Knite

A whiff of blood, a hint of feces, the scent of sweat, the smoke of burning wood, and a constant breeze of salty wind, but mostly the place stunk of piss both stale and fresh. The hundreds of prisoners I shared my confinement with paid the smell no mind. Maybe it was an acquired oblivion. Maybe it wasn’t. I would not wait so long as to find out.

The guards who’d guided me had wounded me. It couldn’t be helped. I felt no pain and my aversion to injury was but a matter of convenience. Letting it happen marked me as weak. My plan would be easier for appearing an easy victim. I’d found myself in need of predators.

The Bridge, in actuality, was a cylindrical structure built around an almost perfect hole on the northern coast of The Bark—perfect in that it was shaped in a flawless circle and ran as deep as any hole could. My assault on the guard had earned me a place on the ninth floor. With Sanas likely being held on the deepest of them, I had some distance to fall.

Hugging my knees and forcing a tremble, I huddled against a wall close to the cell's entrance where the pungent odors were thickest. It didn’t take long for one of those I sought to find me.

“Gots to tell you ‘bout the rules, new blood,” A gruff voice said. I looked up. A middle-aged man hovered over me. Two burly men framed him. All three had the tanned skin, stocky builts, and dim-witted grins Golodanians were known for. “There be rules you gots to follow down here in rainbow’s arse,” the man continued. “You know how the Bridge works?” I stared blankly at the man. “Then let me enlighten you. One, you listen to our orders. Two…well, I guess it’s just the one rule.”

“Where’s the rest of your crew?” I asked.

The man's brow creased. “Here’s ya first order, laddie. Don’t—"

“I see.” I stopped shivering. The man furrowed his brow. I stood. He stepped back, confused. “I guess the question I should've asked is, where’s your…boss? Superior? Leader?”

Livid, the man jabbed a finger at my chest. “I’m gonna teach you some manners, or my name isn’t—"

I didn’t let him finish. I seized his greasy throat. “I do not care to know your name.”

The thug to my left moved first. I caught the back of his hand and bent it until his wrist snapped and his palm touched his forearm. A kick to his shin brought him low. A knee to his face put him to the ground, unconscious, one eye leaking blood.

The one to my right went for the arm I was choking the first man with. I let go, grabbed the back of the brute’s head, and crashed my forehead against the bridge of his nose. He stumbled back but came away without injury, Duros sensus pulsing below his skin. He was proud of himself. A sensus-laden punch wiped away his prideful grin. I left him on the ground, gurgling on blood and broken bits of teeth.

The last man fled deeper into the cell. I let him. He’d bring the person I hunted to me. I turned back to the unconscious one with the broken wrist. He lay face-first on the floor. I broke his neck with the press of my feet, the snap delightfully audible. His breathing seized.

The third man had gotten to his hands and knees. Blood and spit ran down his chin. Flecks of broken teeth fell from his mouth. He Looked up at the sound of my approach. Fear warped his face and he stumbled back.

“You will die,” I told him. “The less you fight it, the quicker it’ll be.”

His horror was delicious. I breathed it in, let my soul lick at it, nibble and chew at it, savor it. His fear grew at my ecstasy; my ecstasy grew in kind. So lost was I, so enraptured by my long-awaited feast, I’d almost pried deeper into his soul, almost dug out the marrow of his being. I beat back the hunger and released him. Devouring his core was as good as letting him live within mine. I would not poison my soul or extinguish his sovereignty.

The hulking Golodanian had become a shell of his former self. His skin sagged, his eyes went hollow, and his bones had shed the muscles he carried but moments ago. He did not react when I came to him and snapped his neck. On the contrary, as if I’d freed him from the burden of life, he released a final sigh of relief.

A crowd surrounded me, every one of them oozing fear. Some had a tinge of hope. I think they thought me the harbinger of death, and thus, their liberator, their chance at leaving this plane with their souls intact. Suicide or death at the hands of the Research Institute denied them that consolation.

One man showed neither hope nor fear. He stood apart, surrounded by space in a crowd where others pushed and shoved to watch me. The man I’d choked stood a few paces from him, rubbing at his neck and smiling at me like I would be punished for it.

I approached them. The crowd pulled back like a retreating tide.

“Did you have to kill them?” asked the man without fear. A thick, pale scar running from the edge of his nose and across both his lips squirmed like a worm as he spoke.

“Your name?” I asked.

