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kinkfestTitle: The Darkest Beast
Author/Artist:![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
logistika_nyx
Rating: R – NC-17
Warnings: as per prompt - torture, banding, scarring, hurt/comfort, “I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name.”
Word count: 4000
A/N: I…may have failed on the hurt/comfort aspect. orz
Author/Artist:
logistika_nyx Rating: R – NC-17
Warnings: as per prompt - torture, banding, scarring, hurt/comfort, “I want to hurt you just to hear you screaming my name.”
Word count: 4000
A/N: I…may have failed on the hurt/comfort aspect. orz
---
“—t’would not avail, not with a man as yourself,” says the beast. Crested with a peacock’s tail in metal to match his strut, his helm conceals nothing, not his arrogance, not the smile beneath. “Though I do not doubt you would scream. Loudly.”
“I would,” Basch says, “but you would gain nothing from the sound. No knowledge, no admittance.”
“Heh, kingslayer, I have known many men like you. You are at the disadvantage, here, for you have never known a man such as I am, nor what I might gain from the mere sound of your scream.”
“I know myself: it’s the only knowledge that concerns me. I am no kingslayer.”
The beast laughs, an unholy sound in metal. “Then what shall we call you? Will you give me your name?”
“You know it.”
“But not from your lips.”
Basch bites those, then. Into the void that yawns, expectant, he gives only his calm.
To begin with, the beast does not try to break him with pain.
---
Chaos is sent into his cell, another type of beast, timeless, of discordance and bells played loud enough to deafen, a disharmony enough to send a man mad. Chaos keeps him from sleeping until all verticality surpasses him, until time breaks, shattered like sound, a passing illusion; until even the walls sag with that absence beyond exhaustion, acute angles that defy the focus of his eyes. Chaos is colorless, and chilling like the aftermath of fever, stripping from Basch all memories of sun, sleep, sanctuary.
But Chaos does not break him. In the sound of his own voice Basch hears only sanity. The questions, when they come, meet with no answers. I will not, Basch will say when they ask for the numbers of Dalmasca’s soldiers, the location of encampments, the value of armaments, I will not, I will not, a small defiance for such small knowledge, but enough. He will bear this, has faced Chaos before disguised as the discordance of battle, of dissolution, where the voice of friend and foe blur, blend. He will hold, with ease.
---
The true beast walks with a measured tread, a resonance more of echo than sound: Basch hears it come from afar. That time, that distance, gives him time to sheathe his will in steel.
“Your name,” asks the beast, again, a calm conceit in Chaos’ absence.
A small thing, to admit one’s own name. Basch will not admit anything further.
---
Darkness comes next, blindness that burns, shame that sears. A beast of made of childhood terrors and a thousand dishonors, the roughness of a wall against his palms, the unholy manipulation that has his forehead splitting on the stone, his fury impotent without a target. Basch cannot give voice for the spells, cannot see for the like; cannot hear for the cry of Chaos. There is only the touch, fleeting; the rawness, lasting, lonely; the terror, the timelessness. Darkness is black, and stinking; Darkness is hunger and horror, to thieve control of his own flesh.
Yet, this is just darkness. Such a thing cannot be beast enough to unman him. Without speech, sound, sight, without control, Basch still has the feel of his own flesh. He traces the line of his own ribs, the suffocating concave of his belly. He feels the curl of his breath though he cannot hear it. I know not, Basch will lie, when the questions come again, I know not, where Ashelia would shelter, which are the strongest of Dalmasca’s alliances, what Ashelia’s habits are, her secrets, her hopes, her horrors, I know not, and his is a sorry boldness for Ashelia’s brazen resistance. He cannot think of that. When Darkness would sear him of sanity, he wields hunger’s edge against it. His fingers at his wrist, his throat, so the very count of his pulse becomes a shield against that beast which would raze his connection from this earth.
---
The beast measures his pace for the dread, Basch thinks, to stretch those long minutes of anticipation to laden eternities. The corridors wind, the convolution of paths has the echoes double, redouble, until Basch cannot convince himself he hears the approach of a single man, or even a man at all. There are only echoes, only sounds – and his eyes ache to see, his ears to hear --
“--Basch,” says the beast, so real against the threat of darkness, assured against his own shadow, “are you well?”
To hold against this question would avail no one when strength must be saved for true battles.
“Well enough.”
The beast laughs at the wariness there. “I would offer my sympathies.”
“For what?”
The beast ignores the question. “I would offer you supper as well; from the look of you it appears we have forgotten to feed you for a while. The menu is not grand, but we have stretched ourselves tonight: two choices, here.”
Basch looks, cannot see aught, smell any of the usual fare. The beast waits, tempting, taunting. Basch will not rise to such bait.
“I would rather your sympathies.”
“That is not the choice. That is the reward.”
Basch finds himself at the cells bars, snarling. The feel of cold metal draws him back to himself, just short of the indignity of trying to claw that armored arrogance apart.
“--reward? What game is this, to you?”
“Perhaps a sampler plate will entice you to decisiveness.” The beast claps, such a sharp metallic sound that Basch recoils. From the shadows two guards step forward, plated in armour that reflects only dullness. They carry a bucket each, tilted so Basch can see—
He staggers back, hits the corner of the cell within a step and a half, gagging.
