Gehenna. Year 203 since the creation of Arkariya. Three years since the failed revolution.
For Gale Kalthome it was just another day in hell.
There had been a split second of blissful amnesia in the moment just as he had woken where he hadn't remembered who he was or where he was or what it was like to be here.
But then all those those things had flooded in on him. He was Gale Kalthome, he was in Gehenna prison, and being here was utter, total hell.
What had even woken him up and brought him into this hellish day, anyway?
His slop-bowl hadn't been pushed through yet, he saw, and he couldn't hear any screaming or crying from any of the other prisoners yet. Maybe there had been a noise somewhere, but he couldn't recall it now.
Oh well. Better start my meditation before the Bullies arrive…
To begin with, he thought back to yesterday's number, added one, then whispered "One thousand and ninety-four" to himself.
Why do I even bother counting the days anymore? he thought. Especially when today is the anniversary…
But it was an empty question, and he had known the answer even as his mind had formed it: He counted the days to keep himself from losing his mind.
Because that was a real possibility, festering down here in this wardens-forsaken dungeon beneath Arkirya, bound by these Wardens-damned chains that nullified his magic, with only periodic torture to look forward to and nothing to do, nobody to talk to, no joy to be found anywhere, utterly and completely and entirely alone.
He had felt like he had been on the verge of slipping into madness more than once over the past one thousand and ninety-four days, what with his vivid nightmares of Allegro handing him over to the Archmages or Ariadne being executed or his torture memories, and the waking hallucinations he had experienced along similar and worse lines.
Counting was his way of exerting order and control over his experience in some small way, even if it was only a very small way. Counting helped. He had also counted every single brick in the dark grey stone walls of his cell (three thousand and eighty one) many times. Time to start again—
A key rattled in the lock of his cell's door.
Gale's chest constricted.
Now? Had he overslept and not realized it? Why hadn't he heard footsteps in the corridor? He wasn't ready; hadn't done his counting meditation yet!
The door swung open and, instead of the Bullies that Gale was expecting, in walked a spindly man wearing a shabby suit, full-moon glasses and a battered top hat and carrying a cane, quickly followed by two large men in red prison guard uniforms with shaved heads and carrying chainsaws.
They were no less disconcerting.
Gale scrabbled backwards against the wall of his cell, tugging his chains taut so that his wrists flared with pain as the manacles bit into them. But he wouldn't show them his fear, whoever these new torturers were; he never showed them his fear, that kept him sane too, gave him something to focus on.
"Who in hell are you?" he demanded. Maybe they had come to kill him, he thought looking at the uncountable chainsaw teeth.
"Yes, we are in hell, aren't we?" said the man with the top-hat, in an unexpectedly educated accent. "The more pressing question for us, really, is who in hell are you? We've already mistakenly broken into two incorrect cells this morning, and I haven't even had my breakfast yet."
He strode up to Gale, not showing any fear himself, and peered into his face, inspecting it. The man had dark eyes, Gale could see even in the dimness of his cell, though just now his glasses seemed to glimmer for a moment.
"By all the Wardens…" the man said, more quietly. "Silver hair, furious gaze, phenomenal magic level (though of course you're silenced at the moment)… It's really you, isn't it? I mean, you're really him, aren't you? The Black Wind, in the flesh!"
Gale scowled. What in hell was going on? "What are you talking about? What's the 'Black Wind'? Where are the Bullies? Are you my torturers today?"
The man pinched his nose. "Ah. Of course. Nobody's ever called you that name to your face before, or told you that you were given it. My apologies. Never mind—I'll explain as we go. Boys!"
He snapped his fingers, and the other two larger men stepped forwards with their chainsaws, which began to roar as their motors were started.
Gale put his hands up and called out on reflex, trying to cast Fira, and fresh pain seared into his arms through the chains. There was a loud whistling noise and sparks fizzed around his arms.
But he felt no new pain.
When he opened his eyes he realized that the men had been trying to cut his chains. Even now, after one thousand and ninety-four days he had reflexively tried to cast a spell to defend himself.
The chain links glowed red hot and hissed with steam where the chainsaws had met them, but they remained un-cut.
"Didn't work, boss," said one of the men.
"You're rescuing me?!" said Gale.
