Why does it hurt so much? He wanted to ask, but only a guttural scream could be heard. With a simple kick, he was thrown toward something hard, perhaps the wall of this small room, as he could see nothing but that small glimmer of light that shifted around as he was already picked up.
Jared had lifted him again and asked the same question he had asked before: “Who knows of this place?”
With waves of pain still running through him, he managed to grin and spit in the direction he thought the man to be.
Silence ensued. Wish was broken with his own screams as he collided with the wall again and then the floor.
“Come on, bastard! You can save at least a few of those who live in that shitstain of a village!”
Again he was lifted, and again he was possibly faced with Jared, the huntsman who now played with his prey.
Kanrel was breathing heavily; he just needed a moment to not be tossed around. One moment in which he could burn these blinds away. He began forming a code, as the only position that he could burn was the bridge of his own nose. A small price to pay.
“Have you gone, deaf? Or perhaps mute!?” The man screamed loudly and prepared to launch Kanrel toward another wall with all of his strength.
As he was about to do so, his movement stuttered as he saw flames that suddenly burst around his captive's eyes. “Bastard!” He screamed as he lunged Kanrel away from him and went for his belt, trying to take out his axe.
It was too late. As sight was all Kanrel needed, even if one of his eyes was blinded by the light of the flames, the other worked just fine.
Jared was left standing still as multiple small flames were around him, most of them harmless, but he wouldn’t know that. The huntsman only knew that if he made a sudden move, all hell would be let loose.
Kanrel took his time, burned away his binds, got up, dusted his clothes, and soon stood across Jared. His face was slightly burned, but nothing a session with a mirror and magic couldn’t fix.
“So… Is this now my turn to ask some questions?” Kanrel asked and forced a smile on his face. He was in pain, but this was one of those moments when he should not show weakness. He had to be in control of the situation, lest he have to just kill the bastard and get no answers.
Jared gave no answer; he just stared at the priest who stood before him, his mind perhaps racing with thoughts—anything that could get him out of this predicament.
“Paint, torment, agony, suffering—all words I know all too well... Have you ever heard of the Inquisition? You must have! Such things are their forte—this, which one could barely call torture.”
“Jared, my new friend. You know nothing of such things, so answer my following questions, or I will let you see what an inquisitor excels at."
The man gave a slight nod as an answer. It was difficult to say if he was afraid or not, but one good look into his eyes was enough. Jared was more than afraid; he was terrified. Perhaps he did not shake, but would anyone want to even shake if they were about to make contact with fire?
“Wonderful… You and your friends—how many of you are there?” Kanrel asked his first question.
“Here? Only three, but there were more. In this kingdom? I am not sure, but surely thousands."
“And those 'more'… Where are they?”
“They went below—months ago! We’ve not heard from them since... No one ever returns from below…”
“What is there below?”
Jared shook his head slightly; a tint of despair was apparent on his face now. “I don’t know; we don’t know. Only they would know, but they aren’t here!” He hissed his answer as the flames around him slowly but surely approached him.
Kanrel stopped the flames from approaching. “Do you have any records here? Perhaps any more of your sacred texts?”
Jared nodded enthusiastically. “There are many! So many! We would always record the most important knowledge! And then there is the diary! Yes, from that old priest! He had one! Do you need that one? I can bring it to you!”
He gritted his teeth. “And where is this diary?”
“In the pit! With all the bodies! We threw him into the pit!”
Kanrel grinned. “Now tell me... You ripped out his heart when he was still alive?”
The man did not move; he did not give an answer.
“So now you refuse to answer my questions? Well, you’ve served your purpose more than well. At least now I get an answer to a question I had once pondered many times before: At which point does a man stop screaming when they’re slowly burned alive?”
With these words, the flames engulfed Jared and his body, and the small room in which Kanrel found himself was now filled with screams of agony and lights that danced upon the walls. Jared ran without direction, perhaps to the ladder from which he had come down, but instead tripped over and fell down. His body disappeared over the ledge, his screams echoing through the air, and the flames that had engulfed him slowly dispersed out of his vision.
Soon he could hear how a body hit the ground somewhere below, but the glow of flames could still be slightly seen, so he looked down only to see the flames and the ladders, which seemed to connect multiple levels of the ruins.
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With a simple code, he smothered the flames as the smoke slowly rose from below, reaching the higher levels of the ruins. With another code, he forced all of the smoke out. He wanted to see when going up and down the ladder, and the smoke would only block his view.
He did quickly eye the room in which he had found himself but only found multiple different instruments that could be used for further torment. Such things didn’t interest him. He let them be and readied a bunch of codes to be ready when he would have his way with Petyr and Franc, wherever they might be.
The ladder led up to the tower room, which he had found earlier; it still held the things it had held before, so there was no point in going through them any further. All he had to find were two men, some notes written by these fools, and the pit that might hold the bodies of Betty Jenkse and Boran Walden. And hopefully the latter's diary.
It was early morning outside, and he could not see any signs of the duo, so he did the only sensible thing that he could; he went back into the tower and looked for a suitable position. One from where those entering could not see him, and began the long wait for his prey.
