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Planet Selara, year 1556 on Earth
Tarkin Dair was walking in his favourite place, the private garden of the king of Ranock.
Tarkin was not allowed to be here, nor was anyone else but the royal family. However they hardly used it, and no amount of guards could keep a spatial mage out.
He walked over to the pond and watched the ducks swim around for a moment. I should get them some bread. He thought.
If anyone had been watching him illegaly walking around in the royal gardens they would have seen him dissapear, reappearing a minute later with a small loaf of bread in his hands.
He sat at the marble bench along the pond's edge and tore small chunks of bread from the loaf, tossing them to the ducks.
Suddenly he stiffened and his eyes rolled up in his head, loaf of bread falling from his hands into the perfectly trimmed grass.
Tarkin was having another vision.
A woman is weaving together fronds, sitting in front of a mound of earth with a hole in it, humming an odd tune Tarkin has never heard.
If Tarkin could have gasped he would have, she is the most beautiful and exotic woman he has ever seen.
She has jet black hair and slightly slanted eyes, like the missing people of the western island.
The scene is peaceful but that just makes Tarkin more tense, he knows his visions only end in disaster.
He wonders what it will be this time, another great flood, fire and ash raining from the sky, or a disaster less natural, like the other three visions he has had, humans slaughtering millions of other humans.
He gets his answer a moment later.
The ground begins to shake, the woman drops her fronds and runs into the earthen hovel, and the earth shakes harder.
The mound collapses burying her in the earth, and the view soars up into the sky. The earth is being torn up everywere, great cracks and rends appearing in the ground.
Just like all of his other visions he could feel the number of lives being lost, hundreds of thousands.
He started to weep for the people he doesn't know and finally it ended, returning him to his bench in the garden.
Tarkin clenched his fists, two visions in two weeks, he was going to make the elders see sense. He was going to demand they let him attempt to shift to these other worlds to try and save these people.
Tarken stood from the bench and dissapeared, reappearing in his room in the temple. He rushed out the door and down the hall, out through the courtyard and into the hall of elders.
The double doors slammed open banging against the wall causing all six elders, three female and three male, to look up at Tarkin's rude and abrupt entrance.
Luckily they had no one seeking their council at the moment, but even if they did Tarkin would've demanded their attention immediately.
"I had another vision, this time I'm going whether you approve or not. I hope you can see sense and send people to the other places my visions have shown us." Tarkin said angrily.
The elders didn't look at each other, they didn't need to. Elder Maron's passive magic was telepathy which the elders used to commune with each other, as well as share Tarkin's visions.
Tarkin waited for them to come to a decision with his hands clenched into fists at his sides, righteous anger burning in his chest.
"I have shown the others the vision I just saw in your mind child." Elder Maron finally said.
"We have decided, we will send one man to each world you have seen in a vison."
"But I beg you not to go yourself, there is no way of knowing if you can shift all the way there, or if you would be able to come back. We cannot risk your gift on such a mission."
Tarkin pictured the exotic woman he had seen in his last vision, imagined himself rescuing her and how grateful she may be, and Tarkin vanished.
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Planet Earth, Ming Dynasty, year 1556
Tarkin appeared in front of the earthen cave he had seen in his vision. It had been midday when he had left his world, but here in this strange land it was night.
Only one moon was in the sky, a tiny sliver of a thing. Tarkin thought it didn't compare at all to Oros and Zara the twin moons of Selara, but it was many times as bright.
Even the stars were brighter here, and far more numerous, they lit up the sky in no discernible patterns, nothing like the purposefully placed stars from his home that wrote their stories across the sky.
The woman was missing, probably sleeping in her cave-home he guessed, although that was lucky for Tarkin.
He probably couldn't speak the same language as her after all, and he wanted to make a good first impression.
I'll go find some locals and learn the language, but first I should probably report back to the elders so they know I'm safe. Tarkin thought, and tried to shift back to his room.
He pictured his room, spatial mages had to shift into their own rooms in the temple in order to avoid teleporting inside of each other, but nothing happened.
He held up his right hand, fear tearing through his mind, and to his absolute horror his spatial mark was gone.
He held up his left hand, expecting his great disaster mark to be gone as well, but it was still there. A moment later he wished it had been taken away by this strange world too.
Tarkin had only seen a total of five great disaster visions in his twenty years of life. Now stranded in a strange world without his spatial mark, he had his third vision in just the past two weeks.
