So I hadn't fully realized that there were two cliffhangers in a row. Hopefully this chapter helps everyone tired of being out on the edge. It's also my favorite. Enjoy!
Ch. 14
He couldn't scream, not again. The sound of it made him furious. Even with all this agony, the violation and indignity of the man's rutting, he had been denied the sound of his own pain. Instead every time a sound emerged from his tortured throat it sounded like her, that bitch who had left him here, encased in her skin.
The man behind him finally finished, again, and pulled out of his beaten body. He chuckled and slapped Orlith's ass.
"I was nun so pleas'd to 'ear I couldna split your cunny, but I must admit to enjoyin' this all the same."
Orlith groaned, the feminine sound deepening his hatred further. The large man whistled a tune as he rummaged around behind Orlith's back.
Fucker
, Orlith cursed mentally, having been deprived of words as well. He had taught this man half of what he knew, despite the fact that the big oaf was dumb as a brick. He had even encouraged the idiot's love of employing his skills on women. Orlith struggled to speak again, "Cooper, it's me, stop this." All that emerged was a low moan, Anna's moan, a sound that had once made him hard and eager.
The jailer appeared before him, an evil grin on his face, "Do that once more fer Cooper, sweet thing, let me 'ear ya 'gain." Orlith shot him his most withering look but the man was already licking his lips and glancing down the feminine form he saw before him. "Yer gonna wear me out, girl. I got a job t' do on ya, y'know."
Orlith screamed his frustration into the man's face; the big man just smiled wider and pinched his nipples so hard it made him arch his back trying to relieve the pressure. Cooper simply twisted the nubs in his fingers until Orlith was sure his skin would rip off. Orlith was panting when he was finally released; the large man chuckled as he moved away again.
He had been through worse, he thought. He had endured the monastery for years on end, as a child no less. This would be no different. He could hear Cooper dragging something heavy across the floor. Orlith closed his eyes and retreated inwards, finding the sanctuary he had created all those years ago. The pain, the indignity, the frustration, all of it felt more distant, like he wore it on the skin she'd forced on him, and he wouldn't let it penetrate to his person. It was Anna being tortured, not him. The pain faded, the room with it. He would remain apart.
The burning hatred for the cunt surfaced again. He would find a way to bring her to heel. He had seen her almost break so many times. Even this last time, he knew she was just moments from crumbling. He only needed to endure until he could get to her again. And when she did submit it would be all the sweeter. The thought gave him solace, again bolstering him against Cooper's inelegant torture. He knew exactly how the man would proceed and none of it scared him. He would endure. And he would rip the man's throat out.
And then the things he would do to her would not equal a fraction of what he had managed before.
The chain slackened for the first time in hours. His arms were still chained but his feet finally rested completely on the floor. He opened his eyes to see the basin in front of him, the water black in the torchlight. He eyed it impassively.
Cooper released the chains completely, and Orlith crumpled to the floor, the weakness in his limbs more profound than he'd thought. The man dragged him to the edge, whispering words Orlith ignored as he shoved his head under the water. At first the veil of distance remained intact and Orlith felt more removed than ever from the body twisting in the water. But the burn of his lungs, the panic of a brain denied oxygen set in, and he could not remain separate. Over and over Cooper shoved his face under the surface, never allowing him a moment longer than absolutely necessary to breathe. Distantly, Orlith recognized his own lessons on the intensity of torture.
The last time Cooper shoved him under he was still desperately inhaling and the water rushed eagerly into his lungs. He thrashed, coughing reflexively and inhaling more liquid, the dark spots in his vision closing in too quickly. By the time Cooper dragged him from the pool he was barely aware of the liquid running from his mouth, the desperate inhalations only half effective.
The big man left him there as he passed in and out of consciousness, memories long since buried haunting the darkness behind his eyes. How long he hovered there he could not be sure, the sounds of old screams ringing in his ears. A strange shape started to coalesce until it looked like a man. The austere face before him was so familiar he could not muster up surprise to see it floating before him as he came back to himself on the floor of the dungeon.
"Rise, my son," the man said, holding out a ghostly hand for him. Orlith groaned, unsure but he reached for it all the same. It was his own hand he saw as he grasped the offered support, and when he was pulled to standing he looked down at his own body once more, the hateful witch's magic gone from him. He felt stronger, as if the man's grip was strengthening him as he rose.
"How," he began, looking around the small room. Cooper was gone, the basin as well. "Am I dead?"
The man smiled, "No, Orlith, you are very much alive."