In the meantime, he used the little light he had and healed his wounds with the help of a mirror. Implementing codes in such a way was more time-consuming than directly seeing the location, which he would try to alter with magic, but with considerable effort, his face was back to normal.
With all the time he now had, something dawned on him. He had killed a man. Not directly, not with a sword, but with the fire that had blinded Jared’s vision. He might have killed someone before when he had been ambushed all those years ago, but it was never really the same.
He had not seen the bodies that lay dead after the magic he had continuously thrown at his attackers. The only body that he really saw was for a moment—the massive carcass of Yirn, the eldritch transformation he had gone through.
Jared’s burned body, which he could see from above, didn't feel real to him. No emotion lay behind his actions. He felt the same. He had not lost anything. Had he even truly killed him? Based on his emotional state, it was difficult to say. What would he have felt if he were the man he was before the Ritual? Satisfaction? Guilt? Or just nothing, like now?
Hours went by as hunger gnawed at him and as his own thoughts bothered him more than he wanted to admit. The two men finally returned to the camp; he did not see them at first, but he could hear them—how they discussed how their hunt had gone—a deer that they had caught.
“Jared! You were supposed to prepare the fire!” A shout soon came from around the area where they held their camp. This shout was also Kanrel’s cue; he prepared his codes, got up, and walked out of the tower, into the open, toward the two men who carried a deer on their shoulders.
Without hesitation, sharp ice spikes formed in the air and, in quick succession, flew toward the two fazed men. The sound of them hitting flesh was heard; it was so loud. And Kanrel stopped in midway as he saw how Franc stood there, utterly confused, with a spike running through his chest. Blood spattered from his mouth as he fell to the ground.
Petyr was left alone. His shocked expression told the whole story—none of this was supposed to happen. None of this was real. His confused eyes met those of Kanrel's, and it seemed like he could not move. He could not speak. He had no words—not even a scream—to offer in that moment. Just silence, which had the loudest of meanings. Fear.
Kanrel collected his thoughts and formed a few more ice spikes in the air, but he did not launch them at Petyr—not yet, at least.
“Tell me, where do you hold all of your records, and where have you hidden the bodies of those that you hunted?” Kanrel asked as he tried to keep his voice from shaking.
After a long while of just silence, Petyr found his voice again: “They are below. Everything is below.” His answer was simple. He was now staring directly at the spikes that were aimed at him.
“Do I get to go now?” He then asked.
“No.”
The ice spikes pierced the man from multiple directions, and he was left standing in an awkward position. He would stand in such a manner until the ice would crack or melt away. Kanrel dared not look at what he had done and just returned to the tower and went down the ladders.
Beneath, he would find answers; there’d be no time for regret; he’d regret everything either way, but let it be later.
He climbed past the second floor, as he had already explored it, and straight to the one below that. There, with a light that he himself produced, he could see a formation of shelves that formed a small library. One with less than a hundred books or so.
Most of the books were fairly old; some of the books that had had more hands-on them were slightly damaged, and there were pages missing. There were also books that were much newer, and one specifically that lay open on a stone table.
The pages left open read as follows:
Years have gone by since we’ve let anyone go through, yet none have returned. I begin to doubt my faith. I doubt all that I have ever done so far. But deep inside, my heart is in flames, and I can feel it; I can hear it—it calls for me. It whispers to me in my sleep; in dreams, it embraces me; it manifests itself in me as desire.
I want to enter, but I am afraid.
As Kanrel read through some of the pages, he figured that the book was Petyr’s private journal, and the last entry was on the pages left open. Most of the entries were about an “entrance” and this weird desire of his to enter it.
Mentions about people who went inside but never returned, and mentions of the hunts they had conducted, mostly on random people that entered the forest too deep. Only a short mention—a momentary remark as a sidenote—revealed that they had killed Betty and placed her head inside her own home—all this during a visit they made to the village of Jersten.
The trio mostly lived in solitude, deep within this forest, waiting for anyone to wander near their hunting grounds and waiting for those who had entered to return to them. Perhaps with words from their savior, from their god.
Kanrel picked up the book; it would serve as valuable proof, which he would study through and then send to the Herald. The same he would do to the other books that he had found; there were just so many of them that he could not read through them all now. They would have to wait as he climbed another level down.
The next level was mostly empty, but he figured that the area was used for other people who might have camped here or as another prison to keep hold of any possible prisoners that they might have.
The next few levels were similar; there was nothing of interest, just proof of people living there. But the further down he went, the less the areas were used. Until he reached the bottom. A body lay burned in his way, so he moved it out of his way—without looking at the eyes of the person that had once existed, not truly witnessing the man that he had set on fire.
At the bottom, there was more space. At the bottom, there were halls, rooms, and corridors. At the bottom of this tower were the true ruins—proof of a great civilization that once built this complex.
There was a stench. The stench of the man who had died because of a fall, his charred body that remained behind him, as he went deeper ahead. Perhaps this is when he ought to return to the village and form a party to explore these ruins.
But he had to find the “pit” they had mentioned and the diary of a priest long dead. Thus, he went further, with the light that was of his own creation leading the way.