The mountain roads had never been smooth, yet Solera knew they were not at fault for the shocks of pain running through his body. No; those were caused by the channelers carrying him. Even after three days of journeying, they were still seething with anger left from the fight, and rattling Solera’s broken bones seemed to be their way of venting.

That was all they would do to him, though. These channelers belonged not to Rasmurnov, but to Zmenoy, and the things he had overheard Zmenoy say made her intentions very clear: he was not to be permanently injured or killed.

“Lay him down.” Rasmurnov intoned as he strode past them to the prisoners up ahead.

Solera was unceremoniously tossed to the ground, the sling making a clattering sound against the hard stone. His body screamed with pain, but his expression did not change in the slightest. He had already experienced too much pain and felt too much hatred, to the point where he had grown totally numb to both. This little shock, how much more injured or angry could it make him? Just one pebble atop a mountain of rocks and boulders. He felt like a husk, an empty shell of the person he had been before he had left the Grove, because he couldn’t feel anymore.

“He’s brain dead.” One of the channelers grumbled. “Just stares blankly at nothing all day. If I were in charge, I’d have left him for the wolves.”

“We’re finally here, though. I can smell the unwashed bodies already.”

“Heh, you ain’t smelled nothing yet. But lucky us, we get the prize of lugging this sack of shit to the capital.”

“The fuck, really?”

Solera’s eyes moved downwards to the stump of his right hand. It was still only a stump, with no noticeable signs of the new hand that should’ve been forming. He looked back up to the skies of the Tornado Sect. As always, it was covered with clouds which cried rain. For the first day, he had used the sight of his stump to ignite the rage within him and temporarily forget the pain and suffering plaguing him, but it had stopped working. His fire had died when they had spared him. That was the moment he realized his absolute helplessness. Cutting off his hand? That was just an act of sadism on Rasmurnov’s part. There was nothing Solera could do ever since the moment he became unable to kill himself in battle.

“It’s been an eventful journey, contrary to the wishes I expressed at its start.” Rasmurnov’s dull voice slithered into Solera’s ear from a bit away. “But it is over now. My men will escort you for the remaining kilometer.”

The sound of Rasmurnov’s boots scraping against the ground could be heard for a moment before a voice cried out.

“Wait!” It was a girl’s voice, a voice he vaguely remembered. He didn’t try identifying it, though; she was going to die, just like Lem. Sometimes, he wondered why he had warmed to Lem. From the start, he knew it was almost certain they would die on this hellish journey. If he had just continued to treat everyone coldly, then he wouldn’t have had to bear with the anguish of watching them die.

The footsteps stopped. “Yes?”

“If we’re all going to die, then grant us just one request. Let us speak to the boy in the back!”

The channelers surrounding Solera began snickering. He craned his neck to look at the speaker, his mind struggling to understand. Talk to him? Why would anyone bother to do that? His actions had condemned them all to death!

“Please.” The voice begged. Against his will, Solera realized it was Tamarind. So she had been one of the prisoners to survive.

“You may speak from where you are.” Rasmurnov spoke after a short pause.

“Solera!” A man whom Solera had never heard before immediately shouted. “May kismet and the Gardener be with you!”

“Good luck and godspeed!” Another voice he didn’t know.

“Solera, let’s meet again sometime, somewhere.” Tamarind called out. “Have hope!”

He trembled as the remaining prisoners called out to him. Why were they doing this to him? If they were all going to die, why did they have to say these things? He didn’t want anything more to lose!

“Have hope!” Someone yelled again, and then the voices were gone, replaced by the sounds of fading footsteps. A single tear leaked out from Solera’s cheek as he heard them disappear. Cruel. It was cruel of them to make him care about them, when they knew he knew they would die. It was cruel of them to tell him to keep hoping when he was in this hopeless situation.

Rasmurnov’s gaunt profile blotted out a portion of the sky. He was holding a rope in his hands, one threaded through a series of metal cylinders which each had a spike jutting out of one side.

Solera’s eyes flicked away from the rope, into Rasmurnov’s black voids. A pang of despair shot through him. Have hope? How could he have hope? It was all over for him. He was left alone here, with this monstrosity of a man and a group of channelers who already hated him with every fiber of their beings. After that outburst by their prisoners, their hatred should only have been intensified.

He needed to give up hope, and stop caring. He couldn’t care anymore, not if he wanted to keep his sanity. He couldn’t care about the people who hated him, because he knew wishing them death was pointless. He couldn’t care about the people who wished him well, because they were going to die and cause him further emotional pain. He couldn’t care about himself, because his situation was the grimmest of all.

Rasmurnov bent down, his blank, inscrutable expression examining Solera. “Apologies.”

He took hold of one of the spiked, cylindrical tubes and stabbed it straight into Solera’s body. Solera’s eyes widened as he could feel a tiny hole being punctured in his channels. The power in the vicinity was sucked away, disappearing into the cylinder, which lit up with light and began to crackle. Drainers, Solera realized. The doctors had used them to drain away excess power, yet it was now being used on him!

