torture, trauma, horror

Loiral and Marcus - Routine - 8.ii

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"Work" as it turns out is not the ordeal Loiral is expecting. He sits at the table with Marcus, and answers questions about politics. They refer frequently to the map as Loiral dredges his memory for troop numbers and movements, past skirmishes, trade deals and supposed alliances, and Marcus takes copious notes in an unfamiliar script.

He thinks about lying, but it seems unwise. It's difficult to sabotage an endeavour with misinformation when you don't have the first idea what that endeavour might be. And he's acutely conscious of the consequences of being caught out. He can't start to guess what the surfacer might already know, and that's before the possibility of magic for catching lies.

Loiral and Marcus - Routine - 8.i

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Reverie is a blank room, empty and silent. The constant babble of the slum is walled out, and the mind is still. No thoughts unspool. No memories -- thankfully -- present themselves for examination. There is just nothing.

The nothing is interrupted by nearby footfalls, heavy on the flimsy floorboards. The voices that Loiral has been hearing and not hearing for some time, become near and immediate. He gets up promptly, scurrying out of the way of the two women who converge on his pallet.

One of them strips the sheet off it, adding it to the bundle under her arm, while the other replaces it with clean. It's still strange to see them doing slave's work, but it seems to be the surfacers' way. They talk continuously, laughing with each other. Their words are still meaningless to Loiral, but he is starting to be able to pick out the rhythm and the tone. They are relaxed and cheerful, and he is happy to be ignored.

Loiral and Marcus - Recapture - 7.v

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Unexpectedly, inspiration has struck to write some more of this! Happy holidays, folks.

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The door opens, and blinding light washes across Loiral where he lies. Marcus is just a dark and blurred silhouette, but Loiral knows him by his heavy footfalls, and by the easy confidence of his posture, and by the threatening shape of the scourge on his hip. His captor, his torturer. His master.

Loiral's first impulse is to curl up and hide his face, like a useless child. His second is to beg for mercy.

Loiral and Marcus - Recapture - 7.iv

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Loiral has the peculiar experience of becoming familiar with the manhandling well before he consciously understands. At first it is purely a rhythm in the pain. Agony jumps and flares in patterns. Across his back. Across his front. Each limb in turn.

Water is poured across his lips and he is desperately thirsty but he does not want it. He doesn’t have the coordination to drink. It gets into his throat, his lungs, leaves him coughing and choking. Agony in his chest, over and over. Then, before the spasms end, the pattern begins again.

Loiral and Marcus - Recapture - 7.iii

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[Caution: gore.]

Loiral and Marcus - Recapture - 7.ii

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Through the pain and the hysterical panic, Loiral isn't certain when the cuffs are clipped round his wrists. He certainly notices when a hood is shoved over his head, the rope pulled tight around his throat.

In the suffocating dark, he cannot decipher the impacts any more. The gauntleted hands are all over him – gripping and pulling and snapping and driving home blow after punishing blow. Pain flares over and over until he has no idea which way is up.

Loiral and Marcus - Recapture - 7.i

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Loiral runs at the breakneck pace that only outright terror permits. He is acutely aware of the gravel giving under his imperfectly-fitted boots, stealing his momentum. His hand moves to the sword on his hip. Not fast enough. He’s sure it won’t be fast enough. 

Several paces in, he realises he has to decide where he’s going. Away is not good enough. He can hear the human’s deep voice ringing out in sonorous incantation behind him. 

Loiral and Marcus - Flight - 6.iii

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[Content includes: fantasy racism, mention of slavery.]

"It's not that simple," Aeliira explains, voice edged with frustration. Loiral feels it too. Panic still beats a steady rhythm in the back of his head, despite the comforting weight of new arms and armour, despite the distance he's put between himself and the source of the terror. He's been making tough decisions one after another for hours. He knows that implacable monster is out there somewhere, perhaps already on his trail. And even his supposed ally is as likely to gut and rob him as to help.

Loiral and Marcus - What Slaves Do - 5.vi

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“Were you good while I was away, drow?”

Pretend it never happened, he said to Aeliira. To his best hope of escape. That shared conspiracy feels like a tentative promise that she might help him...

But on his knees before the human that he calls master, all thoughts of lying shrivel and die in Loiral’s mouth. There’s too much evidence. His healed back. The witnesses - hells, how many saw, if you count the slaves? Too many.

