Convict Fenix

by Alan Brickett

  Off to one side of the apparatus was a bucket and the funnel, he caught a glimpse of wriggling white flesh within before his attention was drawn to the hooded figure standing nearby.

  It spoke to him. “Kneel.”

  He wasn’t sure he had heard right, and the pause must have been taken as insolence because a pale hand appeared from one voluminous sleeve and gestured at him. Then came the pain, the grubs stretched inside his gut squirmed, thicker than his intestines and with so many already inside him, the agony was incredible as they writhed and clawed through his innards.

  He fell to his knees in no fair amount of unfeigned outburst, giving off a good cry in response.

  The deep throaty chuckle of Torn echoed slightly within the closed space, the goat man had regrown his hair, his horns were polished clean, and the amused look on his face spoke volumes. Completely relaxed he didn’t expect Fenix to be a problem at all.

  “Please, no more.” Fenix wailed, putting a piteous tone into his words as he fell to his hands and bowed down low. He had been stripped down to nakedness and could see the writhing taking place under the abdominal muscles standing out beneath his skin.

  Like they were squirming to get free from underneath.

  The pain stopped, and the hooded being stepped closer, still with the white-skinned fingers visible. They merged along the base, making more of a three-fingered hand with short digits on the ends.

  No normal hand for a humanoid so this being was something vastly different, and with that amount of pale skin, it did not enjoy sunlight, some kind of cave dweller then, or something that only went outside dressed in those heavy velvet robes.

  “There will be more pain, of that I can assure you,” It spoke slowly, enunciating carefully but still in a language that worked with low sounds and words shaped by different tones rather than air passing through lips. He was starting to suspect the kind of creature that this was.

  “The amount of pain depends on how forthright you are with your answers.”

  It came closer to stand over him, where he could look up into the hood and see its face. “Why are you in my domain?”

  He caught a glimpse of a lamprey face, like those creatures that swam in tepid water and latched onto bigger creatures, it had that ringed mouth of barbs to hook on. Its black eyes were lidless and covered in slime, set back behind the mouth on a serpentine neck that likely held itself up spinelessly with some small limbs like the hand it held over him.

  That explained the lack of footsteps, it moved by slithering over the stone.

  Based on that comment, this situation was exactly what he had hoped for. Fenix surreptitiously looked around the room even as he spoke obsequiously, trying to give the impression of one pleading for his life.

  “I wish only to serve the Warlock great master! I do not wish to intrude, when I arrived it was confusing, but now I can see where the true power of the Prison lies!”

  Among the wailing and tossing of his head, Fenix got a good look around. Torn with a smug smile on his animal face was on his other side from the Warlock. The room had a single door, made of metal and flush inside a metal frame bolted to the stone. Obviously meant to secure a prisoner but also perfect for his purposes. There was no other way out of the room, not even a window or chimney to get rid of the smells.

  Prisoners likely didn’t live long enough to be an issue in these cells.

  The Warlock curled its fingers together grotesquely; even as it did, the grubs inside him squirmed again, sending agony ripping through him. “And of what use could you possibly be to me?”

  Fenix screamed, using the pain to give it impressive volume and feeling. He lurched upward and then fell over to one side, writhing on the floor. Torn made as if to come over and keep him away from the Warlock. But he had fallen over further away, and even now tried to crawl along the floor toward the door. The Warlock waved the goat man back, confident in his control over the prisoner.

  Perfect.

  He hadn’t brought any other equipment along, nothing that could be taken and destroyed. Especially the new bow and moth skin armor. Aside from the spells on stones he had swallowed, ironic now considering his torture, he had only himself as a viable plan. Not that he was going to just try a straight out fight with Torn again, oh no.

  He had figured out a much better way to deal with these two, something that should play right into their special bond, if he was right.

  “Speak!” The Warlock commanded, a lurching spasm wracking Fenix’s body as the grubs moved again.

  “I beg your forgiveness master! I meant no ill intent! I can serve you well, wherever you see fit!”

  With a mind that had endured worse suffering and still been forced to focus on complex arcane constructs, Fenix segmented the pain from his working consciousness.

  He split that consciousness further into the slow working of magic he had devised in his plan for getting both of these beings into the same room, while the last part prepared the glyphs he would need when he got to the door.

  “Please, oh great one! I have power, enough to have given your servant pause, and I can wield it for your purposes,” he begged, a spastic throw of his body getting him up from the floor and immediately over in a fall closer to the door, where, wracked by pain, he landed in a sprawl.

  Torn hissed through his teeth at the reminder, but the Warlock held up what passed for its hand to silence him. There was a whisper of sound, the air passing back and forth through its barbed teeth like it was laughing softly at Fenix.

  “How can anything as pathetic as you be of use to me?” It asked. “You harmed my creation yes, but not enough to be valuable. No, only enough to be an annoyance I want to torture for as long as you can survive it.”

  The Warlock’s hand clenched into a fist, and the grubs within Fenix went into spasm in a whole new frenzy of blinding agony.

