The sun and the moon

The earth and the stars

I wanted to hold

Them in my own hand

I wanted, I wanted

Them in my own hand

I wanted, I wanted

Them in my own hand

Hubris.

Why didn’t Broken want to kill himself? If he had nothing to live for, why didn’t he just kill himself? Why didn’t he at least try?

Because in truth, as he searched deep within himself, he just didn’t care.

Days passed. Broken knew he had left Asan Paril, that he was being moved somewhere else, but he just didn’t care.

Day and night, light and dark, Broken ate the food he was provided, and, for the remainder of his time, did nothing, absolutely nothing.

He didn’t even think. There was nothing to think about, anymore.

Everything Broken had ever loved or believed in had been ripped away from him once before, a long time ago.

Now, history repeated itself. Broken was alone once again. Despite all his careful planning, despite his meticulously applied skill, he had lost Mai. He had lost his purpose.

If he tried to do anything, he would be like an ant running around in a colony that had lost its queen.

There was no point to waste effort, energy.

By definition, there was no reason to do anything, if there was no goal to strive for.

And so Broken merely existed, and did little else.

Days passed. Broken’s surroundings changed quite drastically, but he cared little. He found himself on a ship, soon enough, a prison ship, or a carrack, as it was called.

The ship was large, and circled the seas north of the Makini homelands aimlessly. For the carrack was not bringing its prisoners to any destination. It was the destination, and miles and miles of frigid sea all around proved a far more effective deterrent than any guarded walls.

Not that there weren’t guarded walls. There were.

Broken, day in, and day out was kept in a windowless cell, perhaps ten feet long, ten feet wide, and ten feet up. His wrists were attached to chains that came from the ceiling. The chains were taunt enough so that they hung his hands at head level. His arms ached from being bent, but Broken didn’t care.

Black walls surrounded Broken on three sides, all but the front, the direction the chains held him, and made him face in.

The front was formed of vertical black bars, ten of them, exactly. When a guard entered to give him food, all the bars shafted down, into the floor.

Broken was neither chained nor imprisoned in his cell by any other way, but the chains and the bars were enough.

From his vantage, through the bars, Broken could see the hall before him through eyes like slits.

Guards passed by, on various errands, and occasionally they whispered to each other, without realizing that Broken’s acute senses allowed him to hear them perfectly.

From the guards, Broken had learned that the prison carrack was divided into three cell blocks. There were two blocks on what was called the basement level, and one block on what was called the sub-basement level. From what Broken gathered, he was in the sub-basement block.

Each block housed a hundred prisoners at max capacity, Broken had also learned, but the ship was only about two-thirds full. It seemed the guards were still nervous though, as two hundred escaped murderers and other worst-of-the-worst would be able to easily overpower the fifty or so guards and other personal on the ship, if they all managed to escape.

The guards knew that was impossible, such were the precautions taken on the ship, and laughed about their fears, but they laughed nervously.

It seemed the sub-basement level was home to the convicts who were the worst of the worst, even for those who managed to be evil enough to get onto the ship. Constantly, their words assaulted Broken’s ears, as they spoke of what they were going to do when they get out, how they were going to do it, and who they were going to do it with.

Broken listened, and considered it all a lesson in human psychology. Not that he really needed to learn anything, anyway. Not in his state. Sometimes, Broken thought he heard the faint hum of a man praying, but he was sure the words came from one of the guards. There was no way a prisoner here was going to praise God.

It was on the second day Broken was on the ship, when he was first moved from his cell.

Four guards came in, as the bars shot down to the floor to let them have entrance, and unchained Broken. Immediately afterwards, they bound him again in a variety of other ways, so that he would not be a problem during transit. But Broken still had a moment of freedom. They blindfolded him, and led him out of the cell.

Broken let the guards direct his shuffling, slow steps.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour later, they finally reached their destination. Broken found himself being slammed down in a hard chair, and his various bonds being replaced with new bonds, to the chair.