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Planet Earth year 2020
Christopher Dair sat on the BART with his heart pounding in his chest, hand clenched tightly on the grip of his uncles revolver.
No coming back from this. I'm going out with a bang. He mused grimly.
As the BART screeched to a halt and the doors opened he stood on shaky legs.
He exited the car and walked up the stairs, passing through the turnstiles and walking up yet another set of stairs to the bustling sidewalk of downtown San Francisco.
The sweltering summer heat of early July on top of his black hoodie sweatshirt made him even more painfully aware than usual of the burns coving most of his body.
He passed a homeless man with a sign asking for help and paused, turning around and going back. Guess I can't take it with me. He thought morosely.
He pulled out his wallet and pinched all the bills between his two least burnt fingers on his right hand, holding them out to the man with the sign sitting on a ratty blanket.
The homeless man stared at him for a few seconds, likely wondering what had happened to his face to leave him with a flat scar covered mess where his nose should be, no eyebrows and a hideous grimace lacking any lips.
But realizing he was being given more money than he normally makes in a full week of begging, he hastily snatched it from Chris's hand and stammered out his thanks.
Chris continued on his way, not responding to the man's gratitude. His mind was already back on what he had planned.
He was going to kill a man named Ryan Tash, the man that had ruined his life.
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Chris took his time walking the few blocks to the address he had memorized, taking in the sights and sounds of San Fran for what might be the last time.
He sat on a green bench with an advertisement for a real estate lady displayed across the back painted over with some illegible graffiti and a bright red spray painted phallus pointed towards her mouth.
He had planned on walking right up to the door, knocking and then pulling the trigger, but the location of the bench across the street and two doors down from Ryan's house was convenient to observe for a bit without looking suspicious.
Not that he didn't look suspicious, with his plain black hoodie pulled low over his face even in the extreme summer heat of July.
He waited until no cars were on the street, no people walking on the sidewalk, and then stood steeling his nerves for what he had already decided to do.
He crossed the street and walked down the nice stepping stone path through the well maintained yard to the front door.
Gripping his gun in his sweatshirt pocket with his right hand, he raised his left and knocked loudly three times.
He waited a minute, glancing around the neighborhood to see if anyone was watching him before he knocked again.
Finally he heard someone moving in the house and removed his uncle's revolver from his pocket, holding it out in his trembling hand pointed right at the door.
The door opened and Chris looked into the eyes of a startled woman in a silken robe with tousled hair.
Shit he must have a girlfriend over, should I run away? No this is my only chance, the cops will know exactly who showed up here when she reports the burnt freak with the gun.
He rapidly thought through his options but he didn't really have any, he had been planning this day for years and wouldn't give up so easily.
"If you scream I will shoot you, back up I'm coming in." Chris said quietly, not wanting to alert Ryan to his presence.
She backed up while holding up her hands and he walked inside, closing the door silently behind himself.
"I'm not here for you but if you don't cooperate I've got enough bullets for you too." he threatened. "Is Ryan Tash home?"
The woman didn't say a thing, pointing to a door at the back of the lavish living room Chris had just barged into.
Chris pointed his gun at the nice black leather couch across from the massive TV on the wall. "Sit down and be quiet." he whispered.
The woman backed up and when her legs hit the couch she sat, arms still raised in the air but remarkably calm for someone with a gun pointed in her face just moments before.
Chris crept slowly across the wide open space of the living room to the door at the back, frequently glancing at the woman on the couch to make sure she hadn't moved.
Taking one last deep breath he shoved open the door and looked upon the face of the man he hated more than anyone else, a fat balding man sitting up in bed naked luckily with a sheet covering his lower half.
He looked like he was well over fifty, but Chris knew he was just fourty-four, he had found out everything he could about the man that ruined his life.
"Who the fuck are you, where's Natasha?" Ryan yelled when he saw Chris walk in the door holding out a gun.
Chris had spent a lot of time thinking of what he wanted to say when he finally got his vengeance, and a few of the lines he had memorized raced through his head.
But he couldn't say anything, he was overwhelmed with a profound hatred and anger. Without wasting any more time he pulled the trigger over and over, screaming his anger out to the world.
The gunshots were deafening in the small room but he still heard the front door slam shut, Natasha running away.
