PARAGON
Remnants of the Great War Arc [1]
Chapter 10 : World Prison
----------------------------------------
Darkness, cold and quiet, cloaked the man in its motherly embrace. The chains that wrapped around him dug into his back and offered a nostalgic agony. Rank water dripped from the cobblestone void above, onto his cheek, and it itched so bad he could’ve torn his face off, if only for a moment of relief. But he couldn’t. So he remained still. Only his breathing broke the everlasting silence.
How long had it been?
What does it matter?
When would it end?
I don’t care.
Was he broken yet?
…
No.
No. No. Maybe his body was beginning to decay, but his memories hadn’t even begun to smell. He could still remember everything like it’d just happened yesterday.
The carnage.
The rage.
And the pain.
The black blood of his long dead enemies lived on under his yellow fingernails, and beneath his rotten garb, staining his skin.
So here he lay, decrepit and forgotten. Time carried no meaning in this eternal dungeon, and the days and years slicked together like tar. Perhaps he hadn’t been here all that long. Or maybe this was all just a dream, and he’d wake up on the battlefield again, as he had countless times before.
No, the war was over. He had ended it.
Distant sounds caught his attention, but he made no movement. The sounds became louder, boots on stone, as they approached.
From beyond the thick, rusted iron bars that enclosed him, two figures stepped from the gloom, illuminated only by faint torchlight from the other side of this black expanse. They donned nondescript uniforms of black and wore hoods to hide their faces. The standard wear of this prison’s guard.
“Hey, monster. You alive in there?” one of them jeered, banging on the bars and letting a deafening echo loose throughout the chamber.
“Hey, cut that out or we’ll get found out!” the other said, snatching his partner’s fist before it could hit the bars again.
“Tch. Pussy. You scared of a corpse?”
“No… and they say it’s still alive…”
“You dumbass. How can it be alive without food and water?”
“Still… what if the warden catches us down ‘ere?”
“Shut yer bitching. No one ever comes down here. Half the guards don’t even know this floor exists.”
“What do you even want with it? We been down ‘ere three times already and it hasn’t moved a single time.”
“I got a little something for it this time.” The guard reached into his uniform and pulled out a bundle.
“Hey! That’s my morning paper!”
“Fuck you mean, it’s mine!”
“You ‘on’t have a subscription!”
“And you don’t even read! I know you bought it just to look smart!” The guard shoved his friend aside and tore off the first page of the newspaper. He tossed the rest of the paper to his friend and crumpled his page into a ball.
“No… don’t…”
The guard tossed it between the bars, and it bounced off the enchained mass, tumbling back into the soiled darkness.
“Now you’se done it…”
“Fuck you mean, pussy? No response!” The guard laughed and smacked his friend. “C’mon, gimme another. I wanna try and hit his head.”
The game continued for another ten minutes. None of the projectiles hit the man’s head, but they bounced over his body and ended up all around him.
“Damn. And now we’re out.” The guard crossed his arms and exhaled, before turning back toward the bars. “Well, you got off lucky this time, monster! Next time, we’ll be back with a sack of rotten berries! Hahahahaha!”
“Why you talking to it if you think it’s dead?”
“Shut the fuck up!”
The two guards walked away, and that sweet silence soon returned.
The ink from the newspapers was slowly seeping into the moistened stone. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be unreadable.
News of the outside world rarely made its way down to the bottom of this pit, but when it did, he did not let it slip between his fingers.
The man exhaled, and that ancient power awoke in him. Terrible and euphoric. Like gasoline in a vase. It coursed through him, awakening his senses like fire. He closed his eyes, and his other one opened. It required no light to see.
The text from the crumpled up pages of the newspaper flooded into his mind, and he absorbed their meaning in an instant. Unfamiliar names and places dripped off his mind like oil on water, discarded. Words he didn’t know— no doubt names of innovations since his incarceration— embedded themselves within his mind like seeds, waiting to be studied at a later date. Only the information he wanted remained with him, selected by a hand of cosmic objectivity.
His eyes snapped open as a singular name fell upon his psyche. The veins in his eyes swelled, and his chains scraped against the floor as he clenched his fists.
No.
Of course he was still alive.
Damn you!
The man wasn’t so naïve that he thought he had died. That would’ve been wishful thinking. But to think he was being this brazen… after all this time…
I was content to lie here and await the end of the world. But an insult like this?!
No!
NO!
“NO!” he bellowed. His muscles filled with oxygen and rage, and the chains around him began to crack apart and shatter against the cobbled walls of his cell. He tore his legs off the ground and stood, ripping the last of the chains off his body. Eyes of hatred burned beneath his furred cowl.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
The lights in the chamber flicked on immediately as an alarm started blaring, and he squinted in agony, having been bathed in darkness for so long. As his eyes adjusted, he heard the clambering of a hundred pairs of boots pouring out of the nigh defunct elevator on the far side of the chamber, and orders being shouted in fear and urgency.
