Story:Kings of Strife/Int 5.1

Intermission Five+1
Consciousness came back, and the pain with it. The tears came shortly afterwards.

“Why?” croaked Silverius. He shivered and chains moved with him. “Why are you doing this?”

His voice stirred the captor to action. Silverius looked up slightly to see and squinted instinctively. The room went for days either painfully lit or completely dark, and this was one of the dark days. Silverius was only barely aware of time by now, his perception slipping more and more each time he woke from agony-induced slumber. Had he been here for hours? It felt like days. It felt like years.

The administrator walked around Silverius, his footsteps gradually getting closer and farther away, and Silverius shivered with another spasm of pain. He must have been worked on outside of consciousness again. He focused on this pain, and wiggled all of his fingers and toes to confirm what was missing this time.

His left hand would not respond.

Silverius attempted to lift himself up with a scream, only to shiver and heave with vomit at the effort. Not only was his left hand severed, a spear was impaled right through his stomach, and moving it had brought up a river of blood into his esophagus. Silverius allowed himself to fall back to his normal position and vomit equal parts food ration and bright red blood. Pain. Pain.

“How long has it been?” Silverius croaked. How long had his hand been cut off from his arm, he meant. How long had he been chained up? How long had it been dark, and how long until the light returned? How long since he forgot her? How long until dinner? How long until the pain stopped? How long until the pain stopped?

The smell was almost as bad as the pain. He was always vomiting and sneezing and spitting out teeth. He expelled enough fluids for there to be a glorified moat around him, but everytime the chamber was flooded with light, the floor and walls were always expressly clean. The smell never left his nose, though, the smell of vomit and fear and rotten flesh stuck in his nostrils. He had long ago stopped hoping the smell would ever go away.

It was here to stay, just like the pain, and himself. When Silverius claimed that it was not yet time for him to die, he did not realize he was cursing himself.

“You’re very lucky, you know.” The administrator sung. He loved to say that, every day, in the midst of his experiments. Speaking in a singsong voice pleased him almost as much as torturing Silverius did. How else could someone persist in a task so grotesque so often without enjoying it? “You get to keep your name. Your life. Most of your skin. Your execution isn’t for some time yet, and will be relatively painless. You’ve been such a good boy.”

Silverius didn’t consider himself lucky for any second he drew breath. Everytime the administrator brought an iron or a scalpel or a chainsaw or a drill to his body, Silverius hoped it would finally be enough to kill him. It never was.

The administrator said that part of him was “fascinating”. That even though Silverius was separated from the Crystal of Wind, his body had been altered genetically and healed at an incredible rate because of it. Hands grew back with fingers as dexterous as ever; teeth grew in quickly; wounds not burned sealed up without scars. The admin had experimented on them all, stabbing him, cutting pieces of him away, burning others, skinning him, flaying him, impaling him, grating him, beating him.

The last time he awoke to new injuries, Silverius had lost both of his legs. They grew back slower than any other part of him, and were extremely sensitive for a long time. The administrator had taken special care to peel back each inch of the new skin and pour acidic water on all of his exposed muscle. Before that, Silverius remembered having each of his ribs ripped out and put in opposite places in his rib cage. The operation was painful, but what hurt more was having his body slowly push each bone out of his flesh in rejection as correct new ones grew in their place.

Silverius trembled just thinking about it, and also because of the intense pain rushing through his body now. Or was that just his arm hurting? He swore that he could feel his fingers moving, could still control them. Maybe that was the new hand growing in. Things were starting to move slower – how long had he been away from the Crystal?

His stomach felt like it was leaving his body, and Silverius leaned forward as much as he could with an arched back and a scream. The gloved hand of the admin was all that was visible in the darkness as it gripped the thin lance that pierced through Silverius’ back and pulled it out. It felt like his stomach was leaving his body, and when Silverius looked down he saw that it was, along with loops of his intestines and splashes of his own blood.