  “No! Please, I beg of you!” He screamed, writhing across the floor until he was pressed up against the door frame, shuddering in utter unrelenting pain.

  Neither the Warlock nor Torn noticed the faintest hiss of metal being scorched half an inch deep at the base of the door.

  Not over the cries Fenix let out with as much vigor as he could summon.

  At the same time, the wafting vapors were pouring from his body, invisible to the eye and odorless. He could feel his magic lightly carry the mixture from his sweat over the floor of the room.

  The Warlock released its fist, and with it, the grubs stopped their punishment of his insides. He flopped back over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling and gave off a last plaintive.

  “No, please.”

  He thought it added a nice touch to the scene, just before everything was about to change.

  Torn broke into the silence. “Master, are you really considering it?”

  “No, my child.”

  The sibilant voice carried a horrible menace, it promised a great deal of pain yet to come.

  “I simply like to hear it scream.”

  Torn’s cruel chuckle was a counterpoint to the slow motion as the Warlock raised its hand.

  “I believe we can get the grubs out now, and then try something else. They will force their way out of you, through any exit they can find while the cluster of them pushes the ones in the fore even further. I will command them to exert themselves as much as necessary even if you tear and bleed. Can you imagine the kinds of places they will be forced to come out of you, the damage they will cause?”

  “Quite well yes, thank you.”

  Torn burst out with an animal sounding “Hunh?”

  Fenix’s tone in response had lost all of its wailing and mewling. It was so calm, so matter of fact that even the big goat man who had never seen any other torture but what he inflicted or the Warlock created felt a shiver go up his spine.

  It was the voice of a being so educated in the arts of pain, so well endowed with experience and knowledge in the ways of endurance, that it could lecture in hell.

  The Warlock t
oo had frozen, standing with its hand raised and hood cocked to one side, puzzled. It was not so shocked as to delay reacting when Fenix made to stand however.

  It immediately clenched its fist.

  But nothing happened, Fenix still got to his feet, slowly and calmly standing up to his full height with no sign of pain at all.

  “What is this?” hissed the lamprey mouth of the Warlock.

  Fenix smiled, a satisfied and confident grin that made Torn step forward involuntarily.

  The door frame behind the gray-skinned man burst into a red-hot light, the edges melting into the door and sealing it closed. Both the Warlock and Torn glanced at the sudden conflagration at the same time.

  He had cleansed himself of the grubs from within, the blue flame scoured the invaders from his body in a simple burst he could have done at any time. But he needed them to believe they were in control, right up to this point.

  There would be no speech, no taunting dialogue where he explained his plans and how he had defeated them. No, he had prepared, and they had lost; now they would die, and he could continue with the next stages.

  As if on a single cue they all burst into action.

  Torn became a vessel for berserk fury, cloven hooves striking off flinty shards from the floor. The Warlock brought pale hands up in the start of gestures to shape spells. Fenix snapped his fingers and ignited the gas.

  Being inside an explosion within a confined space is not an experience that many can talk about. Fenix was one of the few with the natural immunities to be able to describe the effect in great detail. Torn was able to withstand the immolation and through him and its own magic so was the Warlock.

  The gas was the initial accelerant used to create the fire, sitting as it did within the air of the torture chamber it was so mixed in that there was a uniform content, and thus a unified ignition.

  The air around the gas was consumed as fuel, the initial sparks went from red to orange to yellow in milliseconds, consuming the atmosphere and jetting out omnidirectionally. The shockwaves coincided from the magical start, pushing out the heat, destruction and sheer impact forces to tear apart the occupants of the room.

  Fenix was prepared, and immune to the flames and forces, so he stood there as the room turned into a brief but violent inferno. Torn was moving forward rapidly, into his charge towards Fenix and was brought up short as the fire swept over his fur and the shockwaves pummeled him from every direction.

  Despite the fact that Torn took massive damage he was only slightly hampered, his momentum gone, the giant goat man took a step forward after the explosion and shook himself to get rid of the blackened fur.

  The Warlock was the most affected, being dried out, burnt and smacked around all at the same time it was the most vulnerable of the three by far. Which was exactly why it had created Torn, to absorb the damage through their magical link and keep the Warlock alive.

  While Torn grew back his fur in heartbeats to recover from his own damage, this took Vitae from the Warlock who had been about to use that energy to cast a spell.

  By hitting them both at once, Fenix created a loop between the two of them, one that required them to support each other and tax their ability to take direct action. Now Fenix had to keep up the pressure until they were dead.

  The torture chamber rang like a gong as the internal pressure pressed against the door vanished along with the air which had been consumed. Negative pressure fought the sealed door and urged what remained of anything breathable in the lungs of the three beings to come out at once.

  Fenix had his own breath safely inside a magical shell inside himself, along with added breathable air in compressed pockets sealed inside. He had known what was going to happen after all.

  Torn had no need for air, his body being a creation which although of flesh and blood was also supernatural. Where Fenix could adapt to a vacuum through magic Torn did it by virtue of the reason for his existence.

  As a weapon for the Warlock, breathing was optional.

