Mists

[Adrian Kane]

Arikan

The pit in his stomach grew simply to dwell on Shayol Ghul. It was an experience infused with masochistic ecstasy. To be a man one moment, and the next reduced to a creature ripped apart more than simply being dead. To feel yourself begin cease to existent. To have your thread plucked from the pattern by the groping fingers of the Dark Lord, unsure if it would ever reform again. That was a true death few understood but all should truly fear. There was something lurking in the back of all humanity’s mind that once shown to the grave uttered a whisper that they should try again. That the next life was the one in which redemption would come, when what was deserved would finally be earned. That the next life would be riddled with less suffering and filled with more glory. That was the power of the Lord of the Grave. Death was not the end for Him unless He took the desire to unravel you. From there, if a man emerged reformed, he should know there truly was no purpose to it all: life, choice, pleasure, pain. In the end nothing waited but the long rot. If there was a purpose to the years of sucking air until the inevitable descended, it was his purpose. His needs. His fate.

Perhaps it was his time spent in Tel’aran’rhiod, where the pattern was nearer. Where all of life, reality, and alternate realities converged in the endlessness that was the Gaps that he should fear the chasm of such a doom. Perhaps it was Arikan’s splintered mind hovering above the fog of countless lives blurring together, but that was what he truly feared most: to cease existing.

“You’re right o’holy Inquisitor. Most never have the chance to see it, and most who do are never seen again,” he said, slow to respond. He stared at the questioner, eyes of stone, hatred billowing. What was the man waiting for? Always standing. Always looming. Arikan crunched his hair in his fingers, wracked with the anticipation of suspending the torture he knew should have come by now. "what is taking you so long? Can we bloody start—?”

Then a pin pierced the veil.

Arikan’s face lifted from the plane of his knees so that he may stare at the Inquisitor. No thoughts scattered behind those red-rimmed eyes. There was no resistance, only the glassy sickle of lamplight flashing in the cycle of blinks that followed. And he finally understood. Finally recognized what had been happening.

"Questioning. This whole time?” He said. Unaware the thought in his mind passed his lips at all.

"You've been questioning me this whole time.” He barely dared to say it aloud, fists balling. His own idiocy ripped his insides apart. Memory scrambled frantic across their previous discussions, clawing through every phrase, hoping to discern what he had revealed but the memories eluded him. But they were wisps of fog on a cold river. Unreachable. Not possible.

His expression darkened considerably. Their gentleman’s discussion was over. If the Lord of Souls wove a single fiber of a man's being to a cause, it was that there were no other options than obedience.

Or so he thought.

Unless he was tricked into answering every bloody question the Interrogator posed without even realizing it.

Byron / Inquisitor Jeorune

This method had been far slower than his task masters may have liked, but he had gleaned many interesting bits of information. And, more importantly, the boy had survived this long. Byron knew how to cut a man to make him talk, but had never before needed to worry if the one under his knife lived. It was also something he was usually almost loathe to do; a rare emotion in his mind. Some things were just too foul to be done without some hesitation. It was one of the few markers he had to judge that he hadn't wandered too far from the Light.

But now the easy road was gone. Inquisitor Jeorune stared down at the boy with a knowing smile. A smile that seemed to hint that perhaps the boy had given up too much already. Could the boy trust his own memories of these past many conversations? What had been delusions and what had been real? "Not every Inquisitor needs knives and clamps, boy."

There was another room, not far removed from this cell with a table. Straps had been prepared, and now it was just a matter of getting the boy tied down; again, times like this would have been far easier if he had had help. A true Hand of the Light would have a retinue of Children to strong-arm the boy, but Inquisitor Jeorune would have to manage the task alone. But, with the boy weakened as he was, it would be easy enough. Without sleep or full meals, and still nursing the effects of past beatings, the boy wouldn't have the endurance to struggle long. "But, I think it is time now for us to...get down to business, yes? Shall you cooperate boy, or shall I have to bring you like a misbehaving dog?”

Arikan

Sweat.  Fear.  What were these things?  Did they exist or were they figments of an overwrought imagination?  Staring into the smile of one's enemy, and knowing he had best you, the question was rather provoking.  The frost of fear did indeed glaze his eyes, for what else had transpired he did not recognize, but he was not yet conquered.  Arikan forced a smile in return.  ”Not knives and clamps. No.  Only an Aes Sedai and poison, Sir Inquisitor." 

When the Inquisitor came for him, he met a mild struggle.  Arikan was far diminished compared to their previous encounter, but the mild price of energy was necessary.  Complete submission would touch the Inquisitor's suspicion.  It would have touched his, had their roles been reversed.  Thus he was dragged from his pigsty, vaguely aware of stone shedding the skin from his legs.  Yet on he clutched at everything the Inquisitor wore.  A teeth clenched resistance sharpened every grunt and curse to pass mindless lips.

Yet his eyes made purpose along the way.  It razored his brain to draw upon such focus, but he learned the distance from one hole to the next.  A torchlit passage.  Unfinished stone.  Low ceilings.  They were underground after all, and he knew the way out now.  It was a fitting tomb, for one of them was not to see daylight again, and Arikan did not intend it to be him. This was his last chance. There would be no escaping once the straps were tightened.

It happened fast.  That delicate moment when compliance escalated to fighting.  And he fought.  Fought for his life.

Byron / Inquisitor Jeorune

The boy's struggles were about as pitiful as Inquisitor Jeorune would have expected. Half starved and sleep deprived as the boy was, these pitiful struggles would only further weaken the boy when the time came for a true struggle. The look in the boy's eyes was entirely gratifying to the Inquisitor; the boy was only now realizing how truly out-maneuvered he was, how entirely powerless he had become. The boy had once commanded armies and held the fate of Darkfriends and Black Ajah in his hand. And now, he had been babbling secrets and prophecies to the Hand of the Light without a single touch of a blade. And now, to know that the true ordeals were just beginning?

The boys roving hands wouldn't find any convenient short blades to be plucked from belt or sheath. The Inquisitor still had his sword, of course, as any old soldier surely would, but any blades he would need in the near future would be found in his satchel of tools that awaited within the room, awaiting their chance to put the boy's already questionable resolve to the test.

The boy's second wind, that sudden burst of motivation, might have surprised the Inquisitor. The boy shouldn't have had such energy left in him, after all. But Byron...had their roles been reversed, Byron could easily see himself making the same gambles. The ambush with the table leg would have been his greatest chance of escape. To over power his captor in one surprise strike. And if that had failed, to then play the part of the broken prisoner, too weak and confused to put up much resistance. To again lay in wait and bide his time for another chance of escape. A chance like this.

When the boy redoubled his efforts against Inquisitor Jeorune, the boy would find himself with a ready opponent. As the boy gained his feet, shoving against the Hand of the Light, the Inquisitor would stagger but not fall. Jeorune twisted about to face the boy, tugging violently at the boy's hair to try and wrench him off balance instead, and drove a mailed fist at the boys jaw. But the boy wasn't spent just yet. A flick of the boys arm managed to break Jeorune's grip on the his hair, allowing him to avoid the Inquisitor's first blow.

Jeorune had the advantage of a healthy and rested body, of greater depths of physical reserves. But the boy was motivated by the knowledge that death was a certain, and decidedly unpleasant, experience on the immediate horizon. With such motivation, the boy's attacks were an all or nothing gamble. Once again, it would quickly become obvious to the boy that Inquisitor Jeorune was more then just an arrogant torturer. He again refrained from going for his sword; he wanted the boy alive, after all. Tired and bruised was fine, as long as the boy still drew breath.

The boy had an impressive well of resolve left to him, more so then Byron would have expected of the boy. Channellers had a rather self-destructive tendency or relying on the One Power to solve their problems. But, the Asha’man actively sought to work past that short-sighted fault. They trained with swords and in more traditional concepts of melee combat. The Aes Sedai could learn a thing or two from them, in that regard. That the boy was so physically competent wasn't terribly surprising. Just the sheer level of it.