After the sixth shot the gun was empty but Chris kept pulling the trigger, his screams of rage turning into choked sobs.
Blood started to run from the holes in Ryans chest and Chis's anger swiflty changed to fear, he had to get out of here.
He unlatched the cylinder of his revolver and shook the shells onto the ground, no need to take them with him anymore. Natasha would surely be able to identify him.
He dug into his jeans pocket to pull out the extra bullets he brought, but his scarred left hand had no feeling in it and he fumbled them dropping some on the ground.
He got down on his knees and picked them up one at a time, reloading his pistol. Once he loaded six more rounds he snapped it shut and held it up to his head.
But he couldn't do it. Not here, I can't end it here in this asshole's house. He told himself, but he felt his resolve slipping.
He pocketed his gun and raced out of the house, back down the street to the BART station.
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Chris sat on the BART, the loudspeaker proclaiming the next stop and some common sense rules of how to behave while on the public transportation.
He was faced with a choice, one he thought he had already made long ago. It shouldn't be this hard to end it. He thought, gripping his gun tightly in his pocket.
If you don't end it you will go to jail. You think you're in pain now Chris? Just wait til you're getting raped in your burnt ass. He told himself grimly.
He looked up, catching the woman across from him staring at his face. She looked away quickly but he knew. People always stared.
He didn't really blame them of course, he would probably stare at a burnt freak too if he was anyone else.
The doors closed and the car started to move, but it seemed to be vibrating, not just shaking like it normally did. A high pitched humming sound began to drown out the loudspeaker.
Chris looked around at the other passengers rapidly, but none of them seemed to be concerned. It was only his third or fourth time ever riding the BART so he decided it must be normal.
Suddenly a sound like metal scraping against metal tore through the air and all the passengers were violently thrown from their seats.
Chris was thrown to the right and smacked his head againt the pole in the middle of the car.
Groggily Chris used the pole to pull himself to his feet, his gun had fallen from his pocket and he snatched it up, looking around to see if the other passengers had noticed.
But he quickly realized he had bigger problems, the BART car was cleanly sheared at the end and he could see tall trees through the hole.
He looked behind him to the other side of the car and saw the same thing there, except there was also blood.
Roughly half of a man was lying in the isle cleanly cut from shoulder to crotch, his guts spilt out on the floor.
That was horrifying to Chris, but not nearly so much as the people in black hooded robes walking calmly towards the cut open car, long dark daggers almost big enough to be shortswords held in their hands.
He turned back around but now there were two robed men climbing up into the car from the right, also holding huge black knives.
The other BART passengers, (an elderly white couple to the right of Chris and a trio of twenty something year old black males to the left) were still picking themselves up off the floor from the abrupt stop.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The cute lady that had been staring at Chris was still in her seat but slammed against the armrest, blood running down her brow.
"Come quietly and show us your hands!" A feminine voice shouted from the third hooded figure on the right, who hadn't yet climbed into the car.
The passengers all raised their hands above their heads the way you do when someone orders you to while carrying a weapon.
"The backs of your hands." The female cultist shouted, and roiling flames spread across her hands.
What the fuck? Did she just cast some sort of fire magic? Chris thought in disbelief.
The two cultists on the right reached the eldery couple who had turned their hands around to show them the backs, and the cultists examined their hands for a second.
"Master tier healer mark here, should we keep her?" One asked, turning towards the female cultist.
"No, we can't sell her anyways or word might get out." The female cultist replied.
The male cultist examining the old lady's hands grunted in reply and slashed forward with his knife, opening her throat right before his partner did the same to her husband.
Chris had seen enough, he looked behind him to see which way had less opposition but there were now six cultists in the car behind him, already slashing at the trio of young black men.
Chris walked towards the two hooded men in front of him, hands still in the pockets of his sweatshirt to hide his gun.
He got ten feet away from the pair of cultists to make sure he wouldn't miss and pulled out his pistol, quickly firing twice into each of their chests.
At least Uncle Shithead taught me how to shoot. He thought grimly.
The cultists both slumped to the ground and he ran forward, training his gun on the lady with the flaming hands, who began shrieking incomprehensibly.
A wall of fire rose over her whole body and blocked her from his sight. He pointed at the center of the flames and pulled the trigger two more times, emptying the chambers.
He stood still for a second hoping the fire would go out so he could run out of the car and away. The wall of fire died down a few tense seconds later to reveal the woman still standing, fire swirling around her hands.
