by Andre Pisco
"What was that noise?" The guard asked and peered through the door. He didn’t see anything, but the suspicion remained.
He was about to go check it when Ghost put his arm against the wall, blocking his way. He tipped his head to the right, smiled at the guard, showing his yellow teeth, some food between them, wide-open green eyes, and a macabre smile that would leave anyone with curled toes. The strong smell of rum and liquor gained space between the great nostrils of the guard who sneezed in reaction, losing his initial composure.
"I... ah... I have something to do... there... in." The guard said, turning and taking quick steps in the opposite direction.
Ghost kept his face almost demonic as the soldier walked away from him, throwing a few glances, confirming that the young man didn’t follow him. He inspired fear and chills in anyone who faced him. His story was known throughout the village and knowing what was known about him, no one risked defying him. As the man disappeared through parallel corridors, Ghost called the group. They kept their steps slow, walking to the door and coming in, running into another long corridor. This time there was no grandeur or lighting.
"How do we know which door he is in?" Alec asked, looking at the metal doors, painted green, surrounded by stone walls.
"That's the problem. As I recall, inside each door there are two guards and one torturer. With any luck, they'll be empty by now," Ghost replied, erasing the candles that had been methodically placed along the corridor.
"That way we can’t see ourselves!" James replied, raising his voice.
"I know. Neither can they. We're going to need to run away and there's nothing like darkness to isolate ourselves and disappear." Ghost said in a tone as bleak as the stains on the white ceiling.
"So what now?" Max asked.
"That’s up to you. I brought you here," Ghost replied, pulling back and leaving them free to argue with each other.
"I have a plan," Alec said, counting the doors.
"What a surprise..." James replied sarcastically, "Quick."
Every second wasted made them less likely to succeed. The sun was about to set, and in less than a few hours the streets would be filled with frightened people and armed soldiers looking for the fugitives. Fear would take control of the people’s bodies and mind and make them thirsty to deal with the matter with their own hands. That is, of course, if the group succeeded. They were trapped between deadly consequences. They could die saving Lucian, and they could die after saving him. In neither option was there a moment of rest or a lifesaver that would lead them not to be afraid to face whatever was behind any door.
"There are 8 doors. Each one of us stands behind one and tries to listen to the sounds coming from there. Maybe we'll get something useful. If you don’t hear anything, go to one of the missing doors." Alec said and walked to the door closest to him, setting an example of what to do.
"That's just silly," James muttered.
"You got something better?" Neil replied, defending Alec and following in his footsteps.
"No," James admitted, sighing as he walked to the door next to Neil.
Max and Lucy did the same. They leaned against the door, their ears as the receivers of any noise coming from the other side. Voices, an object that fell unintentionally, and even cries of despair. Alec's and Neil's rooms were empty and they ended up going to the next.
Ghost stood in the doorway, pretending not to mind when he was actually watching the hallway and sometimes looking at the young men and wondering what it was like to have someone willing to die for him. A sense of curiosity that he struggled to keep under his carcass. He couldn’t, and would not, allow himself to be corrupted by fragile feelings, by a utopia that gained strength in his head whenever he saw a group of friends. Envy, too, and it couldn’t be. He lost himself between "I don’t deserve" and "why would someone want to be vulnerable” falling into a bottomless spiral, abandoning his desire and replacing it with black feelings.
Chapter XVIII
Max's face went pale and his body slid down the wall. He raised his hands to his face and concealed it between his legs.
"He's here..." he said, his voice low, trembling, almost aphonic.
"Are you sure?!" Neil exclaimed as quietly as possible, doubting the statement.
"Listen," Max replied, still cradling his head.
Neil mumbled a handful of incomprehensible words and leaned in the doorway, listening intently, his hairs bristling as he listened to the voices on the other side. A defeated Lucian, weak voice and pausing to spit, pleaded for mercy. Neil couldn’t believe it. It was as if someone had pulled a rug out from under his feet without worrying about if he would fall. His friend's request was greeted by a psychotic laugh, and by the sound of an instrument pounding on what was probably a table.
"No more, please." Lucian pleaded, "No... no..." He tried to finish but the words stuck deep in his throat.
"I have not finished yet." A familiar voice said, "This is getting funny."
The voice made Neil move away from the door and cover his mouth to stop himself from expelling the vomit that tormented his stomach. The pale face and the constant blink of an eye caught the attention of the other friends.
"What did you hear?" Alec asked, approaching him, putting his hand on Neil's shoulder.
"The... The doctor... He's torturing Lucian," Neil replied, taking pauses to inhale. Life seemed to have been sucked from his eyes, and now there was only a blank, empty space.
"We have to act. Max open the door, I’ll throw a fireball to distract him and James attacks him with a wave of punches until he passes out. Neil and Lucy rescue Lucian and we get out of here as soon as possible. Everyone in?" Alec asked, breathing in quickly, rolling his shoulders, preparing for the denouement.
James was about to speak when a scream, unlike anything they'd ever heard, stopped them. It was animalistic, and yet it was possible to feel the pain in his voice. An agony that languished him, expressing his pain in roars. The voice lost strength each time it was expressed, and before long the initial screams became mere barks of a weak animal. He was the guinea pig of a macabre experiment and was about to succumb. Lucian's voice mingled with the roar.