When the guards were done, Broken’s blindfold was taken off. He examined his new restraints. The chair was metal, and his legs were chained to the legs of the chair. His arms were forced together into his lap, and chained to the floor. It actually seemed that in his current situation, Broken would be able to stand, but he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere else.

He sat across a high backed table, in a small room, only lit by a pair of hanging lanterns on opposite walls. It was rather similar in appearance to his cell. Across the table, there was a comfortable, cushioned chair, in sharp contrast to Broken’s chair of iron.

A girl sat in it.

That was probably to harsh, Broken corrected himself. She was clearly in her twenties. It was just, he had rather expected an older interrogator. A guard stood on either side of her chair. Behind Broken, two guards flanked him as well.

Broken studied the woman who sat before him. She, oddly for a Makini, had red hair, but it was carefully combed, and let to hang straight down behind her back. She wore black attire, of course, semi-uniform, and semi-armor. What was strange about it was that it showed an odd amount of chest, and even a little cleavage.

Broken wouldn’t have thought that the prisoners needed more incitement.

But what did he know? He was nothing, anymore.

“We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” said the girl.

Broken had a quip prepared, and was just about to let it loose, when he remembered that he had failed twice at life, and so there was no point. He stayed silent.

“You don’t talk?” asked the girl. “All right, then. Hit him.”

The guard who stood to Broken’s right turned to him, and unleashed a powerful backhanded blow to Broken’s right shoulder.

Broken absorbed the damage, and didn’t even recoil. Truth be told, compared to the many things he had been through, the strike didn’t even hurt that much.

“All right, then,” said the girl. It was clear she was nervous. What kind of interrogator is she?

“Your alias is Broken,” she said. “What is your real name?”

Broken said nothing.

“This can be made very, very painful, if that’s what you want,” said the interrogator.

Again, Broken had no comment.

“Hit him again,” said the girl.

And the guards did, interchanging, again, and again, and again. Through it all, Broken said nothing, his face expressionless.

When they were finally done, the girl spoke once more. “That’s not the worst we can do.”

The silence seemed to scare her.

“We will talk again, when you are ready,” said the girl. “You have brought yourself a whole world of pain.” She looked at the guards behind Broken. “Get the thunder-strikers. If that doesn’t work, keep trying.” She looked solidly at Broken. “The pain stops when you’re willing to talk.”

And then, she left the room.

The guards didn’t even bother to get Broken out of the chair. One of them left, and then came back with a small, black object, with painted yellow streaks. It was magic, Broken knew. He had felt the lightning coursing his body before.

Then there was pain.

Pain.

Nowhere near as much pain as the failed exorcism had caused him, through. It was almost funny to see them try to break down a wall that could not be broken.

Even as his body writhed with pulsating energy--writhed because he let it, because Broken didn’t bother to hold himself still--his mind could hold concrete thoughts.

If they were trying to make his whole world pain, they had a long ways to go. A very, very long ways.

Broken closed his eyes, and thought, out of curiosity, what it would be like on a sandy beach this time of year. It was fall, and so there would be no crowds. It would be nice to walk down the beach.

But Broken didn’t deserve that. He had failed, twice. Once for what had happened all those many ages ago, and once, for what had happened less than a week past.

Broken tried to open his mind up to the pain, tried to drown everything in the white of agony, but he could not. The pain was nowhere near intense enough. It felt like a pinprick, compared to other things he had been through. A pinprick, on a man who had never once been afraid.

The pain wasn’t enough.

As the pain came, on and off, interspersed with the guards asking him if he wanted to talk, yet, Broken felt a twinge of irritation, at their futile efforts.

No one knew more than he just how much they were wasting their time.

Finally, after what Broken’s internal clock told him had been eight hours, the guards stopped, cursing that their fourth thunder-striker had run out of energy, and they didn’t have any more with them.

The guards untied him from the chair, and brought him back to his cell. Broken let them carry him along, even though he could have walked, quite easily. To explain that fact to them would have meant talking, and that was something he was not prepared to do.

