Chapter Thirty-Six

Ragoth was surrounded by freezing air coupled with intrepid darkness. At first, he was certain he’d crossed over into an afterworld of some sort, but he soon decided that his body felt far too sore for that to be the case. Then he thought, maybe I’m blind now… though he swore there was movement flickering at the edges of his vision. Swirling shadows that whooshed every so often.

Shit. I’m still here. Still with that naked devil Marina.

He didn’t try to stand, Ragoth had suffered enough injuries over the years to know his own limits, and he knew there was no need to raise his downcast head or voice either. She would hear him. This is her world. “Marina.” Ragoth’s voice was much more even than he thought it would be, gaping wound in his back and all, “ I know you are here. I can hear when you move… I think.” A soft giggle rippled through the shadows, riding every rise and fall of their weightless dance. Much like everyone else, Marina seemed to find his meekness entertaining to some degree and while it didn’t bring Ragoth any great joy that she mocked him so freely, it did give him a morsel of hope. He had been mocked and pitied enough across his lifetime to know how such things could be used to his advantage. He started counting while Marina’s ethereal laugh receded.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…. Ragoth stopped at one-hundred-and-eighty. That’s...Three minutes! I’m pretty sure… yeah, sixty times three is .… Uhm, but three minutes from where? He really missed his mask. Mezir’s mask. Though he’d used it for a decade he knew deep down that it would never belong to him. Where Ragoth relied on it as a handicap to get him out of tense situations, Mezir commanded it to do his bidding like an enchanted servant. Doesn’t matter now, does it?

“Marina?” she stayed silent but he was sure the woman was still there. “Marina… what is this place?” Nothing.

Guess I need to sound weaker, more afraid, if I am to get a laugh out of this one. Ragoth tried to spy any stray pieces of light or shadow that may just look off but the black around him seemed nearly absolute. Nearly. He didn’t know what it could possibly be but there had to be some minuscule source of light around for him to see shadows swirl, didn’t there? The infinite black was devoid of all light… but the shadowy waves were almost grey to his eyes after a few moments. They were adjusting to something. Slowly. Ragoth wasn’t much of talent with casting essence but he knew how to do small, subtle things. Like siphoning light from around him and storing it in his iris.

“Marina, please!” Ragoth made sure it sounded more like a vagrant's begging than a pseudo-nobles demand. “Just tell me what is going on here. Why… why keep me alive?” His voice faded with an entirely sincere sadness. There you go, feel it Ragoth. Don’t fake it. Be it.

“Hm… honestly?” Marina’s voice carried around him like silken waves, all at once on his left and right, simultaneously behind and ahead of him. She was everywhere. “I’m not quite sure what father hopes to achieve, never really have been before either, but with you, it's even more perplexing. You’re fairly....” Pathetic? Weak? Shattered? All true… “average? At least, for the time being. Father doesn’t keep weaklings around, no matter how adorable.”

“As a man of some repute, I’m not sure whether to be more offended by the term ‘average’ or ‘adorable’ when it comes from a woman, especially one whos as naked as a newborn.” Shit. Ragoth doesn’t charm or joke. He wallows. He- I- do not flirt with death. Ever. He grabbed aimlessly at a phrase that would slip back his unseen mask and make him appear weaker, but at the moment it felt as if Ragoth were peeling the very skin off of his face. Ragoth’s confidence was building too quickly as the dark world around him slowly became visible. The essence of light stoked his hopes. He’d always been horrible at casting because essence affected his emotions so strongly, as it did most novices, but he could do little to curve it aside from releasing the light. Ragoth had built up too much for that now. He held it in his eyes, despite how badly it burned. It was too late. “Especially one as lovely as you, Marina.”

She was there not five steps away from him, smiling with teeth bared and cheeks high. No shadows obscured her figure from Ragoth now and despite the burgeoning pain in the wound on his back bleedingly so freely, his body betrayed his circumstances. Marina laughed and grinned ever harder. With an ever clearing sight, Ragoth was able to appreciate every dip, dimple, bump, and crevice of Marina’s carnelian skin, which he noticed with agitated interest, seemed to have a distinct bronze tone in some places.

Crets, Ragoth. Keep your head about you. Filthy scoundrel.

He pushed up from the ground, expecting a stabbing pain to charge through his body from the hole on his back, but no groan or cry moved up Ragoth’s being. In fact, he felt excessively well. Why am I smiling?