"Trying to," said the man in the top-hat. "But it's not going very well, is it?" Shouting from somewhere else far off in the prison. Rumbling and footsteps above. "That will have alerted the Bullies to our presence. We must move even more quickly. Plan B, boys."
"Sure thing boss," said the thugs, and they moved on the metal rings fixed into the floor by Gale that the chains were linked to. These were made of steel, not witch-iron, and they gave way to the saws in a few growling seconds, and Gale's chains came loose.
He was free.
Thrill surged through him, then faltered.
Well, free from the floor, at least. But still silenced.
"Good," said top-hat breathlessly, "at last that worked. Come on!" He held open the cell door for the two heavies to run out, then beckoned for Gale to follow.
Gale had no idea who these people were, who this strangely dressed man was to defy the Bullies with such apparent brazenness, but he wasn't about to refuse his chance to escape Gehenna after all these years. He could ask questions later.
He started forwards, then tripped and stumbled, crashing onto his front.
"Your muscles are weak," said top-hat, kneeling down to help him up. "You haven't used them properly in a long time. Here; drink this." He held a small stoppered glass bottle out to Gale.
Gale narrowed his eyes at the man. Following him out of his cell was one thing—drinking a mysterious clear liquid was another.
More shouts, closer now.
"Come on, do you want to die?!" yelled top-hat; the first crack in his composure. "It's an elixir! It'll get you back to the erak of what strength you have! Just drink it!"
Gale reasoned that if the man was going to kill him he would have done it already. He snatched up the bottle, un-stoppered it and knocked it back—a quick shot of honey and citrus. The constant ache he had grown so accustomed to he hadn't noticed it was there left him, and his tendons thrummed. "Ahhh."
"Now come on," said top-hat, dark eyes flashing behind the round glasses.
Gale ran after him into the corridor beyond his cell, only the second time he had ever been into it, pulse pounding hard between his ears, and they quickly overtook the two heavies who had been waiting for them. They dashed along and when they got to the first corner two prison-guards in red came round it brandishing taser-truncheons.
Gale began to pull up, but top-hat stuck out two fingers and cried "Death!" and at once the two guards folded up and collapsed to the floor, and they hopped over their corpses and ran on.
"You know dark magic?" Gale asked as they ran. He was impressed. "Who are you?"
"Jailbreak now, explanations later," said top-hat.
"Fair enough."
They ran down the darkened corridors, past rows of locked cell doors, turning this way and that at junctions at top-hat's leading, Gale trying and failing to remember the route in case this went wrong and he ever got another chance at it.
"Wait!" he said suddenly, and stopped so that the two heavies crashed into the back of him, thankfully with their chainsaws lowered.
Top-hat stopped too. "What is it?! We've got to get out of here fast. The guards we can deal with, but if we're found by more than one B—"
"My friends," said Gale, unmoved. "You said you accidentally tried two other cells before mine. Whose?"
"Two nobodies," snapped top-hat. "Trust me, no one you know. Some old man who's been in here for decades and a low-level woman who probably got thrown down here for trying to sneak up an echelon illegally. Gale, your friends aren't in here. Not Allegro. Not Blys. Not Ariadne. None of them."
Surprise made Gale stutter. "H-how do you know?"
There was roaring, from back the way they had just come. Gale's blood ran cold.
Top-hat grabbed one of his arms and wrenched him forward and into another run. "Gale," he said, "when the revolution failed, only two of you were sent to Gehenna: You and Allegro Prestoro. And he died."
The revelation hit Gale like a brick. Questions chased it. So it wasn't Allegro who had betrayed him? "What about Ariadne?" he asked out loud between pants as they ran. "Blys?"
"There is no record of Ariadne Harker or Blys Arven ever being held in here," said top-hat. "Trust me, I had to search quite extensively through the prison records in order to locate your cell. If they ever were in here, they either escaped, or they died too. Oh fuck."
They had rounded a corner, and there, running towards them down the new corridor, were two huge, pale humanoid shapes with grotesquely oversized mouths locked in sadistic smiles and teeth too big for their heads, with an array of surgical instruments where they should have had fingers.
Sickness swam in Gale's stomach. Bullies.
"Back!" top-hat yelled, and dragged Gale round. "Back the other way!"
Gale surrendered once more to the trust that this man knew where he was going and sprinted alongside him, now with the two men in chainsaws in front of them.
