Ara guided me into the bowels of the beast as I reached into the palisade’s inner chambers. She and I walked through ever evolving hallways, each more gruesome than the last. First, all paint left the walls. Scratches and scrapes altered from a happen stance to an inevitability, and the smell of musty mold and the repulsive rot of marrow and flesh leaked into our noses.

The walls shrunk until I ducked my head while walking at a slight slant. Something about the air thinned, like I was slowly suffocating as I squeezed by. Whenever the sound of hollow screams began radiating in the background, Ara said, “You'll be just like them, filthy Donovan.”

I rolled my eyes, “I'm pretty clean most of the time. Do I smell bad?”

She clenched her hands into fists, “You've got nerve, but that won't last long.”

Hellish howling intermingled with the screams along with a familiar ring in my ears. I breathed deep before I said, “You'll be using plague doctors on me then?”

She clapped her hands before saying, “Hi hi, exactly. I hope you like watching your parents die over and over.”

“Mind elaborating on why you act like an angry child? Seems like you’d need a reason for lashing out like that.”

Ara murmured, “The Donovan’s where cruel to me. I don’t need any other reason.”

Needless to say, her comments dug under my skin, but killing her over something so trivial, well, that’s even pettier than she was.

Regardless, the horrors of the palisade became clear after she placed me in a room with a steel operating table in it. Teeth, hair, and nails scattered around the room while a patch of redd moss grew on one of its corner, pulsing like a beating heart. The humidity and heavy heat of the air caused a clammy sweat on Ara’s face in seconds, yet no sweat dripped from mine. Deluge’s modifications eliminated any of my sensitivity to temperature.

Behind the table stood a masked man holding a black scythe of ebony and bone. The ringing in my ears blurred my vision as visions of cooking flesh and empty eyes swirled in in this prison. Ara pushed me towards the table, and I stumbled forward as my breathing and composure unraveled into ragged, convulsing movements.

Like a sensation between pain and discomfort, I squirmed under my skin as I blinked nothing out of my eyes, yet they watered. Needles jabbed from my skin as they both strapped me to the table, Ara eager to start the torture. In my eyes, it had already begun.

Ara giggled at me before I laughed loud. The laugh continued until Ara snapped with displeasure, “What is so funny?”

My teeth clattered as my mother burned alive in front of me, yet I said, “If this is all, then this is nothing new. I have felt this pain and lived through it. I shall do so once more.”

She swung a fist against my left jaw, radiating a shot of torment up the side of my face. Red ice prickled up and out of my skin, piercing my face till a minced piece of meat remained of my left cheek. before Ara snapped, “Sir Regis and I shall bring something far worse than just dead parents. We’ll be showing you a whole nother world.”

I forced my jaw open, snapping the frozen blood before I said, “Go ahead then Miss Viper. Show me something new. I’ll return the favor later.”

She screamed before smashing her hand against my left arm, the same deep cold penetrating my insides as before. As if crushed by a siberian snake, coils of agony shot up my arm before the limb convulsed in sheer torment. Ara’s face flushed at this point, her breath coming in full pants like a dog in heat.

Sir Regis said, “We can’t kill him here, Ara. This is merely an interrogation, not an execution.”

She shook her head as she said, “It doesn’t matter. I’ve heard rumors of Jericho’s apparent invincibility.”

Deluge frowned in my mind as he said, “This is quite the mess we’re in.”

I replied, “Stop them if we are close to death, but I know we can go through more than merely this.”

He replied, “Good luck sustaining through the experience. You’ll come out new and refreshed, I’m sure.”

A laugh escaped my broken face before Ara clenched her fists in frustration. She howled at Sir Regis, “Help me. I can’t stand his incessant grinning. I want some to hear some howling for Gaia’s sake.”

Obeying the order, Sir Regis lifted then lowered his scythe into my right arm, and no longer could I smile. A darkness deeper than decay and moving as death seeped in. My arm shivered and jostled around as if possessed before the limb snapped then slammed into the table beneath me.

The metal crumpled like the pop of squashing a cockroach underfoot. My restraints snapped before I fell to the hard, moist brick beneath me. I pushed my face into the stone, the rock cracking as my forehead broke it. My arm writhed at random before slamming into the chest of Sir Regis, sending him across the room before his body popped against the wall like a blood filled balloon. I dashed away from Ara as she screamed before I grabbed my arm and pushed it down.

