Saltwater burned in the wound.

Arkun was in a cabin somewhere lying on a table. The hard wooden surface was not befitting someone of his station.

The High Elf tried to sit up, but there were chains on his wrists and ankles that were holding him down. The lighting in the room was a single candle. It smelled of seawater and mold and was very damp. The stone walls looked like they might be growing moss as well, but that could easily have been shadows.

“H...!” His throat was so dry despite all the water that was on him. He couldn’t get any words out.

Part of the stone wall pulled back to reveal a dark sky. The sound of rain filled the room, which was odd because he hadn’t heard any rain before the wall opened.

A hooded figure walked into the room and closed the wall. “Good! You’re awake!”

Arkun strained against the chains and struggled to speak, but no words would come out.

“Oh, don’t try to talk…” The hooded figure was running gloved hands over his wounds. “I can’t have you screaming yourself hoarse while I study you.”

Fear gripped his heart as Arkun was hit with the memory of Keller Malus taking him to the edge of death, then healing him.

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“I see you understand.” The voice was so neutral that he couldn’t tell if it belonged to a man or a woman or what race they might be.

The hooded figure was too tall to be a Dwarf or any of the Borrowers, but too thin to be something like a Minotaur or a Griffon. Still there were dozens of things it could be.

“It’s rare to be able to study someone who has been modified so much.” The hooded figure patted his face. “You’ve already helped me progress my experiments more in the last few days than I’ve been able to do in the last decade!”

The hooded figure turned away and the room lit up, to reveal a much larger room than Arkun had believed he was in. There were shelves to his right lined with jars that contained various parts of monsters as well as sentient beings. The Regent pulled against his restraints, but he was too weak to budge them and there was barely any slack at all for him to move. The wounds on his chest stung as his movements allowed the saltwater to work its way deeper into his body.

“You shouldn’t move around so much.” The hooded figure put something over his face so he couldn’t see what was happening. “You broke open this wound again. I’ll have to seal it up. I can’t have you dying before I learn all of your secrets.”

Arkun smelled burned flesh before he felt the pain. Whatever this miscreant was using was so hot that the pain didn’t have time to radiate through his entire body before the nerves were burnt away. It was crude and painful and each time he was touched he dreamed about what he was going to do to his tormentor as well as that ungrateful child. He’d raised her to be the perfect Queen and she’d betrayed him and taken everything from him.

The Regent clenched his jaw to weather the pain. He was determined to survive this. And once he did, he was going to go back and take his throne.