Pain flooded his senses.

His eyes were glued shut and an aching headache were the first thing Cris experienced as he involuntarily sucked in a large breath and prepared to shout when he realised a voice was talking to him.

He tried to move his legs and arms and his backside had pins in needles in it as stopped himself from forcing his eyes open. He’d prefer to save what energy he had remaining and gain some awareness before he woke to a room of violence and dead bodies and lost control of his emotions and wasted the opportunity.

His hands were loosely restricted, he could lift his wrists and fingers and little else. Feet, the same. Tight restrictions but not enough that he had lost feeling in his limbs. He was clearly put into a sitting position but there was a warmth at his back.

Possibly another who was captured like himself.

Cris doubted that it was one of the augmented but he wouldn’t know unless he tried to talk to them first. That could wait as he needed to keep himself calm and collected and give his situation a little room to think.

Recalling the last moments before he had lost consciousness, he resisted the urge to call out and let his aura sense give him feedback as he accepted the drain on his energy reserves that it came with.

There was a strange sensation, a type of magic he hadn’t ever experienced before. As though someone had contained various types of corruption inside a glass bottle but restricted them heavily and removed the infectious nature of the magic.

His stomach hurt but it wasn’t down to injury, Cris had tried some of the food that the tavern had on offer but he’d only taken a few bites before the cheap quality of drink on offer had made him want to relieve himself in the back alleyway.

Agnes. Richter. Marley.

Alessandro.

Out of the four names, the three he barely knew but Alessandro would notice his absence if it had been long enough. They had argued about life choices of all things and the head servant of his house had watched him walk out the door into the early evening of the city. The old man would either be concerned like a mother hen or accept Cris was becoming an adult in his own right.

Focus Cris.

Immediate situation.

There was corruption inside this room but it was minimal, further away it was deeper and stronger but as his stomach ached again Cris simply lacked the energy to keep his aura sense active and let it drop.

The voice that had been talking to him had stopped for a moment and begun again. He wasn’t entirely sure but the previous words had been in a strange tone, a language which flickered on his the very edge of his awareness but he couldn’t place it clearly.

‘Hello? Are you a friend or a captor?’ said Cris aloud.

The voice stopped talking and he realised that the sound of it was almost directly behind him.

‘I’m a prisoner. Hey buddy, do you think they sold us as raw meat? I mean the cultists here, they love the raw meat diet when they get crazy enough with this magical disease of yours. I think if they try eating me they’ll all die of worse diseases, I don’t taste good. Can you use your magic to try and free us both or do I need to wait for my bodyguard to turn up?’ said the voice.

The accent was odd, he understood the words clearly enough but the accent was strange in a way that was different than even the visiting merchants that he had heard visit from the cities near the capital city of the kingdom.

‘I can’t place where you’re from. Are you visiting Nurburg from one of the other cities on the borders of the old kingdom?’ asked Cris.

Flexing his hands and finger, he squeezed his toes tight and tried to roll his feet around to get more feeling back into them. The bindings restricting him weren’t heavy enough to weigh him down but when he tried to lift his arms up they remained taut.

Likely rope.

Chains are a waste of time.

Forcing his gluey eyes open he blinked a few times to find himself in a simple stone room. The floor was covered in stone slabs and the walls were much the same. There were several small sources of light that illuminated the room but they were outside of his immediate field of vision.

Alchemically treated torches. Same as the temple. They emit a similar light. Designed to block traces of corruption and blessed by the Goddess Aliza.

‘Oh, wow, I’m tied up behind a racist. I see how it is, you hear my accent and immediately call me a foreigner. Then again, if we met face to face you’d call me a foreigner as well. Hey, I’m calling you a foreigner as well, boy. Yeah, how do you like being called a boy?’ came the voice.

Cris stretched his eyes but all he could make out was a stone wall, then he noticed several large hanging chains that dangled down from the dark grey ceiling with several dark patches on the wall.