When the guards put him back in his chains, within his cell, Broken straightened, opened his eyes, and looked at the guards.

As, before they could stop themselves, they took a step back from him, in pure horror, Broken knew what they were thinking.

How could he take so much, and still be conscious after the energy stopped? Broken was sure one was thinking.

What kind of freak is he? Broken was sure was the running dialogue in the mind of another.

Maybe he has some kind of Talent, Broken was confident a third thought. Some sort of Talent, so he can siphon off pain!

As the bars snapped shut, and the guards scattered, Broken thought to himself about the truth. The truth he was sure had never passed through their minds, because they could not possibly accept it.

I survived, unharmed, because I have inner strength you couldn’t possibly imagine, guards.

But when things mattered most, his abilities had failed him. The prison didn’t contribute to his depression. Broken had been through worse, far, far worse, and emerged unscathed. The prison carrack to Broken was like a shell, a shell he could escape from at any time.

Broken just didn’t see the point.

***

Her name was Alsi. Alsi as Sarani del Makin, in full.

But who was she?

Alsi was third interrogator aboard the prison carrack known as the Wretched. She was the junior interrogator, the third of three.

Truth be told, the job of an interrogator was not the one she wanted. But she hadn’t had much of a choice in the matter. Alsi was a noblewoman, the seventh of seven children, three boys, and four girls. Rather than being dotted on, as the youngest, she hard rather been ignored. If she did something, it was old news because her parents had already seen six children do it before her, and, if she didn’t do something, she was frowned upon, because everybody else already had.

The Lord Sarani, her father, had never really had the time or the patience for her, to the extent where he couldn’t even be bothered to arrange her a marriage.

One day, instead, only a single year ago, or near enough, he had met with her, and told her in no uncertain terms that she was going to be a Makini interrogator. He had had to say as much three times, before the words finally processed.

Alsi had asked her father what he was talking about, but he responded by saying that the pay was good, and that she had never been the type to spend her life at balls and fancy feasts anyway.

In truth, Alsi had always fantasized about marriage, as had almost every Makini girl her age, but her father had never spent the time to realize that. He had wanted her to be different, because that way, it wasn’t his fault that she always had seemed stifled, compared to her older siblings.

And so, in short order, she had been shipped off to train. In training, she had suffered a variety of horrors she had rather not think about, and then she had come aboard the Wretched, where the real horrors lurked.

When her father had told her offhand about what her future was to be, after a few days in tears, Alsi had managed to take what came in stride.

She still held all her emotions in, her stifled potential.

She had not wanted to be this. During her time aboard the Wretched, about six months, now, Alsi had seen things she had never wished to see. In six months, the ship had only stopped at port once, to pick up supplies, and new prisoners. The ship had only stopped for a day.

In her own way, just as much as the prisoners, Alsi was trapped. She was the only one, by happenstance, who had not chosen the assignment. There had been a manpower shortage, and so she had ended up on the Wretched, very much without any say in the matter.

When she had first been given the position, she had wondered what kind of person would volunteer. The truth was, most of Alsi’s fellow crewmembers had no more moral fiber than those they guarded. Some far, far less.

A prime example of this was the resident demon, Eton, who had come onboard when the prisoner Broken had.

Broken.

Alsi stopped to think, as she looked about her surroundings. It was night, and she was on the deck of the Wretched, leaning over the railing. It was now that she had been given off time, to have one of those moments with herself.

With herself, and her nightmares.

Alsi had never had any illusions about her job. She was an interrogator. Her life’s work was to make others suffer. But Broken had put everything into perspective for her.

According to his file, Broken had been a warrior errant, of sorts. He had happened upon none other than the Princess of the Empire, Maiako as Arathou del Tachen, and had sworn himself to her. He then had been oddly successful at keeping her safe. But then, his run of luck had ended, and he had come to the carrack. It was Alsi’s job to decipher Broken’s past, to see if somehow, he was connected to any who were possible threats. His interrogation was a top priority.

