Broken hung in his chains, as his mind rushed with commitment. A million plans traveled through his mind, to be either discarded, or filed away for future use, and a million eventualities were given consideration.

All in all, Broken was alive, and focused again, as focused as he had ever been. His hands were clenched into fists.

He was strength incarnate.

He was paragon.

And the escape was just a small, tiny step in his life.

He was paragon.

Broken made comparisons, figured out how he had failed at Asan Paril, as his mind rushed with activity. He analyzed, and overanalyzed, until he understood each and every mistake he had made, and why.

When he was done, he lifted his head triumphantly. He was new again. For the third time, he had a clean slate.

And, in popular superstition, three chances were all one had.

Broken would not fail again. He reminded himself of who he was.

I am paragon.

The bars to Broken’s cell swung down, into the floor. As a very certain, very particular little man walked within, the bars returned to their original position.

Broken was locked in a room with Eton.

And he didn’t care one bit.

“Do you know what I am here for?” asked Eton.

“You are here to kill me,” said Broken. “But first, before you attempt to do as much, I wish to talk to you.

“I was thinking, Eton, about how my exorcism failed. You should have turned to dust, and yet you looked no more hurt than I was. Quite a bit less, in fact. I was wondering how that could come to be. And then I realized something.

“You are no demon, Eton. You’re just a sad, sad imitator. In the employ of the Nari, no doubt.”

Eton looked at Broken. “You are a fool,” he said. “You know nothing.”

“Quite to the contrary, Eton,” said Broken. “I am sure I know more than you. You don’t have to confirm what I said.

“Why?

“Because I know what the truth is. You can’t hide it any longer.”

Eton, wearing his small, little robes, shrugged his shoulders, looked around the cell, and then back to Broken.

“So what?” he asked. “There’s nothing you can do to me. You’re in chains! You’re in chains in this dark, dark room, in the dark, dark bowls of this ship. Your revelations are worthless.”

Even as he hung in chains, with his wrists suspended over his head, Broken smiled. He smiled, partly to scare Eton, but he also smiled in genuine satisfaction. Everything was moving along to his plan.

“You’re wrong about that,” said Broken. “You see, now that I realize you’re human, I realize you’re not a threat to me.”

Eton looked at Broken darkly, reveled in his seeming helplessness. “I’m going to kill you, Casari-spawn. There is nothing you can do about that. Accept it.”

Broken laughed, for a reason he knew Eton could not fathom. “No,” he said.

“What?”

“For the murder of Ishad,” said Broken. “I sentence you to death.”

“Empty words,” Eton responded.

“Now that I know you’re human,” said Broken, “I don’t have to worry about you living through something as mundane as having your neck broken. I snap your head back, you die. In a few moments, I will do just that. You can try to blur, but, my reflexes are faster than yours.”

The color drained from Eton’s face.

It suddenly occurred to the man who pretended to be a demon, that Broken was telling the truth. He was not lying.

And, as such, in that moment Eton realized the threat was real, he tried to get out of harm’s way. He tapped into his innate powers. He began to blur.

But, as fate would have it, Broken was faster. He couldn’t outrace the blur, of course; he couldn’t run at all, due to the chains. However, in a fraction of a second, Broken knew what Eton was attempting to do, and reacted.

Broken launched his legs off the ground. He wrapped his ankles around Eton’s neck, and held in position, suspended off the false demon, and the chains that held his wrists. Not part of him touched the ground.

With foreign mass around him, Eton was unable to blur. He shuddered, as the energy he had gathered was suppressed, and fell away.

The little Eton stared at Broken, even as his neck was surrounded by ankles. Ankles that knew exactly what they could do, and how they could do it.

Despite his precarious hanging position, Broken looked at Eton, and smiled, as he braced himself on the wrist chains, so that they would support his weight. He waited a moment, to exact his vengeance.

Broken remembered something he had told Mai once. He had said that one could best re-grow after they lost everything. Lasting change was dramatic. At the time, when he had said that, Broken would have never dreamed he would have been the one building up from scratch.

