I was building.

After Solus visited me for the seventh time, the only real measurement of the passing day that I had in this place, I had started to hear his voice in my head, even when he was not there. My determination to resist was being eroded from inside of my own mind.

Give in.

Let go.

Why fight?

I had tried several times to simply blockade him out of my mind, but that effort, no matter how hard I pushed myself, never worked. I could resist his infiltration for a while, but he would always break down my barriers.

Instead, I decided that if I couldn’t keep him out of my head, I could at least try to hide a part of myself inside of my head. So, between sessions seven through ten, while I waited for my visitor, I carefully laid brick upon brick of a wall deep within my mind, rather than at the periphery. Solus’ voice was a counterpoint to my activities, driving me forward as much as it tried to lull me into compliance.

At last, I finished the little room in my head. Carefully, and ever so gently, I slipped myself inside of it and dropped the last brick in place. The voices seemed to grow weaker, until, with a final hushed sound, they grew completely silent.

Inside this space, my body had a surreal, muffled quality to it. Colors were less sharp and sounds were more distant than I was used to. Absently, I poked my flesh with a small nail I had pried from the privy bucket that had been left for me. It hurt less than it should have.

I bid my body to rise, and, as if I were dreaming, it moved slowly at my command, rather than responding instantly with my slightest thought. I put myself through several paces, hoping that I would grow used to the feeling. No such luck. Whatever I had done had dampened all sources of outside stimuli, as well as the magic which Solus was layering in my head.

I wriggled my way out of the sanctuary I had built for myself and settled down to work on my other project.

Using a broken piece of wood, once again from my privy bucket, I had smoothed out a nearly perfect rectangle of wood on the stone floor of my prison cell. Now, with careful deliberation, I jabbed myself with the rusty nail, and began to scribe an inscription which would reduce the ambient temperature. Laurel had been kind enough to let me mess with her magical refrigerator.

The white magic which I now habitually circulated throughout my body quickly closed the wound I had left on my arm.

This was one of half a dozen cold inscriptions that I was working on. They did not take too long to make, although another twelve of the things were carefully stashed inside the bucket from which they had come, victims of either a shaky or impatient hand. I had learned to be very discerning in my movements.

The sound of footsteps coming down the long hallway to my cell warned me, and I quickly stashed the inscription underneath my clothes. It looked like I was going to get a chance to test my little mind trick. With a sigh of disappointment, I made my last preparations. I let go of my white magic.

The task was almost physically painful. If I kept the amount low I probably could have hidden it, but I had already given away too much to Solus. I was determined that he would not wring another secret from me.

Maybe I would try it next time anyway. I was coming to rely on white magic more and more. It was truly a beautiful substance.

“Hello Ethan.” Solus said.

Martin stepped up next to his master and set down a chair, its wooden legs scraping softly against the stone. Solus took a seat.

“What shall we talk about today?” He asked.

I sank my mind into my little cubby in my head as he spoke, and it soon wasn’t hard to make my gaze lose focus. His voice came again, though I heard him as if he were speaking to a man underwater.

“This is truly growing tiresome Ethan.” Solus said, “While I do have a certain interest in you, I will not be patient forever. Martin has suggested that you could make do without one of your legs. What do you think?”

I felt detached, but the way he made that statement with such a straight face still made me shiver. I remained silent. By his tone, he could have been asking me how much cheese I would like on my spaghetti. I might have started to become hungry from only having a meager crust of bread on the occasions that I was actually fed.

Solus regarded me for a moment, then brushed his mind against mine.

“I may have been a little too forceful last time,” He muttered, “Martin, would you try to rouse him?”

The lock of my prison scraped, and I almost leaped for that hope of freedom. Solus always spoke to me through the iron bars, never coming in. If I moved now, I would probabl-

My ears gave off a hollow ringing sound, and I wondered why the world had suddenly gone sideways.

“Hmm,” Came Solus’ voice, “Maybe a bit too hard. Bring him up to me.”

Strong arms closed around me and brought me to eye level with the man. I stared into the empty depths of his pupils.

“Let me in.” He whispered.

The magic whispered through my mind. I felt it bounce through my skull, though the feeling was muted, and I could feel a definite attenuation of the power as it searched for something to latch onto. It looked like my trick was working. As the reverberations faded, I could feel them settling into my brain, joining the silent whispers that plagued me constantly now.

Solus watched me for any sign of giving, then turned to Martin, “Drop him. I’m afraid I may have scrambled something in his head. It feels like he is only half there. If he hasn’t turned within two more days, then you may try your way.”

I turned my head slowly to look at Martin, who only regarded me with a cool glare. The man was controlled. He wasn’t a crazy dog on a leash, he was a bullet in a chamber, just waiting for that extra squeeze to explode into action.