“I take it,” the beast says, amused, “your gratitude is overwhelmed by your hunger pains. Can I hope that you would be provoked to choose..? ”
“Not--” Basch chokes, spits, against the rising bile, “no--”
“No? He says no. Too politely raised this one, to turn us down when he would devour both buckets and still have room to spare. Judges, feed the poor man. We cannot have him wasting away.”
The sound of the cell door opening provokes terror as thick as the darkness. Basch cannot fight, not two at once, not armored as they are, he is wasted, wasting—
The beast turns to go.
“Wait—“ Basch says, and steels his voice so it will not sound like a plea. “Your sympathies—you have news of--“
“Perhaps we will converse later,” says the beast, distant already. “I would not disturb your supper. Ondore would send his sympathies also, were you not already a dead man.”
The beasts take Basch again, Chaos and Darkness both, thick stillness, ever blackness, that wailing silence. He is swallowed, he is drowning, and he must swallow to survive this, for he does not know, he would know, he must know--Ondore--
---
Sickness claims him, then, leaves that dark shrillness thickened with the wracking stench of filth and fever. He cannot feel himself any more, cannot breathe for the vile beast that lives in his throat, his nose, his belly. This beast layers thin, intangible; it pervades everything, undeniable, unavoidable. Adrift within the skin of that bestial, inhume Sickness, anchorless, the heaving pain sunders Basch from himself. Sight, sound, scent, they all leave him. He cannot retreat, has no corner of his mind in which to hold, for fever’s beat shatters his thought as Squalor ravages him from the inside out. Time will not cohere. His fingers will not feel. He cannot find refuge, not in himself, and turns—elsewhere.
Yet, this is just sickness, wrapped in the horror of weakness, of starvation, of impurity; just sickness, he tries to hold to the word even as he floats on its vile current. He would weep to find himself lost on such a common sea, stinking though it is. He cannot lose himself, he --cannot, Basch begs, when the questions come this time, I cannot, when they ask of the Shard, the Shard, Ashelia’s Shard – he holds her hope in his heart, and they do not demand it, but they ask, they offer comfort for it, life, continuance, peace - I cannot, Basch pleads, pleads, begs them to bring an end to the rot that eats him inside out, that devours his thought, his will. He has no shield to hide behind, no sword to cut his way free of this beast when it is in him. Sickness and poison, wretched, weeping, and all he has is her memory to hold him true – Ashelia – this is all of him that is left, her name.
---
Basch does not hear the beast approach this time, knows nothing but the horror of his own deprivation until a caress wakes him. Green magick is the vanguard of an invasion that begins with the touch of a bare hand, healing that draws him forth from the void.
Sensation, sight, sound all returns with an agony too overwhelming to name as every nerve screams. The air proves a rank acid. The red glow lighting the cell burns like the blinding heart of a sun. The curl of smoke suffocates. Basch twitches, unbidden; flails and chokes. Collared at the neck, his wrists are pinned. The wood and metal hold him upright, for he would not have the strength to stand; he cannot see himself, cannot look down. The beast demands his attention, red-dappled in the glow, dull metal gleaming.
“Basch,” says the beast, stingingly, even that short sound a tumult, “you’re a ghost, man.”
“Then let me,” Basch says, wracked, “become one, please. I will – anything. If you will.”
“Do you know how long it’s been?”
The beast appears flesh and blood, hume, where his bare hand betrays him. Basch cannot look away from that skin, the thought as jagged as his pulse: that this man shared the same structure as he, the same blood, the same memories of a world with sunshine and rain, the same ears, sight, smell. They are both hume, they are both men. Too easy to believe that the beast was of metal and coldness, an arrogance peacock-proud, a calculation born of inhume desire, when instead, the same pulse drives them both.
The beast steps away, gloves himself with a sound of metal on metal serration and turns his back to busy himself with the lantern by the door. Only then does Basch realize that not even the cell’s bars divide them.
A swelling numbness that comes with that thought.
“Ondore. You said Ondore—you have news—had—“
“Not what I asked,” says the beast. “You never listen to what I say, do you, Basch? You would make some woman a terrible husband.”
“Six months,” Basch chokes, spits, gasps. “Maybe seven.”
The beast laughs for a long time, until Basch thinks the sound an echo.
“Close,” the peacock crows, joyous, hard, “six weeks.”
Basch spasms, involuntary. His chain clinks.
“A long enough courtship,” the beast hums, as though such a thing strikes him with hilarity. “Now that you know what sort of man I am, I would put to you another choice.”
Not a lantern, Basch sees when the beast turns, his armor red-stained and heaving. A brazier. The beast holds aloft a ruddy terror. The heat that rises from the curled, refined metal blurs his image; the peacock’s tail fans on that heatwave.
“I can give you another six weeks of solitude,” says the beast, “or would you rather the pleasure of my company?”
The breath that escapes Basch carries his surrender.
---
“The left or the right?” is the beast’s first question.