Why was it Alsi’s job, and not the job for one more experienced?

Because Eton had said so. That was the odd truth. When Eton had come aboard, he had relayed that his handlers needed Alsi to do the job. He said that Broken would be tough to crack, and only one with nonstandard experience could do it.

Alsi didn’t even know what that meant. All she knew, was that, an hour ago, the guards had emptied the energies of five thunder shockers on Broken, and they hadn’t even put a dent in him. That was nearly a record.

If it had been up to Alsi, she would have let the poor, fallen man go. All he had tried to do was save a life, and his current condition was no reward. But it was not up to Alsi.

Indeed, if she displayed the slightest hint of rebellion, the captain could lock her up with the prisoners. And that was not something Alsi was going to let happen.

She turned from the railing, from the dark, rushing sea, as she realized a figure was coming over to her.

It was Eton. The two of them were all alone of the deck.

Eton craned his neck to look up at Alsi, such was their difference in height. Alsi didn’t know why a shapeshifting demon wouldn’t choose a form more…intimidating. However, she had more pressing worries. Namely, what the demon intended to talk to her about.

“You failed,” said Eton, explaining his topic, quite clearly.

“It’s been only one day,” she replied. “Surely, you don’t expect me to break him in one day.”

“It was not your results that I criticize,” said Eton, “for I know it is too early to tell. What I dislike, however, are your methods.”

“What do you mean?” asked Alsi. “I fed him pain. I fed him more pain than I believe I could possibly ever handle.”

“That tactic,” said Eton, “is traditional.”

“There is something wrong with proven methods?” asked Alsi.

“Broken knows the tried and true methods,” said Eton. “He knows them well.” It seemed the demon himself knew Broken personally.

“Do you know my mark?” Alsi asked Eton.

“My handlers do,” replied the demon, “and that’s all that really matters. In order to break Broken, you need to do something unexpected. That is why you were chosen to interrogate him. Because you, yourself, are unexpected.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a female,” said Eton. “A young, beautiful female, who looks like she has no purpose on this ship. Why do you think I forced you to wear that outfit?” The demon answered his own question. “To highlight your…physical attributes.”

“Why?”

“Because Broken is an individual who needs to be engaged,” said Eton. “He is able and perfectly willing to separate his mind from outside stimuli, to endure any pain you could possibly give him. His weakness is that, once he make a connection, he makes it for life. He is stubborn to no end.”

“You mean, he has honor,” said Alsi.

“In a way,” replied Eton. “What you need to do is to reel him out of his shell, as if he were some sort of turtle-fish. And then, when he is committed, he will be weak. Prey on him then, and get the information you need.” The demon paused. “Why do you think Broken is so depressed now? Because he reached out, and formed a connection with the princess Maiako, and now, he knows only in death will he see her again.” The demon laughed.

“Think on that, Alsi. And then, when you see him again, I expect better results. Do not disappoint me, my dear.”

“I won’t.” Alsi knew she didn’t have much of a choice.

“That is a very good answer, my dear,” said Eton. “Now, start thinking. I bid you farewell.”

And the demon swept away.

Alsi was alone once more. Now, however, she knew she could not rest. She had a job to do. A very distasteful job, but a job nevertheless.

Alsi headed to the crew cabins. There, she ran across the captain, a tall, imposing man, by the name of Ezea Radi. She turned away from him after exchanging proper greetings.

She then headed to her room. It was small, no larger than a prisoner cell. A bed, a writing table, a chair, and a chest were all that could be squeezed within the small, dark space. A tiny porthole provided the only light within the room: the light of the stars. Alsi closed the door behind her, and pulled the porthole shutters wide open.

Only a little more light filtered into the room, but that small difference made her feel a little better.

Alsi changed into her night clothes, and readied herself for bed, smoothly, and, as she thought, at least, rather efficiently.

And all the while, Alsi was thinking of ways to draw Broken out, entrap him, and rip his mind to shreds.