The display might have been rather magnificent if it weren't so...almost comically presented. A greased hair Hand of the Light in a hearty round of fisticuffs with a half starved naked man. There was probably a good tavern song in there somewhere. The fight lasted longer then Byron might have preferred, but every moment just helped to further weaken the boy, and to help reinforce that he simply could not stand up to Inquisitor Jeorune, no matter the conditions.

Unlike their first fight, the turn around wasn't a matter of gaining ground. The boy wasn't trying to escape, but rather to destroy the Inquisitor outright, to prevent the man from stopping the boy's escape at all. The Inquisitor's goal was to inflict pain, to drive the boy to his knees and beg for the Inquisitor to stop. To collapse and weep and whimper and grovel.

They exchanged blows, but then Jeorune managed to strike one of the boys arms aside, allowing a swift jab into the boys floating ribs on his left side, mail-reinforced knuckles biting hard at the soft ribs there. Another flash of his arm to knock the boys arms away again, and another first drove forward into the boys torso, this time driving his knuckles into the boys right clavicle. The boy was good enough to roll with the punches, but the blow was aimed to fracture or even break that bone, to rend the boys arm useless.

The tide turned then; without the use of one arm, the boys defence was crippled. The Inquisitor caught the boys other arm, twisting the arm enough to force the boy to the side and drive him onto his toes for a brief moment, the boys arm pinned into the Inquisitors side, just long enough for Jeorune to drive a two-knuckled blow into the boys exposed armpit and ribs there. Next would be a violent stomp to the back of the boys closest knee, to drive him to the floor.

The blows that came next were cold and calculated, to extract the greatest pain without actually risking killing the boy. They were meant to thoroughly implant the realization that the boy was beaten, and all the while Inquisitor Jeorune would calmly recite those same blasted rules. "The rules are simple. Speak only when I address you. Ask permission to speak when I address you. You will address me only as Inquisitor. You will do anything you are told. You will only act when told. There shall be daily routines, and you shall do these without complaint or hesitation as you are told. You will make no excuse and tell no lie.”

“You have acted without permission, and so I have to punish you.”

Arikan

Tunnel vision.  If there was anything the black tower properly drilled, it was brutality.  Infliction without remorse.  Carnage without sickness.  To blank out all thought, grip death by the throat, and cow it into submission.  During the Farm's impressionable years, when an experienced dreadlord haunted their holy grounds, Darius Stowyn blended perfectly within that sea of boring black.  Because the first lesson his very first teacher instilled lasted nearly two-hundred years: focus the hate.  Dissipate all distraction.  Tunnel his vision.  Concentrate.  Wait.  For all his practical wisdom, Arikan recognized the ironic misfortune of his teacher's abrupt end, but such finality was the easiest way to take the man's place.  How the old graybeard would sneer now. 

The Inquisitor rallied immediately.  His prisoner had been broken, trembling, weak, and pitiful.  Yet this whitecloak anticipated the game like an expert.  But there was no time, no energy, no ability left to Arikan to wonder what that meant. 

For every attack he deflected, the next landed like the Inquisitor were playing with him, but he refused to lose ground.  The two men dug in their trenches and wailed on one another. Though most of the fleshy cries of pain came from Arikan's side of the war. He inflicted little to no damage in return. He fell into his own world as a result, refusing to back down, refusing to care.  This was no contest of rioting factions.  Arikan aimed for blood smeared on the walls, either his own, or the Questioner's.  Preferably the Questioner's.  It was all he saw.  It was all he cared about.  But he wasn’t going to the table alive. Not alive.

Somewhere in the stench of time, a sluggish throw was flung off-course and something immediately crunched inside.  A stabbing shock rippled from his side and knocked the wind from his lungs.  A moment, or maybe a lifetime later, his vision colored white as a bloated corpse when the collarbone snapped.  His entire chest thickened, and submersed in shock, he didn't breathe. The force of the downward blow knocked him nearly over.  In that split-second, there was no cry, no reaction until his overwhelmed mind was able to process the flash of pain that followed. 

In the surge of adrenaline burning his veins, one thought arose.  Move. Run.   

His mind roared with will. He tried to simply run. Or die trying, and it seemed likely now the blood on the walls would be his, but glimpsing a sliver of his gruesome future, it was better than the alternative. 

It was too late.  The Inquisitor caught him immediately and became the puppeteer. Arikan was forced beneath the riptide of his wailing.  Ribs, shock.  Arm, darkness.  Knee, floor. 

Instinct he would later loathe tried to get him away from what came next.  To crawl out of this hollow crypt rather than dig deeper into the dirt.  To reach out for something, to throw his hands up, anything to make the Inquisitor stop.  Or go ahead and die now.  Death was certain once cold buckles bit into his naked flesh, he couldn't calculate those consequences, only the moment. Only the instinct. 

The walls of his soon to be tomb were too thick to process the Inquisitor's rules.  Their fight was done, and this time, when Arikan clutched and clawed at the Inquisitor's dragging, the weakness was not fake. The desperation was very real. Heavy straps he was unable to fend off bit wrists and ankles like gnawing dogs until those clenching hands subsequently released him.  Fogged minutes later, roaring with fury too weak to show itself, his head rolled over in time to watch the Inquisitor straighten himself out.  Uniform perfect.  Armor untarnished.  Sword quiet.  And their eyes met.  He beheld nothing behind the globes of the Inquisitor’s stare. Just darkness and intent. The same streamed from his own.

Arikan moved; well, tried to move.  Only a few fingers twitched, but no wrist lifted from the table.  His heels scraped on the coarse surface slabbed beneath. His back could not arch.  He was wounded in every way possible with frustratingly minimal threat to life despite how hard he tried to get the Inquisitor to kill him. He was drained of all energy except to draw the next painful breath.  His faculty was empty as scorched stone.  And he was unable to contemplate anything except the identity of the man he'd failed to manipulate into killing him. 

When the Inquisitor left his prisoner alone, panic began to creep in, glad to keep him company.

Byron / Inquisitor Jeorune

The boy would be left in the darkness for some time, left to his thoughts and worries and aches. When the Inquisitor returned next, it was to arrange his tools. Another table, lower and within clear view of where the boy was strapped down, was where the Inquisitor set down the satchel that had so often been in the background of their previous encounters. The straps were opened with care and the satchel was unfolded to reveal its contents once more. Knives and needles and hooks, barbs and clamps and spikes. Each item was tugged free of its bindings, examined and wiped clean with a gleaming white cloth. Then they were coated in oil and set to the flame of a candle, to purify and cleanse each tool, before being set onto length of clean cloth, where they would await their turn on the boy's body.

All the while, he hummed a quiet tune. Inquisitor Jeorune held no reservations of what would come next; the ends justified the means. And the boy no doubt deserved every pain and humiliation that had been, and would soon be, delivered upon him. The boy had chosen his allegiance, had taken these steps willingly if not knowingly. Not at first, perhaps. But the boy had never sought to return to the Light, and had seemingly held no reservations for his dark deeds.

Byron himself held no qualms over what was to happen next either. Indeed, the boy was a monster who walked willingly in the Shadow. One whom had brought death and pain to the Tower. He studied a wickedly curved needle. It was much like a fishing hook, save that the tip was rounded and dull rather then sharp, he thought, although far longer. The notes of the late Inquisitor indicated the proper usage of each of these tools; the man's notes were meticulous in that sense. Pierce the flesh of the stomach with one of its sister needles, and carefully insert this hook amidst the bowels. Dull as it was, it would not easily pierce those filth-filled organs, but would allow one to press and turn them about. A curious technique, and the dead man's notes indicated all sorts of dreadfully curious long-term uses of such. Notes of knots and placement of clamps.