The void trembles, aches, asks for Basch’s word, and he cannot, cannot, would not play this game--
“Too slow,” says the beast. He lays the hot metal along right buttock, languidly. The left follows. Basch’s head cracks back, his throat chafed against the collar. This is a feast after such privation before, foul though it is: he can feel – everything, the way the metal cooks into the flesh, the burn beyond, beyond – the way his flesh sticks when the beast lifts his implement, comes away– gods – the smell searingly familiar—
Basch’s breath heaves, ragged, arrhythmic; a sob escapes on one, stifled too late. The beast’s cold gauntlet rests on his spine, five points of chill on sweat-slick filth.
“Scream,” says the beast. “It helps.”
He walks to the brazier, cooks the metal anew. Basch sees – on the tine – his skin blackening, charring away. He gags, breathes, can’t help but smell it, feel it. His muscles will not still their flickering, twitching panic.
“Ondore has announced your death,” the beast says. “The kingslayer’s execution at the hands of Archadia for crimes against Peace.”
That sparks a flicker of self; Basch had thought such dignity beyond him now. “I did not kill him.”
With a great heave of metal, the beast shrugs. “I would believe you but that I saw your face. As did many others, irrefutably.”
Basch laughs, too hard, that it sounds like weeping.
“Oh, I know,” says the beast, “nasty, isn’t it? It does impress me that such a thought came not from me. The dark beast in the heart of every man but requires an outlet. Ah, here’s another thought! I’ll give you a gift, Basch. A gift tailored for a sundered twin; to tailor circumstance.”
The stinking hot wire rests on the edge of the stock, angled to point at Basch’s eye. Too close to focus on, the yellow-white hazed heat makes him blink too fast, fluttering. A curl of smoke lifts from the wood, a smell too ordinary for this.
“That your face may never again be used against you,” the beast says, “the left or the right?”
Basch’s eyes water.
“…left.”
Some perversity strokes his humor; humor that always sparked Vossler’s ire for its incongruity. Basch cannot tell now whether it is perversity or madness that drives him, but he says, bitingly:
“My thanks.”
The beast’s helm never hides his smile.
“You’re most welcome.”
The retching pain that comes claims more than just Basch’s vanity as victim.
---
“The country or the capital?”
The questions curl like heated metal, searing eyes and skin and thoughts, until Basch will answer new questions with past answers, the words a sleek coolness as they escape. Basch measures time by the count of the beast reheating his metal, hours or days, unknown.
“Country,” Basch replies.
“You lie like a mountain, namely, tall or not at all. I will pretend that you said ‘capital’ and continue without marking you for the falsehood. I am magnanimous.”
“You already know the answers—“
“Some, but not all. You will not know which until you speak. Capital, then. The low or the high?”
Basch clings to silence--
“Nipple or cock?”
“Nipple.”
--and he burns then, crying out with it, until the stretch of the scream sets his cheek aflame as the agony swallows his chest, until his pain matches the worth of what he has sold so cheaply.
“--high.”
Basch suffers for each answer by not suffering.
“Your favorite color.”
It floods his vision, his scent. “…red.”
“Fortunate, then.”
Basch laughs, madly. “Yes.”
“The palace or the city?”
He fights, inside, to determine the worth of this answer--
“The inside of your thigh: edge or flat?”
“Edge.”
--until blood weighs in blood for the betrayal that his words wrought.
“Palace.”
“Your worst fear.”
“You.”
The beast dips his peacock-helm, the tail flickering, catching the light.
“Such flattery, Basch. You’ll woo me yet.”
Basch shudders, heaves when the pain uses the beast’s pause to catch up, to inflict itself anew. He cannot see himself. Cannot see below the level of the stock. Wants to. Does not. His own stink is harsh in the air, blood and filth and burn.
“Keep going,” Basch says, speaks on the tide of his own insanity but can only speak insanity, “I’m rarely so conversational, what else would you know, how many lovers, bastards, broken hearts?”
His flesh shudders, uncontrollably, that he can feel but not see. The pain swings in waves, heat and cold, fever and chill, swimming and spewing. This cessation of the rhythm of question and burn strikes Basch harder, though; thicker, worse. He has room to think, to know that he will fall, that his blood, his hide, his pain will never account for the value of what he will trade.
“Well?” says the beast, eventually. “How many?
“How many what?”
“Let’s start with the bastards.”
Basch focuses his eyes, with effort. The beast stands at the brazier. There are long blades in there as well as wire. Basch has no memory of the beast drawing them, using them, ordering them brought.
“None. That I know of.”
“Ha,” says the beast, “I’m glad you told me. I’ll leave your manhood alone. Even a kingslayer deserves some chance to claim himself a hume’s flawed immortality.”
Basch bites his tongue when the only thing he thinks to say sound like words of gratitude, untainted by mocking: gratitude for the action, for the thought of a future. He tastes metal.
“Water or wine?”
Basch cannot think clearly enough to determine the trap there.
“Quickly, Basch, don’t make me drink alone.”
“Wine,” Basch rasps, “why not?”
The beast laughs. The sound of fluid being poured flares Basch’s thirst to life unbidden. Air cloys on slick skin, stinging wet. The fluid calls to him, makes his mouth water in anticipation of rehydration. The beast puts a cup to Basch’s lips; metal taps teeth, gently, and the contents sting Basch’s broken lips. Almost too rich to take, that taste, an unreality.