And yet he was. Eton’s death was but the first piece of the puzzle.

“I am not a proud man,” said Broken, to Eton, who, trapped, stood there awkwardly. “I can forgive any transgression against my person.” He paused. “But you killed Ishad. He was no great warrior, but he was a noble man, and a good person. He deserved to live with Mai in happiness.

“You killed him.”

Broken paused. “I know it was the Nari who pulled your strings, who gave you your orders. But you still murdered an innocent person. You were complicit.”

Eton said nothing, and, as he lived out his last few moments, looked at Broken coolly.

Broken didn’t care. He knew that inside, Eton was terrified.

And then he twisted.

His ankles pushed, and Eton’s neck snapped. And then, the murderer was dead. Light drained from his eyes.

Broken landed his feet back on the floor.

Eton crumpled, and fell in a heap before him.

And then, Broken settled, and waited.

Guards ran past him, in the hallway, from the other side of the bars. They looked in horror at the dead Eton at his feet, and then rushed into the shadows.

Broken knew they were planning what to do. Broken knew they were confused, uncertain how a chained man had managed to kill one they thought was a demon. They were uncertain what that meant for their own futures.

If only they knew the truth.

Broken waited, as Eton remained at his feet. He waited for the soldiers to come for him, and come they did.

Beyond the cell doors, two squads of guards collected, staring at Broken, the man on the other side of the bars, in apprehension.

They jeered at him, told him they weren’t afraid of him, but the guards’ huddled movements suggested otherwise.

They didn’t know who Broken was, what Broken was. He pitted them. They stood in his way.

Rage against the world.

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***

Varsis wore spectacles.

It wasn’t that, without them, it was hard to see, it was that, the alchemists had assured him, he would be able to see better with their aid.

Varsis’ didn’t notice much of an improvement in his eyesight, but, to humor the alchemists, and, more importantly, his mother Hisa, who had paid for the invention, he wore them still.

It had been an interesting week, after Broken had gone off to one of the carracks. The Minsu army had showed up, what some had prophesied to be the Final Battle of All Time had occurred, and…

Varsis and his Makini armies had won handily, and sent the Minsu remnants scurrying from Asan Paril, with their figurative tails between their legs.

Hiro is Varad had been set up as the puppet High Lord of Asan Paril, and everything continued to go well.

But Varsis still sighed. Despite the fact that he had won another great victory, despite the fact that all projections indicated Emperor Ehajdon would be unseated before the year was out, and Makini hegemony would be secure, he was not content.

Something was off. There was a tiny fracture in the wheel of the great plan, and Varsis worried that, if left unchecked, the tiny fracture could grow, and splinter everything to pieces.

And that fracture rested with Broken. Fitting, Varsis thought, considering his name.

Varsis, at the moment, was sitting in a chair in the Palace apartments that, he had been assured, had been home to Maiako, for the duration of her stay in the city.

A pile of ancient books retrieved from the Palace library rested at his feet, and he was even now skimming through each, looking, searching. The books were genealogies, of all different sorts.

Others, as such as Captain Sari, were confused as to why Varsis was spending so much of his free time in solitude, trying to find out a particular piece of information. They didn’t understand why he didn’t share what he was looking for, or delegate the responsibility to minor functionaries, who existed in Asan Paril in droves.

For the truth of the matter was, no one else could do what he was doing. No one else remembered Broken’s face.

For Varsis was trying to discover Broken’s family lineage. He felt a pressing need to discover more about that mysterious man, for he had a gut feeling that Broken would find strength again, and somehow, break out of the carrack prison that held him.

And so, Varsis thumbed through the books.

Just when he was about to give up hope, and call it a day, the name on the spine of one of the books caught his eye. Tome of the Shattered Mind.

Varsis picked up the book. It had a black cover. He opened it. The book seemed not so much a genealogy as a chronology. It seemed to cover family histories during the Age of Despair, a thousand years ago, when the demon Casari is Koranor tried to break all order down.