He set the hook aside after it had been properly cleaned, the last of the tools to be inspected and tended to thus. A lantern sat on the same table, allowing the tools to be well lit and clearly seen, by both the Inquisitor and the boy, should he be so inclined. He continued to hum as he studied the boy; the mess of bruises and swellings and lacerations from the beating, fresh over the near faded bruises and scabbed wounds of past punishments.

The Inquisitor circled the table briefly, staring down at the boy as he did, as if planning a move in a game of stones. Where to cut first? Where to gouge and pierce the boy's flesh. Byron was curious how this would go. He had spent many nights studying the Inquisitor's notes, familiarizing himself with the techniques and practices described within. Would the Brown Ajah be interested in such a book? He could perhaps arrange for it to appear in the Tower Library's grasp some day. Perhaps the Yellows could find a use for it? The diagrams within were quite detailed regarding anatomy. It was almost a work of art, if the topic weren't so dark.

Most men Byron had put to the question were not near so important as the likes of the boy had been. Most had been Darkfriends, but they had been low on the ladder, so to speak. Simple, common folk who had for whatever fool reason sworn to the Dark One. Those had always been short and simple things; most had broken quickly and under far cruder methods than what Byron had at his disposal now. Break a few fingers, twist a knife in a man's guts enough, and most divulged whatever secrets it was that he had sought at the time. But this would require more, and he was quite interested to broaden his array of skills.

He circled the table and returned to his tools. He deigned not to waste time speaking with the boy, or even to answer him should the boy try to speak. A dozen slender pins were selected first, and he turned to the boy, looming over the bound Dread Lord with the pins neatly arrayed between two fingers. A dozen in all, with one held pinched between two fingers as he studied its length. Then he met the boy's gaze for a long moment, as the needles were laid on the table's edge, far enough away that the boy's squirming would not knock them to the floor. All were set down but the one he had between thumb and finger, and his free hand pressed down heavily against the boy's hip and thigh. The needles were long and fairly sturdy things for their size and the first was carefully pressed into the flesh of the boy's inner thigh till it pressed to the bone, piercing through layers of skin and fat and muscle.

The others would soon follow; he had studied the Inquisitor's notes quite thoroughly on this, careful to note the location of important veins and arteries. The more the boy would squirm, the more the muscle would catch and tug at the needles, pulling them deeper or scraping them against muscle and sinew. The more the boy squirmed, the more pain they would inflict.

He would work on the boy for some many hours that first day, with long pauses between to allow the boy to calm and recover slightly. Buckets of water would be cast across his body, and thin gruel and water forced upon him if need be, in small amounts to avoid vomiting. And all the while, he would refuse to speak to the boy or answer his questions or pleas. He seemed more interested in seeing how far he could push the boy before he would pass out. Questions would come later, when the boy better understood what the Inquisitor could and would do to him to get answers.

Some hours later, with Byron's mind rife with a better understanding of what all the tools and blades and such could do, he turned away from the boy, removing the last of the invading pieces of metal from the boy's body and returning to the lower table. He continued to hum the entire time, wandering between various tunes the entire time. He began to clean and inspect the tools that had been used that day, the cloth they were arrayed across stained red.

Arikan

The following silence pounded the eardrums.  Or maybe it was the heavy pulse of the blood in his own head.  Alone, desperate and driven by thoughtless instinct, he strained every wounded limb for freedom once more.  A roar overtook his entire shoulder when he heaved against the broken collarbone, but he bit through the pain and pulled with every scrap of intent he had. It was futile. The straps gripping the limbs were secure, inescapable as his very skin, but he would never stop trying. Just, that moment, as he sank back, he needed to think.

As he lay, he curled bloody fingernails into his own palm, furious at the failure to operate his own limbs.  Furious at twice the failure to capitalize on decent chances at escape.  That he'd let down his guard in Tear, that security turned to comfort which turned to capture.  That he'd let Lairona betray him, the catalyst that started this whole violent descent from glory. All that, but it wasn’t over yet. Not while he breathed.

The shield boxed him in.  Invisible as black ice, but smooth and solid, undented, unwarped as he stretched out to graze his soul along its surface, seeking some ripple he'd overlooked before.  The exploration was frantic at first. Desperate and sweeping. But soon, studying the shield became the ticking of the clock; the count by which he passed the wasteland of time.  Breathing slowed. Steadied. The shield and air. Both taunted. Both ached indescribable, but the search gave him focus, and his body sank soon into a cadaverous weight he could not control.  His mind calmed… he felt like sinking… Like topping the horizon on a clear morning to behold the city he favored most after months of hazy travel by horseback.  Though the night was power for the runners of darkness, there was a sense of beauty in a cold, crisp sunrise he thought.  A splay of orderly tents, the gleam of steel, the whip of a rippling cloak; the retraction of a fearful hand, the narrowing of suspicious eyes, the haunt of a cowering face.  The imagery blurred and focused. Sinking…

…Focus slid from his grasp altogether, and a sort of comfort took top pedestal.  He pulled the reigns and studied the city of his birth from the saddle, glad for the narrow streak of shade provided by a cap against the glare.  Already in the early morning sunrise, droplets pooled on the back of his neck.  A sticky warmth crept up, and the padding of his coat felt heavy as a horse-blanket on his back.  The sun meanwhile overtook the width of the River Erinin and turned those deep waters to a gemstone blue, and early rays cut through the shape of the distant city alongside.  Atop spires and along the outer wall his eyes briefly studied banners he knew by heart.  And far in the distance the mountainous shadow of the Stone of Tear gleamed brightly in the sunrise as it towered directly above the river. 

Horse and rider sat unnaturally still, staring.  Warring feelings for the three-crescents rippling in the air above and hatred for what the Stone harbored inside clenched his stomach with conflict.  High Lord Emorian frequently walked those halls, accessing the heart of it for purposes unknown to the Council, but none broke the courage to question him about it.  Since the first moment he beheld the crystal sword, Arikan could not ignore the lure of callandor. Glowing faint in the innermost chamber, it waited out of reach; out of touch yet pulsing with power, hinting at temptation.  He tried many times to claim it. Yet that frustrating chamber drew his desire every day he remained in the city, every day he left it behind, and every day since.

He startled, but nothing external explained the sudden arousal.  His eyes flew to a point in the darkness though there was nothing to mark it, but toward which all his attention was now directed.  It moved, very slightly.  A darkness conceivably, or inconceivably, darker than the absence of light surrounding.  Arikan heard a low, distinct swish of movement like the sheen of a velvet cloak swept across stone. Barely perceptible footsteps.  Approaching slowly closer.  There was no visible aura to reveal whether the specter be man, beast, or something in between, but it felt as though the very walls cried syrupy tears, pleading for the chance to bow their shadowy might before the master that walked among them.  A shudder of doubt flecked his brain, and he shivered. In that moment, he questioned his very sanity. 

Arikan lay skeletally still as a sweep of fingers gently brushed the hair away from his brow, and there upon a cold whisper caressed his mind.  Arikan dared not move; dared not breathe.  Then the force circled like a cold current of air, and in the pitch blackness Arikan's eyes followed, glued despite every instinct in him urging that he should look away.  The presence again scratched the air with explanation, menace billowing.

Arikan's stolen breath caged itself in his chest as much in shock now as it did during the horror of previous moments.  Then the presence dissipated like a yawning comet swallowed behind the arc of the world, and Arikan's eyes cast a harried search around.  Then, suddenly, he felt a tug on those boiled leather straps like an afterthought and each fell away from his skin altogether.  He was released?  But warning blazed across his mind; a nightmarish chasm of questions choked him in place.  Was this some test?  Some probe into the purity of his commission with offers and taunts?  And who was stretching the bonds of his loyalty?  Was the Great Lord of the Dark fully free to walk the world? 