He drinks. The beast gives him more without asking. A small blessing, for Basch would have begged.
“Ashelia took her own life four weeks ago. Ondore announced it.”
Basch chokes.
---
The beast that takes him this time is entirely of Basch’s own making.
This is Remorse, and it is Chaos and Darkness and Sickness in tight focus, blindness to the thought of tomorrow, the sound of a thousand accusations. It is the sickness of his own shame, the stink of his fear, rotting inside. This is Remorse, to have thought himself sufficient, to have thought his own suffering of any value to a kingdom lost – another, another, and what a man such as he to have lost two heartlands, two homes, two heart-brothers, and all his honor with them.
This is Remorse, a sickness inside. This is Guilt, resonant laughter. This is Responsibility, a flail on his reason.
“Who would have thought,” the beast says, the gentleness of his touch a violation on unworthy flesh, “that all it would take to break you was word of another war widow’s death?”
--broken, Basch knows his own insignificance. His suffering will never be an equal trade for whatever knowledge he holds. As arrogant as a peacock to have thought himself of value, as prisoner or protector.
“You will tell me everything,” the beast says. “Your men, their numbers, their hideouts. You will tell me where the Shard lies hidden.”
But the beast can give him nothing now, no trade of life or future for knowledge.
“I will not,” Basch says, simply, and says nothing more.
---
A strangeness follows then, of salves and silence, of bearable food that sparks no appetite. Cold but not chilling, quiet but not calm, tedium without release; he sinks, drowns, dies.
They have to feed him as he heals. He will not - eat nor fight nor heal, and so they leave him.
Solitude devours him along with his other dark beasts. Time passes, unmarked with speech or solace or even a shower, but that Basch notes he can sleep on either side now. The flaming skin of his left cheek settles into its new mould, a protuberant scar that aches in place of a burn.
Solitude is nothing; or a lie.
The beasts never leave him alone.
---
“You must know tis without meaning,” the beast spits, between strokes, “your stubbornness, your silence, it avails no one,” and the whip bites, into bone, “you will tell me, everything,” and the blade bloodies, unwearied, “this is my duty to my lord, and unlike your failed efforts, I will succeed—“
“I will not,” Basch states, surrenders, “and your rod will break before I cry more than my pain.”
The beast’s helm flies, the sound of steel striking stone wild, a vicarious clatter. Blonde, heavy-set, it surprises Basch to find the beast so crudely featured, to find him flesh and likewise flushed, panting for breath. Hume, despite the cruelty there. Hume more so for that cruelty, that frustration. The arrogance of that peacock’s comb replicates in an undeniable stamp on those heavy features.
“Then,” the beast snarls, “I will not stop until you cry my name.”
Basch stirs against the stock, his wrists raw, stinging, meaningless. “I do not know it.”
The beast’s smile curves. The satisfaction there would have terrified a man who still had hope.
---
The beast breaks before Basch does, this time.
The healing unravels him, the forced connection of that curative bent that puts the strength of one into the wounds of another. The beast sweats with it, shudders, as Basch closes his eyes and bears the beast’s touch. Basch finds a grim pleasure in denying the beast his acknowledgement: the beast’s arrogance bites him from behind. Arrogance cannot bear failure. Surrender gives its own strength.
The beast curls as he sits, metal segmentation wailing a protest. Basch swallows air, tainted with singed flesh, and will not smile. His vision blurs.
“You care not,” the beast says, incredulous, “you would die, Basch. Mortal and fallible and weak, you would die.”
“Are you so inhume that you would live forever?” Basch asks, his voice a new agony in his lacerated throat. “Arrogance, to think that. We all die.”
“You care not,” the beast says again, this time considering. “Did she mean so much to you? Ashelia and Dalmasca, flesh and future in one, perhaps. Duty and dedication bound together. And now both, gone, sundered from this realm. You think to join them in the realm after.”
Basch does not speak, air chilling sweat-wet skin. He has not seen the ruin of his flesh for too long. It does not belong to him. He can ignore it.
“Bergan,” the beast tells him, “my house name, a long name in Archades, a history for the ages, and now you know it.”
“I will call you ‘beast’.”
The beast moves like one, fast, violent, until his crude lips are on Basch’s ear, metal-clad fingers vicious on ravaged skin. The beast’s leer curves. “Then I will call you ‘kingslayer’. A lie for a lie, for I am no beast. I am your master now. And I would have you consider this, kingslayer, while you contemplate how much pain a name is worth --”
The beast uncurls his whip anew, loosens his shoulder against the steel of his plate. His grin is vile, vile enough that Basch cannot meet it.
“--Ondore has lied before.”
Basch flinches when the whip strikes. The name bubbles to his lips with the cry that comes. The struggle to keep from saying it will not alleviate the thought --
Ondore has lied before. Kingslayer, but a lie. Executed, but not. Ashelia, a suicide, but Ondore has lied before.
Basch does not know whether to hate this Bergan, or to thank him.
Hope proves the darkest beast in that hellish place, to wield twin blades against a man with none.
