off down the hall, pausing at another cell to torment another prisoner and Duncan, for the thousandth time since he’d left New Dallas, wondered what was going to happen to him.
They sat in silence for hours, just listening to the cries of agony from the other prisoners in the dungeon. Many were under active forms of magical torture, burning, constant electrocution, drowning. The dungeon was never quiet, night or day, and the prisoners were never anything but in complete agony. Jessica and Duncan sat near each other, but not too close. The intense heat in the dungeon was overwhelming and the closer they sat, the worse it got.
“What did they do to you, Duncan?” Jessica asked, sweat dripping down her forehead.
He still didn’t want to answer. “It’s complicated.”
“We’ve been through enough complicated stuff, Duncan. I think I can handle whatever it is you don’t want to talk to me about.”
“He wants me to rat out my father and tell him what his plans are for the Source of Magic.”
“The Source?” Simon asked, suddenly interested. “You know about the Source? It’s been so long, so very long, since I laid eyes on it.” His voice sounded like old gears in an ancient motor clanging together for the first time in a thousand years.
“What do you know about it? Duncan asked the man.
“Know about what?”
“The Source of Magic.”
“You’ve seen the Source of Magic?”
“No, I’m asking you.”
“Who?”
Duncan paused and looked quizzically at Jessica. “How long do you think he’s been in here?”
“A long time,” Jessica said. “Look at him. He looks so old he could have built this place.”
“The Source is very old, very old indeed,” Simon told them. “Older than even this war.”
“You mean the Last War,” Duncan corrected him.
“The Last War is now, is it not? You’re still fighting? Humans wouldn’t have given up…no, not at all. They are a tenacious lot. Do you remember the battle of Washington?”
“I can’t remember something that happened a thousand years ago.”
“But you know the Source is old. You know it is older than the Last War, older than the humans. You know it stares at you with a thousand blinking eyes, all angry, all hungry?”
“I only know what Jeremiah Fredrick told me,” Duncan said, unsure of what Simon was. For all he knew, the crazed and ragged old man could be some sort of plant by Fredrick to gather information from him. He and Jessica could only trust each other.
Simon leapt to his feet and his gray hair and beard looked like bright shards of light splashed around his head, bursting out like the rays of the sun. “Fredrick? The Monster, the madman? Do not speak that name in my presence. Do not tell me about the man who calls himself Master. Do not do it!”
“Why not?” Jessica asked and Simon paused, the instant rage dissipating into confusion.
“I don’t remember,” the man said honestly, looking around in a panic. “I can’t remember…I don’t even remember my own name.”
“Your name is Simon,” Jessica said.
“Is it?”
“That’s what the guard said.”
“The guard is an abomination. Nothing can liv
e so close to the Source without becoming such,” Simon told them and then raised his hands. They glowed as dull a blue as his eyes, much like the piping that ran from the mainland to the continent of New Atlantis. “Everything here, even you, I sense, has the power.”
Duncan ignored the comment and instead asked. “If you have the power, why not teleport out of here?”
“Why not indeed,” the man said and then tried to blink himself away. “Wait,” he said when it failed, “I think I already tried that once, maybe twice, maybe even a hundred times a day. No, we’re stuck here.”
“But the Source is close?”
“You can’t feel it making the magic stronger in you?”
“We don’t have magic,” Jessica told him. “We’re humans.”
Simon scratched at his chin. “No, that doesn’t seem right. You might be, but he isn’t.”
Duncan squirmed uncomfortably. He didn’t want to get into this now, and was hoping he could somehow get rid of the power.
“That’s what you didn’t want to tell me about, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Fredrick gave me the power.”
“There it is again, that name that isn’t a name, that blasphemy from your tongue!” Simon exploded. “Do not speak that name in front of me.”
“He did something to you, didn’t he?” Jessica asked. “I know he put you here, that probably goes without saying, but he did more than just that. He did something to make you the way you are now.”
“I’m brilliant,” Simon said. “I’m the newest thing in a room full of antiques, bright and shiny as dull metal.”
“But the Source…you know about the Source,” Duncan insisted, still wondering if this was all some sort of trick from Fredrick.
“Don’t you know about the Source?”
“Why does everything have to be a question, with you?” Jessica asked.
“I could ask the same of the two of you.”
“Shut it in there,” the Magistrate Felix said as he passed by. “Don’t make me fill the room with leeches.”
Two tiny black slugs appeared on the floor, squirming towards Jessica, and she yelped. Simon squatted back in the corner and resumed his position, rocking back and forth. Duncan stepped on the two slugs and defiantly stared at the Magistrate before resuming his position near Jessica. He never broke eye contact, never showed any signs of fear.
“We’ll see about that attitude in the pits, young one. See how much heat you can actually handle then.”
The Magistrate left and Simon turned to them. “The pits are fun. You get to get out and socialize, meet your fellow inmates, and the insane are running the asylum. Do you remember that movie?”
Duncan whispered, very desperate, “Please tell me about the Source.”
“Why?”
“I have to know. It’s important and people’s lives are at stake.”
“People’s lives are always at stake. It’s the nature of this joke we call life.”
“If it’s all a joke, then you can tell us about it.”
“All I can tell you, Duncan Cade, is that it fell from the stars one night in the desert.”
“The stars? It came from space?”
But the old man was already back to rocking, oblivious to their presence.