  The goat man roared incoherently, there was no sound without a medium through which to carry it, so the possible words and dire threats he issued went unheard. Fenix could not read goat lips to tell what was said.

  At a stop to a run Torn moved into action, while the Warlock focused on trying to create a conjuring to save itself. It too did not need to breathe so long as Torn was alive, but the strain on their link consumed both Vitae and effort that it could better use to attack Fenix.

  As Torn charged Fenix swept his right hand to one side and then closed his fist.

  The bone skull of the beast appeared out of the open space from a dimension created within Fenix’s own. His own pocket dimension where the weapon would reside until called for.

  The arch of the skull was visibly in the shape of a bow, held in the middle at one of the bony handles natural to the skull. Where the spine would connect via vertebrae and soft disks to the head. Fenix brought the bow around to his left hand, which he brought level with his right.

  He then pinched with his thumb and two forefingers.

  A line of light appeared, connected to the tip of each end of the curving skull bone and when Fenix drew on this line like a bowstring, a glowing arrow appeared and drew back when he pulled on it.

  All in the sapphire color of intense fire.

  With casual swiftness, Fenix completed the motion in two heartbeats, and the magical arrow let fly.

  Torn ran right into it with a whoomph that would have expelled all the air from his lungs if any was left. The bolt pierced his chest and went right through him, much more powerful and painful than anything that had hit him his entire Prison life.

  The magical bow was nor a weapon of supreme power for Fenix, it took all the native potency he had, with that amplified by the Mirror Kaleidoscope and then refined it further. No excess energy was lost, no bleed off from moving them magic through one form to another.

  The bow harnessed his power, concentrated it, and made it into the pure form of blue flame.

  It cost Fenix a minor fraction of Vitae to do this compare to summoning the bolt of fire for himself, and in far less time. So where he had been capable of doing this himself, with the same power and at the same speed, the bow did it for him using less energy, and he could focus his full attention while using it.

  A perfect weapon for a world like the Prison limited by the source of energy called Vitae, where every speck consumed was valuable.

  The hole through Torn healed instantly, the link to the Warlock drawing on the Vitae which it needed to cast its own spell. Taken in that one instance, the energy was only a pause in what the Warlock was attempting to channel.

  Fenix added to that pause by firing off a barrage of arrows, each with its own impact, piercing fire and burning pain. Torn was pushed backward by the fusillade, stumbling and yowling in pain as his body was perforated like tissue in a hailstorm.

  At the end of this sudden and impressive display of archery, Fenix added to the Warlock’s difficulties by releasing his own counterspell. With his attention relieved from creating the magical firebolts, he had more than enough capacity to compartmentalize his mind and create other spell forms.

  The Warlock’s beginnings of a spell to bring it atmosphere snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. Without pause, it started to construct the spell again, attempting to draw heavily on the Vitae it needed to do so.

  Fenix’s eyes glinted with contained glee as he again put several holes into Torn and with a flick threw out another counterspell. Seconds had passed, and between them, the Warlock and Torn were losing more life force than they had when the battle between Torn, Quelina and Old Man Page took place at the arrivals area so long ago.

  It was not going to get better for them.

  Having bought himself a split second Fenix took the moment to focus on a larger and brighter arrow in the bone bow. This one he shot at the Warlock before Torn could recover any forward motion.

  The larger arrow splashed against protectiv
e wards the Warlock had sown into its robes, the power flared and died. The Warlock felt many of its protections go out, if there had been air, then his robes would be smoking or have caught alight from the need to bleed off the energy.

  As it was there were fewer protections to take the second magical bolt that flew in after a few lesser arrows punched through Torn once more.

  Fenix added another counterspell to interrupt the Warlock’s train of thought.

  It was an overwhelming scenario, the Warlock could release its protection of Torn and focus on itself. But then the odds of it having enough immediate magic to take on a warrior of Fenix’s caliber were slim to none.

  If it focused on Torn, then it would have only seconds to live, and it would have to hope that Torn could defeat Fenix who displayed too much arcane skill to only fight Torn in a way that was to Torn’s advantage.

  The Warlock could also not speak to try and bargain.

  The conclusion to these options was an almost certain death unless the Warlock could get creative. It had options, like merging itself with Torn to create a single being, or leaving its own frail form and ejecting Torn’s soul to replace it with its own.

  It might have tried telepathy to bargain with Fenix.

  It might have done a number of things.

  Except that Fenix had created no time for it to think about what to do, it had only had enough time to act. Instead, the overwhelming situation and the creative ways out of it took up the time the Warlock should have used to instead take action.

  Like an avalanche, the sequence of events swept up the Warlock and its servant Torn. Fenix sent magical bolts into the both of them while at the same time countering the Warlock’s last attempt at a spell.

  Torn could not die before the Warlock so when the pain of his wounds lifted enough for him to realize that he was not healing the horned head looked over in horror at the falling body of its master.

  Then the mortal wounds took their toll on a suddenly mortal body, and Torn was educated in what it meant to be vulnerable in extreme and graphic detail.