---
“—t’would not avail, not with a man as yourself,” says the beast. Crested with a peacock’s tail in metal to match his strut, his helm conceals nothing, not his arrogance, not the smile beneath. “Though I do not doubt you would scream. Loudly.”
“I would,” Basch says, “but you would gain nothing from the sound. No knowledge, no admittance.”
“Heh, kingslayer, I have known many men like you. You are at the disadvantage, here, for you have never known a man such as I am, nor what I might gain from the mere sound of your scream.”
“I know myself: it’s the only knowledge that concerns me. I am no kingslayer.”
The beast laughs, an unholy sound in metal. “Then what shall we call you? Will you give me your name?”
“You know it.”
“But not from your lips.”
Basch bites those, then. Into the void that yawns, expectant, he gives only his calm.
To begin with, the beast does not try to break him with pain.
---
Chaos is sent into his cell, another type of beast, timeless, of discordance and bells played loud enough to deafen, a disharmony enough to send a man mad. Chaos keeps him from sleeping until all verticality surpasses him, until time breaks, shattered like sound, a passing illusion; until even the walls sag with that absence beyond exhaustion, acute angles that defy the focus of his eyes. Chaos is colorless, and chilling like the aftermath of fever, stripping from Basch all memories of sun, sleep, sanctuary.
But Chaos does not break him. In the sound of his own voice Basch hears only sanity. The questions, when they come, meet with no answers. I will not, Basch will say when they ask for the numbers of Dalmasca’s soldiers, the location of encampments, the value of armaments, I will not, I will not, a small defiance for such small knowledge, but enough. He will bear this, has faced Chaos before disguised as the discordance of battle, of dissolution, where the voice of friend and foe blur, blend. He will hold, with ease.
---
The true beast walks with a measured tread, a resonance more of echo than sound: Basch hears it come from afar. That time, that distance, gives him time to sheathe his will in steel.
“Your name,” asks the beast, again, a calm conceit in Chaos’ absence.
A small thing, to admit one’s own name. Basch will not admit anything further.
---
Darkness comes next, blindness that burns, shame that sears. A beast of made of childhood terrors and a thousand dishonors, the roughness of a wall against his palms, the unholy manipulation that has his forehead splitting on the stone, his fury impotent without a target. Basch cannot give voice for the spells, cannot see for the like; cannot hear for the cry of Chaos. There is only the touch, fleeting; the rawness, lasting, lonely; the terror, the timelessness. Darkness is black, and stinking; Darkness is hunger and horror, to thieve control of his own flesh.
Yet, this is just darkness. Such a thing cannot be beast enough to unman him. Without speech, sound, sight, without control, Basch still has the feel of his own flesh. He traces the line of his own ribs, the suffocating concave of his belly. He feels the curl of his breath though he cannot hear it. I know not, Basch will lie, when the questions come again, I know not, where Ashelia would shelter, which are the strongest of Dalmasca’s alliances, what Ashelia’s habits are, her secrets, her hopes, her horrors, I know not, and his is a sorry boldness for Ashelia’s brazen resistance. He cannot think of that. When Darkness would sear him of sanity, he wields hunger’s edge against it. His fingers at his wrist, his throat, so the very count of his pulse becomes a shield against that beast which would raze his connection from this earth.
---
The beast measures his pace for the dread, Basch thinks, to stretch those long minutes of anticipation to laden eternities. The corridors wind, the convolution of paths has the echoes double, redouble, until Basch cannot convince himself he hears the approach of a single man, or even a man at all. There are only echoes, only sounds – and his eyes ache to see, his ears to hear --
“--Basch,” says the beast, so real against the threat of darkness, assured against his own shadow, “are you well?”
To hold against this question would avail no one when strength must be saved for true battles.
“Well enough.”
The beast laughs at the wariness there. “I would offer my sympathies.”
“For what?”
The beast ignores the question. “I would offer you supper as well; from the look of you it appears we have forgotten to feed you for a while. The menu is not grand, but we have stretched ourselves tonight: two choices, here.”
Basch looks, cannot see aught, smell any of the usual fare. The beast waits, tempting, taunting. Basch will not rise to such bait.
“I would rather your sympathies.”
“That is not the choice. That is the reward.”
Basch finds himself at the cells bars, snarling. The feel of cold metal draws him back to himself, just short of the indignity of trying to claw that armored arrogance apart.
“--reward? What game is this, to you?”
“Perhaps a sampler plate will entice you to decisiveness.” The beast claps, such a sharp metallic sound that Basch recoils. From the shadows two guards step forward, plated in armour that reflects only dullness. They carry a bucket each, tilted so Basch can see—
He staggers back, hits the corner of the cell within a step and a half, gagging.
“I take it,” the beast says, amused, “your gratitude is overwhelmed by your hunger pains. Can I hope that you would be provoked to choose..? ”
“Not--” Basch chokes, spits, against the rising bile, “no--”
“No? He says no. Too politely raised this one, to turn us down when he would devour both buckets and still have room to spare. Judges, feed the poor man. We cannot have him wasting away.”
The sound of the cell door opening provokes terror as thick as the darkness. Basch cannot fight, not two at once, not armored as they are, he is wasted, wasting—
The beast turns to go.
