Six Mad Kings, Chapter 3. by DarkBeta
He balanced on a ridge like a knife edge, between a bright chasm and a dark one. The bright one was pain, everything he felt tearing at him like brambles. The dark one was oblivion, absence drowning him like velvet.
Voices had become too complex for comprehension, too full of tones and shading. Even the words in his own head were lost in the flood of sound and scent and taste and touch and blinding light, as if he tried to solve equations while church bells rang over his head.
He was rage and murder. That searing black calm was the hurricane's eye, the center keeping him whole.
The man who spoke fear would die first. That mouth dropped sounds as heavy as stones. The one who raged could smell fear rippling from others tied like he was. He did not understand stones but the fear was his, because the men were his. They were him.
After the fear-thrower, he would kill the men who smelled of guns and pride. After them, everyone. Every stranger.
The stone-thrower went away, with the gunmen and the whipstroke light, to a kettledrum of footsteps and cymbal clash of door. The world turned calmer. The light was dim enough to see by and the whispers still enough to hear.
Rage and murder planned. He set his hands crossways of the iron and fell back on them, once. And once again, and once after that, until bones broke.
The bright chasm howled for him. He clung to the ridge between chasms, and the men tied as he was handed him stones, square mortared stones to build a rampart. He pleated his hand through the ring of metal, unlaced its chain and twisted at the chains until they broke, and the chasm couldn't pull him in. He/they were beginning to be free.
Light blared in the corridor outside their prison. The drums returned, with castanets of key and lock. His other selves feared. The one who raged was loosed to kill. He ran forward, bare feet silent.
The new guard stared as if he was blind, groping along the wall for triggers to the light. He stank of guns and fear. At the last moment he started to turn. The forearm across his throat cracked him smartly against the wall, but left the larynx uncrushed.
One hand still whole and strong. Easy enough to reach past the pinioning arm and close on that pale smooth throat. The cozy warmth of flesh. The pulse like a string of beads drawn under his hand.
The forgotten luxury of knowing what he felt was separate from what he was. He tasted the air, but the air was not himself. He heard the walls, but the concrete was not his flesh. The chasms waited, but the path between them was broad. The five men whose fear he felt were his, but they were not himself. He was Chris Larabee.
Narrow strong fingers tore at his grip. Chris had broken bones in one hand already. More of Driscoll Smith's amusements, he supposed. He needed to keep one hand whole though, if he was going to get his men out of here.
He yanked forward, dragging the slighter man off-balance, and then pushed him down. Automatically the other man put his hands out to catch himself. Chris dropped onto him, a knee across his shoulders pinning him down and driving the breath from his lungs. Easy enough then, even one-handed, to collect both wrists and hold the man pinned.
"Where are they?"
The words were a painful wheeze.
"Ezra?" Josiah called in astonishment.
Ezra Standish. The gambler. Their agent in the shadows, lying to liars and cheating the faithless. One of his team.
All unimportant. What he was, was hope.
Somehow in Ezra's presence, the universe snapped back into shape. It was an unpleasant shape but better than the state Smith's drug created, where every instant sound and light and flavor changed unpredictably.
The man's coat and shirt smelt of a stranger's sweat, along with the familiar stink of dirt and vomit and cheap alcohol. That wasn't the right smell.
Chris fixed his hand in both collars and dragged them down, not troubling with buttons. He laid his head on Ezra's naked back and heard his heart. The alien scent dissipated. This smelt right. Sounded right. Felt right.
"Mine." Chris said.
The tang of fear peaked, like a mouthful of vinegar. The heartbeat he shouldn't be able to hear accelerated.
"Don't fight him, Ezra!"
Nathan's voice. The healer. But there was no comfort in it. With reek and crash and fire, the universe was waiting to move into him.