He had no bullets left and in desperation threw the gun at her.
A ball of fire raced away from her hand and intercepted the improvised projectile, melting it into a puddle that splattered onto the floor of the car.
He stared horrified as she hopped up into the cut open entrance, walking towards him with fury in her eyes.
She walked right around the pile of molten metal on the ground and all Chris could do was shake, staring at the fire in her hands and thinking about the day he had been burned.
He heard the BART door slide open behind him and felt a breeze blow in. Fuck why didn't I think to try the damn door. He thought sadly right before the woman reached him.
And then her flaming right fist smashed into his face and he blacked out.
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Sophia Reed got out of her last college class for the day and rushed to the BART station, eager to get home to her fiance.
She boarded the BART and played around on her phone for a few stops trying not to draw anyone's attention, she hated it when strangers tried to talk to her.
The doors opened and a few people got off but only one person boarded, wearing a black hoodie sweatshirt in July, and sat directly across the aisle from her.
Sophia tried not to look at people to avoid conversations but she had to see who was crazy enough to wear a hoodie in this heat.
She quickly glanced up and back down at her phone and had to do a double take, his whole face was a mass of scar tissue.
The burned man looked up, catching her staring. She looked away quickly as her cheeks began to burn in guilty embarassment.
Shit I'd be wearing a hoodie too if I looked like that. She thought, and immediately felt even more guilty.
The doors closed and the car started to move causing the man who had his head down until now to suddenly look around rapidly between all the people on the BART.
Well maybe he is crazy after all. She thought.
And then a sound of screeching metal tore into her ears and she was slammed to the right against the armrest.
A woman's voice yelled for everone to show their hands and Sophia complied, dazedly looking towards the voice.
What she saw defied logic, the car was cut open showing massive trees that couldn't possibly be growing in San Fran.
Two black robed figures had climbed up into the car and were walking forward, wicked black knives in hand.
"The backs of your hands." the woman shouted and fire swirled up around her hands, not seeming to bother her or burn her clothes.
Sophia watched in horror as one of the robed men roughly grabbed the sweet looking old lady's hand before asking the fire covered lady a nonsensical question.
The fire lady gave a negative answer and the robed man slashed his blade across the old lady's throat, the man next to him doing the same to her husband.
The scarred man in the hoodie started walking towards the robed men with his hands still in his pockets.
What is this idiot doing? She thought, watching in horror as he walked towards his own death.
Suddenly he pulled his right hand out of his pocket, covered in burn scars as well she noted, and fired a handgun twice at each man.
Sophia turned to look the other way for an escape but six more robed men were advancing towards her over the bodies of three black men.
She turned to the doors that were right next to her seat and hastily pried them open before jumping down to the ground.
Two more gunshots rang out behind her and the fire lady screamed, but it didn't sound like a scream of pain.
Sophia pumped her legs as fast as she could and didn't slow down when she reached the trees, racing around their massive trunks.
She didn't look back.
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Kira Stell was not having a good day, in fact she was not having a good month.
Her master had her performing some ridiculously draining summoning ritual on skull after skull after skull.
She had gone through hundreds of rituals but it had worked not once, and the lack of results was getting to her.
According to her master these skulls were from the spatial mages entombed within their temple for the last 500 years.
If anyone other than her master had told her that, she would've laughed in their face. No one had successfully looted the temple that she was aware of.
The journey to get there went through some of the most deadly places in the world, which would be why the reclusive spatial mages teleported out there to build their temple in the first place.
Her master had explained the purpose of the ritual before leaving to gather another batch of skulls. Supposedly it would summon a descendant of whoevers remains were used.
What she didn't understand was how that would be useful, there were no spatial mages left. Even if the ritual managed to bring forth one of their descendants it would just be some non-marked nobody with no magic.
But she trusted her master in all things, he had saved her after all. And even gave my dear brother a place by his side as well, what a generous master. She thought.
So she dutifully continued exhausting her magic energy performing ritual after ritual, but they were running out of female slaves to sacrifice far faster than skulls.
"Three more and then we can take a break." She promised the group, and they all returned to their places.
Three groups of three cultists stood at the tips of the triangular symbol that had been etched out and then filled in with blood.
The sacrifice was tied up in the center of the huge slab of black quartz the ritual took place on, an old cracked skull resting on her chest.