Then a faint sound carried into the darkness from some great distance, like a wave crashing against a distant cliff.  The sound took shape; a pleasant tune Arikan found it. A siren calling him back…

That, finally, was when he opened his eyes to the tangible world, and he frantically searched the surroundings of reality. The room was as it was the last time his silvery eyes beheld it, but the walls were illuminated in torchlight not weeping for the god of the dark.  The security of his bonds were ironclad as before.  He was still shackled to a table, and every inch of him ached.

I was sleeping, he thought hesitantly, as though focusing too strongly on the glimmer of reality might make it untrue after all.  Darkness. I was sleeping?  Or hallucinating.  Or passed out. He swallowed, though there was no moisture in his throat to force down.  Tension he'd held tight as bones suddenly melted beneath the flames and fiercer memory boiled upward from deep in his gut. No, he was sure he had been dreaming.

Then he heard the song. The tune from the dream finally took form. The very same voice that tugged him back to consciousness issued a steady stream, and Arikan rolled his face toward it. The Inquisitor was there, unfurling a script of tools, whistling as he did. He shivered to think that’s what stirred him awake. Despite his brush with the divine, Arikan was mortal still, and his eyes quickly followed the righteous placement of every silvery edge and careful testing of every gleaming point.  First through quenching flame then to reverent distribution on that oh so nearby cloth.  The man handled each item surgically — fondly, artfully; and Arikan found the elegant ritual disgusting. How was this to start? He swallowed dryly, watching.

They met one another's gaze.  While the foreground was set by a grueling display of what was to come, Arikan would not flee from facing it.  His all too human eyes followed the Inquisitor's wolf-like circling, both taut with challenge and narrowed by hatred; this was what he requested all along.  He did not speak as the butcher examined the cut of meat he was soon to dissect, but every hair on his body flinched when the first needle pierced. He grunted. Hide and sinew quivered involuntarily up and down his thigh but soon fell motionless when he realized the exquisite consequences of struggling. At that very moment, it wasn’t bad, tolerable even, but that was soon to change. The needle gouged to bone, and Arikan was flung past what he could endure in silence. He'd seen metal pulled from bone before, and heard the screams of men who endured it.  Now it was his turn.  So the screaming began.

Hours later, a few droplets of precious water seasoned his lips with life.  A bucket of cold slammed afterwards, pink streams dripping away the black blobs up and down his body. The cold tide shivered after the heat of so much violating, and he tried to shift, what much as he could while strung to the slab--but his skin was stuck to the table, adhered by the sludge of his own sweat and congealed blood until he managed to peel a gruesome layer away.  It felt like the skin peeled from the body of a snake. He grew light-headed, and his eyes sank with exhaustion. The respite was savored. He didn’t speak. Nor could he if he tried. His swollen tongue greedily lapped every drop of water given him by the Inquisitor's cradling hands. 

Byron / Inquisitor Jeorune

The ladle was returned to the bucket of drinking water, kept just far enough from where the boy was strapped down that he could see it, if he so chose to turn his head that way. The boy's last meal had been a few hours before, and it was time to get back to work. The tools were laid out once more, on a fresh, white cloth, once more sterilized and arranged with undue care. He still never graced the boy with so much as a word, and he casually inspected the boy's injuries and the marks from their first session. The Inquisitor was most intrigued for how well the boy's body had held together so far; surely an undeserved blessing of the power these monsters had stolen from the Creator.

Byron was of course more curious than he would ever let on, of course. Just how far could a Channeler be pushed before things like infection was an issue? Before the exhaustion and stress prevented his body from knitting itself together any more? He had never been tasked to chase Black Ajah or Darkfriend wildings. And even if he had been, he would never have been able to give the such intimate attention; he would have relied on poison or a knife or a crossbow quarrel from a safe distance. Far more efficient that way.

Inquisitor Jeorune took up his tools once more. Today, he started with more pins, two inches long. The boy's left hand was taken firmly, the fingers pinned down to the table, keeping the fingernails exposed as the first of the needles was lined up. Byron wondered absently how far Merayin and Elseen had traveled in this time? Altara, perhaps? With the escort he had arranged for them, he doubted they would run into much trouble there, or even in Murandy; few bandits were willing to fall upon a band that was more armed men then soft merchant staff. And as far as he understood, the Seanchan still hadn't managed to solidify their hold on northern Altara.

What would he do with those three when he returned to the Tower? Elsae, he suspected, would be far more understanding of the situation than Elseen had been. He had some very strange suspicions about those girls. They hadn't looked much like their father. Of course, he was a poor mind for guessing the ages of children, or of anyone really (Light alone knew his exact age, but he gathered himself to be in his mid to late twenties perhaps?), but the girls seemed too old for Merayin's husband to have been the father, surely. Unless she had wed almost the day he had left, of course. He had attacked this interesting puzzle in the recent past, but was too busy with his tasks to ponder it too deeply.

He finished with the first five of those pins and stepped back to study the boy. It was a rather unimaginative opening to the day's activities, but it simply meant they could move into more interesting waters later. "Awake now, yes boy? Good.” The pins were left where they were, firmly pressed beneath the boy's finger nails. The more he would struggle and thrash and make fists, the more they would move and dig and tear. Much like the pins in the thigh before, they were meant that the boy's own resistance would directly cause him pain. It would give him one more thing he would need to focus on to keep from hurting himself, to help prevent him from simply retreating into his own mind. An anchor of sorts, to keep him in the moment.

"You are well aware the rules by now, I am sure. I ask you a question. You answer me, truthfully. The more you lie, the more pain you shall know.” For a long time, the questions were rote and simple and constantly circling; simple details of name and place of birth, of names and places that might have seemed entirely pointless in the grand scheme of things. But they were traps against lies; the Inquisitor had a memory like a steel box, and his mind was fresh and lacking in the distractions the boy was made to suffer through.

He never struck on the first lie; to do so would have tipped the boy off to what was happening too soon. But eventually the fallacies would be repeated to the boy; you said one thing, then another. The details have changed. You said there were three, not two. Whatever was offered and caught was then turned back on the boy in punishment. Starting with the boy's foot. More pins, then pliers to pull broken nails away. He would move onto something different after the foot though; he did not wish to over due this one type of punishment, after all.

Eventually, the questions moved onto more interesting topics; means of troop movements of Trolloc forces; what he knew of their spawning grounds, the forging of their equipment. These were things the boy might not even have known, himself, details that may have been below the cares of a Dreadlord in his prime. The more accurate answers he received, the more obscure the questions would become, and any time the boy could not answer, he was punished. This was meant to frustrate the boy and confuse him, to tear at his attention and make him more open to respond when given topics he had answers too.

"When a traitor to the Light swears to the Dark One, how is he made known to you? Do Darkfriends travel to Shayol Ghul to swear? Do Channelers?” The questions seemed eager to find ways of finding Darkfriends, of knowing how they may be marked or coerced into revealing themselves. Exactly the sorts of things an Inquisitor would be interested in knowing, surely.

[Adrian Kane]

Arikan

There wasn't much else to do but think or sleep.  The latter was fitful, wracked with dreams of the exhausted and always ending with a pathetic jerk against the straps. The chains rattled loud in the booming silence until he remembered where he was.  The thoughts, however, strayed across a thousand different moments from his life.  As much as he wanted to escape, he’d rather the torturer just get it over with. It was better than the infernal waiting. He was going to die on this table, that seemed certain now.  Yet had he ever really expected any other way for it all to end?  Arikan had been no ignorant acolyte shocked with sudden sacrifice.  He defeated his share of the Great Lord's loudest coryphaei in his life.  Their howling choruses were silenced by his tactics. Their untouchable conductors overthrown by his ambitions; both replaced with someone better.  And yet here he was. All the more fallen. All the more alone.