Varsis flipped through the pages, until a particular illustration, a portrait, caught his eye.

Varsis stared at the portrait, and gasped, as revelations clouded his mind.

He knew who Broken was.

And he suddenly felt very, very sorry, for the poor crewmen of the Wretched.

***

The bars slid down into the floor. Urged on by their fellow soldiers, a pair of guards stepped away from the mass of sixteen, at towards Broken. Their swords were out, and they stepped cautiously around Eton’s fallen body.

Broken, whose arms were still bound by chains, looked at them with eyes of fire, as the two guards approached him, as if they approached a rabid dog.

Broken stood there, completely still, as the two guards prepared to cut him down with their swords, and end the threat he posed.

They were such fools, in the scheme of things. Unknowing fools, but fools nonetheless.

In the next moment, just as the guards converged on opposite sides to kill him, Broken acted.

His wrists were bound by chains, so what was there for him to do?

Free himself.

There were no keys handily nearby, so what was there for him to do?

Free himself. Will himself from the chains, with naught more than the strength of his mind. There was no magic involved, though it may well have seemed that way to the guards, the outsiders.

All Broken had to do to free himself was compress his hands, until they were smaller than his wrists. And so, he did.

In one smooth, swift yank, he was free.

The guards saw this, and pulled back, horrified. Broken took advantage of their shock, and subdued them in but moments, his hands connecting with pressure points. As they both fell to the ground, unconscious, Broken helped himself to their swords. He held one in each hand, as he walked out of the cell, directly at the fourteen remaining guards.

Belatedly, the prison bars swung closed, behind him. There were now three bodies in Broken’s cell, and none of them were his.

In the hallway now, and armed with two blades, Broken eyed his opponents.

They eyed him back, and, remembering their training, drew steel. The hall was crowded with the rings of drawn blades.

Fourteen swords, to Broken’s two. Fourteen men, against Broken’s one.

And yet, his cold rage endured. His calm, calculated rage would not be hindered by such things as odds.

The hallway was dark, condensed. There had been no cell opposite Broken’s but now, as he stood unblindfolded in the hallway for the first time, he saw that in other cells, that was not the case.

His cell was an oddity, with its mechanical bars, where all the other cells had pairs on the opposite wall, and were made of solid metal, with only tiny air holes. His cell was also at the very far end of the hall, a dead end.

The guards positioned themselves between Broken, and the stairs leading upwards, at the far end of the hall.

Broken considered his adversaries for a moment, and they considered him. And then the battle began.

With only fifteen participating, total, it was only a small battle, but the ferocity was still there.

Predictably, the Makini guards made the first move. They charged.

Broken slowed his impression of time down, so he would be more adequately able to respond.

As the first soldiers came at him, Broken leapt, straight up, into the air. His legs curled, then struck, slamming into the first guard’s face and chest. He tumbled backwards to the ground, tripping a second guard with his fall.

But Broken did not have the time to celebrate a temporary victory. He landed lightly on his feet, but as the tiny horde swarmed to intercept him, flowing around their two fallen companions, Broken had no choice to react, if he wanted to stay alive.

And, because of his catharsis, he wanted that. He wanted that very much.

Even as Broken began to touch the ground, he jumped again, pivoting, and gave a heavy double kick that slammed a guard hard against the bars of his cell. As he was in the air, Broken used his swords as rudders, of a sort, and as he landed, he landed with each sword in the back of a guard.

He yanked them out, and the two dead men crumpled.

But then, the rest were around him.

Broken danced the dance of blades. There were not twelve opponents to fight, to kill, all at the same time, there were only four at each individual moment, for that was the number that could crowd around him, at one time.

And while versing twelve might have been a feat for the ages, four against Broken was what he considered child’s play.

The truth was, his opponents never stood a chance.

Broken flowed as water, his mind understanding what each guard would go next, even before they themselves knew.

Broken was operating on a higher level, and while his form, his avatar was doing the grunt work, facing men, dueling, slicing, Broken’s ethereal arms were folded over his shoulders. He watched what his body did, noted, and continued to direct.