Rasmurnov wrapped the rope around Solera’s entire body, puncturing his body again and again with the small spikes on each cylinder. Each prick sent a deep sensation of pain through Solera, followed by an uncomfortable tingling as his power was drained away from his channels, like water pouring out from a punctured barrel.

“What are you doing? He’s no immortal, we don’t need to put drainer ropes on him.” A channeler asked Rasmurnov with a tinge of curiosity.

“I do this on Zmenoy’s orders,” was his blunt response.

Even though Solera believed Zmenoy wouldn’t endanger his life, he felt a growing sense of unease. These drainer ropes didn’t seem like it was all that was planned for him. Not from what he knew of Rasmurnov.

The man withdrew a capsule from his jerkin. From the capsule he popped a pill out into his hand, a gray pill, cloudy like the sky. Rasmurnov looked down at the pill, then at Solera for a long moment.

Then rammed the pill straight down Solera’s throat.

Almost instantaneously, Solera’s stomach began roiling. Strange waves of a totally alien power was seeping into his channels, covering them, sticking to them. Grinding them down.

Solera arched his back and yelped. His yelp turned into a scream as he was torn apart, dissolved, squished. Like cloth folded in half, then torn down the middle. Like a finger wrapped in sandpaper being rubbed back and forth at high speed. His channels experienced every kind of pain imaginable, and more.

Why were they doing this? Solera howled at the sky, but he saw nothing anymore, for everything was black, then brown, then gray, then black again. Every moment was an eternity, a constantly shifting montage of different pains and colors. His toes were being clipped off, his bones being broken yet again, his hair being ripped out, one by one. Choked. His insides were burning while his outsides were freezing. Choked again. The insides of his body set on fire. Gray, black, gray, black.

He could see himself, a disembodied blob, a trembling puddle that was constantly being drained away. It was like that for an eternity, until without warning, a deluge of acidic black liquid enveloped him, threatening to totally dissolve his very being.

He was born in the First Ring, one of the many offspring of a merchant family. When he was seven, he witnessed the improper, unfair trial and execution of his friend’s father, and learned the importance of the law, and of justice. By the time he came of age, his studies had earned him exemption from the draft, and he was sent to the capital for higher education and training.

What was different between good and bad, criminal and lawful, just and unjust? When he tracked down the man who had killed for food, he didn’t know. When he hunted escaped slaves from the Dome, he didn’t know. When he watched his superiors in the bureaucracy writing and interpreting laws as they pleased, he didn’t know. When they tried his family for graft, bribery, and corruption, he didn’t know.

Law and justice were not one and the same. No, the concept of justice he had held absolute from childhood didn’t even exist. Every time he condemned a criminal, he felt not victory, but sympathy. For the only difference between police and criminal, killer and victim, exploiter and exploited, are the vicissitudes of life. Everyone is selfish and greedy when they have everything they need, and even more so when they don’t.

Fundamentally, everyone was the same; three meals away from being a criminal. The circumstances of life could turn a boy into a corrupt official, like his brother, or a man of “justice,” like him. A criminal could have been the Patriarch, or the owner of an inn, and the owner of an inn could be a criminal or the Patriarch, and the Patriarch himself could be the owner of an inn, or a criminal…

Justice, then, was men born into circumstances allowing them to follow law, passing judgment on men born into circumstances forcing them to violate law. Totally arbitrary and pointless. Yet without law, society would collapse. That was why he had to know his place, and carry out the justice of the law, no matter how unjust it may be, for justice is nonexistent. Still, it was a pity. This child, with his strength of mind and body, could easily have been anything else other than a boy to be experimented on…

Solera broke away from Rasmurnov’s grip, his mouth frothing with dried spittle. Rasmurnov stumbled back, his face beading with sweat. He stared at Solera, his empty eyes wide with astonishment.

“What’s wrong, sir?” A masked man shouted, running forward to grab Rasmurnov’s shoulder. Hands gripped Solera, dragging him away from the man.

In front of him, Solera could see a vast gateway, ornately decorated with carvings and inscriptions. On each side of the gateway was a vast mountain plateau, upon which grew the largest mountain he had ever seen, covered with stone buildings and strange sculptures. Yet what befuddled his eyes was not any of that, but the gargantuan funnel of wind enveloping the very top of the mountain, forcing the dark gray clouds in the sky around it into a circular spin.

Solera’s right hand twitched for a moment. He looked down to see a pale hand where his hand once had been. His mind was whirling with confusion, just like the tornado in the skies above. How much time had passed since he had last been conscious? Where was he? No, forget those questions. Just what was that strange experience he just had? Who was he? Wasn’t he from the Grove, not the First Ring? Yet those memories were as real as any of his own! That vision… just what was it?!

Rasmurnov straightened up, wiping his brow. “Nothing. Just… just get a move on.”

I'd like to thank the readers and especially the commenters for sticking with me for this long. I'm so grateful for you guys! :)

I know this chapter is pretty weird, so I'm aiming for another three chapters this week, let's give this a go.

I did a lot of brainstorming over the last week, a lot of re-evaluating the far future of Overpowered and a lot of fleshing out of backstory I didn't think I needed to flesh out until now. Major changes have been made, but funnily enough the only real difference on the current story is that Tornado Towers -> Tornado Tower.