“Don’t move, prisoner!” a voice blared through a megaphone in front of him.
Above him, there was a mechanical hiss, and a second later, the cell flooded with a searing, high-pitched keening. The sound waves blasted down from a series of nozzles lining the ceiling, warping the air as they crashed upon the man.
“Arghhh!” The man dropped to the floor and clutched his ears. Blood poured between his fingers, and dripped from both nostrils.
Do they think something like this can stop me?!
He grit his teeth, and his skin began to shine. With a deafening roar, he detonated, destroying the nozzles, the bars, and the antediluvian cobblestone around him. Dust and rock showered down over him as he took his first step past the twisted metal of the bars’ remains, out of his cell.
A throng of hooded guards surrounded his cell, their pokémon deployed at the ready. Tyranitar, Dragonite, Slaking, and a host of other titans prowled before him. An Entei and a Landorus stalked among their ranks as well.
As he glanced between them all, he inhaled, and for the first time in forever, he smiled.
Fear.
A nectarine scent.
A moment later, the chamber exploded as a deluge of attacks impacted against him. Blast Burns, Frenzy Plants, Hydro Cannons, Stone Edges, Discharges, and more buffeted his body, but he shrugged them all off. They were beneath him. Out of practice as he was, he would never fall to such a feeble onslaught.
Again, he clenched his fists and released an effulgent shockwave, slamming everyone back into the walls around them, and they slumped to the floor, all knocked out.
Or, almost all.
The Entei got to its feet shakily and glared at the man. No doubt many of its ribs were broken, and a gash above its eye dripped steaming blood, but it bared its fangs nonetheless.
The man disappeared and reappeared beside it, wrapping his arms around its neck. Entei snorted, and its massive paws clawed at the man, but the man’s grip tightened, and he snarled in kind. A wet snap reverberated off the walls of the chamber.
With its neck broken, the man let go of the Entei, and stood.
He craned his neck up. It was impossible to tell how deep in the earth he was, but he tapped into the power within him, and a path to freedom revealed itself as ghostly ley lines that snaked through the air, visible only to him.
Gripping the cobblestone wall, he started to climb.
He was halfway up when an army started flooding down from on high, riding various flying-types and armed with weapons he could not identify.
Bangs and screeches lit up around him, and he scowled. As a Salamence swooped down and tried to clip him from the wall, he flipped backward, across the pit, and seized the rock on the other side. He looked up and quickly scanned his new assailants.
“Monster!”
“What the hell is it?!”
“How is it alive?!”
The guards squawked about, calling out moves, and the attacks that didn’t land on him carved blackened rents into the stone around him.
As a Crobat blitzed toward him, its wings imbued with a noxious poison, the man pounced off the wall and propelled himself skyward. The Crobat sneered at his approach, but the man sailed past and planted his foot on its head, before launching even higher. Its rider tumbled off with a scream, and Crobat smashed into the ground, far below.
The next nearest guards rode a Dragapult and a Braviary. The man grabbed the Braviary’s thin legs in one handful and yanked it out of air, flinging it into the wall with its rider. Dragapult fired a dozen Shadow Balls, but the man shielded himself with his arm.
As he dropped, he located a Staraptor beneath him and fell onto it. It chirped in pain as he landed, and the man shoved its rider off. Staraptor did a barrel roll to get him off, and he let himself get thrown back onto the wall. Staraptor nosedived to go save its trainer, and the man began his climb again.
Now, he wasted no time, bounding up the wall like a rabid animal. Elemental energy showered over him, but they all glanced off his skin. The guards yelled in horror as he approached the ceiling, the floor of the next floor. With one last leap, his fist hardened, and he smashed through it. An avalanche of granite boulders tumbled below, and the man landed on velvet carpet beside the hole of his own creation.
A hundred, no… two hundred men stood before him, filling the lofty atrium with their numbers. Gray brick pillars soared around him, the torches mounted on them casting their light over the assembled enemies.
A figure clad in white pushed through the host. Unlike the others, he wore no hood. His alabaster pauldrons clanged together as he walked, and with a flutter of his pristine cape, he planted his steel boots onto the floor and crossed his burly arms. He had close-cropped gray hair, and countless milky scars covered the dark skin of his face.
“For three thousand years, this prison has held all manner of evil. And for three thousand years, we have put down every attempt at escape. Today will be no different!”
He slammed his fist against his chest and roared, and the others bellowed alongside him beneath their hoods, their morale boosted.