Then there were ten guards. Eight.

It was at this point that his cell doors opened again, and released two groggy, newly aware soldiers, the ones whose blades Broken used. They, nevertheless, drew daggers, and waded into the fray.

They were slaughtered.

Broken quickly turned to other, more pressing fighters.

And, one by one, dead body after dead body dropped to the ground, as blades tangled, twisted, cut, and sliced.

He parried blow after blow with his opponents. But one by one, they fell. He did not.

As the last soldier’s screaming cry was cut short, Broken stood tall. Seventeen bodies littered the floor, and Broken’s swords were drenched in red blood.

But he stood tall, amidst the dead he had created.

He was paragon. He had proven that, here.

At the far end of the hall, by the stairs, a metal gate came crashing down, cutting Broken off from the stairs.

Apparently, the remaining guards thought containment was the best policy, until they decided what else they could do.

Broken wasn’t worried. He had expected as much. And the next stage of his plan had nothing to do with leaving this hall, anyway. No, he had something to do, first.

Broken bent down to a fallen guard, removed the belt and scabbard from the corpse, and placed it upon his person. He did the same with a second guard.

Now, able to give his twin swords a home at last, he sheathed them, not bothering to wipe off their crimson coating.

He was paragon. When he wished, he brought death. He saw no reason to shed who he was.

Not anymore. He was done hiding, in one shell or another.

He had been unleashed, after so long, oh so long, and any who faced him would meet his wrath.

Broken reached down to the fallen bodies once more. There was one more item for him to collect.

A key ring.

Broken’s cell had been rigged mechanically, to not need a key, but all the other cells, being traditional, followed the traditional system.

And the truth of the matter was, Broken did not intend to vanquish the crew of the ship alone. After he was done, he would have no way to sail the carrack. He needed assistants, associates, acolytes.

And the prisons themselves provided him with an answer. The other prisoners themselves would prove useful.

They were madmen, murderers, and rapists. But Broken intended on setting them free.

He unlocked the first door. Inside was no raving felon.

Inside was a holy man. Crumpled against the far wall, unchained, but utterly defeated, leaned a man in priest’s robes, with his head down. Broken recognized the man at once.

It was Priest-Lord Ralad, of the Holy Citadel. Broken, knowing that the Holy Citadel had fallen to the Makini, quickly deciphered how the man had come to the Wretched.

As Ralad saw light pouring in, he raised his head, slightly.

Then, he recoiled, as his face registered recognition. Slowly, he got to his feet, and came over to the doorway, where Broken stood.

His time in the bowels of the Wretched appeared to have weakened him. Broken knew the priest could not in truth not much more than forty, but he looked half that again.

“…Broken?” Ralad asked. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing here?” responded Broken. He jingled his ring of keys. “Come, Ralad. We are escaping.”

And the two of them walked out into the light, the torchlight of the hall. Broken gave a quick glance at the grate, protecting the stairway. No soldiers were massing on the other side.

Broken was fine with that. He knew he would have to come to them.

But Ralad could not be so analytical. He looked at the ground, where the sixteen bodies lay.

“What’s going on?” he asked, nearly stumbling. “How did you…”

“I killed them,” said Broken simply. “You should be glad of that, as, had I allowed myself to die, you would not be free.”

“No warrior could take on that many,” said Ralad. “And yet, you killed them all, and you don’t have a scratch on you.”

“I’m different,” said Broken, gruffly. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have others to rescue.”

Ralad put a hand on Broken’s arm. He looked up at Broken, even though there was only a small difference in their height.

Broken could have pushed him away, and moved on to freeing the convicts, but, for the moment, he did not.

“I asked you this before,” said Ralad, “under very different circumstances. But now I ask again. Who are you?”

Broken looked at Ralad, with his cold grey eyes. “Do you really wish to know?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the priest, plaintively.

Broken prepared to say his next words, and then they were uttered. The secret was out.

“I am Casari.”

Rage against the world.