Heads up, graphic descriptions of torture in this chapter.
Kellach sat on the couch next to Jourdain when the time came. Moyra was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest at Kellach's feet. Driskoll sat in the armchair next to the couch while Torin had positioned himself in the armchair across from his wife and son, back to the front door. The whole room was filled with a kind of tension, and most of it seemed to be radiating off of the blond boy who was the center of attention.
"So… where do I start?" He asked blankly, rubbing his wrists again. He seemed to be trying to distance himself from the real world in preparation for the terror he was about to relive. Driskoll just hoped that they would be able to pull him back after his parents were done.
Torin seemed the most composed of everyone seated in the room, so it wasn't too much of a surprise when he was the one who spoke first. Having conversations like this was in his job description, but Driskoll could hear the impact of the victim being his son in the tremor of his first few words. "The night of the party. You disappeared. What happened?"
Kellach fidgeted with his wrists for a moment before he spoke. "I… I don't exactly remember," He answered. "I stepped out to get some fresh air. It gets kind of fuzzy after that.
"When I came to I was… I was shackled to the ground by my wrists, my hands behind my back. I wasn't gagged… yet. I was in some sort of cell and a guy walked in. He never gave me his name. He was shorter, about as tall as I was then. Short dark hair, dark eyes, looked like he hadn't shaved in a while." Torin and Jourdain exchanged glances, and Moyra wondered if that description meant anything to them.
"He tried the nice guy routine on me, and asked about the state of the knights, and where Zendric was. I didn't tell him anything. He told me that if I didn't tell him what he wanted to know, he'd get the information out of me somehow. I told him he wouldn't." Kellach seemed to shrink in on himself. "He never did, but things got really unpleasant after that…"
Kellach grimaced as the iron shackles bit into his wrists. He knew they were solid and saw no use in trying to fight his way out of them. Wearing nothing but pants, Kellach didn't even have a chance of magicking his way out of this situation. He was stuck here for the time being.
He pushed himself to his knees, the most upright he could get given the short chain on the shackles around his wrists. His shoulders were already protesting the position that they were being forced into. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious or what time it was. But something told him he was about to not care.
Kellach shivered, waiting for his original guest to make good on his threat, and his promise came all too soon. A huge man, probably half orc by the look on his ugly face, entered the room and Kellach felt his stomach plummet. But he tried to act brave. "You here to make me talk?"
"Oh no sweet boy," the small man said, "He's here as backup. You see, you're quite a high value prisoner to us. He's here to make sure you don't escape and to help us move you if need be."
"So who's here to make me talk?" Kellach tried to put as much bravado in his voice as possible.
The man smiled a sick smile, and Kellach really felt a punch of fear in his stomach. "I am the one who has that particular pleasure, but first…" He drew several pieces of fabric out of his pocket. "I want to listen to you beg me to stop through a gag…"
It was here that Kellach paused. The room was silent, and the tension felt palpable. "He uh… he made good on his promise," Kellach said quietly. And then Driskoll saw Kellach go to remove his shirt.
Jourdain's hand went to her mouth. Torin's jaw and fists clenched. Horror, sympathy and anger were present in both their eyes as Kellach revealed his menagerie of scars. "Lashes, strategic cutting, hot irons, broken and crushed bones, and alcohol and salt to remind me they were there." He abbreviated the weeks of torture in a single sentence. Driskoll knew his brother had retreated into himself in order to get through this retelling, but it was terrifying to hear him state all of this information so blankly and emotionlessly.
"He was right again," Kellach continued, "I screamed. I begged him to stop, to please let me go." Hands twisting on his wrists were the only sign of the agitation and pain that lurked beneath his blank exterior. "But through it all, I never told him what he really wanted. That's when he… that's when she almost broke me…"
Everything hurt. The overwhelming cacophony of pain made it hard for Kellach to focus on any one pain in particular. By that same token, it made it hard for Kellach to focus on anything. He was on the edge he knew so well, the edge of wanting to, needing to pass out, but not being able to. A new voice was the first thing that finally jarred him into a state of semi consciousness.