"I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t hurt him, please." Loud enough that the metal door wasn’t enough to block the sound from spreading through the hallways.
"And now?" Max asked, also walking away from the door. He was dizzy and eventually leaned against one of the walls. He took the opportunity to remove the glasses and clean them with the glide of his fingers.
"Now what?" Neil asked, "Nothing has changed. We have to do something."
"How do we take the wolf with us?" Max asked.
"Shit, he's right," James said, frowning, struggling to think of a solution.
"You really have to hurry," Ghost said. Leaning against the door, his back was leaning on the diagonal and he wiggled his fingers as if he were touching delicate pieces of an expensive piano.
"We think about what to do next. What matters now is that we have to save him." Alec said, and approached Max, "I'll count to 3. As soon as I say the 3 you open the door, okay? I go in and James joins me."
Max nodded. He wiped sweat from his forehead with his palm and walked to the door. He put a hand on the doorknob and held it tightly. His hand shook and his body erupted, the clothes clinging to his body and the hand in the door sliding along it due to his sweat. Alec didn’t say anything. Max stood still, staring at Alec, ignoring everything around him. He heard the number 1 in the distance, the sound muffled by how loud his heart ran as if at any moment it could jump and leave him to survive by himself. Although he had cleaned his glasses a moment ago, they were already covered by a layer of mist, blurring his vision, unable to see the faces of his colleagues.
Max didn’t know if it that was good or bad. On one hand, he wanted to make sure that he was not the only one whose fear was visible on his face. That it was not just him whose stomach was writhing little by little or that only he had voices
in the back of his head telling him that he was going to die there. On the other hand, it comforted him to know that perhaps it was just him, that the others kept their faces protected by the hope they had had so far, and that what moved them was to hear whispers in their ears telling them that everything would be all right.
"2 ..." Alec said, and waved his hands, letting the flames spread across his right arm, flowing like hot lava, to his hand.
Max couldn’t stop blinking. He lost control of his body and he only had control of the hand on the doorknob. It didn’t matter that his whole body shut down due to pressure and stress, but he wasn’t going to drop his hand. He wasn’t going to disappoint them again. He couldn’t. It was a second chance and he wasn’t going to throw the towel on the floor, no matter how his body rejected his ephemeral courage. Everything depended on him. Lucian's screams and the wolf's roars echoed in his head, begging for help, while images of Lucian being tortured passed through his mind like a bloody short film.
"3 ..." Alec said and took a step forward, his hair fluttering with fiery splinters thrown into the air like fireworks.
Without hesitating, Max pressed his fingers onto the doorknob, and with all the strength he had left, he opened the door. The next picture shocked everyone, including Alec, who didn’t anticipate anything so cruel.
"NOW!" Max shouted, still with his hand on the doorknob.
Alec woke up, glanced at him, then into the room. The doctor was in a corner, one hand still in his briefcase, his eyebrows arched, his mouth half open. He too had been surprised, and it was possible to see by the way his body froze, that he also felt fear, that it was his nightmare to have revenge taken for what he did. He opened his mouth slowly, preparing to let out a scream from the core of his being when he was hit by a fireball. The impact was enough for him to break a few blocks when he hit the wall, making the structure of the building shake. His white robe erupted into ashes. Only a tainted blue t-shirt, and black pants that fit his lean legs remained. He still moved and struggled to stand up and counterattack, but he was supplanted by the pain that left his body incapacitated.
He looked at his arm and noticed that some pieces of wood had pierced his skin and now his own blood was exposed to everyone, just as he did to others for his pleasure. He focused on red, sliding his finger through the peeling skin, taking the opportunity to indulge in his own taste. He completely ignored the people in front of him.
James and Alec were close to him, prepared to protect their friends as they removed the rusty chains that held Lucian to a stretcher. The wolf emitted a radiant light blue light over the white fur stained red. Its chains were different from Lucian's. The boys had to use their full strength to save Lucian and still ended up hurting him as they did it, his fleshed skin getting brighter. The wolf's chains had spikes the size of thick fingers that were tangled in his skin so that anyone who tried to remove them would be forced to hurt him. The agony of the wolf was present in his crystalline eyes, diminishing each time he roared in a hot flash that thrashed his knees, the light behind them fading.
"And now?" Neil said, with the tip of the chain in his hands.
"You... Hahaha... you're going to get caught and then I'm going to destroy you. I was devastated when I had to free you. I have not yet tasted the blood of all of you. That salty, hot taste, the essence of every being..." The doctor said, and as he finished, he put his finger to his mouth, licking it and sucking it until there was no trace of red dampness.
The young men lost themselves in his words, sinking into the fear of being caught and entering a nervous trance that prevented them from reacting. For a moment, they looked at each other, hoping one of them would have a resolution on the tip of his tongue. All they needed was a push, someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right because at that moment the hope and the courage that had brought them here had been sucked into the doctor's mouth. He laughed heartily, knowing the effect he had on them, and how possible it was to break an idea by overcoming it with the fear of failure. Alec held Lucian by the shoulders. His head was down, his neck disappearing for those who saw him from afar, and there was little left of his clothes. What was once an official mantle of the Drexus academy was now a ragged piece of fabric whose color was impossible to identify. What was once his pants were now shorts with red scratches, and the black color was now closer to the brown.