‘I wasn’t born in this city either, nor was my father and mother. I get called foreigner as well, I’m Cristiano or Cris. We moved here when I was a baby and people like looking at me funny as well asking me where I’m from. How about we work together to find a way out of this place?’ as he tried absorbing in details with his eyes, smelling out for any traces of fresh blood or meat and listening for any sounds of movements.

The voice behind Cris took in a deep breath and a sigh before the man replied. His tone indicated that he was trying to be friendlier but he was certain that the man was mainly bored with the whole situation as though they were chatting in a city restaurant.

‘I have two questions for you then Cristiano. Nice name. You are not from around here with a name like that. I’m Maxton. Maxton Confucius Ge. Call me Ge. Or you can call me Disease Master. As long as you don’t call me a foreigner then we’re all good. My name doesn’t translate well in this...provincial language of yours Trust me, Disease Master is way more powerful than it sounds. You never answered my question, how’s your magic? Or again, my bodyguard is likely on his way right now. He gets angry when I’m not around him and not for my own protection either.’ said the voice.

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The accent was odd but Cris had his own experiences growing up in the capital city of the kingdom and had been called out enough or his own appearance of light brown hair, olive skin and green eyes. As long as the man tied up behind him wasn’t a threat then they’d get along fine. He didn’t really understand why he wanted to be called Disease Master though.

‘Ge, what can you see on your side. I’ve got a stone wall, several large chains hanging from the ceiling, what could be several large patched of dried blood and all illuminated by a light source where I can’t see it’ said Cris.

‘No. You need to answer my questions first. My bodyguard will be here soon enough and I’m going to tell him to leave you tied up as raw meat for chaotic mind melted cultists to snack on. These ropes are annoying, they treated them especially with oil so they can’t be burnt through but it strengthens the material every time I try and stretch them out a little. Stupid intelligent cultists, stupid small city full of stupid foreigners who keep calling me a foreigner or try and talk to me either slowly or overly loud. Sorry buddy, I’m done complaining. Answers. He’ll be here real soon, then we can work out where we ended up.’ said the man.

Cris tested the strength of the ropes holding him, if they had been specially treated with oil as the man had said then trying to burn through them with light magic would simply ignite them as as well as his clothing.

He knew that was beginning to smell a little though, he was badly in need of a warm bath and a decent meal prepared by the house cook.

Not wanting to exhaust himself into unconsciousness through excessive use of his magical senses Cris gave in to his hungry stomach and now parched throat and decided to respond to the man. He’d been told to wait by a woman he barely knew besides meeting her for a few hours at best and a forceful kiss.

Unless Alessandro was able to track him down and he wasn’t still angry at Cris for arguing with him then he was stuck on his own with this interesting man and his bodyguard who had yet to appear.

If this particular situation was as bad as Chris thought it was then he and Ge had both been kidnapped by cultists, in his case because they wanted an easy kill to remove remove someone who had been gifted by the Goddess of light and purity magic.

The man on the other hand was a little crazy if he wanted to be called Disease Master as a title. Even alchemists promoting their business wouldn’t want to call themselves that, maybe before the magical virus that struck after the kingdom had succeeded in killing the armies and in extension the life force of the Dark Lord itself but not currently.

Taking in a deep breath of the air which tasted faintly of copper Cris replied to the man as he stretched his wrists once more. He was at least thankful that he had been left fully clothed and his shoes and socks left on.

Waking up naked and tied up would have been far worse but he wouldn’t have put it past the woman called Agnes to try it on.

She was an odd relative stranger.

‘Ge, I’ll answer your two questions if you answer a few of mine. First I want to know what you can see and then if you’ve met anyone called Agnes, Marley or Richter. We have a deal? I’d shake on it but my hands are a little tied up at the moment.’ finished Cris with a slight chuckle.

He didn’t hear the man laugh in response to his attempt at a joke but there was a vibration of movement which betrayed his response. Clearly, he understood the nuances of the language well enough to take in a joke or he had just been poisoned and died.