Kira led them in the chant they had recited over nine hundred times, louder and louder until on the ninth repetition Kira shot out a fireball, lighting up the sacrifice and the skull.
The sacrifice screamed, like they always do, the body smouldered, like it always does, and the skull... crumbled?
That was new.
The air seemed to vibrate and shimmer and a humming sound came from all around, then suddenly a hulking metallic rectangle appeared in the middle of the ritual site.
Kira looked at her brother and most trusted guard at her sides before flicking her hand out to the opening she could see at the end of the long metal rectangle, signaling them to go forward.
Kira cautiously followed her brother and her guard to the opening. She looked inside and saw multiple people.
I thought this was just supposed to summon one descendant of a spatial mage. She thought.
"Come quietly and show us your hands!" She shouted as her two companions climbed up into the weird metal box.
None of the people in the box looked threatening but they all held their hands up with the palms pointed directly at her, which normally signified a threat from a mage.
"The backs of your hands." She shouted, bringing fire into her hands in case the unkown people tried anything.
But the two people closest to her side of the box complied immediately, flipping their hands around and allowing her brother and her guard to examine them.
"Master tier healer mark here, should we keep her?", her brother asked, looking back at her.
"No, we can't sell her anyways or word might get out." She replied.
Her brother and her guard each slit one of their throats. Must not be spatial mages then. She thought.
A man in a strange black hooded jacket walked forward, his hands in the pockets at the front of his weird clothing.
Suddenly he removed his right hand from the pocket and a series of loud bangs emerged from the end of some odd metal rod.
Her brother and guard both dropped to the ground, and Kira shrieked in rage and loss before hastily throwing up a wall of flames to protect herself.
Two more loud bangs sounded out but nothing came through her wall of fire. She waited a few seconds and then recalled the flames.
The man threw his metal object out towards her and she instantly launched her prepared fireball, intercepting whatever it was in midair and melting it into a puddle.
She jumped up into the box and raced towards him while he just stood there shaking in his boots, right up until her flaming first connected with his face.
Kira looked across the box and saw the other six members of her group stepping over three fresh corpses, strange humans with dark skin.
Must be from across The Endless Deep. She thought.
Kira knelt down and examined the right hand of the man who's face she had just caved in.
Her breath caught in her throat, he had the mark of a spatial mage. She didn't know enough about it to tell what tier it was but she was certain.
She hastily pulled the collar out of her robe pocket and snapped it around his neck before looking up at the closest man to her.
"Jonas run to the house as fast as you can, bring Mara before this boy dies." She said in an excited rush, momentarily forgetting her brother had just died.
"You mean he's actually a spatial mage?" Jonas asked skeptically, walking forward to check his hand for himself.
"Don't question me filth." Kira snapped, "Go now quickly, if he dies Master will kill us all."
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Water splashed across Chris's face and he was jolted back into consciousness.
He was in a cell on a straw mattress, and could feel a tight collar around his neck.
The guard that had just thrown a bucket of water in his face was walking off with the empty bucket in his hand, not sparing him another glance.
The woman with the flaming fists however was glaring down at him, though her hands were thankfully not on fire anymore.
He could practically see and feel an aura of anger radiating off of her.
"One of the men you just murdered was my brother." She said icilly. Chris gulped.
"I was going to have you healed and then torture you, and then heal you and then torture you, for a few weeks untill I got bored, and then kill you. But since you're the spatial mage, I'll have a lot longer to torture you until you produce enough offspring for my master."
Spatial mage? Produce offspring? What is this woman smoking? Chris thought in shock.
"Who the fuck are you and where am I?" He demanded, as he reached up to pull the uncomfortable collar off of his neck.
The second his fingers touched it a jolt ran through his entire body and he fell back onto his mattress convulsing.
It hurt worse than the time he had brushed up against a live wire in his parents garage.
The fire lady giggled, and it was somehow more terrifying than her threats.
"Guess you aren't familiar with Gnomish suppression collars." She said.
"As you have probably figured out by now, you can't use your teleportation powers, and any attempt to remove it will be met with pain."
"I'm going to go bury my brother, but I will see you tonight. Bring all of your skin so that I can burn it off."
She giggled again as she walked away.
The convulsions finally faded away leaving Chris lying on his straw mattress in pain, muscles clenched tightly.
