[Year 351, The month of Storm, day 17]

A chilling splash of cold water woke me up.

“Cauuagh Cauuahhgh” The world started to come into focus as I coughed up the water that managed to enter my mouth.

A thick layer of fog blanketed the ground and the sun was just beginning its arc along the sky above. On the upside, I was no longer hanging upside down from a tree. However, that was the only good thing about any of this.

Even now, flashes of jumbled memories of me waking up only to be drugged again ran through my mind as I struggled, to no avail, to raise my hand. My back was up against the trunk of a collapsed tree and my arms and legs were bound together with thick rope in front of me. I was starving, soaking wet, and could barely wiggle a finger. Also, I was completely naked.

“Sorry for the rude awakening my resilient friend, but you have enough danken flowing through your veins to kill a man several times over, and we need you conscious for this.”

The deep-voice belonged to the angry dark-skinned man. He was standing on the opposite side of a small fire with an empty canteen in his hand. The three new faces accompanied him must have been the drunk leader from before and the pair that had been on patrol last night. The strange metal implements that hung above the flames were already red hot. I couldn’t stop my mouth from forming into a self-deprecating smile as I realized the nightmare I’d awakened to.

“Now, I know elves teach your kind our language so the silent treatment won’t work on me. I won’t lie and say that you’re gonna live through this, but how long this is gonna take and how painful it’s gonna be depended entirely on you.” The dark-skin man continued to speak in a calm tone as he put the canteen down and slowly put a strange leather glove on his right hand.

“Get to it already. We’re already a day behind schedule and I’d rather not be caught in elven territory.” The impatient tone of voice and blood-shot eyes marked the medium-sized man as the drunken leader from last night. He was less impressive than I thought he’d be, with his dull brown hair and a scruffy beard.

“Patience, Renvar. This isn’t something you can rush.” The unknown on the right spoke up in response to their leader’s pestering. He was the shortest of the men, barely at the shoulders of his leader, but also the most muscular of the bunch. His arms were as thick as my thighs and there wasn’t a single strand of hair on his head.

“We’re not bad people you see. We’re just trying to make a living in this world, just like everyone else in this godforsaken world.”

The dark-skinned man ignored his companions as he continued to speak in a calm voice. He reached out with his right hand, grabbed hold of one of the red-hot pokers, and held it a little bit away from his head with a wide grin on his face.

“We only want you to answer a couple questions. Just tell us a few things and you can fall into a permanent dream.”

The man slowly approached me. Each of his footsteps caused my heart to beat faster than it had been the moment before. They hadn’t even done anything yet, but there was enough sweat flowing down my back to rival a river.

When his hand reached out, I tried my best to move away, but he easily managed to grab my chin with his left hand and was forced to look directly at him. His figure blocked out all other things, but my eyes were drawn to the ever approaching poker. Only when it red hot end hovered just above my left shoulder he did the man speak again.

“Tell me, where are the others of your pack? How many of them are you? When are they expecting you to return?”

Once again, I desperately tried to break free of my bonds, but I couldn’t even summon a tenth of my usual strength. However, that’s when the burning began.

“AUGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”

My pained screams tore away the visage of the quiet early morning forest as I was racked with a type of pain I hadn’t felt in quite some time. An explosion of golden light blinded me, yet the pain I felt in my shoulder had my full attention.

The skin on my left shoulder literally started to boil when he pressed the red-hot poker against it. The all too familiar smell of my own burning flesh blew away the sluggishness of my mind. I flailed around as best as I could, but the man’s grip on my chin remained firm and I was forced to endure the burning all over again. Blood filled my mouth as the poker dug deeper into my shoulder, the newly formed layers of flesh in its wake helping the piece of metal lodge itself into my body.

I don’t how much time had passed before it happened, but the man reached a point where my body healed itself fasted than the poker could cut through it. Even when the man used both hands, he couldn’t get the poker any deeper than halfway through my shoulder.

“You are a tough one, my friend. Most men would have passed out or bitten their tongue clean off by now. In fact, that’s why this is an unpopular method amongst professionals, you can’t get any information out of the dead and dying after all. But you, you’re special.”

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuu!!!!!”

With a vicious yank, the man managed to wring another yell out of me.

“By Azul, it’s already closing. Not even a priestess could heal an injury that quickly.”