"This is him?" A female voice asked.
"Yes," The voice of the man Kellach knew so well seemed for the first time intimidated by the person he was talking to, and that would have worried Kellach more had his mental state not been teetering on unconsciousness.
"He's just a boy," The voice was dismissive.
"He is stronger than he looks," The man said desperately, "He has been able to withstand everything I have thrown at him."
"He had better for you to have bothered me," The female snapped, and then Kellach's chin was grabbed and his head was lifted for better inspection.
Through the pain, Kellach forced his eyes open to take in his new assaulter. A jagged scar ran from the right of her forehead to the left of her jaw, having taken out her left eye. An ice blue eye met his, and Kellach noticed pointed ears like Zendric's had been. A half elf? They weren't very common at all.
"Hello Kellach," The woman greeted him. "How are you doing?"
Kellach mustered up his strength. "I've been better," He managed, and was proud to see the borderline impressed look in her eyes.
"My associate was correct," She mused, "You do not seem to be a boy easily broken."
Kellach nodded, trying to brace himself for what was to come. He couldn't imagine what would be worse than what he had already endured.
His answer came when the half elf began to pull what Kellach recognized as spell components out of her robe. His heart sank deep into his chest. There was no way this could be good.
The first feeling that something was wrong came from a tingling sensation at the center of his skull. The feeling increased to a steady buzzing, but it wasn't painful yet, and Kellach didn't know what this was supposed to be. Until the woman came forward and placed her hands on his temples.
Kellach didn't know how to describe the feeling the assaulted him next except that it was wrong. He could feel someone else in his head. Someone else was in his head. "No!" He yelled, yanking his wrists against the cuffs that bound them.
"Ever had someone inside of your head?" The woman asked him, but the words didn't come from her mouth. They rang inside Kellach's head at a volume that made him yell in pain. "I'm going to guess that you haven't by your reaction."
"Get out of my head!" Kellach yelled through clenched teeth. It felt so wrong to have her in there. So violating. Kellach could feel as she began to poke at different parts of his mind, searching for information.
He panicked. Zendric had never taught him what to do against mental assaults. Jourdain had barely mentioned it was possible, let alone what to do to protect information in the case of one. He threw his whole conscience into thinking about anything else, anything but what he knew she was looking for. He drew up a memory of Jourdain putting him to bed as a child after a nightmare, singing softly to him as she stroked his hair back from his forehead.
"Cute, but not what I'm looking for," The woman quipped, and what felt like multiple serrated blades ripped through the memory. The pain was intense, but not as devastating as the memory slowly fading away, until Kellach could not recall what he had been thinking about.
"What… what did you just do?" Kellach cried, his mental self trying to pick itself up from the little ball it had crawled into to escape the onslaught.
"Keep on throwing those cute little memories at me," The woman crowed, "But be careful, because I can destroy those memories too!" Kellach tried to throw his consciousness against the overpowering one in his head, but searing pain just ripped through his skull as he tried.
They went through this cycle a few times. Kellach would throw up a memory as a shield, only to have it ripped through and destroyed by the half-elf spell caster. He tried to keep the memories ones that he would not regret losing, but as the pressure to pick faster grew, Kellach began to stumble in his defense.
"Come on Kellach, you seem like such a smart boy. Please don't make me turn you into little shell of yourself." Her voice seemed almost comforting after the pain, but Kellach mustered up his strength again.
"You won't find my friends," He snapped weakly, and tried one last tactic: using himself as the shield. He gathered all of his memories behind his consciousness, and stood up to the evil bearing down on his mind.
"Cute," She commented, and ripped into him with all she had.