It took much of me to ignore the fear that radiated about the room. I couldn’t tell whether I approached the man to further my objectives, or to find refuge from my urges in his cocoon of courage. Bravery always dulled the scent of fear, the depth of my appetite.

The man smiled. Lopsided because of the scar, it was a menacing sight. “Jonar.”

“Were they your men?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And what manner is that?”

“I beat them, spared their lives, and they swore a fealty I neither wanted nor needed.”

“Then they’re your men. I assume you lead this floor.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

I gave him a silent stare.

He sighed. “Yes, for all the trouble it causes me.”

“Good. Take me to your dwelling.”

With a sharp nod, the man turned and walked deeper into the cell. A soldier, I thought. No one recognized and followed orders quite as promptly as they.

We passed through a listless crowd of men and women sitting around improvised camps. Pots of stew simmered over fires, dulling the wretched smell of piss and salt. Plates full of cheese, bread, and even of meat were passed around freely. Warm as it was, fed as they were, each wore a haunted look of despair, their languid movements fueled more by instinct than desire.

The northern edge of the prison was built into the city’s very cliff and lay open to the wild winds of the sea. Metal bars fixed twenty or thirty paces from the opening were the only obstacle keeping the prisoners from the plunge to the rocky shore below. Jonar’s place, what he called home, took a section of the bars as its own, one side enclosed by one of the cell walls, the other two partitioned by impromptu screens of old fabric draped over wooden frames.

“Were they acting on your authority?” I asked, sitting on a wooden box. The wind blew strong in his corner of the cell, forcing me to be louder than I wanted to be.

Jonar stuck out his bottom lip and shrugged his broad shoulders. “I am not much of a leader. Supervising these animals is not something I wish to do.”

“Animals?”

Jonar turned to face the falling dusk, watching the final rays of the day shimmer orange on the calm sea. His hands gripped the metal bars separating him from the sweet release of death. “Once you cage men,”—he shook the metal bars—“and force them to fight daily for survival, they have little choice but to become…less. It is the only way to avoid the heartache of their humanity.”

I shook my head in disagreement but kept silent on the matter. “You’ve…delayed my plans. I’d expected someone I could kill without mercy.”

Jonar turned to me. “Then I’m thankful for whatever has stayed your hand.”

“Thank your humanity,” I said. He chuckled at that. “When do they come for their research?”

Jonar walked over to his poorly built table, picking up a ripe apple from a skull-shaped bowl of fruit. He held it up in my direction. I refused the offer with a shake of my head.

“Soon after daybreak,” he answered.

“Tell me how they work.”

Jonar raised a brow. “You don’t know?”

“Do not ask moronic questions.”

“I just assumed—”

“Do not make assumptions.”

He came to sit on a box in front of me, taking a large bite from the apple. “The east and west quadrants hold the research and testing rooms. Every morning, prisoners are led to their floor’s bridge where they fight to avoid the sadistic experiments of House Silas.”

“The fights themselves are part of the experiments,” I corrected.

“Yes, I suppose they are.” He chewed loudly, crunching the juicy fruit between his teeth and smacking his lips. Definitely a soldier. “But I thought you did not know how they operated.”

“What did I tell you about making assumptions.”

His face set into an expression of curious confusion. “Then why was my earlier question moronic?”

“Does losing mean death for a prisoner?”

“Ah!” Jonar’s eyes lit up as though he’d fathomed some elusive mystery. “They were moronic because they would go unanswered.”

I sighed. “Jonar?”

The man barked a nervous laugh before thought of my question exposed sunken eyes tired in that way long nights without sleep brings. Only then did I notice the thin, purple-tinged veins that webbed them. “No, it does not always mean death,” he said. “They try to keep us alive as long as they can. I suppose a living body is more useful to poke and prod than a dead one. But The Bridge sits over the world’s deepest maw and scores of men and beasts fall prey to it every day. I don’t much think they mind.”

“How many times?” I asked.

“Hm?”

I tapped my cheekbone. “The purple. It marks most of their concoctions. A pious dedication to their deific patron.”

His eyes shimmered. This soldier, who had likely seen and suffered the brutalities of war, held back tears for the horrors The Research Institute had put him through. “Once was enough.” He threw the half-eaten apple over his shoulder, past the bars of his imprisonment, and out into the calm sea below. “Once was more than enough.” Grief wafted from him, festering upon his soul. It stunk much like a flesh-bound infection might.

“What do you know of the lower floors?” I asked.