He tried not to think about it, except that was all he could think about.

He ceased watching the arrangement of tools before the Inquisitor began.  Arikan found himself relying on concentration, eyes pushed shut like blocking the sight made it unreal. His fingers were smashed flat.  He was growing numb to the questions. Forgetting why he bothered resisting. It’s not like the Hand was going to let him go on good behavior.

So he talked.
"--Arikan,” he repeated, again, when asked his name. He had no family name. Or if he did, he long ago forgot it. Just Arikan.
 
He was born in Tear.
He said as much. Eyes closed hard, breathing steady. His voice didn’t shake when the Inquisitor asked for clarification, “—no, the city." He knew the Hand didn’t actually care about his name and city of birth. He wanted compliance. He wanted a tongue warmed up to responding when the more pertinent questions came.

He asked his age. Of the questions so far, the instinct to hold this answer to his chest was tight. Hiding his strength and experience kept him alive a long time. Yet as the Hand pulled an iron from the fire, Arikan swallowed. He really hated burning men alive. The smell was sickening and the bastards usually screamed loud enough to burst the ear drums.

“I don’t know,” he tried to explain. He honestly didn’t know his age. Like that last name, it was long ago forgotten. It wasn’t like he celebrated a nameday each year. The iron was pushed to the bottom of his feet. The limbs curled so hard the muscles in his legs cramped and seized. Smoke sizzled and the smell. The smell.

He answered fervently, desperately. “I don’t know! Near two-hundred I think. I don’t know the year!” It stayed. He answered! Yet the iron stayed. Why didn’t the Inquisitor believe him? Of all the things to lie about, this one wasn’t worth the fight. The Hand let him go. The iron pulling away flesh burned to its spike as it did. Then the Hand passed the orange metal near his face. So close he could feel the heat of it on his cheek. Sweat rippled down his brow. Pooling with the rest. His head rolled away, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for it to come. But the Hand pulled it harmlessly away.

The silence was filled with Arikan’s breathing hard and fast. The Hand clearly letting the wall built up in his head time to crumble back down again. Nothing happened, and the anticipation of waiting became too powerful, and he tentatively opened his eyes, seeking out the Inquisitor. The man was nearby, watching. Allowing his victim a moment for him to catch his rapid breath.

But truths about himself were one thing. Revealing the secrets of the Great Lord’s armies was quite another. Again. There were some things he simply could not say no matter the desire. He tried to explain as much. That if he bit off his own tongue, there would be no more answers for either of them. The Hand didn’t believe him, of course. Just like not knowing his age. So when Arikan’s own teeth clamped down, smothered the self-induced screams by the push of his lips, and blood came coursing out the corner of his mouth, the Hand started to believe.

He was left alone before he sliced through is own tongue. Arikan was legitimately relieved it didn’t come to that.

Arikan

When the Hand returned, he laid out his freshly cleaned tools as he had before. But the questions were different. He wanted to know about Arikan himself. Seeking the boundary between what loosed his lips and what made him start to bite off his own tongue.

He lost track eventually, talking about his movements through the nations like some shadow of a shadow.  Of which were lies or not.  Hazy details blurred in and out of focus.  Some answers he couldn't recall at all, others he was sure he'd offered carelessly, but accurately.  There were breaks as before.  Only long enough to allow him to recuperate enough will to cling to hope; fear drove accuracy better than apathy after all.  But the waves constantly beat down, wearing him away inch by inch like water on rock. The water ladle returned a few more times, wetting the vocal cords just as they stretched dry as old parchment and he lost his voice.

Every peaceful moment in his life was an act, he explained.  Part of the role he was invested in building at the time.  Arikan cared nothing for his many ‘wives’ - almost entirely darkfriends, every last one - nor for Lairona, the Black he was given by Moridin in ploy as his plan for Tar Valon.  He loathed bonding her, yet the subtle compulsion was easier to prod than constantly warring with her less than stellar intellect.  Her betrayal was the first step leading to this red slab. How he'd dreamt of creative revenge, but unfortunately the woman was already dead. “I’d give her to you if she wasn’t already dead,” he laughed weakly. “Maybe you can dig up the body, Hand? How’d you like that?”

As a High Lord of Tear during the decade before the Aiel War, Emorian Dimas had a wife.  A partner, really.  One who knew her sham-husband was a darkfriend and robustly engaged every opportunity he presented for her to advance herself through the Great Lord's favor.  Arikan happily used her enthusiasm to set up Amalric Tamison.  The ranking High Lord of Tear should have been the country's commander in the Covenant of nations to rise when the Aiel invaded Cairhien.  Amalric was shrewd, wise, futuristic, and cunning.  With twenty-five thousand Tairens at his back, Amalric would have ridden second--perhaps third--in command of the entire Alliance, depending on how many Shienar could afford to send south of the Border. “He was far too devout a man of the Light to give him an army,” he laughed. The last few minutes before Emorian died, Arikan explained his plans just to see the High Lord’s reaction. Ironic then that he was now spilling his secrets in the minutes before Arikan himself was likely to die. 

The weather held clear the afternoon Amalric sucked his last breath, dead in his seat on Lord Emorian's patio.  Blue waters of an afternoon bay rippled in the distance while stormclouds built on the horizon above them.  The two Lords meant to go hunting together: a trip fated to explain Amalric's end.  Channeling the man's heart to a rock would have been faster than poison, but that would mean missing out on their final conversation, and Arikan always enjoyed the honesty of such talks.  He owed it to the man, as well.  Emorian and Amalric had been friends after all; as much as a sower of chaos in a world of escalating order could charter.  Astoril Damara took command of the Tairen armies in Amalric's absence, and he conducted a fine, perfectly mediocre campaign.  Laman ran Cairhien into the ground.  Shienar withdrew from the Border.  The People of the Dragon watered the slopes of Dragonmount with their blood, and the hunt for the Dragon Reborn began.  Indeed, it had been a fine day High Lord Emorian Dimas retired to the history books. 

The ability to lay still frayed like old rope until Arikan clung by a thread.  Extremities were distant surges, islands of fire he could isolate in his mind and so endure, but the Inquisitor became increasingly exploratory.  Those proximal punishments outshone the darkness of comparison memory; the Pit was an old terror and this was here and now.  Trolloc spawn?  He pictured the valleys of the Blight and shook his head weakly, refusing to answer and hoping to choke on his own tongue.  The Inquisitor’s needle slipped between the joint of his knee, waggled just so. He howled. The tears real, nearly regretting the resistance to answer.  But not quite. So he went back to talking about himself.

From the dueling canes and lace cuffs of Tear a humbler identity followed.  Darius Stowyn was in western Andor five months before the real Stone fell to Aiel.  Those years were torment in the mundane.  An exercise in fortifying patience when it ran thinnest, and Arikan was a man who cultivated patience like a crop.  Fitting metaphor because Darius was suppose to be farmhand.  He learned on the job, as Arikan had little opportunity to till earth before, but the immigrant was praised for his accuracy and speed.  Channeling certainly helped the labor of turning those hillsides to fertile pastures, but its glory filled the months he obsessed over callandor after word arrived of the Stone's capture.  Who was the man able to possess the sword Arikan coveted as his own?  Was it taken at all?  Or did the Aiel circle below it like a pack of wolves afraid to approach the fire too closely? How the darkworld talked about the boy that would become the Dragon. A kicked anthill. Those few months were a bloody annoying pain in the ass. 

The months in plebeian squalor became clear when word of the Dragon's Amnesty reached the backwoods of western Andor.  Obediently, the loyal, hard-working Darius moved to the Black Tower, and Arikan easily behaved as the man fumbling with the One Power for the first time.  As a condemned man shackled by a taint he had never known, Darius both struggled and loved his position.  He was easily imparted a good deal of trust.

