The seething screams of agony bellowed through the steel tower, echoing violently through the long, winding halls. Salty tears dribbled down the man's cheeks while the smith-fashioned hammer pounded the rusty screw, nailing his bleeding hand to the wooden plank. Wrinkles indicative of middle-age crinkled along his forehead, condensing as the dying man stole a nervous glance upwards, watching his captor whilst pain dug through his body like a sharp knife carving through unguarded flesh.
“I have a wife.. children..” the suffering man muttered as his lithe body hung limp from the cross, grievously stricken with malnutrition and a plethora of beatings.
The dimly lit candle, the sole source of light in the impregnable shroud of blackness within the chamber burned in indifference, its molten crackles being the only answer to the tortured man's plea.
“My lord..” the man spat out with a cough, as rose-tinted strings of blood drizzled down from his hands, the ropes holding his body to the vertically-planted plank squeezing his skin, holding it in place rigidly.
“What was that?” The man's captor dignified him with a response, studying his masterly crafted dagger amidst the shadows.
“I have a wife, my lord. A gorgeous woman, and two beautiful young daughters. I beg you.”
The beggar's appeal was once more addressed by the cold, silent darkness. A minute passed. And another. Another. And another. An eternity seemed to have passed since he had spoken his last words, yet the quiet, aching eternity was, in truth, no more than a handful of mere minutes.
The dead silence was broken as his captor stood before the pitiful candle, bearing a masterly crafted dagger in one palm, and an unsullied cloth in the other. The jailer gently ran the fabric along the steel, brushing off any unseen pigments of dirt and dust. Fear wallowed in the captive's eyes as the robed, elderly man before him prepared the weapon, knowing all too well the fate that beheld him.
“Please, my lord. I will do anything.”
“No amount of begging can save you, my friend.”
“Is it gold that you want, sir? I have gold; a lot of it. Land? House Norder owns many fine pieces of unoccupied farmland, ripe for the harvest. A castle, armed with women of pristine beauty?Anything, pray tell, sir! I ask only in return for my life.” The captive panted, wheezing as he struggled for air.
“I am no sir, nor a lord,” the robed captor chuckled. Turning to face his prey, the predator reached to a nearby wooden table, gripping a glistening flask, filled a quarter-full with a clear liquid. “No bribe may win you your freedom, I'm afraid. I'm far beyond any concern for wealth or for crops, or even for the finest of women. Nor do I, I must admit, have any concern for your family.”
“Water?
“What?”
“What are you going to do with the water in that flask?”
“Presumptuous one; you're hardly in any position to be asking questions, my friend.”
Bitterly, the captive man snorted. The reality of the situation had finally dawned upon his frail, fear-struck mind. He was going to die, and there was nothing that he could do to escape death. “I want to know how you're going to do it.”
“I could leave you to starve; or, perhaps an order of flaying might be due.”
“Anything but flaying!” he cried, wincing in pain as the sides of the rust-coated screws pricked the inside of his flesh. “You've already starved me for.. how ever long I've been here.”
“No more than a week, I would say.” With a confident nod, the robed captor skillfully spun the blade along his skin, the firm hilt dancing along his fingertips as he studied its elegant craftsmanship.
“So how is it going to happen?”
Stepping forward, the dagger-wielding warden rose the freshly cleansed steel towards the prey's naked chest, and trailed its edge along his tender skin, not with enough force to penetrate its upper layer, yet with enough to leave a mark of evidence. “Today is not your day, my friend. We have other plans for you. Far finer plans.”
Excitement and curiosity found their way into the man's eye-sockets, washing away the previously dominant tide of fear and widening his eyeballs with a fragment of hope. “What are these plans you speak of? Am I going to live?” He eagerly spat the questions out of his quivering lips, wheezing for oxygen once more as his ears perked upwards, listening attentively to the coming news.
“Live? Not quite, my friend. Naivety has taken control of your head, it seems. The once bold and unscathed rationale of your military mind has been swept away by the pain you've felt, replaced by a willingness to accept, without question, a claim of chance for liberty. Curious, how frail the broken mind is. Intriguing indeed,” he spoke with a domineering grin.
The robed intellect's rambling tangent was met only with resentful silence. “Nothing to say then? Almost amusing; droll, perhaps.” The sharpened lead of the dirk met the left-leaning center of the man's chest, relaxing tranquilly above his heart as it awaited its handler's drive. “Your last words, my friend?”
“Fuck you,” the middle-aged lad snarled angrily, spitting in his captor's face.