“Wait—“ Basch says, and steels his voice so it will not sound like a plea. “Your sympathies—you have news of--“
“Perhaps we will converse later,” says the beast, distant already. “I would not disturb your supper. Ondore would send his sympathies also, were you not already a dead man.”
The beasts take Basch again, Chaos and Darkness both, thick stillness, ever blackness, that wailing silence. He is swallowed, he is drowning, and he must swallow to survive this, for he does not know, he would know, he must know--Ondore--
---
Sickness claims him, then, leaves that dark shrillness thickened with the wracking stench of filth and fever. He cannot feel himself any more, cannot breathe for the vile beast that lives in his throat, his nose, his belly. This beast layers thin, intangible; it pervades everything, undeniable, unavoidable. Adrift within the skin of that bestial, inhume Sickness, anchorless, the heaving pain sunders Basch from himself. Sight, sound, scent, they all leave him. He cannot retreat, has no corner of his mind in which to hold, for fever’s beat shatters his thought as Squalor ravages him from the inside out. Time will not cohere. His fingers will not feel. He cannot find refuge, not in himself, and turns—elsewhere.
Yet, this is just sickness, wrapped in the horror of weakness, of starvation, of impurity; just sickness, he tries to hold to the word even as he floats on its vile current. He would weep to find himself lost on such a common sea, stinking though it is. He cannot lose himself, he --cannot, Basch begs, when the questions come this time, I cannot, when they ask of the Shard, the Shard, Ashelia’s Shard – he holds her hope in his heart, and they do not demand it, but they ask, they offer comfort for it, life, continuance, peace - I cannot, Basch pleads, pleads, begs them to bring an end to the rot that eats him inside out, that devours his thought, his will. He has no shield to hide behind, no sword to cut his way free of this beast when it is in him. Sickness and poison, wretched, weeping, and all he has is her memory to hold him true – Ashelia – this is all of him that is left, her name.
---
Basch does not hear the beast approach this time, knows nothing but the horror of his own deprivation until a caress wakes him. Green magick is the vanguard of an invasion that begins with the touch of a bare hand, healing that draws him forth from the void.
Sensation, sight, sound all returns with an agony too overwhelming to name as every nerve screams. The air proves a rank acid. The red glow lighting the cell burns like the blinding heart of a sun. The curl of smoke suffocates. Basch twitches, unbidden; flails and chokes. Collared at the neck, his wrists are pinned. The wood and metal hold him upright, for he would not have the strength to stand; he cannot see himself, cannot look down. The beast demands his attention, red-dappled in the glow, dull metal gleaming.
“Basch,” says the beast, stingingly, even that short sound a tumult, “you’re a ghost, man.”
“Then let me,” Basch says, wracked, “become one, please. I will – anything. If you will.”
“Do you know how long it’s been?”
The beast appears flesh and blood, hume, where his bare hand betrays him. Basch cannot look away from that skin, the thought as jagged as his pulse: that this man shared the same structure as he, the same blood, the same memories of a world with sunshine and rain, the same ears, sight, smell. They are both hume, they are both men. Too easy to believe that the beast was of metal and coldness, an arrogance peacock-proud, a calculation born of inhume desire, when instead, the same pulse drives them both.
The beast steps away, gloves himself with a sound of metal on metal serration and turns his back to busy himself with the lantern by the door. Only then does Basch realize that not even the cell’s bars divide them.
A swelling numbness that comes with that thought.
“Ondore. You said Ondore—you have news—had—“
“Not what I asked,” says the beast. “You never listen to what I say, do you, Basch? You would make some woman a terrible husband.”
“Six months,” Basch chokes, spits, gasps. “Maybe seven.”
The beast laughs for a long time, until Basch thinks the sound an echo.
“Close,” the peacock crows, joyous, hard, “six weeks.”
Basch spasms, involuntary. His chain clinks.
“A long enough courtship,” the beast hums, as though such a thing strikes him with hilarity. “Now that you know what sort of man I am, I would put to you another choice.”
Not a lantern, Basch sees when the beast turns, his armor red-stained and heaving. A brazier. The beast holds aloft a ruddy terror. The heat that rises from the curled, refined metal blurs his image; the peacock’s tail fans on that heatwave.
“I can give you another six weeks of solitude,” says the beast, “or would you rather the pleasure of my company?”
The breath that escapes Basch carries his surrender.
---
“The left or the right?” is the beast’s first question.
The void trembles, aches, asks for Basch’s word, and he cannot, cannot, would not play this game--
“Too slow,” says the beast. He lays the hot metal along right buttock, languidly. The left follows. Basch’s head cracks back, his throat chafed against the collar. This is a feast after such privation before, foul though it is: he can feel – everything, the way the metal cooks into the flesh, the burn beyond, beyond – the way his flesh sticks when the beast lifts his implement, comes away– gods – the smell searingly familiar—
Basch’s breath heaves, ragged, arrhythmic; a sob escapes on one, stifled too late. The beast’s cold gauntlet rests on his spine, five points of chill on sweat-slick filth.
“Scream,” says the beast. “It helps.”
