Chapter XI

The gallows from which Ardal rescued Caiaphas seemed bleak enough, though they were nothing compared to the prisons of the Inquisition. Long ago, these prisons had housed Nihilus' enemies. Now they only housed true Nihilites.

The prisoners dared not sleep, for if they did their dreams were nightmares, brought on by the constant screams of whatever victims had been so unfortunate as to be taken to the torture chamber, but no nightmare matched the horror they saw in their waking hours. They were starved, beaten, and forced into cold cells. Their manacles had been mangled, such that jagged edges of metal dug into their wrists and ankles. On the rare occasions that they were fed, they were given the saltiest meat they'd ever tasted, stale bread, and not a drop of water to drink. In some cells, the floor was a grate over hot coals. The floor of every cell was stained with the blood of those who'd slept in it before.

Occasionally there would be prisoners resourceful enough to get out of their cells, whether that was by stealing keys, picking locks, or by summoning helpful daemons. This prisoners met a quick end, though, as angels would immediately appear and slay the prisoner attempting to escape. The ceiling had symbols, similar to those written on the back of Sister Clove's hand, etched into the bricks, and the prisoners had deduced that it was through this enchantment that the angels, bound to that inquisitor's will, had been watching over the prison.

The Inquisition certainly knew how to get answers out of people. Not only did they threaten suffering for not cooperating with them, but they offered rewards for those who did. After even a day in their dungeons, eating overly-salted meat but never drinking any water, prisoners would become so thirsty that they'd tell their captors anything for but a few drops to quench that thirst. Some were suffering so badly that a quick death was their reward, and they groveled and thanked their captors for it. A very rare few would actually be let go for telling the inquisitors all they wanted to know, but they had to have some truly valuable information to earn that.

Ardal's cell was next to Caiaphas', and in the third hour of their imprisonment Caiaphas got Ardal's attention, “My friend, this is the end for me, but not for you.”

“What?”

Caiaphas tried to keep his voice hushed so that the inquisitors in the next room would not hear him. It was hard to find the right pitch so that Ardal could hear him but the inquisitors could not. “Sister Clove will be here soon, she's not going to risk another public execution, she's going to kill me in the torture chamber, but you don't have to die.”

Ardal shook his head, “Even if I were to summon Kamwi again I'd not be able to make it out of here, angels guard these halls...”

“Listen to me!” Caiaphas hissed. “Deidra's son, Therion's heir, watches over his faithful followers. He is fighting in this war too, but powerful as he is he cannot be everywhere at once.”

“Or anywhere at any time, judging by how well he's doing,” Ardal said, sneering at Caiaphas. He'd have spat at him if his mouth were not so dry. Between Deidra telling him that he was going to die, his being assigned to watching over a bunch of ill-behaved children, and the multitudes of Nihilite followers he'd seen falling away from the faith or suffering for it he had lost all confidence in the Nihilite resistance. He felt he was not far from losing his faith in Prunikos and the daemons as well. Where were they? Were they turning a blind eye to all of this suffering? He understood that because of the Firmament, that great barrier placed in the sky by the Agalmites' God, they could not enter the world of their own accord, but surely with a soothsayer like Deidra on their side they could do better than this.

“Pray to him,” Caiaphas said, “Pray to Elykos, but silently. Say the prayer in your head, call out to him, and he will come to your aid, I'm sure of it.”

“Therion's heir didn't come to your aid when you were last about to be executed, I did,” said Ardal. To him it was obvious, really, they needed a practical solution to their problem, not hopes and prayers to some distant mystic they'd never met.

“Who do you think sent you? You really think the courage you mustered, the courage to stand up to the inquisitors for the first time, came from within?”

The doors closing off their cells banged open suddenly, giving Caiaphas and Ardal both a jump. “Bring the one with silver hair!” Sister Clove shouted from down the hall, pointing at Caiaphas. The dungeon guards unlocked Caiaphas' cell and hoisted him up by his arms, dragging him off to face the end. Sister Clove was clearly doing all she could to hide how thrilled she was, for if she took pleasure in causing pain this would be sinful in the eyes of the Inquisition, which ironically made the best inquisitors the worst sinners of all.