“A charming choice. Doubtless, you aren't the first to choose those as your final words; nor are you the last. That, I can promise you.” Once more, unblemished silence stood between the two men. With a keen, calculated thrust, the jagged shiv sunk into its victims chest, whose throbbing howls of agony pierced through the short lived quiet. The edge of the steel buried its finest point into his beating heart, which continued to vigorously pump the crimson fluid through his veins. The dagger-wielder's cut was executed with supreme expertise, as no more than a few rebellious droplets of blood had escaped from the small, taut wound. Slowly, the head of the tool emerged from the gash, and within a split second, the senior man rose the flask to the wound, and tilted it sideways. “A couple drops should do. No less, and no more,” he muttered beneath his breath as small drips of the clear fluid drizzled into the clean sore, directly into the small, finely cut hole in his heart. “For what it's worth, I'll give you this much; this is not water. It's far different. Far more potent, rather.”
The victim's narrow eyes followed his captor as he reached aside and set the flask atop the wooden table once more, and lunged for a roll of bandages, as well as a needle and thread. “Do you feel any pain?”
Mysteriously, the crucified man tried to open his mouth in response, but his jaw was locked, sealed shut by some sort of invisible force. No doubt, it dawned on him that his jailer had likely administered some sort of poison which kept him from speaking. Yet, oddly, he felt no pain; not in his body, which was tightly packed along the hard wood, nor in his starving stomach, and more surprisingly so, not even in his wounded palms, along which the fresh blood had begun to darken and dry. Shutting his eyes, he simply shook his head.
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Swiftly, the robed man began to seal the tiny chest-wound, skillfully sewing the bandages into his skin. “Excellent. Soon, Lord Norder, you will die. Your death, however, will not be one of the traditional sense. You, as you are known, will die; yet you as you appear will live on. Slightly distorted, however. Open your eyes.” Obeying the given command, the man of House Norder propped his eyes open, and turned his attention towards his captor's motion, directed towards his chest. His skin had begun to darken unnaturally. What was once a pale shade of whiteness had been replaced by a blanket of miserable gray. The invasive color was spreading quickly, dancing along his body and washing away any thought brooding within his head.
Within no more than two minutes, the infectious gray had run through most of its course. From neck to toe, his skin had been replaced by the unnatural layer, which appeared almost metallic in nature, yet far too dull to be considered so. The muscles touched by the unnatural force had grown in bulk. Beyond growing in muscular magnitude, his stature, too, had been significantly stretched. “As expected,” spoke the robed man, who inspected the transformation with undivided concentration, taking a mental note of every single aspect of the transition from man to what ever he had become. The gray then claimed the sufferer's head as its final prize. The hair that had adorned his head, along with his eyebrows and his body hair had shriveled to dust as the darkness claimed his damaged figure, making him appear as if he was a statue in motion.
Indubitably, the creature nailed to the cross before the elderly man was no longer a proud lord of House Norder. He had quickly lost his body to the poison coursing through his veins, and even quicker lost his sanity. Seemingly, his mortality too had disappeared, for his heart had stopped beating, and the blood that had coursed through his veins, the same that had just spilled from his wounds, had lost its momentum.
“Look at me,” the man spoke as he studied his creation curiously, whose eyes were locked on the floor beneath him. “Do you hear me, my pet? Look at me if you do. Look into my eyes if you understand.”
As commanded, the creature peered upwards, gazing its eyes, which had retained their azure color, into those of its creator. The entity was calm, and collected, unlike the starving, trembling, pain-stricken man that it had been minutes ago. It seemed to harbor no hatred, nor hostility for the man who commanded it; merely a willingness to follow and obey.
“Most excellent. You are mine now. Henceforth, you shall serve me in all endeavors without question. I alone fathered you, and as your creator, I have need of your service. Do you understand?”
Slowly, the stony being tilted its chin downwards, nodding its head and stretching its neck from side to side. The robed man's face gleamed with a great grin, one of a man who was both indescribably proud and happy. “No longer are you Lord Owine, second in line to House Norder. Resurrected in your new form, you shall henceforth be known solely as Bor, sworn servant of Anselmus, second in line to House Torzet.”
Again, Bor addressed his master with a nod.
“Good. There is much work to be done.” Anselmus turned his attention to his work bench, and grabbed the hammer that had been previously used. Using its tail, he wrenched the nails out of Bor's hands, freeing his servants upper limbs. Tossing the hammer aside, he then used his blood-coated shiv to slice the layers of rope which had bound his servant to the cross, freeing him from his prison. Bor's feet slammed into the ground, and he arched his back, stretching the soreness from his transformed muscles. “Come,” Anselmus muttered as he grappled the door's knob and twisted it sideways, pulling it open.
Gentle orange flames sparked along Anselmus' fingertips, igniting the rusty, iron-fashioned lantern that his other hand held. The newborn blaze penetrated the darkness around the two, and the robed man began to tread up the first of the many stairs above. Anselmus halted at the fourth stair, waving the lantern around and turning to face Bor, who gawked curiously at the lantern's flames. “Impressed, my friend?”