They made their way down the hall, the cells to either side of them empty since they had dragged the babbler away.

Pulling myself back into my mind, I was immediately set upon by the whispers. Solus’ latest attempt had made them bolder, and they were now a low buzz inside of my mind. Banishing the sound, or at least suppressing it somehow, I got back to work.

Six cold inscriptions, altered by yours truly to increase their output, should be enough for what I had planned. I absently ignited some essence into white magic and began circulating it through my body. I shivered in pleasure for a moment, then got to work.

The last inscriptions were completed after two more visits from Solus, and they might have been my best work yet. Each time the man had returned, I had sunk once again into the hidey-hole I had built into my brain, and we had carried out the same dance. If my plan worked, I wouldn't have to see if it worked a fourth time. To tell the truth, if I let my mind wander to much, I started to wonder why I wanted to escape anyway. I had to act now.

The door to my cell was made of iron, lock and all. I had carefully tested all of the bars for give and had come up empty. I had taken a moment to curse competency in Solus’ dungeon designer at that point, then chosen my plan of attack.

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Iron is very hard. It can also be very brittle if it is not worked correctly. Moreover, grows brittle if you can bring its temperature down far enough. The weakest point in my cell was the locking mechanism. The internal workings of the lock were made of bronze as far as I could tell and would be resistant to anything I could do. The three bars that drove into the catch on the adjacent bar that did the actual obstructing though, were narrower than the bars of my cell, and would be the most likely point of failure.

If I could make it cold enough.

I had tried with a single inscription, and the results had been less than stellar. Two had still not been enough. Taking the difference between the two, I decided that five might work, and settled for doing six.

Licking the first inscription, I fed it essence. The little piece of wood grew cold in my hands, and when I placed it against the iron for a moment, then released, it held still as a little layer of frost creeped out from where it was touching. I repeated the process with the other five tokens, my work accompanied by the mad little chorus which had started up in my head at some point.

Normally an enchanter would close his inscription, trapping the essence he had poured into it in an infinite loop. Although this would not render it permanent, it did have an extremely long half-life. Enchanting had a sort of elegance to it that cardinal magic did not. Mages could do spectacular things, but they did so by spraying their power out into the world. An inscription, in most cases, was more subtle than that, yet its effects were always much longer reaching. Larger inscriptions in materials with high magic affinity could last several lifetimes and some enchantments, like those laid into the stones of Aramor castle, would never truly fade.

I had left the inscriptions open on one end, and with an effort, I pushed as much essence into my little creations as I could. The cold inscription would not be nearly enough by itself, but if I could supercharge it…

Essence flowed from my body into the tokens, and I suddenly began to shiver. Frost rime coated the locking mechanism and began spreading across the entirety of the barred door. It still wasn’t cold enough.

Minutes passed, and I heard a faint snapping sound. Then, with no further warning, the first of my tokens shattered. There is a reason why inscriptions are usually done in metal. It handles the power just a little better.

One by one the tokens broke. When the last one gave out, I grasped the bar next to the door firmly for leverage, channeled all of the essence I could throughout my entire body, and gave the most tremendous kick I had ever thrown.

Crack

The door held.

I kicked again.

Crack

It budged ever so slightly, something had come loose.

With a roar, I unleashed a final attack.

CRACK!

The locking bars went skittering off into the hallway as the door was flung open by the power of my kick. I had done it. I was free.

Now all I had to do was find my way out of here.

Gathering up the nail that I had used for the inscriptions, I stumbled out of my prison. There was no actual change in the air around me, but I swore I could smell liberty.

My cell block funneled into a hallway which had numerous branching points. I decided to stick to the main thoroughfare and started slinking along. As I moved, I muttered an incantation to myself, visualizing a pattern I had memorized before ever being able to use practical magic:

Ye sacred fire, ye eternal truth

Hear my prayer and answer now

Break the bonds of mortal sense

Enlighten now, with perfect view

I’m sure it was more poetic in the ancient Esturian language.

Magic flowed through me, and I felt my senses sharpen dramatically. The awareness spell was another spell of practical magic that I had learned. It sharpened the senses of the user beyond what the standard essence infusion could. The dim hallway was now bathed in a sort of twilight. Colors had grown dim, but I was now sharply aware of the area as a whole. Maybe the spell stimulated rods in the eye.

My nose, which had once been deadened, was now filled with the scents of human blood, sweat, and excrement. My ears picked up shallow breathing or moans of pain. My tongue just felt more like sandpaper.

The sound of footseps made me sink into one of the various branching paths and meld myself against the slightly recessed bars of a cage. A man with a torch moved past me and I held my breath. I tracked him with my ears until he turned down one of the side passages. The sounds of loud cursing, then fleshy thumps and disjointed pleading told me that he had come to retrieve somebody.