Loiral and Marcus - What Slaves Do - 5.ii

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By the time he’s scrubbed the whole floor clean, Loiral’s back is aching from the unfamiliar pattern of exercise, but he welcomes it. Better to work hard and stay strong than to waste away in chains. He’s hungry, but he’s been hungry before. He’ll cope. And thirst at least is not an issue. He has to draw fresh water a couple of times when his supply runs low or gets too murky. While he’s out there he drinks his fill . It feels good. Not just because the water is cool and clean and refreshing, but because it’s something he can do on his own initiative to make himself feel better.

Loiral and Marcus - What Slaves Do - 5.i

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Once he’s dressed in his slave’s clothes and hobbled again to keep him from running, he’s led out of the cell. His wrists are still cuffed, and the metal chafes on the half-healed sores, but the connecting chain is removed so that he’s free to move his arms. They stop at the door at the end of the corridor - Loiral assumes some kind of back room, he’s seen Aeliira go through here - and Marcus knocks sharply.

Loiral and Marcus - A Lesson In Respect - 4.iii

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Loiral’s reverie is blank and thoughtless, too exhausted for reflection or introspection. And it’s too short, interrupted by the return of the torturer.

He’s too shattered to more than limp through the motions of complying with basic instructions. Everything hurts. He can’t get enough air to stop the room spinning unless he stays flat on the floor. Movement sends cramps through his limbs and cracks open his scabbed back. His throat is swollen and his head is pounding. He can barely move his arms and he can’t even feel his hands.

Loiral and Marcus - A Lesson In Respect - 4.ii

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Time crawls. Loiral has no way of tracking it. Fear retreats a little as he adjusts to being alone again. But misery persists. Breathing hurts. Shifting against the wall hurts. His arms start to hurt from the unnatural angle. His feet hurt. His mouth hurts. His throat hurts. And most of all, his legs ache from standing with them bent. He can shift his weight around a little to alleviate that pain. But it only puts off the inevitable as the muscles slowly exhaust themselves.

Loiral and Marcus - A Lesson In Respect - 4.i

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Loiral is picked up by his collar, and Marcus drags him out of the cell. Even if he weren't far too miserable and scared to ask questions, he's too busy choking. He's dragged a short way down the corridor, then released in front of the water closet and shoved towards it. "Relieve yourself," he's ordered shortly, and he supposes he's glad of the opportunity to do so. By the time he is done and stumbles back into the corridor, the surfacer is waiting with a box of metal objects under one arm: shackles and clamps and locks and nails and so forth. Deeply intimidating, in context. He doesn't have time to dwell on it. He's dragged by the neck again back to the cell and tossed roughly to the floor by the back wall.

Loiral and Marcus - An Excursion - 3.v

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The return trip to the holding facility is uneventful. Loiral watches the ground, or looks at the barbed scourge hanging from his master’s belt, and is quietly obedient. They stop only once, at a stall selling snack food. “Are you hungry, drow?” The question comes as a surprise. “No, master.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he realises how peculiar that is. It must have been at least a day since he last ate, if not two or more. And in that time he’s been pushed past all his limits both physical and mental. He should be ravenous. But he’s just queasy. “I, ah, I still feel a little sick, master.” “Hm. What do you eat?” A tug on his collar guides him to stand up and look at the stall.

Loiral and Marcus - An Excursion - 3.iv

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The human female takes the cup away once Loiral has drunk and brings him another. He drinks that too, and a third, and starts to feel better. When he refuses a fourth, she sits down on the floor in front of him, legs crossed.

He blinks at her in surprise. Who sits down with a slave like that? Could she be a slave as well? But no, her clothes look well-fitted and well-made, and there’s no collar on her or brand that he can see. She wears weapons: a long knife on one hip and a coiled whip on the other. And she spoke to the man - Marcus - like an equal. Loiral supposes it must just be another surfacer peculiarity.

Loiral and Marcus - An Excursion - 3.iii

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As his pulse starts to calm, Loiral starts to think about his situation again. Briefly he considers escape. But even if his tormentor is not in the room, he is being watched, he’s in chains, and he’s locked inside this building, presumably. This is definitely not the time.

There are two surfacers still in the room - he thinks. He didn’t see more, but there were other demands on his attention.. The pair were seated at a bench to the side when he came in, and he listens to them chatter to each other in their ugly language. They sound young, he thinks. Not that he’s great at telling the age of a human.