After a few minutes of waiting until he felt like he could use his muscles again he shakily rose from his mattress, walking on unsteady legs to the door of his cell.
He examining the lock but it was a flat square of metal on the inside, so he reached through the bars to feel for the keyhole.
He saw a hand feeling through the bars for the keyhole, a hand with a strange silver tatoo like marking on it, his hand, his unburnt hand.
For a second all Chris could do was stare, then he felt at his face, he could feel it again. He had feeling back in his whole hand, and his face was smooth.
He felt at his lips, touched his nose, and felt the warm tears running freely from his eyes.
Chris pulled off his blood stained sweatshirt and his nirvana t-shirt and looked and felt all over his scrawny chest and arms, he was completely healed.
The moment Chris saw the fire swirl around that crazy lady's hands he had accepted he was somewere that magic was real. But he hadn't had time to hope magic healing was real too.
He wept with joy that it was, until he remembered the woman's threats and all joy left his body.
She has fire magic, and healing magic, and she can burn me over and over and over until she gets bored. He thought in horror.
He replayed the crash that ruined his life over and over in his head, the horrible memory reminding him why he was so terrified of fire.
His dad had been driving their tiny car, his mom in the passenger seat and Chris sitting behind her reading a book.
He didn't remember the impact itself, just the sound of it and then the pain. The pain and the screams.
He had swam back into conciousness to a sound he would never forget as long as he lived, the sound of his mother screaming as she burned to death.
The crash had ruined both of his arms and he was helpless to even unbuckle himself, let alone help his mom. And then the flames reached him, and he began to scream as well.
The last thing he remembered before blissfully slipping back into unconciousness was the face of the man who pulled him from the wreckage, and the stench of alchohol on his breath.
Cal lay back down on his straw mattress in his cold cell and cried.
He wasn't sure if they were tears of joy at being free of pain for the first time in four years, or sadness at the memories he was once again reliving.
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Sophia ran through the trees expecting to get horribly lost, but to her surprise she quickly came upon a massive white stone road the width of a four lane highway.
She looked left and then right, but the road was the same unending straight line either way she looked. She turned right and kept running.
She ran until she couldn't force herself to run anymore and then hurried to the edge of the road, vomiting on one of the many enormous trees.
She sat heavily on the warm sun baked stone of the giant road for a minute catching her breath, and swished some water around in her mouth from her backpack.
She had never been more thankful for the tiny runner's backpack with the built in camel pack water bladder her mom had gotten for her last christmas.
Thanks mom. She thought, and then almost started crying when the thought of never seeing her mom again popped into her head.
Sophia put her shaking hands on her knees to steady them and gasped, there were strange silver tatoo like markings on the backs of both her hands.
Must be what the crazies were checking on everyone. She thought, and then returned to running down the road.
When she was too exhausted to go on she moved off the road and sat at the base of a tree that was too large to possibly exist, straining her ears to pick up sounds of pursuit.
All she heard was her own gasping breath and the last daytime calls of unfamiliar birds as the sun sank below the road back the way she came.
Which would make that West and the way I'm heading East, assuming that directions are the same wherever the fuck I am. She thought.
As the light of the sun fully dissapeared two massive moons rose from the North and South as she decided to call the directions, choosing to retain some normalcy in this unfamiliar place.
The moon to the North was a shimmering vivid ocean blue giving off a dim light, while the Southern moon was red and burned like fire, except it was also strangely dim.
She couldn't see any stars which she accepted as just another oddity of this alien world, but then they started appearing, one by one.
The stars popped out of the sky faster and faster, beginning to form obvious portraits of beasts and flowers, mountains and mandalas.
Finally it seemed the stars were done showing up, and Sophia could do nothing but sit and stare at the sky, trying to see all the images she could.
That was when she heard a howl and remembered she was all alone in a strange world, at night, in the woods.
She decided she didn't need sleep and leapt to her feet, resuming a fast walk down the road.
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Chris awoke when the prison door slammed open, banging against the bars of his cell and making a terrible racket.
He opened his eyes expecting to see the crazy fire lady, and wasn't dissapointed.
Well actually I'm very dissapointed, since she's probably about to torture me for killing her brother. He thought.
"Get up. Follow me and keep your mouth shut." She demanded.
Chris got up and shuffled after her, surprised to find his hands remained unbound. If I can get my hands on a weapon... He thought.