The pain was excruciating, so much worse than anything physical he had endured simply due to the nature of it. There was no respite or fading as his body accommodated to the pain, only unending agony. He should have passed out from this, why wasn't he passing out? He would give anything just to get away from the tortured ribbons of flayed nerves she was reducing his mind to…
And then suddenly, he was. There was no pain, no ever present agony, but there wasn't… anything. He hadn't passed out, he knew that. He was no stranger to passing out from pain at this point, so he knew this wasn't that. His whole consciousness felt tight, curled so tightly in on itself that there seemed to be nothing else. He wasn't receiving anything from the outside world either. No sight, no sound, no pain at all. Just Kellach, alone with his thoughts in the darkness of his mind.
It should have felt more wrong, he decided after some time. It should have felt more disturbing that he could not see, more disturbing that he could hear nothing, and especially disturbing that the ever present pain that had been with him for so long was now just a memory. But in his present state, he could not bring himself to care.
Kellach didn't know how long he floated, just a presence in a sea of black. It could have been seconds, and it could have been days. He did know that eventually he started to feel something tickle on the edge of the darkness.
Having not felt anything in quite a while, Kellach's interest was immediately piqued by the sensation. What was that? He focused on it, and the tickle grew to a mild irritancy, and then a burning, and then-
Pain.
Agony slammed into his consciousness again like being hit by a horse. He was so confused, what had happened? Just a second ago everything had been peaceful. He tried to retreat again, back into the abyss he had happily been floating in, but his mind wouldn't let him return. He was floating up to the waking world, whether he liked it or not.
Along with the pain, his other senses slowly trickled back. Flicking flames crackled in his ears, and light began to poke at his closed lids, seeming to want to be let in. He cracked his eyes open, realizing he was on the ground.
Rough gravel dug into the open wounds on his chest, and the position sent his broken ribs and forearm into splintering agony. Kellach screamed from deep in his chest as all the pain assaulted him at once now that he was back in the real world. His body tried to convulse in on itself, aggravating his other injuries until his whole mind was just a maelstrom of pain.
Eventually, his awareness returned as the lack of new agony allowed him to ever so slightly adjust to the sensations wracking his body. With that return came the knowledge that he was, for the first time since his capture, not restrained. There were iron manacles on his wrists and ankles, but they were for the first time not attached to anything.
This was probably the only chance he was going to get.
He forced his injured body into a semi upright position, having to pause a moment at the resurgence of pain before he looked around for any possible means of escape.
It was then he saw a window. It was covered in glass, but was definitely large enough for him to fit through.
When he finally reached the window and ignored the pain in his legs to get himself up enough to see through it, he could see why they had not bothered to reinforce it. He was high up in a tower, high enough that no sane person would try to jump and expect to live.
But Kellach wasn't sure he could count himself as sane anymore. "If I jump and die, then they don't find out about my friends," He murmured to himself, curled up into a ball on the ground. "But if I jump and live then…" Escape. Freedom.
Either way, he decided firmly that he would rather die than endure that mental violation again. And if he were completely honest with himself, he would almost rather die than have to live with the memories of what he had endured here…
"… So I used the manacle to break the glass and I forced myself through," Kellach summarized, "I guess I must have gone into that dark mental space again after I fell, but deeper somehow, because I remember being there for a bit. When I woke up for good I didn't know how long I had been out…"
His hands twitched in Moyra's. She had been forced to grab them not too far through the story as he had started to rub his wrists raw.
"The cleric gave me the rundown on my injuries when I finally came to and was coherent enough to understand him," Kellach continued, no emotion in his voice. Moyra braced herself, and could sense the people around her doing the same. "Both legs were broken at the shin until the bone poked out, kneecaps were cracked, pelvis had multiple fractures, internal bleeding, ribs were broken on both sides, both forearms and upper arms had been broken in half to prevent spell casting, fingers and toes shattered and I was missing all my nails because they'd pulled them out. I had burns and lacerations across my chest and back and face, and anywhere with an open wound had had salt rubbed into it and alcohol poured over it and…" Kellach cut off.
Moyra struggled not to crush his poor hands in a death grip as she wondered if he would now disclose his blindness to his parents.
"And…" Kellach trailed off, seeming unable to continue.