Taim of course was a personal threat, but Arikan had no need to accelerate the man's downfall.  He waited, patient as always, until the man brought disaster upon his own head.  The two following M'Haels were far too useful to the Light, however.  Whiteraven and al'Mere were both men of Andor, born to humble origins yet both destined for greatness.  They trusted Darius as kin in blood and as a brother in arms; the Black Tower lacked a sustainable leader ever since. He was pretty proud of that, even if the work took him away from more important efforts in the Blight.

Whose tenure followed al'Mere's?  It was hard to remember.  Then again, it was hard to concentrate on trivial details when pliers lifted nails by the bed. One by one. Starting with the smallest toe, moving inward, a fiery crescendo that left him struggling and kicking against the straps, but it was better than the burns. By then Arikan stopped long enough to realize he had no idea what he was saying, but apparently he was lying.  His torturer was also apparently not entertained by his creativity. 

Following grave success in the Black Tower, Arikan was pawned from one Chosen to another, however he had little awareness of their bartering at the time.  Demandred painted a glorious picture, and his servant leaped to emulate the general he wanted to become.  He eagerly cast off what shackles remained to his Asha'man name; and the mangled remains of an assassinated Darius was found in the riotous ashes of Andoran civil war.  His tender wife, Olivia, and their children had no hope of surviving without the champion father and husband to defend them.  One set of bones seemed to be missing from the aftermath, but something so small could easily have been ground to dust.  Nobody thought twice about a missing infant, including Arikan.

The Inquisitor frequently took things too far like he were plying his trade for the first time, and the delirium would heighten in response, but it seemed to Arikan the torment swung the other direction thereafter, and he attempted to revive some stamina.  He fought now with no less scrap of intent as he had when he was manhandled into this stank room, but the manifestation was decidedly weaker.  Insurgent hate and turbulent defiance carried him forward, but his body could only follow so far.

But insult him by saying any common darkfriend could go to Shayol Ghul? Arikan screamed his answer:

"--NO! YOU BLOODY IDIOT!”  He spat with outrage, "ITS WORTH!  YOU MUST BE WORTH THE TRIP.  WORTH THE ATTENTION.  WORTH THE HONOR!" 

“—Those cretins aren't worth the sack of blood they haul around.  Only the worthy go!  Those He needs.  Those He commands!”  Pride, fear, tumult and peace colored the sounds of haunted laughs which followed.  The Inquisitor was little amused, so Arikan smiled a crimson smile and explained.  “—And you—,” he bellowed, “—YOU get to play with me!  So take your time, ‘Hand of the Light’!  Because I am it!”

He strained then, lifting his head enough to accuse with arrowhead accuracy his torturer for truths in turn. Thoughts were stirred like silt, and he shook his head.

”—Where are your friends, Hand?!  Where are your strong arms?  Where is your Aes Sedai? You want to know about my kind?  Let's talk then!  But start with telling me about yours, because you are no Whitecloak.”  He smiled a red smile before falling back, heavy and exhausted, but dying to see the reaction on the ‘inquisitor’s’ face.

[Adrian Kane]

Byron / Inquisitor Jeorune

The sudden resurgence of clarity in the boy's mind was a sure sign that the boy was still had some reserves of strength. That was good, as it meant the Inquisitor need not allow the boy the chance to rest. Not yet, at least. The anger was met with that usual disappointed smile; as if the boy were but a petulant child raging about some petty slight. But the smile changed with the boy's final words. The smile turned to one of amusement, the Inquisitor's stance shifted subtly, and with that the Inquisitor melted away, replaced by something else.

Byron

The gleaming white tabard was casually pulled free and neatly folded to be set aside; it was tarnished and stained red by that point, and the hours of washing required to leave it pristine and pure, while certainly a most meditative chore, was robbing him of sleep. Belts and straps were undone and set aside as well, as was the chain hauberk that had been weighing him down all these days. Just how a man was expected to march into battle, and commit to so physical a task, with something so heavy and restrictive was yet another reason why Byron long knew he had no place on a battlefield.

Oh surely, he could swing a sword better than common soldiers; he was Tower trained after all. But his skills were much better pointed elsewhere. With the chain pooled onto the floor, Byron rolled his shoulders casually, but left the padding that was worn beneath the hauberk for the moment. ”I had expected one as smart as you seem to find yourself, to have figured that out long ago, lad. It is a most useful mask though. I think the good Inquisitor shall remain in my repertoire. Some time to practice, however, would be appreciated.”

Gone was the Amadician accent, gone were the mannerisms of the Inquisitor. He ran his hands through his neatly oiled hair for a moment, then frowned at the filth for the oil that clung to them. The blood was ignored; blood washed away easily enough. Oil though, it clung and left a most distasteful film. That there was now blood in his hair was also ignored; again, it would wash out easily enough. But that damnable oil..."But he is so wrapped up in his appearance, isn't he? The hair? And all the white? A poor choice of clothing for a torturer, isn't it? But it is about the image I suppose.”

He plucked a long piece of metal which ended in a painstakingly sharpened blade, and turned back to Arikan, letting the blade trace along the man's ribs exploratively, without actually cutting the skin, yet. He was curious to see how effective the item's application would be, considering the lengthy notes of its application. "Unfortunately, this of course means I will have to try harder now won't I? I mean, now that you know that you have been fooled. How many interesting secrets did you give me before the Inquisitor even had to bleed you? But now your hackles are up. So much progress lost.”

The blade dipped deeply along one of Arikan's ribs. Strong fingers and the sharpness of the blade saw it dip into the bone deeply, only to be twisted slightly side to side as if trying to split the bone like a piece of wood. He didn't apply enough pressure to do so, but the sensation would surely be an unpleasant one. Then the blade was withdrawn, and he held it up to inspect it more closely and nodding in approval to find it hadn't bent under the pressure. It was a well forged piece. High quality steel.

Byron entertained the thought of telling Arikan who he was, or at least of what had happened to the real Inquisitor. But this was no usual prey. He could not take the risk, considering this one's unusual ability. He would have to educate himself regarding this Tel’aran’rhiod business a bit more thoroughly, to better understand the risks and dangers such people posed. Best not to give too much information in the mean time.

"I wonder though. Am most curious. Why did you swear yourself to old Lord Grim?" The blade was returned to the table, and he found other tools to busy himself with; small things, nothing too terribly intrusive. Painful surely, but nothing that would risk the man's life yet. He worked on Arikan's body with more curiousity than hatred or dire intent; he could now experiment more openly, without worrying about trying to maintain the façade of a practised Questioner. Needless to say, such skills weren't amongst those taught at the Tower. Even Master Dekan hadn't taught young Byron such things; how to kill a man quick or slow, in secret or as a show, yes. But nothing like this. It was too time consuming. But now, there was time aplenty.

Arikan

The pale flesh of the Whitecloak melted away, and a sicker man was revealed beneath.  Arikan quickly realized confronting his torturer was a mistake. 

The garb was dropped. Piece by stained piece. The cloak cast aside, the shepherd’s crook folded for storage, to be reused again surely. Chainmail became a discarded mound and none of it trashed.  The man would don such attire again.  Someday.

But it was the relief in the man’s voice that froze his blood. The burden of maintaining his facade was eased.  Now, he was free to plunge the full breadth of his focus into one. disturbing. task. 

Definitely a mistake.

He refused to let his voice shake, but inside, he was worried. Definitely worried. “Hands are convinced they are the shell of the Light itself—“

His voice trailed in the end, inexplicably fixed upon the show that followed: the point of a knife across his ribs trailed a streak of white behind.  It riddled his flesh with goosebumps upon its withdrawal.  And for the threat that followed.