A nod from his silent servant.
“One of many little tricks I've picked up over the years. One that any in House Torzet may perform with ease. Come, now. Our king awaits us.”
Bor followed Anselmus up the staircase, his mighty footsteps disturbing the otherwise serene atmosphere of the great manor. The walls of the Forlorn Citadel were dull and boredom-inspiring, yet incredibly fortified. Indeed, the dark steel that had been used to forge the great building, which stood hundreds of meters high, was resistant to any steel that would clash with its exterior, and equally resilient to any flame that would attempt to melt its imposing surface. The two passed many doorways which lead to the chambers of the citadel, many small and many large in size.
Finally, the pair approached the final floor of the great construct. The smallest of any other chamber in the building, the upper level consisted merely of a small study, whose doors were nonchalantly left open, permitting any to entire as they desire. Bookshelves lay rigidly up against the walls of the room, filled to the brim with a sea of tomes containing all sorts of valuable information; knowledge of magical endeavors and historical ventures, books containing strategical plans of war, those which have both succeeded and failed in the past. At the back of the room stood a seat; one constructed in the image of a king's throne, adopting the structure and style of royalty, yet equal in size to the average chair. The mock-throne was well decorated with a handful of small and soft black cushions, which doubtless provided great comfort to the man sitting in the chair. A black robe adorned the tall man's body, identical in design to the one that Anselmus wore. Gruff, unfulfilled patches of silver facial hair were sprawled across his jawbones and his cheeks, barely covering his roughly aged skin. The seated man, who appeared to be at least a decade older than Anselmus, had evidently long lost the hair on his head. His eyes appeared to lack any semblance of irises, for they were pitch black, darker than a moonless night. A simple table rested before the seated stranger, holding a handful of opened tomes, no doubt taken from the many bookshelves, as well as unrolled parchment, a quill and ink.
“Your highness,” Anselmus announced his presence, bowing deeply before the seated man, whose eyes rose from a tome and gazed curiously upon the two who had entered his study.
“Spare me the formalities brother,” spoke the bald headed lord, who slammed the foremost tome which layed atop the table shut. “I'm not the Lord-King yet; nor would I expect titular recognition from my inner circle if I were. You know this well.”
“Of course,” Anselmus answered, rising to his full height and turning to face his pet. “As expected, my concoction yielded promising results. Once, this fine man was Lord Owine Norder, youngest of the eldest Norder brothers. Now, he is something far more impressive. Something far more innovative, if I might add.”
“Indeed?” The older man inquired curiously, scratching his chin.
“Quite so.”
“Do you have a name, creature?”
The gray entity remained silent, and merely gazed into the elder's eyes with a nod. “Most unfortunately, he is unable to speak. An inevitable consequence of the brew. Nonetheless, his name is Bor.”
“Bor? Short and forgettable; uncharacteristic of you, younger brother.”
With a grin on his face, Anselmus turned to face his brother. “My creativity thrives in the domain of magics, not in the domain of language. If that were the case, I'd be a story-weaver, or perhaps a poet.”
“You'd be a shit-stain of a poet,” Mephisto replied with a cackle.
“Indubitably. Bor, this is my eldest brother Mephisto, head of House Torzet and rightful heir to the title of Lord-King. You will henceforth show your undivided loyalty to him, as you do to me.”
Bor's large form slowly sunk into a respectful bow.
Mephisto rose from his seat, and limped around the occupied table. Halting before Bor, his eyes ran up and down along the creature's torso, inspecting its figure. He prodded the being's arms with a finger, taking note of the new developments. “See to it that your creature is armed and covered from head to toe in black steel. In that manner, he would be of much more use to us than in a mere loincloth.”
“Of course,” Anselmus answered with a slight bow. “What of Darius Norder? Has he caught on yet?”
Returning to his seat, Mephisto leaned back comfortably and shook his head. “No. My servants did a fine job of hiding their tracks. Darius Norder is aware of his brother's disappearance, though there is no trace of his whereabouts. In that regard, we've naught to worry about.”
“A great relief,” Anselmus spoke with a smirk. “We shall leave you then, brother. My profound apologies for disturbing your work.” Mephisto acknowledged the other man's superfluous apology with a silent nod. Bowing once more, the younger of the two brothers turned around, exiting the chamber with Bor by his side.
“Bor.” The robed man stopped abruptly, speaking his servant's name as he turned to face the gray entity. “Though I said you owe your undivided loyalties to us both, in a state of conflict between myself and my brother you will answer to me, and only to me.” Anselmus placed a hand upon his Bor's shoulder, gazing sharply into his creation's unsullied azure-blue eyes. Bor merely nodded his head, immediately receptive to his newest order.
“Good. Now come, my friend. We've much work to do, and far too little time.”