“Don't forget what I said! And don't lose faith!” Caiaphas shouted back at Ardal. The guards twisted both of his arms, forcing him to face forward. Sister Clove shot Ardal a threatening look, but Ardal caught the glimmer of glee in her eyes as she pictured him on a rack.

Ardal watched as his friend disappeared behind iron-wood doors, wishing he could do something to help him. For a moment he considered conjuring Kamwi and trying to save Caiaphas and the other prisoners, in spite of the fact that he knew it would fail. If he didn't have long to live anyway a part of him wanted to go down fighting.

Instead he did as Caiaphas bid him, thinking that there was a chance that he could do more good that way. He took a seat in the corner of his cell, sitting cross-legged, and closed his eyes. Whenever Ardal had prayed before he had always prayed to the daemons, or to Prunikos herself, it felt more than a little strange to be praying to another man, though he remembered that this man was rumored to be an Aeon, a daemon in human flesh, so perhaps this was not so heretical as he thought. He concentrated as much as he could, mentally drowning out the sounds of the other prisoners screaming, numbing himself to the coldness of the floor and the pain in his wrists and ankles, and spoke, within his thoughts, “Elykos, son of Therion, Aeon from the Void and true king of Nihilus, I beg you for your help. I, as well as many of your loyal followers, am trapped in an Inquisition prison. We are all being tortured, starved, treated as refuse. Please, free us! Please free us! Please free us!” Ardal repeated those last three words in his head over and over. He didn't truly believe that repeating them would bring better results, if Elykos was capable of hearing his prayer he'd likely already heard it, but something about repeating the words in his head over and over made him feel better about the situation.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been at it before he heard screams he could almost certainly identify as Caiaphas. He shuddered to think of what Sister Clove was doing to the man, but he had a pretty good idea, given her reputation. He would hear a loud “clink” sound, likely the sound of a hammer hitting the head of a nail, followed by another scream.

“I have heard your prayer,” said an unfamiliar voice in Ardal's head. “You will soon be free, but you must help, you must make sure that every single inquisitor in the prison dies, leave no survivors.”

Ardal jumped at hearing the voice, which caused the jagged edges around his ankles to dig in deeper. For a moment he thought that surely this voice was merely his own imagination, he'd never heard the voices of the daemons during his prayers before. Yet, within minutes, he heard screams that sounded, somehow, different from the rest.

“Traitor!”

“Stop him!”

The sound of fighting. Swords slashing through cloth and flesh, blood pouring out upon the ground, and bones breaking.

“What?”

“Why would you do this to me?”

It sounded as if the inquisitors and witch-hunters were under attack, and from within, no less.

He could hear the voice of Sister Clove, “Surrender at once! In the name of Sandalphon, I command-” but she was cut off when Ardal heard the sound of a blunt object crushing a human skull. He'd only heard the sound a few times before, but it's a sound one does not forget easily.

All the while that these sounds echoed through the halls of the prison Ardal noticed that not once did the angels appear, not once did they come to the inquisitors' aid. Certainly that made sense once Sister Clove was dead, as she was likely the one who etched the summoning symbols into the ceiling in the first place, but it was odd that none of them appeared before that.

The other prisoners, likely ones with a better view of what was going on, began to cheer and shout, some of them even singing or laughing. The wooden door behind which Caiaphas had disappeared opened, and in walked one of the inquisitors, his eyes blank, as if he were in some sort of trance or sleep-walking. He walked over to Ardal’s cell and unlocked it, shortly thereafter unlocking and removing his manacles as well. The inquisitor then handed Ardal a small, bloody knife.

Ardal looked at the knife and then at the inquisitor, not sure at first if this really meant what he thought it meant. Elykos had told him that not a single inquisitor was to survive, but Ardal couldn’t tell if this man was really an inquisitor or some mute who had infiltrated the prison. The inquisitor nodded to him, pointed to the knife, and leaned his head back, exposing his throat, and then Ardal was certain of what he was supposed to do. He pressed the blade to the inquisitor’s throat and yanked it across, fast, cutting deep and spilling the inquisitor’s blood. The warm blood sprayed in Ardal’s face and all over his hands and torso, a sticky, unpleasant sensation that made Ardal cringe.

“You must not be afraid to shed blood, Ardal. Remember, you must ensure that every inquisitor in this prison dies, not a single survivor, and after that you have a war to fight.”