"Goddamnit!" cried top-hat, fear taking his voice high. "We took too long! My death spell won't work on them—if we run into them, you're going to need to deal with them, Tooth and Nail!"
The heavies in front both grunted—but they didn't sound confident.
Left at the junction, then another left, and left again, running so fast Gale's lungs stang. Top-hat was trying to circle back round past the Bullies they had just seen.
The next corridor was clear. It had worked. Gale couldn't be caught by them again—he wouldn't. He wouldn't go back to the torture, the interrogation, the incisions at their 'hands'...
He could see a door at the end of this corridor, beyond Tooth and Nail, who smashed through it. Gale and top-hat followed—
And found themselves in a circular atrium confronted by four more Bullies.
Gale and his attempted rescuers froze in place a few paces into the room.
"Four!?" whined top-hat.
And two more behind, thought Gale.
The Bullies looked them up and down with their horribly human eyes, the faint electric strip light catching on the jagged, broken teeth which spilled out of their massive, oversized mouths.
"Kalthome?" one of them growled in the guttural scrape that passed for its voice. "What are you doing out of your box? And who are these with you?"
They had heard the commotion but they didn't know what was happening yet. Some of the instruments of torture the Bully possessed instead of proper fingers began to whirr and snip. This one's nearest hand had an ice-pick, a corkscrew, a pair of fold-out shears, a mage-knife and a miniature sickle.
Were they human once, or were they made like this? Gale found himself wondering, not for the first time, in the cold clarity of his fear -frozen mind. Four of them. One each. But I am still silenced, and I don't know if top-hat has any other spells that will work on them, let alone whether Tooth and Nail will even be able to scratch them. I'm going to die or, worse, be recaptured. Not that I ever really escaped...
A crashing noise from behind them, and a newly arrived Bully roared "Stop them! They're trying to break out with Kalthome!"
That would be the two that had been chasing them.
Six, Gale thought. One-and-a-half each, then. Not great odds, and we were damned already.
The Bullies in front of them began to advance, finger-instruments gleaming wickedly.
"Come now, Kalthome," said the one in the front with a tone of self-indulgent sadism. "The more easily you come, the less hurt you get, you know that. You don't want to leave now. We were just starting to turn a corner in our relationship."
A far door burst open, and two more Bullies ran in, quickly sizing up the situation.
Two each. When one would have been challenge enough.
Gale considered surrendering, mindful of the additional pain that would be inflicted on him for this attempted escape. But only briefly.
I won't give them that luxury. I'll fight to the death. Even if it's my death. If Ariadne's dead as well, then what's the point anyway?
"Wait!" cried top-hat before the Bullies reached them. "Do you not know who I am? I am Professor Glissando Pias, Elite Enforcer in the Scriobiscath! The Master has need of Kalthome, so I arranged for him to be extracted."
"What do we care, Darkwielder?" sneered the lead Bully. They can see what form of magic he's junctioned to without even casting Scan, Gale realized. That explained a lot. "We don't answer to the Scriobiscath, do we? We answer to the Archmages."
Gale's eyes widened. That was new information too.
"Oh well," top-hat shrugged. "It was worth a try. Get 'em, boys!"
Grunts, then the mad buzz of chainsaws starting up. Tooth and Nail ran full tilt at the Bullies in front of them, shouting battle cries and swinging saws wildly, but the Bullies sprang back out of the way, then fell on them in the gap left after their swings, scalpels and ice-picks and scissors bared.
Screaming and shrieking, and flesh flew, fresh blood bespattering the atrium floor, the walls, the already heavily bloodstained dungarees of the Bullies, some got on Gale.
Visions of mutiliated bodies Gale had never wanted to see joined the bank of horrors burned into his memory by this place of which he would never be able to rid himself.
Tooth and Nail hadn't lasted two seconds.
"Fuck!" Glissando yelled again, then: "Gravija!"
A big black ball of dark energy appeared in the air in front of them, crackling with black lightnings, and Gale suddenly felt ten times heavier, the weight pulling down at him and threatening to drain what strength Glissando's elixir had recovered until he stepped backwards out of range of the spell. The Bullies sagged a little where they stood too, but that was all.
"Idiot!" Gale cried. "The worst that will do is halve their energy! Don't you have anything stronger!?"