Marina chuckled and stepped close enough to him that he could feel her breathing. Not just from the warm air escaping her lips. “Do you feel it?” Yes. It is quite a hard spot on such a soft mound. Ragoth gulped. For some reason, he wanted to pounce Marina, her transgressions, and hand in his current misery be damned- He needed release. “Ha! You do… you tried to suck in light, yes? I did the same, long, long ago. The funny thing about essence though… it creates its own kind of light…. No matter what you’re casting. Even, shadows, per se?” She smiled with her lips pressed to Ragoth’s cheeks. When had she slipped off his armor? What was she just saying? “Oh.. too distracted to think about it, huh?” Marina’s hand slipped onto the small of his back and slowly trailed up, grazing where she had run him through with the obsidian dagger. Ragoth braced, winced, but for no reason. The wound was closed. Numbed and scarred. “See… you tried to grab the light… but you grabbed it all…” Marina did quite the same with Ragoth’s apparent excitement, “ And the shadows have already started to care for you, to heal you. To consume you.” She slid down his body as she spoke. Was I wearing my armor, to begin with? “So, Ragoth, tell me. What do you think this place is?”

Whether it was because of the influence of the shadows or Marina consuming him Ragoth could only laugh out one quick word-

“Paradise.”

***

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Amberosin’s mother used to put her through training that Amberosin had always seen as cruel and highly unusual. There was sparring, which she loved despite her mother’s undefeated streak. There was reading, which she hated at the time but had been thankful for more than once over the years. And then there were the… less conventional methods. Once a month Amberosin’s mother, Alicena, would take her to a cellar in the middle of the Wilders. Apparently, some apothecary or another had stored his valuables in it in days long before Amberosin was even a thought in her mother’s mind and when he had abandoned it Alicena had gladly taken it for herself.

Remnants of neglected objects told Amberosin that her mother had adopted the cellar to a multitude of uses of the years but the young girl would only ever know it for its one purpose. She remembered vividly the day Alicena had walked her to the cellar for the first time. Told her the test was to go inside and come out with some obscure spice for dinner that night. As soon as Amberosin had entered the dusty, cramped space, Alicena had closed and bolted the door behind her.

“When I come back I want you to tell me how long it's been. If you get it right, you get out. If you’re wrong, you stay inside until I come back again. Don’t forget the spice either.”

With that, she had left. Amberosin could hear her footsteps crunching leaves and sticks as she walked away, back towards their troupe. Amberosin was six at the time. She had screamed and cried, not bothered to count at all. She was too terrified and enraged to give a damn what her mother wanted her to do, she wanted out. Young Amberosin had scrambled around in the dark until she found a metal pole of some sort, wrapped her small hands about it, and bashed the door to the cellar off of its hinges. By the time she crawled out of a small hole in the old, splintered wood, her hands were blistered and bleeding. Her mother came back a few hours after that and found Amberosin cradling her hands, sobbing on the ground.

“Oh. Oh, dear girl. Come here. We need to clean those, okay?” Alicena scooped Amberosin up and ran them back to their small shack where she applied ointments and oils to her hands, silent all the while. She didn’t seem upset to Amberosin. The young girl thought that her mother even seemed to be proud of her figuring out a solution not previously offered. Alicena was, as she would tell Amberosin much later, very proud of the young girl. The next month the cellar had a new, thicker door. Same test as before. There was nothing inside anymore.

Everyone had thought it cruel. Evil, even, to put such a young Nomad through something so heinous. Crouched, chained in the dark of some small stone room with no indication of time or place, Amberosin had never been more thankful for her mother. She’d eventually learned how to count out and keep track of the minutes that passed, up to a few hours at least. With the help of some soft dirt below her, she had scraped every minute into the floor. The room she was in now, however, had no dirt. It had nothing. It was dark, not pitch black, but darker than a normal day's light.

White had taken her from the clearing at sometime closer to midday than night and so far as she could tell he had put her in the dark stone room immediately. She’d passed out during their trip, likely thanks to White himself, and when she awoke her goggles were gone. Everything else was present, even her pack of food. Amberosin had been able to pinpoint midday again at least five times before she ever saw or heard another person. For five days, she simply sat in the dark. The chains were too tight and strong to break or break free of. She’d bled plenty on the fourth figuring that out. She was sure she’d die from infection soon enough but as luck would have it on the sixth day a hole the size of a threshold appeared in the wall furthest from her.