Cris sometimes wished his mind didn’t go to dark places so often in times of stress but it was always better than the alternative of shouting out loud to be rescued or helped. Beyond his obvious physical discomfort at being tied up and sat down along with his lack of energy he hadn’t been harmed in any obvious way.

‘Hmm….nope. Never heard of them. Unless you’re talking about three, gene-bonded partial-superhumans who are a woman, a man and someone in-between as far as I can tell. Wait, do you even know what that word means? No offence but your backwards kingdom is a little lacking in the sense of knowledge and science despite the power of your little Goddess of Energy.’ said the man.

Holding back a retort at the obvious insult the man was directing to the deity which had guarded the kingdom since the magical virus had begun on the battlefields and ravaged the countryside and city people Cris responded. ‘A super what? Augmented. We call them augmented….Disease Master Ge. I thought they died out after or during the war..’ said Cris.

This time the same vibrational movement shook the wooden chair which Cris had been tied up to and he recognised that the man was likely in another chair, almost but not quite sitting back to back. The warmth that he felt was from the man’s own body opposite his own.

‘Objects of curiosity I’d call them. Or would relics be a better word. I like you. You show respect to your elders. Your language is easy to speak but hard to explain in. My name for one, it doesn’t translate well. Forget it, I’ve answered your questions so you can answer two of mine before my bodyguard arrives. Ah, and if you hear screaming outside this room don’t be worried, he doesn’t like killing but he’s very good at it. When he arrives you need to shut up and let me talk to him. Oh, I’m bored. This is very boring. I’ve been caught by worse banditry than these. Perhaps the illness damages their frontal cortex. Ignore my words, you won’t understand them.’

As Cris was going to respond he heard a hard thump on wood and a splintering sound before a cry of pain rang out and ended. The distance was far enough away from his location before another thudding sound was heard but this time it was closer.

Cris recognised it as flesh hitting stone.

He’d heard stories as a student that those who were deeply corrupted but aware enough of their own slow decay into bestial states tried to slow the growth of the disease on themselves through self-inflicted pain on surfaces.

It was the main reason that the Queen herself had passed into kingdom protected law to protect all sufficiently corrupted by bringing them onto the Asylum of Light and True Health where they would be restricted from both harming themselves and others.

The Goddess of Light and Purity wanted the corruption removed from the land but not at the cost of inflicting massive casualties on those who had been infected unwillingly.

There were a series of shouts and scream outside the room that they were in, Cris was unable to see the door from his present location but he could imagine that it was likely a metal studded door which was keeping them inside.

His thoughts were interrupted then man calling himself Maxton Ge interrupted him as he shook his own bindings. Cris heard the sound of metal lightly striking metal. The other man wasn’t bound in rope as he was, he had far stronger material holding in in place.

‘He’s almost outside. He can detect my presence and I his at all times. He is taking his time despite his instructions. I’d be worried if he changed any more than he has already. My bad influence I imagine is giving him the illusion that he has sentience. These chains are growing heavier, I shall reprimand him for his lack of precision in locating me. Because you display the correct court protocol I’ll only ask you a simple one. Why haven’t you used your obvious physically structured and boosted magical powers to break through the bindings and then free yourself from this place?’ said Maxton Ge.

Before Cris could answer there was a massive splintering sound followed as the reinforced door was smashed forwards and fell down to the floor with a final crash. Wooden pieces and splinters skidded across the floor beneath his feet and hit the stone wall opposite him.

A voice which Cris didn’t recognise but resounded with an odd twang as though the owner of it was talking into a broken metal tube sounded out before it adjusted into a more human-like formal tone.

[Disease Master Confucius Ge, I have effected your rescue. All hostile heavily infected hosts have been removed from within twenty metres of this cell and rendered incapable of violent engagement. Please do not move as your bindings are removed. Is your...guest to be recognised as a willing recruit or a direct threat? This one awaits instructions.]