Moyra thought it might have been for the better. She wasn't sure how much more the people assembled could take. The room was silent. Jourdain had covered her face while she listened, but not before tears had streaked down her face. Torin looked like he needed to punch something- anything. His whole body was taught with tension and his knuckles were white. Driskoll looked lost, caught between mimicking his father's reaction to want to punch something and also wanting to curl into a ball and cry.
Moyra knew the only reason she was able to stay still was her grip on Kellach's hands, his poor hands that she now knew had been through so much, which was grounding her and reminding her that he was here now. Broken as he had been he was here now, safe.
"Mentally, I was a complete wreck," Kellach finally continued. "I wasn't functional for months after I was free, and even now…" Moyra remembered the nightmare from last night. What had he been reliving just then?
"Eventually I made it home," Kellach said quickly, "And now I'm here." He shut his mouth then, sightless eyes directed vaguely at Moyra's hands holding his own, the hands twitching as though they longed to rub his wrists.
There was silence, as the assembled people seemed to realize that Kellach was not going to talk any more. Moyra tried to meet Kellach's eyes to read what he was thinking, but his eyes were as blank as his tone. Moyra wasn't even sure he was mentally all there right now.
The screech of heavy furniture jarred everyone but Kellach. They all turned to see that Torin had stood up. "We will… reconvene in the morning." He said shortly, and walked quickly off to his room. Jourdain looked torn between wanting to stay and help her son and going after her husband to give them both time to grieve for Kellach's pain.
"We've got him Jourdain," Moyra said quietly, squeezing Kellach's hands despite the lack of response from the boy. "Go talk to Torin. He doesn't do emotions well."
Jourdain nodded, seeming to almost flee the room after her husband.
Moyra looked over to Driskoll, who had curled in on himself in the armchair.
"Driskoll, you…"
"I… I need a moment," Driskoll had hot, angry tears running down his face.
Moyra closed her eyes, trying to internalize everything that had happened to their friend. It was worse, so much worse hearing it all put out there. Knowing exactly what laid behind the scars, nightmares, and haunted look that she could remember seeing on her own face not too long ago. He had really been through Hell.
"Moyra?" Kellach's voice startled them both. His voice was rough, and he gripped her hands tightly. "I need…" He seemed to struggle with words.
"Water?" Moyra tried, "A blanket?"
Kellach shook his head. "I need… I need to know…" He paused, seeming to try to look at where he thought her eyes were, "I need to know you guys are real."
"What do you mean…?" Moyra's question trailed off as he freed a hand from hers and falteringly reached out towards her face. Moyra was caught off guard for a moment, but haltingly learned forward to allow Kellach's hand to contact her forehead. He froze for a moment, not seeming to know what to do with the contact now that he had it. "Driskoll!" Moyra hissed, beckoning the boy over.
Kellach's other hand reached out once he heard Driskoll settle at his feet as well. Driskoll's face was perplexed as he guided Kellach's hand to it. Kellach paused once he had contact with both of them, before his fingers started sliding down their faces.
"You're crying," He said quietly as he encountered the wetness on both their cheeks. Moyra and Driskoll only nodded to his comment.
"You're real," He whispered, "You're real and I'm really here."
"You're home and safe," Driskoll managed through his tears, "You're not with those horrible people anymore."
Kellach's face was still turned downwards. "I'm never sure," He murmured, "With the blindness, I can't just see it. It sounds right, and smells right, but I still can't see it."
"Then feel that we're here and we're real," Moyra said, touching the hand on her cheek. "We're real Kellach. You're safe." She leaned forward, shifting her weight so that she could slither onto the couch between Kellach and the arm of the sofa and wrap her arms around him. "You're safe."
Driskoll moved up next to Kellach and slung an arm over his shoulder. "We're here for you Kell," He promised. "No one's gonna get to you again."
They cuddled in silence for a moment, before a choked noise came from Kellach. Moyra and Driskoll both looked up in alarm only to see tears beginning to stream down Kellach's face. He hung his head forward as the sobs started to come, and Moyra pulled his head against her chest.
"We've got you Kellach. Promise."
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