“By the authority vested in me as chief warden of the World Prison, I sentence you to immediate execution.” The warden pointed at the man, and released his pokémon. An enormous Stoutland materialized beside him, already salivating.
The man stared at his assailants, before a gravelly sound escaped his lips. He threw his head back.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
His eyes were wild and bloodshot. The sound assaulted the prison guards, and they cringed where they stood. It was an inhuman guffaw, the crazed howling of a beast torturing its prey before devouring it. Even the warden scowled, but he stood his ground.
“If you are a warrior, then you should know you stand no chance against me,” the prisoner intoned. His voice was deep and clear, despite how long it’d been since he’d used it. It seemed to echo across multiple layers of reality.
The warden grit his teeth and glared. “On me, men!” Without hesitation, he broke into a charge, and his Stoutland bounded off beside him. The guards and their pokémon screamed, and they all charged toward the lone escapee.
It’s been so long since I’ve had fun. Maybe it’d be better if I didn’t finish this in an instant.
The prisoner licked his lips and tore toward the horde, his long arms and hair billowing behind him as he dashed. Stoutland lunged toward him, a cyclone of energy wreathed around his hirsute form. Before the Giga Impact could hit him, the man sidestepped, and rounded on his heel, kicking outward and clipping the massive dog in the side. He swiveled, and with all his strength, he sent the Stoutland careening into its trainer, and they continued off into the far wall.
Now he turned to the rest of his attackers. As they bared down on him, he clenched his fists into solid weapons and grinned.
Ahhh, it’s been so long…
The first row of guards didn’t even have time to process what happened before their skulls exploded in a storm of blood and meat. The top hemisphere of one’s skull was sliced clean off the bottom half, and another lost the center of his head, and his tongue lolled out of the gaping hole. A shower of blood erupted through the mass as man and monster alike were ripped apart, bones and all. The man hadn’t stopped laughing, and he was now covered in red, head to toe, as he carried on his carnage. The remains of a Tyranitar’s head disintegrated in his palm after his lightning-fast punch knocked it from its neck, and a swing of his arm melted the bodies of ten prison guards in a second. Their entrails and cloaks caught on his arm, but he shook them off and continued his rampage. With his eyes alight with glee, his laughter only became more and more high-pitched as he continued to smash, cut, and tear through the horde with his bare hands alone.
How much time had passed, the man could not say. Only, when his fever finally subsided, silence reigned over the atrium. Blood covered every surface. The walls, the stone pillars, what was left of his clothes, his skin, his hair, the velvet floor. Laced with stringy gore as it was, the blood was too thick to even drip off of him.
He breath wafted between his now moistened lips. That wasn’t enough… that was no battlefield… that was no war…
He limped across the room toward the front door. Two oaken doors lie before him, and with a single tap of his hands, they burst off their hinges and scattered outside.
Sunlight assaulted him, and he clutched his hands over his eyes. Cautiously, he took a step outside.
The wind felt cold against his skin, but he let himself bask in its cool. A sensation he hadn’t felt in years washed over him, almost as euphoric as the massacre from a moment ago. This was the outside world. This was freedom. He inhaled, and his nostrils gorged themselves on the non-tepid air.
Perhaps if he’d known how sweet freedom tasted, he would’ve left sooner.
Slowly, he opened his eyes and lowered his hands. The prison seemed to be on an island, as the ocean surrounded him on all sides. A smooth black trail led away from the tower, past a wall of straight, silver bars, down a sandstone cliff toward a port of steel far below.
A rhythmic cacophony from above broke him from his reverie, and he saw two… things curve around the prison and stop in the sky in front of him. With his enhanced sight, he noticed twin blades spinning atop the machines at an incomprehensible speed. Within their confines, more prison guards barked orders at each other and pointed at him.
The man’s smile faded. In his absence, the world had moved on. But his enemies hadn’t. He grit his teeth, but suppressed his rage. For now, he’d need to hide. Word of his escape would travel in an instant, and he knew that man would never let him live. First, he needed to learn about this new world.
He opened his hand in front of him, and the sight showed him where to go.
Crouching down, the veins in his legs bulged, and he launched into the sky. The flying machines swerved in the air, but he sailed over them, and dipped into a dive. Now over the open sea, he dived into the water and a plume of ocean exploded off the surface. Now underwater, he found a rocky outcropping with his foot, and backed himself up against it. His legs bunched again, and he rocketed forward.
Away from the island. Away from his imprisonment. And toward the battlefield once more.
As he cut across the ocean, its waters cleaning the blood from his body, AZ smiled.
It’s time to finish this, once and for all.
Next — Chapter 11 : A Hollow History
----------------------------------------