Damnation
The first thing he noticed was the damp cool air. The sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance was the next thing that registered in Varus's senses, before he realized another important thing. He was naked, with only a bare sheet protecting his modesty. He then figured that he was in the Spartan style bedroom of someone—but who? The bed was plain and the room unfurnished, with nothing indicating the personality of the person who owned the room. Varus sat up in the bed, trying to reorient his senses, though it felt like he was drugged into a stupor. A blinding headache pierced his head, pulsing and throbbing, while beads of sweat on his body alternatively flashed hot and cold. So what Varus deduced from the situation was that he was taken into someone's bed, drugged, and the cold possibility of having done things that he surely would have regretted later resurfaced. Was he an unwilling participant in someone's lust-filled hunger?
Varus didn't know if something had transpired between himself and the person who the bed belonged to. He tried to get up and put his feet on the stony cold floor, though he heard the sound of footsteps approaching him. Varus sat up, and then noticed that the Chain Warden entered inside the chamber. His heart plummeted immediately. What was the Chain Warden planning to do to him? And how did Varus end up in his bedroom, of all people? The memories of the day before were a blur, and when Varus tried to recollect anything, the headache only pulsed even more.
Thresh roughly grabbed Varus by his brown ponytail, jerking him awake into pained consciousness. Varus, however, didn't let out a cry or a grunt of pain, but allowed himself to be manhandled by the taller specter. While Thresh dragged Varus out of the bedroom, Varus suddenly realized that he was inside a dungeon. Darkness infiltrated every corner, and Varus shivered when he sensed rats prowling amongst the dust and bones of the place. Varus couldn't quite see clearly enough, though he had a premonition that things were going to get much, much worse for him.
"Where are you taking me?" Varus said with a kind of resignation that certain prisoners had when they realized that it was over for them. The least that Varus could do was take it with dignity. However, Thresh only pulled harder on Varus's hair and dragged him into a small chamber where chains interlinked everywhere like an intricate chain of spiderwebs. While passing by, however, Varus noticed the prisoners that Thresh kept within his perfectly constructed dungeon—emaciated men and women with various scars slashing across their body, though the shadows didn't let Varus see quite clearly enough, Varus swore he saw a man with gouged out eyes or a woman with a sewed mouth and a long scar slashing across her face into a morbid perpetual grin.
Once they were in the chain webbed room, Thresh threw Varus among the chains. Varus knew that he should fight back and resist, though he had been drugged with something that made his movements slow, sluggish.
"You're in my domain now, Arrow of Retribution," Thresh said, and gestured wide with his gauntleted hands to the room that they were in. "Please enjoy your stay as much as you can."
Varus stiffened at this, before looking around dazedly. "What are you going to do to me?"
If Thresh could grin, his visage would've worn a nasty smile full of ill intent towards the archer.
"There are so many things that I could do to you. I know the right places to cut, which limbs and tendons to sever. I know several torture methods that will leave the prisoner in the utmost agony while still clinging onto full awareness of the horrors that I inflict upon them. I can make them scream. As a formality, I ask them to introduce themselves before the blood they'll be choking on will keep me from hearing it. Ah, but we're familiar with one another Varus, rather intimately, so there is no need for an introduction. I think it's best that I start my work immediately."
In a jangle of chains, Thresh then lifted his kurasigama in the glint of the paltry light that was allowed through the lantern that Thresh always carried on his person, which bore the lamentations of souls in eternal torment within. Then, almost casually, Thresh then said, "Do you know a particularly fun method of torture created by the Ionians? It's called ling-chi, or death by a thousand cuts. I can cut five hundred times on a person without them dying."
The scythe part of the krasigama was spun on its chain, and Thresh lashed out with the first cut by digging into Varus's shoulder first. A sharp pain lanced through Varus's body as the cut was made cleanly into his body. But Varus didn't cry out in pain, merely accepted this punishment with resignation. He wouldn't indulge in the game of a madman.
"You're bleeding…how wonderful," Thresh crooned to Varus as he continued to slash at Varus with his kurasigama, inflicting more cuts upon the archer that opened up fresh wounds and pain. Yet Varus still remained silent, so Thresh continued to carve and slice into Varus's body with these cuts onto his body. Thresh seemed determined to see something-perhaps to see how much pain Varus could endure before he cried out.
Then, something inside Varus stirred. The corruption within his body was sensing his body being mutilated to pieces. A golden aura surrounded Varus, eating away at the wounds on his flesh and erasing them from his body, though the agony of the corruption healing him was just as torturous as the cuts Thresh slashed into him. Thresh, however, seemed pleased with this development and was eager to cut into Varus's body even more. Varus didn't even know how many times the Chain Warden cut into him, though each slice and recovering wound was pure torture.
Varus cried out, while Thresh laughed at the archer's misfortune. His torment only fueled the Chain Warden's sadism, and as the torture went on, Varus's lustrous brunette hair turned white, and when Thresh forced the corruption to heal Varus's arms and legs by inflicting the most cuts there.
Thresh laughed as he cut into Varus, while Varus cried out and wished for the torture to end. While at the highest peak of his pain, Thresh then stopped cutting into Varus and paused, lifting Varus by his white hair and tilted it so the Archer was looking up at him.
"How does it feel, Varus?"
Varus didn't answer.
Thresh shook him roughly by the head.
"How does it feel?"
"It hurts…" Varus said, now a broken man.
"Good. But the point of this isn't to just torture you endlessly. There is something that I wish to see, more than anything."
Thresh yanked Varus's head some more, before he made a large cut across Varus's throat. Blood spewed out in a sickening spray, before the archer fell limp and lifeless at the Chain Warden's feet. While Varus was dead, Thresh then imbued some of the souls in his lantern into Varus, so that the archer would become undead like himself. Once this happened, Varus's skin turned a light blue hue, a deathly pallor, and then the corruption started to manifest itself once more. It turned a sickly black, and tendrils of corruption surrounded Varus as Varus awoke into his new state, completely white eyes staring blindly at the Chain Warden.
"So soulmate," Thresh said in a slightly mocking tone, though his voice seemed gently when he caressed a gauntleted hand through Varus's hair. "How does it feel to be undead like me?"
"I hunger…" Varus said in a toneless voice, as the corruption tendrils started to wave menacingly around him. "Must…eat."
"And I have a prisoner prepared for you," Thresh said soothingly as he untangled Varus from the chains. They made their way from the chain room and towards one of the prison cells, where a frightened young woman lay huddled in a corner. Thresh threw her out carelessly, before saying, "Eat, Varus."
Varus stared hungrily at the woman, before the corruption tendrils snaked forward and wrapped tightly around the woman. The woman screamed as the corruption started to melt and meld into her skin, eating away at her flesh and dissolving her into a sustenance that Varus could eat in his undead state. What the corruption wanted, however, was the soul of the woman, and Varus ate her up greedily once the corruption completely overtook her and liquefied her.
Thresh watched his young charge with morbid fascination. He hadn't expected things to turn out as well as they did, though now he had Varus as his vassal by his side, to inflict destruction, pain, and terror upon the other Champions, the specter began to laugh endlessly, the dungeon corridors echoing and reverberating his laughter like a curse.
Author's Note: Thresh/Varus is my odd OTP, but it's a ship that I love regardless. This is going to be a darker piece of fiction where Thresh has brought out the full corruption within Varus and unleashing him upon the other champions. This is another piece that is meant to be a longer work of fiction, though I guess it could also read as a one-shot. However, I think I would like to explore this piece more indepth, and perhaps write more about fully corrupted Varus and Thresh's shenanigans with one another. What do you think?