"No!" cried Glissando, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Death! Death! Gravity! Demi!" Flashes of light, and another brief ball of dark, and then that and the first one winked out too. The Bullies came on, perhaps more slowly than before, but advancing all the same, still smiling those too-many-toothed smiles, reaching out their not-fingers so eagerly, Glissando's manically cast spells having no further visible effect on them.
Terror pushed down on Gale's chest. The memories. The tortures. His body's scars itched. He could taste the coming pain already.
Glissando's top hat flew at one of the Bullies, spinning on its axis with pointed razor-blades protruding from its brim, but the Bully only batted it to one side.
The finger instruments were near now. Gale couldn't move his legs. What would be the point, anyway? They were completely surrounded.
"You have some skill," the Bully nearest Glissando said as he closed on him. "Can you do Chaos magic too? Should we keep you here for experimentation too?"
Gale saw a puddle leaking out from the bottom of Glissando's trouser leg. "Whatever you want," Glissando whimpered in a small voice. "Just please don't kill me."
"No!" Gale said. "Let them! It will be better if they kill you, trust me!" Chains! his mind shouted at him. I've got chains!
As the nearest Bully's knife-finger reached out for Gale's face he screamed defiance and whipped his wrists up, flicking his chains into the Bully, who hissed and staggered back as the witch-iron stung its magical body. Gale's chains kept moving through the air, still attached to his wrists, and struck him in the face.
"Agh!"
He lost his balance for a moment, and the next thing he knew the Bullies were rushing him, pinning his arms and legs against the cold floor, cutting them in the process, holding him down. New pain bit into his cheek, from a scalpel, and Gale screamed.
"We may not be in your chamber," growled the Bully scoring his face, "but we can still play with you here. It'll be like fucking in a different room from the bedroom."
Pain crawled into Gale's cheek and began to overtake his consciousness. He could barely hear himself screaming any more. Inside his mind he scrambled to find his place of calm, his place of withdrawal. But I didn't do my counting meditation today! Nononononono. What should I count? What do I do?
And then it out came to him, lancing into his mind like the knife-finger that was scarring his face.
He had never been able to think so clearly under the knife, especially without having meditated before. He was stronger than normal—from the elixir. And the Bullies were weaker than normal—from the Gravija spell.
And the Bullies didn't know this. Maybe some of his submission was just out of habit.
Gale opened his eyes and took a deep breath, just long enough to register the look of puzzlement that twisted the forehead of the Bully that was cutting him, and then with a scream he tore his arms and legs free from the Bullies' grips.
Fresh cuts bled from his limbs and the scalpel drew a deep gash down his cheek, but he didn't care, he was up, he was whirling around with his chains like a mad demon, he was driving the Bullies back with them, he was grabbing the wrists of the one who had been torturing him, holding one hand down, holding the other one near to his very own throat.
"Stop!" Gale shouted at the Bullies before they could re-gather themselves. "Stop right there or I'll slit my own throat!"
They stopped. Even the other ones that had been torturing Glissando, who was now curled up in a foetal position on the floor, still whimpering, stopped what they were doing and looked up.
"You wouldn't," snarled the one he had in his grip. Gale had the blade of one of its knife-fingers pressed right up against his own throat. The edge of its blade was cold against his Adam's apple. Any sudden careless or sudden movement by either of them could end his life, but the Bully kept his finger very still. It was the mage-knife on the hand of the Bully he had seen earlier, Gale realised, the one they used to try to cut pieces out of his aura when he manifested chaos. An idea came to him.
"You don't think I would?" Gale said, and saying it made the knife nick his throat just slightly. "You don't think I'd end it now, rather than endure another day of torture from you? You need me alive. Allegro was the only other one who could ever tap into Chaos, and he"—Gale's eyes flicked over to Glissando, cowering on the floor under threat of his own renewed torture—"told me that Allegro died. The Archmages want you to keep me alive, don't they? To learn more about Chaos magic. You won't let them down, risk their wrath. You won't let me die. But me? What have I got to lose? I'm ready to die. That, or you can let me walk out of here in one piece."
The Bullies stood still. He had them. He knew it.
"If we let you escape," said one of the Bullies, "the Archmages will kill us anyway. It's worth the risk. GET HIM!"
They charged, and Gale took his moment.
He held up the Bully's other wrist and smashed its hand into his manacle, counting on the mage-knife that could cut through magical substances, perhaps even witch-iron.
