I opened my eyes to a burning sensation that could only be described as an entire broth of molten coals being poured onto my back. I turn my head to try to look at my back and discover that I am tied down to a bed and the entire room is pitch dark. I struggle to get the ropes lose, but only fail and gain some rope burns. Every fiber of my being is screaming to let loose my pain and despair, only to find one way to flow out. I scream on the top of my lungs to balance out the insane amount of pain that I am going through. My screams seemed to have attracted attention because I heard a door open and several people flowed in as I broke for a breath. With them, they brought in bright torches and malevolent expressions.

"What have you done?", one of the men proclaimed.

"I relieve us of one of our problems", another man behind me said.

I turned in my molten fury to the man standing next to me. He had a look of strong acceptance and radiated determination. He wore a black robe with a symbol on it. The symbol appeared to be an inverted star.

The room was that of a lower house-hold basement. The walls were made of stone, barren of any painting or casting. Left in it's stead are several bloodstains and chains cluttered on the wall. The bed seemed so out of place in such a distasteful room.

"You have betrayed us! We were planning on finding the most cruel to lead us with the Avarian Generator!"

"And how do you propose we would have kept our secret if he obtained the device?"

My severing pain seemed to have died while I paid attention to the conversation, but after he said device, I could only gasp when the pain hit me in another wave before I could ask any question. My agony was heard throughout the room.

The man beside me looked down at my face and gave me a brief, yet subtle look of compassion.

I do not even known this man, yet he shows me pity?

"Once the device is engaged, it cannot be undone", one of the other men said.

"Then it is a pity that you should have found your man sooner"

All of the men were wearing the same colored robes. I can only conclude that every man in this room has a negative influence in society.

I attempt a shallow breath and attempt a quavery plaintiff, "p-please... I am only a student of the arts..."

Every man in the room looks down at me. Every other man except the man next to me gave me a look or both horror and disgust.

"I am afraid we will have to remove him and kill you to repulse the threat that is opposing us", one of the men in the group said, clearly the leader, "It is sad that such an extremely rare and useful device should be laid into the wrong body."

"n-no! Please! I have money, a family, don't kill me!", I stammer off.

The leader looked me right in the eye, pity is plastered onto his eyes and he gave me a cruel smile, "Then you shall receive the gift of nothing"

The man behind me spoke loudly, "As fun as it is to die, I shall take my leave", and he briskly ran towards the door with a bone-knife in his left hand. "move, gentlemen, or I shall be forced to make my own door through your corpses." He flowed over to them faster then I could blink and attempted to assault them.

The group flowed towards him, all withdrew their own knives and came right at the poor man. I winced as he slashed one of the men, only to have three other men drill their knives into his gut. He slowly landed on his keys producing a loud crack! In the room and fell into the floor with all of his weight. I felt like I was going to explode from the continuous waves of pain that are going through me. The only thing I can smell in this terrifying room is blood and the stench of hay bed that I lay on.

All seven of the men in the room looked at the fallen man, only to kick the corpse as if it were a ragdoll. "And stay down, you scoundrel.", one voiced.

I attempted to keep all of my shudders to a bare minimum to keep their attention on the corpse for a while longer, but ran out of luck. Suddenly, the entire group synchronously looked at me as if I were the king's meat.

I felt the eyes of seven predators staring at me.

"I cannot believe he gave it to a mortal," one said, "If he gave it one of our kind, we could be unstoppable."

"We must make haste and dispatch of him before anybody seeks his welfare", the leader said, "If he is a scholar, then he is sure to be missed."

"Agreed", they all said unanimously.

"We should put him out of his misery, seeing as he is already in an intense state of torture," one said, "I doubt, with the look on his face, that we could have caused him much more pain anyway"

I felt faint and couldn't even talk as they approached me, circling the bed as if I were the ugly duck in the room. The pain seems to have subsided just enough to give me leverage to think.

I looked at all of the men and tried my harnesses again. No good. I tried to wiggle my wrists out of the knots, yet again, no good.

"Since you are a scholar, perhaps you can enlighten us with a choice of oblivious words?", the leader allotted.

I thought very hard. I guess 'You all are fiends' is quite cliché. Hmm.

"You seemed to have taken the point of newt towards your stature. For the end, I shall say that we can all agree that the other guy was an imbecile."

The leader smiled a little bit, the looked around the circle, counting each head, nodding to each and finally looked down to me again.

"Fair enough, he was quite the idiot. Unfortunately, the device makes you our enemy, and our enemies die."

The leader raised his knife, along with the others.

"Many pleasantries for the man who sits in the graced sky", the leader said, then slashed down, leaving my mind to blank.