Try till he die, eventually they would come to a point where Arikan could say no more.  He would chew out his own tongue to prevent betraying the Lord of Souls.  Such secrets were priceless, and far more valuable than one useless tongue.  Or so he thought.

However, Arikan liked to think his ability to endure stronger than resorting to such unpleasant measures.  A full team of Questioners might ply the teeth from a man's gums to prevent such things; actually, no.  They were unlikely to think of such careful, preventative steps.  At least, not until Under Lt. Jeremel Nessad suggested it a century ago.  Every once in a while the Questioners gathered themselves an actual Darkfriend.  Or—they were delivered one.  Arikan enjoyed his time in white.

Irony was a bitch sometimes.  Thankfully, as this man was no true Inquisitor, he might be ignorant of such tricks.  Plying teeth seemed quite excruciating--and humiliating--for the poor bastards.  That, and, the task required more than one pair of hands for proper restraint.  Safety first, afterall. And this bastard was alone with his victim.

So his eyes rolled around his head, watching the man as he circled, blade trailing. Twisting and writhing to watch his every movement. The man seemed to settle on a spot he liked, right beneath the ridge of one rib. It wasn’t a long blade, thankfully. But it was flat. The hiss of pain when it slid in was genuine, but it was the twist under the bone that made him scream. Blood dripped a steady river around the arc of his chest when it came out again. His hands yearned to cover the wound, but there was only the weak rattle of a chain when he tried. 

"So Lythia found herself a torturer,” he eventually gasped, continued to stare. "There aren't many of you around.  She's smarter than I thought —I really hate that.”  Yes, he knew her name. In fact, he wanted them to know he knew her. He would take great pleasure in their knowing that.

He continued, wanting to leave her with a wound she could never heal. “You know she was suppose to die too.  The gray man meant to gut both of them.  Tell her that.  With everything else.  I really want her to know Darius was the one.  No.  I was the one.”  He watched to see if there was a flicker of recognition on the torturer’s face. Probably not. He looked younger now than he had all this time. But he wanted them to know that he was the M’Hael’s killer. That a decade of ruination followed because of him.

The torturer, named as Arikan came to think of him because frankly he was too out of his mind to be more creative, was unleashed after that. He didn’t need to keep up the guise of a professional Questioner and frankly was free to ply his practice to his heart’s content. Oh he still asked questions, but it took more and more effort to extract an answer. But sometimes long stretches of time passed without a single word spoken. The torturer left him alone once, returning with buckets that reminded Arikan of being manipulated into cleaning the floor.

He placed the buckets along the wall, walking among them with serious contemplation for a moment, as though trying to decide which one to focus on first. Then, the torturer selected a pair of long pincers. Of all the tools to retrieve, that one cast a worried look across Arikan’s expression. But he watched, transfixed upon how they would be used. Such when the torturer plunged the points into one of the buckets, and carefully lifted out what was hiding inside, Arikan’s eyes flared wide at what squirmed from the end. Clearly the torturer didn’t want to touch it. For a man who did not so much as squirm at smearing his victim’s blood across his brow, that he didn’t want to risk touching this trade was worrisome. Looking at it now, Arikan didn’t blame him. Then the torturer approached, thing dangling from the pincers, twisting and writhing, and walked up and down the long line of his bolted down body. Trying to decide where it should be placed. Every hair on stood on end. Arikan couldn’t watch. He stared at the ceiling and swallowed dryly. Blades and pliers were one thing. But this… Water dripped on his chest. He winced. His abdomen. He shivered when the drips landed on the tender tissue just above his crotch. The torturer paused there. The drips trickled down. Darkness no. Not there. He squeezed his eyes shut.

The torturer seemed to change his mind, and the weight of the worm pooled on the tender flesh of his throat instead. It seemed stunned at first, dropped into the hollow just under the adam’s apple. Silence stretched between them both. Arikan held his breath. Then the creature moved. Slithered down the arc of his throat. Probing. Stretching. Tasting nibbles along the way that felt like little pinches. Arikan didn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. When it slipped off his throat, a slimy trail was left behind. And he exhaled a sigh of relief.

Until it the wetness brushed his earlobe. “NO!” he screamed in horror for this abomination. He whipped his head aside, trying to throw it off, but it slipped in with one long slither and the exquisite pressure that followed made him want his cut it out of his skull. He was breathing rapid, fast shallow breaths. Then a second creature was dropped in the same place as the first.

Deafness plugged his head. He couldn’t hear his own screams. Then a blanket was laid across his face. The heat of it became an oven. Darkness swallowed him up. Devoid of hearing and sight, barely able to breathe, every other sense was heightened. Blades he previously grimaced through reopened half-plugged holes. The breath hot, he gasped for air, drowning in the humidity of his own mouth. Fibers of the blanket were pulled in. Choking. He started to gag, turned his face to the side.  The motion in his ear swirled and he heaved what little remained in his stomach.

Clearly not desiring him to choke to death, the blanket was yanked in a smooth motion. The torturer beheld bulging eyes and a face so red it was nearly purple. He just waited to see if Arikan would manage to calm himself long enough to suck air again.

The pincers came back and the worms pulled out like a long string and dropped back in their buckets. Arikan’s head rolled side to side weakly. Air circulated his lungs, and he was given a chance to recover. More questions came then, and Arikan’s throat burned from the acid of wretching an empty stomach, and he managed a thin answer.

Afterward, he looked down at himself. Little black bodies ebbed up and down his torso. He could feel them now. The prickle of a thousand suckers boring their faces into the skin. Any River Rat raised near the Erinin knew what they were. But his gaze settled on those that delved around red lines where the torturer’s tools had split the skin. The fresh knife hole under the rib. Crawling under the loose flaps of skin. The suckers pushed deeper, and he writhed, but there was no getting away.

Cold snaked up his shaking body, and there he was left to wait in darkness and recovery before the next round.

Arikan

Being given water was a bad sign.  It meant the torturer wanted him alive a while longer.  But he accepted the swallows nonetheless.  It thinned the coating of blood from his mouth. Cut daggers across the wound in his tongue, but he swallowed anyway. The leeches had been peeled away. All but the one under his ribs that in too deep by then, and it was left to burrow. He’d have begged to get it out if he thought it’d do any good, but it was clear what type of thing he feared the most, and the pain of needles, clamps, pliers, and fire was not it.

Later, more buckets lined the wall. And Arikan’s eyes widened when he glimpsed what wiggled around in them.

So Arikan tried explaining again, voice raspy, desperate.  ”—the Chosen built their own forces, with each carving out their centers of power.  Raviel disappeared after being driven from Andor.  Ashtaroth was captured by the Dragon. Amogorath is probably still in the Blight. Merihem skulks in the shadows, a joke by the Chosen. Lanfear stalks the Dreamworld. Graendal is dead. Probably Samóch too.— On and on until his throat cracked and his ignorance of the Chosen was reached.  ’You may take his place', the hallucination--or visitor, or ghost, or the Great Lord himself whispered like a stake to his brain. It wasn’t going to happen, he knew, but his hatred of the Chosen was potent, and he had no hesitation to sell each and every one of the bastards out. They could all burn.  And he wasn’t going to survive anyway.

He spoke about things he knew best, namely the machine of war.

”—The forges of thakan'dar churn without end— armor, bone, blood, steel — the priceless quenched with a soul — “  He babbled about the magnificent valley below Shayol Ghul for a while.  Yet there were no words by which mortal tongues could depict such a place where sands piled to mounds in the site that was once an ancient sea. He described feelings of unprecedented awe, sparked with lucid moments of overwhelming clarity in such raw emotion the Dreadlord sincerely wanted to impart the experience to man who so desperately wanted to know it. 