"Sa... Save him," Lucian said, exasperated, letting out a last breath before fainting.
The plan was going down the drain. Luck had left them at their mercy, and they hadn’t the capacity for improvisation that comes with the experience they also didn’t have. Each second faded into their bodies, the rarefied air weighed a little more each time they breathed in. The doctor amused himself by whistling a quick melody, a sound unsuitable for a situation of high stress, which left them even more on the verge of a fit of nerves. James, in an act of pure nervousness, ended up punching the doctor. His head moved from front to back at high speed, his body trying to keep up, eventually banging the nape on the floor and shutting down his whole body. He was not dead, but he could pass for it.
"What did you just do?" Alec asked, seeing the doctor with his eyes closed, not even touching his fingertips.
"I ... I don’t know. I just wanted him to stop. This was not supposed to happen!" James tried to explain, his heart loose from the box, pounding louder than the noise of his thoughts.
"Someone's coming! You guys are still in there? Shit," Ghost said, appearing behind Max's body, almost like a shadow a few inches taller, "Ignore the doctor. Release the wolf. Quick!" He said, not even reacting to the mutilated bodies and pools of blood on the marble floor.
"We can’t. The chains..." Neil replied, showing what had stopped them.
"5 people and none of you get a solution?" Ghost said, raising his arm. Transparent threads came out of the thin hole between the nail and the skin, and in seconds they were wrapped around the chains, "Get ready," he said and lifted the chains with only the strength of the strings.
Veins appeared on his slender arm, rising beneath his white skin, and his hand trembled. He clenched his eyes, what was left of his teeth scraped between them, and stiffened his legs to stay on the floor.
"Quick," Max said, behind him.
Lucy grabbed the wolf's paws and lifted them, preventing them from touching the chains that were in the air, inches from his skin. Neil had to persuade the wolf to lower his head and pass it through the chains.
"Lower your head, careful. We don’t have much time," he said.
From the way the wolf moved, he seemed to understand him. At first, he scraped on the chain, but it didn’t take long for him to get his way and managed to leave behind the agony that tortured him. The doctor was still lying on the floor. The wires of Ghost returned to his body and the chains fell on the floor, breaking the tiles where they landed, spreading the sound through the tunnel.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?" A thick voice asked, coming from the door that led to the tunnel.
"Wake up your friend. Fast. We have seconds if we want to get out of here alive." Ghost muttered, turning to the other door, "No big deal."
"Do you know who I am?" The voice questioned him. As he spoke, he spat out sprouts and scraps of food out of his mouth, moistening the brown curly beard that had not been cleaned for some time.
"Verdium? Verdi? Vardi? Something similar?" Ghost replied. His sarcasm didn’t fit the man's personality, who was infuriated by every deliberate attempt to miss his name.
"YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WHO I AM!" He bellowed. Saliva slipped through the corners of his mouth, his black eyes behind the rectangular face opened, and he swung his ax in the air, "I belong to the elite. One of the 10 defenders of this kingdom. I will not ask you again, what is going on here?"
"Ah... Mr. Averdi... sorry to interrupt you, but it is forbidden to fight here." A woman of small stature spoke, behind him, pausing at each word and licking her lips as she finished. She used her sharp nails to scratch her left ch
eek.
"This little boy is pissing me off. He has to be punished!" Averdi said, placing the ax on the floor, closing his hand firmly around and whipping Ghost with a glare.
Averdi
Class: Knight
Specialization: Brute Force (ax)
HP: 400/570
Attack: 450 + 70
Defense: 150 + 40
Agility: 90
Wisdom: 200
Items:
Elite Ax: + 70 attack
Soldier’s Hood: +40 defense
Ghost looked at the room, Neil held Lucian's head as Lucy opened his mouth and Alec poured the liquid down his throat. He knew it would take a few more seconds, or they wouldn’t get out. They would die a painful death and would be displayed at the main entrance as a warning from the governor for anyone who even thought to betray him, thus increasing his hegemony over the city. James was still looking at the doctor but lacked the courage to see if he was still alive. He didn’t want to have to deal with the possibility of having killed someone. He hated him and wanted to see him suffer for what he had done to him, but he still didn’t want him to die, let alone at his hands.
"I apologize. I didn’t know I was in the presence of such ... special being." Ghost replied, once again surrounding the words with a sarcasm that was detected for miles.
Averdi smiled. Behind his smile lay an alarming fury, an undoubted desire to strangle Ghost, even though he knew there were explicit rules for not doing so there. Ghost, who had become accustomed to reading the intentions of the people behind the masks they were wearing, knew what was waiting for them if he showed himself to be the weaker one. He remained unscathed, with his eyes half-closed looking at Averdi, who held the ax in his hand, holding it tightly enough so that the joints of his fingers would protrude in his fat hand.