Jonar took a moment to shake away the memories of his torture. He inhaled deeply, the shine in his eyes dimming with the soft release of his breath. “I never bother to explore the pains of others; my own is more than I care to bear. However, every so often, a prisoner rises from the lower floors. They do not stay long. Those I’ve seen come here empty and numb to the world, refusing to eat or drink or speak, and soon their dejection robs them of their lives.”

“I see you are heading to a point. Get there faster.”

“There is a man. He goes by the name Karok. Rumor has it he came up from the fifteenth. I have no way to confirm.”

“Lead the way.”

Karok was a young man and Evergreenish through and through. Platinum hair, a lean figure, pale skin, and eyes of royal blue made him look like an eminent godling. I knew better. It was a wonder he survived the surgeries.

“A visitor?” he asked. So petite was he, so high in pitch and beautiful in the face, I would’ve thought him a woman if not for his soul.

“I’ve brought…” Jonar paused and looked at me, realizing he did not know my name.

“You may leave, Jonar,” I said, and he left without a word. A good soldier. I turned to Karok. “Do you kn—”

He lashed a thin whip of sensus towards me. I knew what he planned to do. I let him.

The sensus latched to the back of my neck, seeking entrance to my soul. A grave mistake. Not even my sister would dare come into my soul so haphazardly.

I grabbed his sensus as soon as he entered my domain, pulling the attached consciousness past my temporary mask and into the recesses of my memories, then showed him horrors that could break many a man: A war too cruel to describe, where souls were raped, tortured, and burnt into non-existence; a lawless land teeming with depravity, where children were eaten to stave off hunger, adults became playthings, and the few relatively untainted souls among the hordes of evil were crushed into following the ways of pointless malevolence. He tried to yank back his sensus. I kept him there until I heard his soul cry out in pain. Tears ran down his face. He deserved it. Deserved worse. Any who would so casually invade another deserved the worse there was.

“As I was saying,” I said, letting his consciousness retreat, “do you know where I might find a woman by the name of Sanas?” I did not have the skill for scrying that Lorail did. She could find whatever she sought by intent alone. I had to follow links in memories and emotions to search for answers. I hadn't the time or fancy to rummage through his vile thoughts.

Karok stared past me at the hangings of his camp, lost in the anguish I’d fed his soul. A crisp slap dropped him to the ground and woke him from his pondering.

“W-what was that?” He looked up at me, bleeding from the corner of his mouth where a bruise was already forming on his porcelain skin.. “W-who are you?”

“That is of no significance to you or your situation.”

“You were in the battle for the Eastern Gate, in the great war with Golodan. How? You are not of the royal lineage, that much is clear.” He pointed at my dark hair and eyes. “You were an adjudicator? A general? A high-ranking royal guard? A—”

“Stop.”

He struck his fist to his chest with clumsy bravado. “I’m a son of a Fiora, a Seculor by right. You cannot kill me.”

“You think I cannot read your lies? You are too old to be a Seculor by right. My guess is you are part of the fallen, of those abandoned by the godlings for being unable to contend with what they consider the dilution of imperial blood into something inferior, something tainted. Then your hate, coupled with your daring stupidity, brought you here to rainbows arse to be punished for it. I do wonder about the lengths you went to that has demoted you beyond The Muds and into this hole, but alas, there are more important questions for you to answer.”

“W-who do you think you see? I-I am—”

“An unmarked grave,” I said, my true voice layered atop the fake. “Tell me what I want to know, and I promise you’ll get there painlessly.”

He whimpered, his weak facade crumbling away. “I was just trying to get a feel for your strength. Please, I beg of you, spare me. I promise I will never commit such a grievous act again. Just…please…”

I whistled my tune of death and strode forward. My hand flashed to the back of his head. He tried to push me away but like most Tunnelers, like so many godlings who depended on nothing but their namats, he was weak. I dove into his soul. He fought with all he had, relentless in his efforts. Layers of matrixes protected his soul. I ripped them without caution, setting off traps meant to make me forget or feel fear or turn docile. None worked. I dove in further and further, and fear swelled beyond his control. I did not taste any of it; indulging while pillaging a soul is harder to stop than to resist.

Some might think Karok was as pitiful as some in The Muds. Some might argue he was more pitiful for the same reasons a man who lost his sight was more pitiful than a man born without. Some might think the opposite for the same reason. Karok had relatively much before his downfall, knew intimately the sweetness of a rich life and then the bitterness of poverty. No, I felt no pity for him. He died that day, and in the end, I found nothing of Sanas in his damnable soul.