Aurelius remained standing at the point where he had shattered the steel door and stared at the torturer, his blue eyes streaked with red as his poignant grief and rage waited to explode.

Uzbec was a disgusting man to look at. So openly vile to the point of taking pride in it and making it a basis for his identity. He was everything Aurelius despised in the nature of man.

"So you are Aurelius, Son of Ares," Uzbec said, his voice as low and dark as one would expect from a man of his stature.

Over the years, Aurelius had begun to be able to see through people and gaze upon their weakness, but when looking at Uzbec, his eyes showed him an abstraction. The old torturer was not as physically weak as one might have expected. He was tall, with a large frame and might even have been described as charming in some context. Yes, his weakness was of a different kind entirely. One Aurelius hadn't seen in a man like him.

"He killed himself," Uzbec continued, seeing that Aurelius had no intention of talking with him. "He had a poison tooth or something akin to that. I'm not sure I've seen the like before." He sounded disappointed in himself at that. "Was this a part of your plan?"

Aurelius gave no sign of even having heard the man. He just kept staring, glaring with pointed eyes into Uzbec, trying to see into whatever structure the man had resembling a soul.

"That girl described you as so caring I have trouble believing that you would sacrifice your own men in such a way," Uzbec said. Aurelius' eyes widened and he breathed hard through his nose. A moment passed and Uzbec tilted his head. "Aren't you going to ask whether she's alive or not?"

She was. She had to be. Aurelius couldn't be the cause of her death.

Uzbec blinked and put a hand on Amadeus' chair, leaning on it loosely. "Don't worry, she's alive. She told me what I wanted to know rather quickly. I'm a man of necessity." Uzbec frowned and gestured towards Aurelius. "Much like you."

"Take your hand off that chair."

Aurelius hadn't known his voice could go so low, sound so different. Nevertheless, he walked forward. And Uzbec backed off.

It didn't make sense. Why would Amadeus do such a thing to himself? Of course, Uzbec would try to take him hostage, but at least there was a possibility of having him give the information about Orpheus. That was who they all were after in the end. Then again, his physical state...

Aurelius' face twitched as he looked down at Amadeus' pale corpse so full of signs of torture it was unbearable to imagine the intensity of his pain. How he had endured it, Aurelius did not know.

Aurelius' eyes jumped to Uzbec and he looked at the man through his eyebrows as he growled, "You disgust me."

Maybe Amadeus couldn't allow the man who did this to him to get away with it. Still, he wouldn't have let Orpheus get away. He couldn't have. Aurelius observed his body in desperation. He saw the repeated stab wounds through Amadeus' hands and felt his rage boil. He walked to Amadeus' left side while Uzbec mirrored him, sticking close to the right wall of the hideous room.

"Admit it. You and I are creatures of the same nature," Uzbec said grimly, his back to the wall as he looked for a window of escape.

Aurelius took Amadeus' wrist gently into his grasp and tried to feel a pulse that wasn't there before closing Amadeus' eyes.

"We both know what you've done and more than that, why you did it. At least I follow orders. There is something I seek beyond self-satisfaction," Uzbec argued and Aurelius couldn't keep quiet any longer.

"I dream of a world where no one is what I am... does what I do," he said as he looked at Amadeus with sorrow before turning to rage and glaring at Uzbec. "You yearn for such an excuse. To do this to people." Aurelius felt dirty for it as he pointed at Amadeus, making an example of him. "You throw away restraint and become an animal of your own volition."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"You ripped off a man's jaw and beat him to death with it," Uzbec stated indifferently the instant after Aurelius finished. There was no emotional infliction in his voice which made it impossible to refute. They were mere facts. "After that you made another man eat his own fingers before stabbing him to death. Then you killed all the others and impaled them on a flag pole upside down for the whole town to see." Uzbec paused to hear any refutations. When none came, he added, "Even. The. Children." He shook his head and looked out of the doorway. "Especially them. They'll never forget."

Aurelius' eyes went hollow, his rage sinking into his stomach as he was reminded of the things it had made him do. "I... That happened once. It was a mistake."