Light shone from whatever was beyond the hidden doorway and her pupils screamed in pain. The shock of having light hit them uninterrupted for the first time in her life felt like someone had shoved a searing prodding stick into her sockets. She cast her face to the ground and clenched them shut.

“Oh, oh dear child I do apologize. I’ll have the lights outside your chambers dimmed, yes?” She recognized the voice. Lord White. He stopped somewhere inside the room and closed the door, bringing back the blessed dimness of her.. Chambers?

Amberosin rose her head and gently spread her lashes apart, letting what little light was there seep into her, rather than assault her all at once. With the door closed, she was able to see the small light cast by some shaded windows again but the sight was clearer to her then. Her sense awakened by the exposure. Amberosin could see clearly that she was in no small, stone room. She was in a gigantic bed-chamber made of marble and stone. About her hand's chains fell simultaneously and rang out across the floor.

“Amberosin?” White stayed more than a few steps back.

Coward. She simply looked at him. Didn’t offer any indication of her feelings. Her stomach, however, decided to make an unseemly announcement of how it felt. She was hungry, starving, as she feared they may have poisoned her food. A ridiculous thought, she’d admitted, because they’d kept her alive… still, she decided not to chance it.

“Ha! Figured you’d be starving by now, probably thought we poisoned your food eh?”

What? How did-

“No worries. I’ve had a full course meal prepared and it will be brought to us, so as to keep your eyes in good health. It will take some time for you to be able to go without them, you know. I’d heard your mother was barbaric towards you at points but the goggles were just-”

Ambersoin moved before the thought had even formulated and taken a strong swing at White’s masked face. She connected, heard a pop, felt a crack in her knuckles, and fell to the floor in front of him. Obviously unfazed, White continued, “Though I do suppose as your father, I must shoulder some of the blame… so I am! This room will incrementally let in more light each day until you can handle a full Noctran day with no goggles! Ha! You’ll see the world without that blasted tint over your eyes and we shall all be able to see your gorgeous face!”

She shook on the ground, her hand bleedingly freely at White’s feet. Miraculously all of the blood pooling on the floor seems to purposely avoid the man’s armored shoes. He dropped down to Amberosin’s level and grabbed her bleeding hand, blood falling off of his immaculate gloves like red waterfalls down a cliffside, and cupped it gently. After a quick flash of blue light, the throbbing in her knuckles stopped. All the blood on her hand and White’s gloves evaporated upwards into nothingness, and that which was on the floor followed suit.

“Better?”

“Y.. yes. Thank you.” What the fuck is going on here?

“Probably wondering ‘what the fuck is going on here?’ right?”

Stop that. Fucking monster.

White chuckled as if he had heard her thought once more and was amused at her veracity. “Well, if you’d like to know, we shall discuss it over dinner.” Indentured were already filling the room setting up some massive table in the middle of her massive room. One stood in front of the open door with a black cloth the entire time. By the time their food was set Amberosin’s stomach was ravenous. She didn’t even wait for the room to clear before she started eating. White simply watched her for a moment before he sat across the table.

“Can you tell me how long you’ve been here?”

She didn’t stop eating, just held up a hand with five fingers extended on the hand that had been shattered moments ago, closed a fist, and opened it up with a single finger out. Not her index, as one would usually count with.

“Damn good guess there.”

Not a guess.

“Though, probably not a guess. I’m sure your brilliant mother devised all kinds of things like this to train you for, and she was brilliant, I meant no disrespect before. I have surely done worse things to my own children.” He had. He listed all of them.

His starkness, his nonchalant tone as he talked about maiming, killing, breaking his children so he could mold them to his liking, caught her off guard. Ambersoin stopped eating with food still hanging from her mouth and listened intently. She kept every detail in her mind because she knew, whether she really was his daughter or not, that she too would be suffering soon, as all of White’s children.

He was going to try and bend Amberosin to his whim as well. She could see it suddenly. His kindness only after such abuse… his giggles and chuckles that calmed the tension… the food, the lavish room…. He was going to buy her and break her. Just like with everyone else.

“So, you see, I am a man of many mistakes myself. Though, I do believe in forgiveness. Do you, my dear daughter?”

Amberosin looked at him solemnly for a moment. Let her eyes appear sincere. Leaned in closer to Lord White, waited for him to do the same…

And spit a mouthful of noodles and meat in his masked face.