Chris followed her through the hallway of empty cells and noted there were six including the one he had just left.
She led him to a door at one end of the hall and he looked behind himself before following, spying another door at the far end of the dungeon.
He went through the door after her and found himself at the bottom of a stone staircase, surrounded by grey stone just like the walls of his prison.
The door slammed shut behind him and he spun around quickly, alarmed.
The guard that had rudely awoken him with a bucket of water an unknown amount of time ago stood against the wall by the doorway grinning at him.
Chris and the fire lady emerged at the top of the stairs and walked down a short hallway before heading through one more door.
The door led out into the left side of a massive entrance room to a castle or manor or some grand house with a soaring ceiling.
Grand enough to have its own dungeon. He mused.
To the right of the door they came through a set of massive dark wood double doors banded with iron stood open letting in cool night air, and Chris spied a massive white marble fountain down the front steps.
The two massive men guarding the exit with matching sets of blood red chainmail, black metal greaves and armguards, and vicious looking black halberds trimmed in a sharp looking line of red disspelled any notion he had of making a break for it.
Straight across from the door to the dungeon was another door, a mirror to the one he had just stepped through.
To the left were two white marble half circle curving staircases leading up one extra tall floor to a landing with a railing looking out over the cavernous entrance hall.
Seperating the twin staircases on the ground floor was another set of massive dark wood double doors directly across from the entrance, these ones closed and guarded by another pair of vicious looking guards.
The crazy fire lady led Chris up the closest red carpeted staircase to the landing at the top, a deep balcony that stretched the same length as the entryroom behind him.
Four doors were set in the wall across from the top of the stairs. To the right and the left were more massive dark wood double doorways, these unguarded for once.
She led Chris to the door directly across from the stairway they had come up, and into a long hallway with numbered doors on either side.
These were all labeled with a B and a number, starting with B-1 on the left, and B-2 on the right, continuing on down the hallway until they got to the door at the end, this one marked B-11.
Chris entered the room expecting anything, but he was still caught off guard.
A woman wearing a black and white maid outfit with bright green hair and even brighter green eyes stood stiffly to the right side of a massive four post bed.
To the left of the bed sat a wooden table covered with old dried bloodstains, a row of sadistic looking tools arrayed in a line.
Suddenly the dark red sheets on the enormous bed made a lot more sense.
Chris's knees trembled and he turned to run back out the door, but after taking one step his collar sent another painful jolt through his body and he bit his tongue, falling flat on his face as his muscles locked up.
"Ahh did I forget to mention that function of your collar dear?" The crazy fire lady said.
"If I give an order, such as follow me, and you try to go against it, that will happen. Isn't it wonderful? Now come lay down on the bed, we have a long night ahead of us."
Chris did not like how happy she sounded.
Not wanting another shock he lifted himself from the ground using the doorframe and stiffly walked over to the bed, his muscles still spasming painfully.
The green haired woman looked at him with sadness and sympathy, and Chris noticed she was also wearing a leather collar.
He crawled onto the massive bed and laid down on his back. At least I get to be tortured on the most comfortable bed in the world. He mused.
Chris watched in wide eyed terror as the crazy fire lady looked through her tools, picking a few up and setting them back down before she spun around.
"Have you ever lost a finger or a toe?" she cheerfully asked.
"No" Chris replied, swallowing back the words he wanted to say.
"Wonderful!" She exclaimed, picking up a nasty looking pair of shears.
"This will be a first for you then!" She turned to the bed and lifted up his right hand.
Chris closed his eyes, heart pounding in his chest. He felt the cold metal lightly touch both sides of his pinky and held his breath.
Then suddenly he felt a sharp pain and heard a snip that sounded just like the innocent hedge clippers he used to use in his mom's garden.
Chris let out a pathetic sounding whimper.
He opened his eyes and gazed in shock at the bloody stump where his pinky used to be, leaking out a terrifying amount of blood and pulsing with horrible pain.
"Oh my name's Kira Stell by the way, what's yours?" She asked, still sounding extremely happy.
Chris didn't want his name coming out of this monster's mouth, so he decided to give her his gaming name.
Hopefully the collar doesn't take that as going against her order. He thought absentmindedly.
"Calibra Dair." He numbly mumbled out, tears streaming down his face.
Then he lost another finger, and he began to scream.
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