"Ah, yes. A mistake." Uzbec waved a hand. "Forget about it then, by all means." Aurelius' nose twitched with spite as Uzbec turned to stare back at him. "Once a torturer, always a torturer. Sometimes a single thing defines you. I assumed you'd know that, Son of Ares."

Aurelius looked down shaking his head, mind empty.

"I wonder how you justify it. Being seen as some kind of saint while you're just a devil on the other side of the issue. From above the clouds, they say," Uzbec scoffed, but then he put his gaze down as well and seemed to reflect, diving deep into his own mind. "I liked it. Having a family that saw me in such a manner. You like it, too, I know. We like having people think we're something that we're not. Because sometimes we don't want to believe it ourselves, and in those moments of disbelief, we can indulge in that fantasy through them. A fantasy of not being damaged like we are. To not be so sick that someone could actually love us."

Both Aurelius and Uzbec raised their gazes and met eyes once again both only partially visible in the flickering lamplight, but this time the emotion between them was more complex. But it changed nothing for Aurelius. He just saw Uzbec's weakness for what it truly was. He just couldn't resist his shadow and it consumed him as well as those whom he loved. He was a pathetic failure in self-control that caused nothing but suffering. Aurelius was nothing like him.

It was ridiculous to even compare them.

As he looked at the man he couldn't help but think, 'How could someone so weak hurt me?'

In thought, he looked down at his hand clenched hand. He opened it and saw that there was blood on it. Fresh blood. Not like that which had been spilled from him earlier. It was Amadeus'.

Aurelius looked down and touched Amadeus' smooth hand which was the mysterious instrument of indescribable beauty, and under it lay a bigger mystery even still. Text, written in blood.

"King" and "12th".

Aurelius froze in thought. Before looking up at Uzbec who seemed to have figured out the situation as well.

The 12th was the day after tomorrow. Orpheus would meet with the king. Aurelius could finally end all of it. But once he realized that it all felt so empty. The mission was done, but all he wanted was his friend back. All of his friends. He just wanted to be together and feel the warmth of life again.

But he was slowly realizing that was gone. It had been taken from him. By the malicious efforts of others and by mistakes of his own. Once he would have given anything to undo. But it was all said and done, and he had ended up here, in this horrid room with this intolerable man.

He looked once more at his bloodied hand and muttered, "All good is lost to me." Then he looked up at Uzbec once more and came to an epiphany. "I was made this way for a reason. In this bright season, I'm freezing."

Uzbec took a subtle sidestep toward the doorway. "What?"

"I am the counterbalance. You, Orpheus, and all the others are a cancer to this world. I don't care anymore about what I have to do, what part of myself I have to sacrifice. I will kill all of you, and I will keep killing you. Your torture will be eternal."

"You won't get anywhere," Uzbec said, maintaining himself, but Aurelius could feel it as the man enhanced himself. He could already see how the man would try his escape.

Aurelius dug into his own stomach and wrenched back the rage. "Neither will you."

Uzbec stopped his subtle movement and all was still. "So what now?"

Aurelius tilted his chin up and looked down at the man for his final statement. "Now I crush your skull."

At that, Uzbec snapped into movement. He rushed and the moving elements overwhelmed the sight. He was a blur of a man as he ran, but Aurelius almost disappeared when he did.

If Uzbec would get out of the and collapse the doorway with compression, Aurelius would lose him. The thought sent a force of essence down to fill Aurelius' legs as he burst and reached the man.

Uzbec turned with a malevolent sharpness to his movement and struck out with a sharp blow. In an instant, Aurelius had leaned out of range and in another, he was back. With a violent twist at the hips, Aurelius delivered a swift but brutal elbow to the man's cheek and heard a crack, but he had already shifted back and shot another elbow of the same kind to the other side of Uzbec's head which crashed him just like the first and a multitude of teeth spewed out mixed with blood.

Uzbec retained consciousness only because Aurelius willed it. However, he could not keep his footing and fell to the stained floor where he would stay forever, as Aurelius stomped his head flat.