It connected, and the manacle flared white-hot and showered sparks, and Gale drove it in hard and screamed as it bit into his wrist.
His wrist! He picked up the loosed chain and whipped it out at the charging Bullies, who roared and recoiled as the witch-iron caught their bodies.
Gale's wrist was slick with blood, but no time, no time. He grabbed the hand of the Bully with the mage-knife-finger again and smashed it into his other wrist, and the other chain came loose.
He was free.
Truly free this time. Free, unhinhibted, unsilenced, to do what he would with eight Gehenna Bullies.
Eight Gehenna Bullies who had recovered themselves from having his witch-iron chains whipped at them and were now staring at him, eyes wide above their grotesque mouths, which for once were no longer smiling, but open in fear. Sweet, delicious, deserved fear.
Gale selected his spell.
"Hasteaga," he cast.
The magic welled up within him like a long sealed-up spring becoming unblocked.
Time sped up for him—and everything else slowed down.
Thrill took him. Pure, hot, unbounded thrill now, no longer dammed up by silencing. The magic came to him easily, both long-missed and familiar. Spellcasting was like making love for the first time again after a very long time away.
First he took the hand of the Bully that he had been holding and drew its fingers across its own throat.
To Gale's hastened perception he moved the hand at normal speed, but in reality it would be hyper-fast.
Blood fountained immediately from the Bully's throat, beginning to spray out in slow motion. Turned out the Bullies bled black. To go with their black hearts. Gale had often wondered what colour their blood would be when he had fantasised about this moment.
But now it wasn't a fantasy. Now his revenge was really happening.
The Bully began to fall backwards super slowly to the ground as its throat fountain continued to begin to gush into the air.
Gale looked for who would like to be next, still in his haste-bubble. It seemed not quite all of the Bullies had rushed him, in actuality—two were still stood over his would-be rescuer, Glissando, brandishing their finger-instruments above him though their frozen heads were turned towards Gale.
Gale ran to them, his body straining, his thighs aching, as in reality he ran at super-speed. The years of imprisonment and torture had weakened him many times over and reduced his mana pool significantly, though he still retained his level in spellcasting. He would find enough energy for this, though.
The fear-dilated pupils in the eyes of the Bullies had begun to track him as he moved across the room, and their heads begun ever-so-slowly to turn to follow him, but they had not been able to keep pace with him when he was hastened, and he had outrun their gazes easily. To their un-hastened eyes he would have appeared to them only as a dark silver blur. Or a 'Black Wind', I suppose, he thought to himself.
Conveniently Glissando's cane doubled as a long, straight sword, which he had managed to draw from its secret sheath but then dropped on the floor beside him. Of course it doubled as a sword.
Gale picked it up, tested the blade with a couple of quick practice thrusts, then rammed it through the black heart of the nearest Bully with great satisfaction. The blade came out black, and this Bully began to fall slowly too.
Gale swung two-handed at the neck of the other Bully that had been standing over Glissando and his hypersonic strike severed it. The Bully's head began slowly to fly off from its body.
Gale ran to the other Bullies one by one, enacting his long-nurtured revenge fantasies, killing them all in a different way: a stab through the back for this one; this one he opened from shoulder to groin; he cut this one in half at the waist; this one he took off the hands and feet of with a flurry of precise slashes; and this one, this one with the even larger than extraordinary mouth, this one had caused him the most pain of all; this one was the Boss Bully who had taken the most pleasure in spending the most time torturing him, this one he stabbed through the face.
He withdrew his blade one last time, now drenched in ichor, and exhaled, ending the spell.
Eight Bully bodies, two dismembered hands and a severed head hit the floor with ten resounding wet thwaps, in normal time, and Gale hoisted the cane-blade over his shoulder, pleased with a job well done.
After a moment Glissando looked up, then got shakily to his feet, staring at the bodies, staring at the witch-iron chain fragments, at his sword now in Gale's hand, at Gale, who stood panting softly.
"You're…" he said. "You're even more terrible than the stories make out."
Gale tilted his head to one side. His every muscle pulsed with fatigue. "That took a lot out of me," he said. "You best pray to Diablos or whatever Warden you're currently junctioned to that we don't run into any more of them. Now show me the way out of here, 'rescuer'."