The slopes of Shayol Ghul was sort of place where a man was rendered to what he was, a spick of dust in a sandstorm of the apocalypse.  A place where infinite night choked the sun, where lightning bolted from the ground upward to the swirling sky, where stables of humans were bred for their parts, plucked from grasping arms like witless cattle.  He loved and hated that looming mountain; both drawing and repulsing, like living with oil coursing veins  he wanted to open because it was slowly poisoning him, but burned ecstasy every moment until.  Glancing along the ridge of his own body strapped below, he knew the color of his own blood, and it was indeed not black as he thought it must be.

The forges of the Great Lord were known to some men of the Light, though no witness of the Light ever returned to tell his allies about it; they should bemoan their ignorance as blank mercy.  The name was known by some, however; to diademed battle lords or warders of the Tower, filtered by leaks among Darkfriends and prominent Black Ajah, but a Child's mind should be ignorant of thakan'dar.  From that trance-like cocoon of self-preservation and the edge of panic, Arikan did not miss the Inquisitor's lack of surprise when he explained the origins of Myddraal steel. Wait. No, he wasn't an Inquisitor. He shook away the thought. The torturer was just a man. Or maybe something else. 

For fear of going madder than he already was, Arikan struck the nocturnal imagery from the forefront of thought.  The burden of falling into his own mind, of his own eyes burning from their sockets simply to behold the walls of dripping stone and black lake pooled therein, was too powerful a mental stroke to endure at the same time as the physical; in the end, he was indeed only mortal, and he reached the point of biting his own tongue off again. Fresh blood poured from the slicing wound. At least the torturer hadn’t thought to pluck a leech on it yet.

But the machine of war was only part of the larger arsenal. There were weapons of the shadow lurking amid dark places in the world. Pieces hoarded by the Chosen, locked away forever. The Seals on the Great Lord’s prison were trinkets compared to these mighty tools. Arikan knew nothing but rumors and saw nothing but glimpses, and his voice shook to explain as much when the buckets were brought near again.

The torturer held a small smile, proud of finally finding the thing that thing that pushed his man over the edge. The silence stretched like the bells in his head finally gonged him deaf, and Arikan looked at the torturer in turn, then. Really looked at him. He was younger than the Inquisitor seemed. Sicker though. Far sicker.

But the final question was one he’d tried to elicit many times already: why sell his soul to the Dark One? 

Arikan was ready now. It was probably the last thing he would do. “Really want to know?" His voice was scratches. Barely audible by then. “Because I was born a darkfriend... and I hope by my rebirth that I return to darkness again... And in that life, I will find you.. And I’ll make you remember this moment... I swear my soul to the wheel... and hope of rebirth you will remember me when I track you down…”  He was confident the man would think his vow mockery. Nobody would believe such things, but whether true or not, Arikan knew. With all his dark soul he swore a vow more potent than anything to have ever passed his lips before. 

He soon folded a void around his mind.  After a certain extent of suffering, more seemed no worse than what came before.  It was all a walk through hell. 

So let the forges churn.  He was ready to die.

[Adrian Kane]

Arikan

Arikan was vaguely aware the door opened. His head rolled lazily toward the portal, but what his eyes beheld was a blur. A woman's figure filled the frame. Hair flaming red. A clean dress. Another figure stood at her shoulder.

So she came to watch the end. To make sure her captive crossed the dark waters rimming the underworld of death. But her gaze was fixed on the torturer, not him. The cowardly bitch didn’t so much as look him in the eye. Oh how she would have witnessed the demon of dreams staring back at her if she had.

They left together, and Arikan coughed up blood from where it had been dribbling streams from his tongue. He was weaker than he’d been the whole time. Her arrival heralded the end. He was ready.

The chill of Saidar pebbled his body, and then, something happened.

He was standing in the World of Dreams. Whole and himself. He looked down. Clean? he ran his hands over his chest. He wore a fine coat in a style he didn’t recognize. The colors blurred even as he looked at them. His face was smooth. His hair styled. 

Then he looked around. The surroundings glowed dreamily. Soaring buildings stretched high. Everything was beautiful. Then a voice filled his mind. It felt soft, like silk. It sounded beautiful as water flowing from a chalice. 

“Serve me and I will make you the king of dreams,” it said.

And the man that was Arikan blinked. 

Something was offered then. Something wonderful.

He took it, and the next moment, he woke up.

It pulsed a glorious, beautiful, horrible feeling. It filled every muscle with strength. It gave him a new will. It was unbelievable. And with this power, Arikan spun it outward. The straps broke all at once. Falling away to the floor. He sat on the edge of table. Could see the blood dripping his body. The wounds falling open from their forgotten scraps of skin. Yet he barely felt a thing. Nothing except this power within. The sun of his soul darkened as he sat there sucking down the meager light of the room. Every flicker of flame whether from lamp or from torch, bent and writhed towards him, though no physical wind disturbed the air.

His gaze roamed bright from one face to the other. To his satisfaction, they were quite horrified. Lythia pooled on the ground, held by the arms of her warder. The torturer stood near, but Arikan breathed deeply of this fresh air and slid to his feet.

Then his gaze fell to the ter’angreal limp in Lythia’s hands, and he knew, he felt, exactly what it had done.

It released his soul.

This power was truth. It was more real than even reality, and it curled beneath his skin, burrowing deeper and deeper until his bones wanted to flake to ash. Yet on he stared at the object that rendered this possible. His soul was released of compulsion. Yet? Yet upon the offer, the Great Lord's offer, he'd accepted the gift with barely a moment's thought. Even if he had yet to give an answer.  There was no redemption, no creation anew; only erosion. 

A single step forward was a leap of faith that the ground would support the footfalls. It was an ecstasy that dwarfed saidin from all memory, a self-inflicted crushing of the soul, and at the moment, Arikan could barely move but to not thrash the mountain with its weaves. He loved and loathed it, and he seriously considered the bargain. 

Radiating with destructive will, he finally addressed his captors.  His voice was steady and contemplative, held up by this power and yet was benevolent with sincerity. 

"Thank-you for this gift."  He looked straight to Lythia.  The eons of Ages pinning the woman with recognition. 

Then he remembered himself as a flesh and blood creature, not a figment of the Pattern, not a puppet of the Wheel, but a man.  No man is so far gone he cannot return to the Light, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. He almost smiled. Apparently it was true?

What he did know was that he would have his vengeance. 

His gaze fell fiercely upon the discarded ter'angreal, and he shoved the True Power through it. The orchestra of destruction pitched all their ears with shrill screams, and Arikan's supernatural gifts of the dark master churned, pulling those around him. Within the eye of this monster, Arikan suddenly reared it toward Lythia. Within her warder's arms, she stiffened as her soul wrinkled from within. He wanted her to know what he once had known, to feel helpless and hunted, to turn her from all loyalty forged in the Light's friendships. 

He swat aside those that rushed to her defense: the so-called heroes of the Light.  They were no more free of their chains than he had been of his.

"Enjoy your service," he uttered, disdain dripping and retribution cast.

With that, the pattern screamed torment as it was touched by the True Power and so was shredded to ribbons.  The gate snapped upon his heels after he fell through.

***

It was dusk where he arrived.  The green grass rolled an epicenter around where he landed face down, clenching the plants. A gust of wind reached up, bending the stalks around him and swirling across the filth clung to every inch of his skin. He still felt the power within, but the lingering promise ungrasped.

He looked up at the sky. Spoke to the voice that promised to make him a king.

“I already am,” he said with a smile and rejected the deal.

He crumpled when the power was wrenched away. He didn’t even care. All he knew was purification, the wind on his skin, the temperature of the sun, and the soft smell of dirt.

He rolled to his back and stared to the burning colors of the fading sky, tears rolling freely down his face. 

Never.  Never again.  Would he bend a knee to anyone.  Neither man nor deity.  He was finally free.

[Adrian Kane]

[[Continued at "Stranger"]]