“You think all Darh’ki heal like that?”

“Impossible, we would have heard about it by know if they dead.”

The leader and one of the other observers were speaking about something. It probably had something to do with the hunk of bloody flesh clinging to the poker in the dark-skinned man’s hand.

“You see my friend was right. Normally I wouldn’t be so forceful with my methods, but our time constraint and that body of yours have given me a bit of leeway. However, I hate unnecessary cruelty and try to avoid it whenever possible. Just tell me what we want to know.”

As he spoke in his calming tone, the man bent down and lifted my head so I was forced to look him straight in the eyes. That was how I knew he was lying through his teeth. That gleam in his eyes and the barely contained grin on his face didn’t belong to someone that was reluctant to do any of this.

“Where are the others of your pack? How many of them are you? When are they expecting you to return?”

The image of Aiyana’s bloody and bruised face flashed through my mind in response to the repeat of the questions. No matter what, I couldn’t allow them to get their hands on her.

“Hawck twooe” I don’t know which one of us was more surprised that I managed to spit a glob of blood in his face.

“You piece of shit!!”

That was the only intelligible he said before he proceeded to beat me over the head with the poker. I even managed to get a taste of my own shoulder when he shattered my front teeth with it. Eventually he tired himself out beating my head in and took a long enough break for my swollen eyes to open back up.

However, before I could breathe a relieved sigh and spit out teeth fragments, the three watchers descended upon me. My body was moved unto the fallen tree, with one of them holding my feet down, another practically sitting on my arms, and the third forcing my left completely open.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the dark-skinned man approaching with a new poker. This one ended in a narrow point no larger than my little finger.

“This is your last chance before things get really bad for you, my friend. Where are the others of your pack? How many of them are you? When are they expecting you to return?”

Aiyana’s face flashed through my face again. Death was the preferable option letting them get to her. I respond to the third round of questions with a, now almost toothless, smile and prepared myself for what was to come.

“Haah, very well, my friend. I command you for knowingly choosing a dog’s death.” With a steady hand, the man pushed the poker closer and closer to my left eye.

“Gyuaaaaaaaaaagu!!!”

The day had yet to truly arrived but I had been forced to relive the worst pain I’d ever experienced. However, the thing I focused on the most throughout it was that I’d managed to clench fists.

Something was wrong. Geisai hadn’t returned this morning to collect his daily rations.

Where is he? Did a wild monster get to him? What monster could do him in?

Those question racked my mind as my pacing dug a ravine into the floor. Geisei never ventured more than a day’s travel from whichever cave we occupied. Even at the worst of times he always made sure to come back and leave me some way of knowing he was safe. Yet, when I woke up the was no message from him. Those awful berries and the canteen I’d set out for him last night had gone untouched as well.

“If he’s messing with me, I swear I’m gonna wring his neck…”

Normally there wasn’t anything in the forest that posed a serious threat to him. Sure, a few of the monsters could give him a bit of trouble, but his strength and healing ability would see him through. Although it was possible to he managed to get stuck in a pit or under a boulder somewhere, but that was unlikely.

Unless he’d done something stup⎯

“No. There’s no way he could have done something so incredibly dumb.”

I stopped in place when the worst possible explanation crossed my mind. He said it took half a day to reach the shallow graves if he went there and something happened to him it would explain why he hadn’t shown up today. But what in all of Naelm would convince him to go there?

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll get it out of him later.” I really wish I was wrong, that he was just dozing off by the lakeside, but if there was even the slightest chance I right, I didn’t have the time to check the safe areas first.

“Spears, full canteen, dried meat, throwing knives…”

The list items I needed escaped my lips while I ran around the cave collecting them. I had no idea what I would actually need. Despite all the “what if..” scenarios we’d cooked up over the years experiencing the real thing chilled me to the bone.

“That should be right.. here it is.”

I pulled out the last thing I needed form under a pile of furs. The dark brown leather jacket had a cross-strap sash, with numerous loops running along it, across the chest area, the mid-drift was metal-plated, and the shoulders were propped up by the thin metal plates sewn under the leather. However, the standout feature were the golden leaf emblems on the cuffs.

It’d been several years since we pulled out of a collapsed house and I guess now was as good a time as any other to give it a test run. Once I gathered everything up in a makeshift bag, I dashed out of the cave northern bound and prayed that I was wrong.