The form of the guard, dragging a wild-eyed man along behind him, clumped past my position. When the sounds of their egress faded, I made my move.

I ghosted along the corridor as it curved gently, then suddenly ended at a four-way intersection. I cursed the architect of the stone around me. He had clearly known that this was going to be a maze. It looked as if this place dated well before the founding of the monster fighting ring. It might even be as old as the castle itself.

I decided that straight was as good a direction as any for now. It at least put distance between me and the area where I had been formerly incarcerated.

As I moved, the sounds of human suffering slowly faded, only to be replaced by the sounds of animals in pain. I heard low growls and hissing echoing through the halls. I swore that there was even a brief whinny, although how they convinced a horse to come down here was beyond me. Probably sedatives.

It was at this point that I found my first door. The thing was a rough wooden construct which was short enough that I would have bumped my head if I entered without ducking down. Leaning in, I listened hard, but heard no sounds beyond an occasional squeak. Rats were an endemic problem in Aramor, and this dungeon was no exception to that rule.

Applying gentle pressure, I was surprised when the door swung silently open. Whoever worked in this room must have liked their hinges well oiled. All the better for me.

Glancing inside, I saw a wide workbench dotted with several tools I recognized, along with a series of stacked cages which lined one wall. Looking closer at those, I made out the dim shapes of rats. I guess it wasn’t a rat problem then, just a rat solution to another problem. If I wasn’t off my mark, this was an alchemist’s laboratory.

I stole inside quietly and was greeted by a chorus of squeaks. I ignored the rats’ excitement or anger at my presence and moved to the bench. Sure enough, I saw a mortar and pestle, several flasks, and a small brazier like the one that Laurel used. Our burgeoning alchemist was a pyromancer then.

A sudden rattling caused all of the rats to fall silent. I froze at that and turned to see a cage which had been pushed against the opposite wall from the bench. This one was far larger than those which held the smaller rats. Laying inside that cage was the familiar shape of a rathound. It glared daggers at me with its large eyes, as if daring me to come close.

I did move closer to it, but only so that I could get a look at the water bowl which lay inside of its cage. When I was about a meter away, the rathound went crazy.

With a chittering that I was all too familiar with, it hurled itself against the cage which held it. Teeth flashed against the iron, but only chips of teeth flew, rather than the harder material of the cage. I had jumped back at the attack, but had soon settled myself into watching. In a minute the rathound, it’s flanks heaving with the effort of breathing, gave up its desperate assault. It slunk back into the corner of its cage, turned once, then settled down to glare at me.

I approached again but only received a baleful glare. Its water bowl was filled with something that made my enhanced sense of smell recoil from half a meter away. The alchemist who had been working on this thing had left it with some kind of potion, then waited for it to go mad enough with thirst to drink the vile concoction.

Turning back, I went to the bench and searched through the various vials until I found one that I thought might be similar. Unstoppering it, I confirmed it with the smell. It was horrible in the way that a rose is horrible after it is half-decayed. You could tell that there used to be some substance to it, perhaps something beautiful. Now, it was just a parody meant to bring shame to roses everywhere.

I was unwilling to see if any of the other concoctions were anything that might be useful, so with the vial in hand, I made a quick search, coming up with a cutting knife. It was even worse than the blade I had forged, and subsequently broken, but it was infinitely better than my bare fists. I left the room, followed by chitters of protest.

In the hallway once again, I heard voices. I ducked back inside the alchemist’s room and waited. The voices grew no more distant, nor any closer. After several minutes, I started to listen more closely.

Give up

Let go

With a shiver, I realized that those weren’t the voices of people. They were the voice of one person in particular. The little presents he had left inside of my mind had started speaking up again, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not suppress them this time.

With a sigh, I leaned against the door and considered my options.

At this point I could do one of two things. I could either start moving and pray that I would hit some kind of object to orient myself, or find a hiding spot nearby and hope that someone would come by and lead me towards an area that was closer to the exit. I was personally in favor of waiting, not wanting to get myself lost in this maze.

However, I also reasoned that Solus would eventually return for our next little therapy session. When he found me missing, he was going to send people out to search. If I stayed nearby, there was a good chance that I would be captured in any systemic hunt. I wasn’t terribly good at hiding, and Solus probably had more than a few mages who could also utilize the awareness spell.

My best bet was to get a head start with the time I had. Even if I didn’t find a way out, I could die with the satisfaction that I hadn’t been turned into Solus’ pet. That was a thought worth more than ten gold sovereigns.

With that in mind, and both a clock ticking in my head and Solus’ whispers to keep me company, I stole one of the two essence lanterns from the alchemist’s workbench, then set out into the darkness.

I increased the amount of circulating white magic in my body to bring me a little comfort as I walked. I had the essence to spare, so why not.