Orlith gaped. "What? Why are you here?"
"You are a child of the North who wandered away from the path. Now I've come, just as you learned I would."
Orlith shook his head, confused. Disbelief warred with his senses, this could not be, and yet it was. In his early years Orlith had cultivated a well-deserved hatred for those around him, and it had followed him even when he escaped the land of his birth. But that hatred was based in the knowledge that those men were liars and sadists who invented stories to justify their licentious tastes. The man before him was a myth, just one of the many creations they used to keep their flock in check. "It's not true. None of it is. They were lies." Orlith stumbled back from the man before him.
"It is alright my child," the man said, stepping forward and raising his hand to his cheek. "Much of it was lies."
"You are Jakob, the shepherd of the Dark God, the one who brings him the disbelieving dead to be devoured." Orlith shuddered as the words of his youth flowed from his lips, the lessons he had rejected resurfacing so quickly it was as if they'd never left.
"The Dark God is a lie, Orlith Mortok, a fabrication of the monastic orders in the North. But I serve a God more powerful than they can dream of, and he has sent me to you." The tiniest smile flitted across his stern lips.
"You waged battles in his name, you brought the mountain ranges to heel for the glory of Death and those who serve him," Orlith sputtered. He felt unsteady, his body shook with exhaustion and his brain tumbled violently with overlapping, contradictory claims. The order ruled the frozen mountains in the North with a strong hand, secluded as they were from most of the kingdom. Those chosen to join the monks, the most promising young boys, were taught that pain was a prelude to death and a supplication beloved by their god. Orlith had been left with them as a boy in order to save his older brother, a crime he had made his mother pay for before he left for the capital.
"I did," Jakob said. He seemed to glow slightly in the dank room but the hand that rested on Orlith's shoulder was solid and weighty. "And I did so for the Dark God, only near death did I learn that there was no such deity." He looked deeply into Orlith's eyes. "But that does not mean there are no gods, and my master is one such being."
Orlith shook his head, his eyes wide, still confused. "Why did he send you? If it is not my desertion that must be punished what does he want?" The small boy who had kneeled before the imposing altar was still terrified even after all these years. Jakob's name had been spoken in hushed tones, a threat and promise to those who tried to escape.
"You are to suffer, my child." Jakob's voice was almost pleasant and Orlith nearly misunderstood him. The ghostly man grasped Orlith's wrists and pulled him with inhuman strength back to the chains that hung from the ceiling. Orlith was still slow, his reactions dimmed by the torture and Jakob's revelations. Before he could think to struggle Jakob had him secured to the chains, his body stretched and open for punishment.
"No!" Orlith twisted in the chains, but it was too late. Jakob, the hero of the order, the man whose painted image had looked down on the boys as the monks had strung them up just as he was now, whose stern countenance witnessed each time the whip or cane was brought down on them, faced him once more. Orlith's sanctuary crumbled, his quiet away from the pain he had suffered for so many years, vanished. "It is a lie! You said so yourself. There is no lord to drink our pain, no Dark God who wishes to feel the suffering of those living who long for his embrace." Tears he had not shed since the first year in the monastery gathered in his eyes.
For the first time since he was small, Orlith was afraid.
Jakob nodded, "That is true. But my master calls for this. And I, who have seen into your heart, am happy to fulfill his wishes." Jakob's hand slid up Orlith's flank until he found the tender spot where Anna had cracked the bone, and he dug in. Orlith gasped in pain, writhing within the confines of the restraints. "You are to suffer until you plead for death, and then I will heal your wounds, and then I will do it again." Orlith saw no shred of pity in the man's face. "In the end, your fate is in her hands and I will leave you with those who live," Jakob reached for the whip, "but until then, we have much to accomplish."
*
Leonid paced the sorcerer's bed chambers. Emera had seated herself in one of the room's large chairs. She watched as his feet traced the same path across the ornate rugs, over to the stones at its edge, back to the window and then finally along the side of the bed. Leonid's eyes ran over the girl's sleeping form again, his fingers twitched as if he were about to reach out to her, and then he stopped himself, continuing his circuit over towards the roaring hearth.
"Leonid, please," Emera said finally. "Sit down."
Her brother turned to her, his face tight with worry. And then, a moment later, it was smoothed away, the god who had emerged with her a millennia ago the same as he'd ever been. Leonid moved fluidly into the chair at her side, his body relaxing convincingly.
"Are you satisfied with The Five's decision?" he asked, placing the tips of his fingers against their counterpart on the other hand.