He walks to the brazier, cooks the metal anew. Basch sees – on the tine – his skin blackening, charring away. He gags, breathes, can’t help but smell it, feel it. His muscles will not still their flickering, twitching panic.
“Ondore has announced your death,” the beast says. “The kingslayer’s execution at the hands of Archadia for crimes against Peace.”
That sparks a flicker of self; Basch had thought such dignity beyond him now. “I did not kill him.”
With a great heave of metal, the beast shrugs. “I would believe you but that I saw your face. As did many others, irrefutably.”
Basch laughs, too hard, that it sounds like weeping.
“Oh, I know,” says the beast, “nasty, isn’t it? It does impress me that such a thought came not from me. The dark beast in the heart of every man but requires an outlet. Ah, here’s another thought! I’ll give you a gift, Basch. A gift tailored for a sundered twin; to tailor circumstance.”
The stinking hot wire rests on the edge of the stock, angled to point at Basch’s eye. Too close to focus on, the yellow-white hazed heat makes him blink too fast, fluttering. A curl of smoke lifts from the wood, a smell too ordinary for this.
“That your face may never again be used against you,” the beast says, “the left or the right?”
Basch’s eyes water.
“…left.”
Some perversity strokes his humor; humor that always sparked Vossler’s ire for its incongruity. Basch cannot tell now whether it is perversity or madness that drives him, but he says, bitingly:
“My thanks.”
The beast’s helm never hides his smile.
“You’re most welcome.”
The retching pain that comes claims more than just Basch’s vanity as victim.
---
“The country or the capital?”
The questions curl like heated metal, searing eyes and skin and thoughts, until Basch will answer new questions with past answers, the words a sleek coolness as they escape. Basch measures time by the count of the beast reheating his metal, hours or days, unknown.
“Country,” Basch replies.
“You lie like a mountain, namely, tall or not at all. I will pretend that you said ‘capital’ and continue without marking you for the falsehood. I am magnanimous.”
“You already know the answers—“
“Some, but not all. You will not know which until you speak. Capital, then. The low or the high?”
Basch clings to silence--
“Nipple or cock?”
“Nipple.”
--and he burns then, crying out with it, until the stretch of the scream sets his cheek aflame as the agony swallows his chest, until his pain matches the worth of what he has sold so cheaply.
“--high.”
Basch suffers for each answer by not suffering.
“Your favorite color.”
It floods his vision, his scent. “…red.”
“Fortunate, then.”
Basch laughs, madly. “Yes.”
“The palace or the city?”
He fights, inside, to determine the worth of this answer--
“The inside of your thigh: edge or flat?”
“Edge.”
--until blood weighs in blood for the betrayal that his words wrought.
“Palace.”
“Your worst fear.”
“You.”
The beast dips his peacock-helm, the tail flickering, catching the light.
“Such flattery, Basch. You’ll woo me yet.”
Basch shudders, heaves when the pain uses the beast’s pause to catch up, to inflict itself anew. He cannot see himself. Cannot see below the level of the stock. Wants to. Does not. His own stink is harsh in the air, blood and filth and burn.
“Keep going,” Basch says, speaks on the tide of his own insanity but can only speak insanity, “I’m rarely so conversational, what else would you know, how many lovers, bastards, broken hearts?”
His flesh shudders, uncontrollably, that he can feel but not see. The pain swings in waves, heat and cold, fever and chill, swimming and spewing. This cessation of the rhythm of question and burn strikes Basch harder, though; thicker, worse. He has room to think, to know that he will fall, that his blood, his hide, his pain will never account for the value of what he will trade.
“Well?” says the beast, eventually. “How many?
“How many what?”
“Let’s start with the bastards.”
Basch focuses his eyes, with effort. The beast stands at the brazier. There are long blades in there as well as wire. Basch has no memory of the beast drawing them, using them, ordering them brought.
“None. That I know of.”
“Ha,” says the beast, “I’m glad you told me. I’ll leave your manhood alone. Even a kingslayer deserves some chance to claim himself a hume’s flawed immortality.”
Basch bites his tongue when the only thing he thinks to say sound like words of gratitude, untainted by mocking: gratitude for the action, for the thought of a future. He tastes metal.
“Water or wine?”
Basch cannot think clearly enough to determine the trap there.
“Quickly, Basch, don’t make me drink alone.”
“Wine,” Basch rasps, “why not?”
The beast laughs. The sound of fluid being poured flares Basch’s thirst to life unbidden. Air cloys on slick skin, stinging wet. The fluid calls to him, makes his mouth water in anticipation of rehydration. The beast puts a cup to Basch’s lips; metal taps teeth, gently, and the contents sting Basch’s broken lips. Almost too rich to take, that taste, an unreality.
He drinks. The beast gives him more without asking. A small blessing, for Basch would have begged.
“Ashelia took her own life four weeks ago. Ondore announced it.”
Basch chokes.
---
The beast that takes him this time is entirely of Basch’s own making.
This is Remorse, and it is Chaos and Darkness and Sickness in tight focus, blindness to the thought of tomorrow, the sound of a thousand accusations. It is the sickness of his own shame, the stink of his fear, rotting inside. This is Remorse, to have thought himself sufficient, to have thought his own suffering of any value to a kingdom lost – another, another, and what a man such as he to have lost two heartlands, two homes, two heart-brothers, and all his honor with them.