Ara said, “You killed him. You will be tried for murder you heathen.”

I shook my head as I said, “I can’t help but move a little when I’m...” My voice broke as I said, “This much pain.”

My body heated until the ice melted in moments. It coursed back into me before I grit my teeth and pounded my black, deformed arm into the wall. A wave of woe rippled through my body, numbing my hand before I dived through the misery. In an instant, I controlled my arm like sliding back into its flesh before Deluge said, his voice harsh as broken glass,

“They sliced into our souls. I wouldn’t allow it.”

I nodded with full agreement before saying to Ara, “What kind of torture involves breaking the soul of your captor?”

She frowned before she snapped, “I can restore wounded souls. This is the capital’s favorite form of torture. It leaves no physical marks, yet it hurts worse than any pain.”

I frowned clasping my right arm once more as I said, “Eh, it was pretty bad, but I’ve felt worse.”

Her jaw gaped open as I continued, “Once, I cut of my own legs and crawled away from a monster that was shooting worms under my skin. It’s something unlike anything else, I’ll tell yah.”

My nonchalance left her confused and off balance before she snapped, “How did you heal those wounds?”

“Don’t know. Can’t remember.”

She ground her teeth before screaming once more, but I snapped my fingers, releasing a deafening boom before I said, “Stop whining like a child. I’m done dealing with it.”

The door behind her slammed open as several armed guards and plague doctors stormed in. They surrounded me before Abraham stepped out from between them, his frown displeased and distant,

“Well, well, well. Look’s like you murdered Sir Regis during your torture. That’s a capital offense here at the palisade.”

I rolled my eyes before saying, “They ruptured my soul, so my arm went berserk, killing him. That’s like testing a man’s reflexes by slicing a sword towards his throat then complaining when your head’s lopped from your body in reply. This is absurd.”

Abraham’s placed his fingertips together in front of him as he walked around the room. After approaching me, he said, “How about we make a deal?”

I squinted my eyes as I said, “What kind?”

“One where you might not die.”

I slicked my hair back as the scent of Sir Regis’s corpse spread to us. Like inhaling the aroma of a perfectly peppered steak, I breathed deep before saying, “Alright, I’ll hear you out.”

A glowing grin exploded on his face before he said, “Wonderful. You see, we have a rather special stone we acquired not long ago. If you wouldn’t mind being a test subject, I can pardon your death sentence.”

I thought towards Deluge, “Do you think the star stone will destroy our minds?”

“Of course not. It can’t be stronger than Gaia’s remnant.”

I shrugged and said aloud, “Alright. Sounds simple.”

The guards near us cringed before Abraham clapped his hands and said, “Perfect.”

As the guards left the room, Arbraham walked closer towards me before saying, “You know, I enjoy my enemies close, but you. You’re a little too powerful for your own good. Solomon, he’s a mindless thrall. You, you think too much.”

He leaned close as he said, “This is what happens to those who show me disfavor. This is what happens when-”

I gripped three fingers into his mouth with my thumb and index finger around his throat. With a vice grip, I locked him there, unable to breath or move. Pulling him closer, I said, “I can pop your skull like a snapping a twig. Do not misunderstand. I do not obey your orders.”

I lifted him from the ground as his face purpled. After a moment, I spoke with words crushing as calamity, “I choose to play along.”

Dropping him onto the ground, he heaped in a pile of limp limbs before coughing for several minutes. I left him before reaching Ara and flashing a cold, callous grin as I placed a fingertip on her forehead. A bead of sweat dripped down her pale cheek as I ground my words like granite,

“Nothing could stop me from killing either of you. Not Solomon. Not Gaia. Not even my own kindness. You forfeit that luxury, and with one more annoyance, you donate your flesh and blood.”

There I left them both pale with sheen's of cold sweat, leaving them alone in that corpse ridden room. Long after I left, I heard echoes of Ara’s words,

“He’s not human.”

She wasn’t wrong, but what awaited me within the star stone was something far worse than mere madness. I awaited a revelation.