Penzer held his arms as he rocked back and forth against the cell wall. Two screamers had taken turns reaching inside, their blackened and scarred hands clacking against the bars. But Penzer was undeterred. There was nothing they could do that hadn’t been done to him already. He had been scratching himself for hours now.

When guards first cornered Penzer, he knew he would have some answering to do. He figured at worst he would have to contend with Boah. He doubted Juddken would have stayed quiet on his behalf. An early retirement wasn’t out of the question for someone like him. But then the guards took him in an unexpected direction, not south to Ash Manor, but north. Before Penzer could protest, he was beaten over the head with a club and shoved into one of the cells.

Penzer shouldn’t have been so careless. He had heard murmurs of some of the Corps overstepping their boundaries. But never did he think they would have come after him so soon.

The cell Penzer was thrown into wasn’t empty. There were two screamers with tattered linens reminiscent of desertfolk traders. The other guards barely had enough time to escape their lunges themselves. Penzer still had his armor, but it had been dark and he was disoriented from the hit against his head. Still, the guards hadn’t removed his dagger. With much struggling, Penzer managed to put down the screamers. It required at least fifty stabbings in their chests and a few lucky shots near their neck, but they eventually stopped moving. The screamers had left their damage though. Both of Penzer’s forearms were completely covered in scratches, and each had landed a few hits on his face. Penzer was pretty sure one scratched off an eyelid, though it was difficult to tell in the dark.

Penzer had no time to think about how the guards brought him to the cells. Instead, he kept thinking back to Amaren, how shriveled and deformed his body became strapped to his table. He also thought of Duncic, the guard who didn't hesitate to kill himself the moment he was scratched. Penzer kept holding his knife, but the screamer scratched his right arm so deeply that it was nearly impossible to grasp it now.

It was beside the point; he could never imagine killing himself, even in such dire circumstances. He was too prideful for that.

There were two things that broke Penzer’s solitude in the darkness. The first was the arrival of the hooded man, the one who came in a few hours after Penzer was thrown in. Penzer could only catch glimpses of him in the rays of sunlight that made their way through the wooden panels, but he didn’t recognize the man. He simply went back to one of the cages and unlocked it, but fled after the screamers took advantage. They remained in the lobby for some time after, wandering aimlessly and scratching at the cages.

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The second event was more confusing. First, the screamers ran out the door, responding to some commotion going on outside, and shortly after Jere had run in. He must have been captured as well, but he was alone. The guards must have been dealing with the escaped screamers outside. Penzer was able to guide Jere to the previously opened cell for protection, using claps and yells to direct him to a possible hiding location. As far as he could tell, Jere was still there, alive and unscratched.

Of course that was moons ago. Before, Penzer had been much more strategic with his planning. Penzer’s thoughts had long passed from caring about his cellmate. He hadn’t slept, and the pain in his belly was building. He had shat a few times in the corner of his cell, but the smell was rotten. He was glad that he couldn’t see because he was sure some of his gut had come out with his last bowel movement. His breathing was getting faster. His entire body itched and ached now. He had long since removed his armor so he could have access to every part of his skin.

He had heard voices for a while. Some he recognized, but most he did not. Some told him he was cursed. A few spoke in languages Penzer had never heard of before. Occasionally they would laugh, and their laughs turned to screams. The screams in his head were different than the ones in the cells as he felt them course through his entire body.

Time became strange. He thought he had been in his cage for a thousand years. Then he found himself repeating the same few seconds over and over forever. He was scared. Strange and unnatural thoughts crawled into his head. For a moment, Penzer became aware of an ancient sound: a low drone that had existed eons before the universe had formed from the loam. It was a noise that preceded even the gods themselves. He could smell the corpses of infants that hadn’t died yet but he knew their names and felt how much their mothers missed them. He could feel the weight of his chest crushing his lungs as though he fell into a cave and was hopelessly stuck. He knew where he was going after he died and he couldn’t tell where it was but it was the abyss.

In his mind he saw Amaren, only he was but a young child now. He was playing with swords and he was proficient. Or at least he was once, now the boy was strapped to his bed. Amaren was thrashing his arms, breaking his shoulders trying to remove himself from restraints. He had no skin. It had all been scraped off. Penzer looked at his arm and saw that he had no skin left either. He had scratched it away moons ago.

Penzer began to scream and his thoughts were no more.