This is Remorse, a sickness inside. This is Guilt, resonant laughter. This is Responsibility, a flail on his reason.
“Who would have thought,” the beast says, the gentleness of his touch a violation on unworthy flesh, “that all it would take to break you was word of another war widow’s death?”
--broken, Basch knows his own insignificance. His suffering will never be an equal trade for whatever knowledge he holds. As arrogant as a peacock to have thought himself of value, as prisoner or protector.
“You will tell me everything,” the beast says. “Your men, their numbers, their hideouts. You will tell me where the Shard lies hidden.”
But the beast can give him nothing now, no trade of life or future for knowledge.
“I will not,” Basch says, simply, and says nothing more.
---
A strangeness follows then, of salves and silence, of bearable food that sparks no appetite. Cold but not chilling, quiet but not calm, tedium without release; he sinks, drowns, dies.
They have to feed him as he heals. He will not - eat nor fight nor heal, and so they leave him.
Solitude devours him along with his other dark beasts. Time passes, unmarked with speech or solace or even a shower, but that Basch notes he can sleep on either side now. The flaming skin of his left cheek settles into its new mould, a protuberant scar that aches in place of a burn.
Solitude is nothing; or a lie.
The beasts never leave him alone.
---
“You must know tis without meaning,” the beast spits, between strokes, “your stubbornness, your silence, it avails no one,” and the whip bites, into bone, “you will tell me, everything,” and the blade bloodies, unwearied, “this is my duty to my lord, and unlike your failed efforts, I will succeed—“
“I will not,” Basch states, surrenders, “and your rod will break before I cry more than my pain.”
The beast’s helm flies, the sound of steel striking stone wild, a vicarious clatter. Blonde, heavy-set, it surprises Basch to find the beast so crudely featured, to find him flesh and likewise flushed, panting for breath. Hume, despite the cruelty there. Hume more so for that cruelty, that frustration. The arrogance of that peacock’s comb replicates in an undeniable stamp on those heavy features.
“Then,” the beast snarls, “I will not stop until you cry my name.”
Basch stirs against the stock, his wrists raw, stinging, meaningless. “I do not know it.”
The beast’s smile curves. The satisfaction there would have terrified a man who still had hope.
---
The beast breaks before Basch does, this time.
The healing unravels him, the forced connection of that curative bent that puts the strength of one into the wounds of another. The beast sweats with it, shudders, as Basch closes his eyes and bears the beast’s touch. Basch finds a grim pleasure in denying the beast his acknowledgement: the beast’s arrogance bites him from behind. Arrogance cannot bear failure. Surrender gives its own strength.
The beast curls as he sits, metal segmentation wailing a protest. Basch swallows air, tainted with singed flesh, and will not smile. His vision blurs.
“You care not,” the beast says, incredulous, “you would die, Basch. Mortal and fallible and weak, you would die.”
“Are you so inhume that you would live forever?” Basch asks, his voice a new agony in his lacerated throat. “Arrogance, to think that. We all die.”
“You care not,” the beast says again, this time considering. “Did she mean so much to you? Ashelia and Dalmasca, flesh and future in one, perhaps. Duty and dedication bound together. And now both, gone, sundered from this realm. You think to join them in the realm after.”
Basch does not speak, air chilling sweat-wet skin. He has not seen the ruin of his flesh for too long. It does not belong to him. He can ignore it.
“Bergan,” the beast tells him, “my house name, a long name in Archades, a history for the ages, and now you know it.”
“I will call you ‘beast’.”
The beast moves like one, fast, violent, until his crude lips are on Basch’s ear, metal-clad fingers vicious on ravaged skin. The beast’s leer curves. “Then I will call you ‘kingslayer’. A lie for a lie, for I am no beast. I am your master now. And I would have you consider this, kingslayer, while you contemplate how much pain a name is worth --”
The beast uncurls his whip anew, loosens his shoulder against the steel of his plate. His grin is vile, vile enough that Basch cannot meet it.
“--Ondore has lied before.”
Basch flinches when the whip strikes. The name bubbles to his lips with the cry that comes. The struggle to keep from saying it will not alleviate the thought --
Ondore has lied before. Kingslayer, but a lie. Executed, but not. Ashelia, a suicide, but Ondore has lied before.
Basch does not know whether to hate this Bergan, or to thank him.
Hope proves the darkest beast in that hellish place, to wield twin blades against a man with none.
---
no subject
Date: 2008-06-14 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-14 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 05:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 08:35 pm (UTC)“Such flattery, Basch. You’ll woo me yet.”
That was one of my most favorite pairs of lines in this.
Shivers at the thought of Bergan as the "person" (and we really do have to say person in quote when speaking of Bergan) who is responsible for torture and interrogation. Creeeeeeeeeeeeeepppyyyy.
Great story! Unholy nightmare fuel!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 05:26 am (UTC)Was a tough one to write, I will admit. Basch's distancing tactic of imagining beasts, externalised personified pain instead of something ambiguous and unkillable.
Meh. I'm surprised it worked for people!