Keeping this in mind, and trying to ignore the feeling of the blood on his skin, Ardal opened the wooden door to see a scene of total carnage. The bodies of inquisitors and witch-hunters were strewn about the ground with throats slit, bowels spilled, and heads bashed. The prisoners in the cells were just now emerging from their cages; obviously they had nothing to do with the massacre.

“What happened here?” Ardal asked.

“A few of them started attacking the others, they were stabbing each other in the back, and in the panic they all massacred one another!”

“Elykos has answered our prayers!” said another prisoner.

“Elykos?” Ardal glanced around the room, “You’re sure he did all this?”

“We’ve been praying to him for days, and now the inquisitors have torn each other apart! You think there’s any other explanation?”

“No, you’re right. This had to be his doing,” Ardal said. “We can’t leave any survivors. Make sure they’re all dead.”

Ardal and the other prisoners took weapons from the bodies of the dead inquisitors and witch-hunters and went around the room, stabbing them between the ribs or bashing them over the heads. Some who had seemed dead already let out cries of pain as their lives were taken from them. Ardal, while finishing off the wounded, made his way to the torture chamber, silently praying that Caiaphas was still alive. He’d heard Caiaphas’ screams, and heard him stop screaming, but he held out hope that perhaps Caiaphas had been feigning death, just as so many of these inquisitors were apparently doing.

In the torture chamber, tied to a chair, Ardal saw Caiaphas, and there was no doubt his old friend was gone. Caiaphas had rusty nails driven into both of his wrists, his collar-bone, and in a line going down the middle of his face, going up his forehead and under his hairline. The expression on his face was one of true agony, and his eyes were dead. Ardal felt his stomach churn for a moment, and he ducked into a corner, retching.

“Remember what you saw here, Ardal, when you fight against those who have profaned our home and enslaved our people. If mercy ever gives you pause remember what they did to Caiaphas, remember that they have no mercy, and neither should you.”

Gasping and shaking, Ardal came out of the torture chamber again and watched as the other prisoners butchered the dying inquisitors, many of them smiling in satisfaction as they did so. It was obvious by their scars that they’d all suffered a lot. Some had scars from rat claws, some had burn scars, and others had lashes across their skin from whips. Most of them were emaciated, looked like men long dead walking around, their lips cracked and dry.

“You are going to lead them now, Ardal. Take them to see my mother, she will make sure they are fed. Then take the strongest from amongst them to the city of Bogeid. Make the knight ruling over that city pay for what he’s done to our people.”

Ardal responded, “If you have the power to control the minds of others why not take control of this whole nation?”

“The process takes time for most. A simpleton or someone with a weak will I can control easily, but a stronger will requires time. First I must implant ideas in their heads, making them think these ideas are their own, and over time slowly warm them up to my way of thinking before I take total control. Every time I do this I risk being discovered, allowing them to find my true identity. I’ve been working on freeing the people of this prison for weeks now. You are fortunate to have arrived when you did.”

“I don’t feel very fortunate,” retorted Ardal, “I still have only a few months to live.”

“In the city of Bogeid talk to the priestess. I have been working on her for a while, trying to turn her into an asset. Show her your hand and she will heal you.”

“An Agalmite priest will heal me?”

“Yes, if you do as I say I will see to it that you are taken care of.”

As much as Ardal was happy to see that he was free of the inquisition, and as relieved that he was that his disease would soon be cured, he couldn’t shake the feeling that everything about this was a bit disturbing. Elykos apparently had the power to invade the minds of others, to influence their thoughts while making them think that such thoughts were their own. Ardal had to wonder how many of his own thoughts were really his own and how many were planted there by Elykos. Was Caiaphas right? Was his courage that day, stopping the execution just Elykos’ doing? Did Ardal have any free will at all? Ardal soon realized that since Elykos could be in his thoughts at any moment, and might even be listening right now, he needed to banish such thoughts from his mind, lest Elykos decide to either strengthen his grip on Ardal’s mind or eliminate him as an insubordinate subject.

“I will do as you command, Elykos,” Ardal said, realizing a moment later that he’d said it out loud.

“Elykos? He’s speaking to you now?” one of the prisoners asked.

“Aye, yes, Elykos is speaking to me.”

“What’s he saying?”

“He’s told me…that I am to lead you all to see Queen Deidra, the soothsayer.”