He squinted and stared at himself, falling onto the ground outside of him. Should he be concerned? It hurt. Everything hurt. But it would all grow back, good as new and better than ever. This was an improvement. He should be grateful. He shook his head slightly and squinted again. His vision was getting worse each day, or hour, or year. Everything was blurry and closer or farther than it seemed. He couldn’t tell which without moving his hand and touching anything.

Chains wrapped around his shoulders, elbows, knees, and waist. They attached to the ceiling, keeping Silverius hanging but kept tight enough that he did not sway. Holding himself upright took away precious strength from his bones, so most of the time Silverius allowed himself to slump forward in a painful position with his head bowed. The pain was nothing to everything else.

“Interesting,” the administrator said. “The wound does not close around the weapon even if left in the body for an extended period of time, but regeneration elsewhere continues unabated.” Scratching on a notebook was audible. His voice was somewhat muffled; when the chamber was bright, Silverius could see that he wore a blue surgery mask over his face. A blue sash wrapped around his waist and he wore a white lab coat that was usually covered in drops of Silverius’ blood. He was an Inusian, but Silverius could not remember his name, nor his rank or what exactly he looked like. Only the mask, and the bloody coat, and the cold gloves, and the mask, and the piercing gray eyes, and the notebook, and the mask, and the pain.

Silverius could never get used to this pain. Just when he thought he could start blocking it out, the administrator ramped up his methods and made things all the more painful. Perhaps it was giving him less rations, or keeping the temperature warm enough to drain Silverius of any energy, or pulling his eyes out with cold pliers, but there was always a way to make the pain worse.

He saw her, at first. Silverius could not remember her name or exactly what she looked like, but he saw her. She wasn’t really there, because the administrator saw everything and he claimed to not see her. She called out to him, pulled on his chains and ran her hands on his skin. Silverius wanted to reach out to her as well, to return her gestures, but all he was able to give her were his screams. He screamed so loudly for her at first, but then she vanished when his vision stumbled and he grew numb to the pain for the first time.

After the administrator pulled out Silverius’ eyes for the first time and they grew back to full functionality hours later, he never saw her again.

Did he forget her, or did she forget him? There were others, others who Silverius was worried for at first. They did not matter to him now. He was angry at first, but that anger had gone away. He tried to resist, and even pulled on the chains earnestly during his first few days, but by now he had long ago lost the strength to fight or attempt escape.

This was what Silverius deserved. He did not remember what he did exactly, nor why he always felt blood flowing down his skin or rain pelting his nerves. All he could remember was this pain, for days, for hours, for years.

“You know why,” the administrator finally answered. Silverius lightly shook his head with his mouth slightly open. “You did this to yourself.” The administrator was very stubborn, and never listened to what Silverius had to say. When he tried to talk, the mercenary often cut the back of Silverius’ throat, just enough to bring more blood flowing down his back and pain to run up the side of his head. “We surmount or we die. That is the Inusian way. You know this.”

Silverius shook his head lightly, and the administrator stabbed a scalpel into Silverius’ shoulder. Silverius’ left eye twitched and he whimpered with pain.

“Dinner is going to be served soon. What would you like?” the administrator asked. His question was pointless: the slop served was always the same.

‘Death,’ Silverius thought to himself instantly. His throat was too dry after the vomit to answer, but he screamed the answer in his mind. ‘Death. Death. Death. End me. End this. Death. Stop it. Stop the pain. Please. End me. Death. Death.’

“Slop it is,” the administrator stated with a click of his tongue. “Your favorite, I see.” He stepped backwards and the squishing of Silverius’ stomach could be heard. “It can wait another day, though. It will take about as much for your digestive functions to return.”

‘No!’ Silverius shouted in his head. If the administrator left, the lights would flicker off and on for hours. When that finished, the room would be either extremely hot or extremely cold. And the rats… The rats were the worst part. They scrambled over whatever he left on the floor, be it vomit or blood or teeth or disconnected body parts or feces. His feet hovered only slightly above the ground, so they would either brush past his skin or bite at it. ‘Please, stay…’ They never came before the administrator left. ‘Don’t leave. Please. End me.’

The administrator left. Silverius wished he took his consciousness with him.

...End of Fifth(+1) Intermission.

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