The Chronicles of Heaven's War: Burning Phoenix

by Ava D. Dohn

  * * *

  Sirion crashed into the steel wall of the prison wagon and then collapsed, crumpled up on the floor on her side as if dead.

  “I know you’re alive!” Legion screamed. He hurried over and kicked Sirion in the midsection, slamming her back against the wall, cracking several of the woman’s ribs. “Tell me you’re alive or I’ll put my boot through your face next time!”

  Vomiting blood from a broken mouth, Sirion cried out in pain, lifting a hand beseechingly, begging for mercy from tortured lips as she wheezed, gasping, “Brother...please... My brother…” Another swift kick silenced the woman.

  “Bitch! Little worthless bitch!” Don’t you dare call me that again! Your brother died long ago. I am Legion, ruler of kingdoms and empires, second in power and glory over this universe! You are a worthless nothing! Not fit for dog meat! Nothing!” He stormed across the tiny cell. Turning around, he sat on a small stool, silently glaring at the disfigured pile of living flesh lying on the floor.

  Legion frowned, concerned. Oh, not over the deplorable condition he had left his charge in. Indeed, he rather enjoyed this kind of entertainment, practicing it often when opportunity afforded it. No, he was concerned that the woman refused to be broken. For weeks, Sirion had been starved, beaten, tortured and abused. Never once did she surrender to the punishments dished out to her and deny her loyalties. Few of the others had remained so loyal, and those who did no longer lived.

  Sirion, though, Legion was to keep alive, at least for a little while longer. This was the one fact that troubled him. Alithea - Asotos - would not take kindly to the girl’s demise, not yet. His gentle but warning words still echoed in Legion’s ears. “Sirion was the last of my pleasured gifts in the days before the evil done to us. She still holds a place in my heart… for the moment. It would pain me so to see disaster befall her. Her life is very, very valuable to me. I’m sure you will be gentle with my treasure.”

  Legion dare not kill this creature, at least not yet. She was a tough one, though, with a strong will to survive. She could take a lot more punishment before her desire to live surrendered itself up to death.

  Legion rubbed his clean shaven chin, pondering. He smiled. All that was needed at the Prisoner Exchange was Sirion’s living flesh, her mind and soul being of little value. There were ways those could be tortured and ruined without further harming the body. That would certainly give him some solace, considering all the time and effort he had invested in breaking this troublesome nuisance. No one resisted him and got away alive!

  Pushing down with his hands on his knees as he leaned forward and stood, he grinned at the thought of making the woman suffer excruciatingly before her head became an empty tomb of forgotten memories.

  Walking over to Sirion, Legion looked down, his charming tone sending a shiver through the woman’s body. “I so much want this to end well for both of us. Now if my little sister isn’t a good girl, I may have to hand her over to some of the uncouth men in the camp.” Sirion silently lay there as if asleep, only the twitch of an eyelid revealing her dread of such a torturous event. Not obtaining desired results, Legion shook his head. “You look so abhorrent, I doubt any man would want you, but now the beasts?” Sirion stirred this time, visions of recent violations burning painfully in her mind.

  Legion smiled. “Well, well, I do think another ride or two with the horses might humble that rebellious spirit of yours, that is, of course, after an hour or so with the dogs. Your passionate moans were so arousing during your last interlude with them.”

  Sirion cried out, weeping pitiably in anguish as she extended a hand seeking mercy, “No! No! Please!”

  Laughing, Legion reassured her, “Don’t worry, they will be muzzled this time… maybe.”

  “No! Please don’t do such a thing! Not again! Please!” Sirion sobbed.

  Bending low over her, Legion hissed. “Then on your knees and pledge your allegiance to the rightful ruler of this universe.”

  Sirion’s terror-stricken eyes flew open, filled with desperate hope. She had been forced to watch other women prisoners suffer similarly, either unto death or until they renounced their mother and offered up oaths of loyalty to Asotos. Few had surrendered to Legion’s demands and had suffered wretched deaths. Ah, but the ones who had relented… either death came swiftly or the tortures were halted and they were removed from the torture chambers.

  Using all her strength, Sirion rolled onto her knees and laboriously pushed herself up and back until she was sitting, staring up at Legion. For the longest time she did not move, her eyes fixed on his.

  Legion soon became impatient. “Hurry up now, or I’ll call the guards to fetch the dogs! You know what to do. Make it quick. I’ve not got the day to wait upon your confessions!”

  Sirion’s lips quivered in trepidation. So easy it would be to confess Asotos as her lord and king. Why, had he not been as much for so many countless eons, at least in action if not in title? It was such a little thing. Mother would understand. She was always so kind and sympathetic. There were limits to a person’s endurance, her endurance. Mother would understand.

  A sudden struggle arose within Sirion’s breast. It was as if two armies were warring against each other seeking control over the moment. Sounds of voices echoed in her head, one group attempting to out-shout the other.

  There came screams of, “Give glory to your new Master and let us all live! Serve the Master and let us live!” and others, more saintly, calm, calling out, “What is death but another journey through time and space, and pain but a tortured companion while in the flesh? Do not fear the tempestuous road, for it is short and journey’s end peaceful.”

  On and on the voices argued, Sirion’s multitudinous thoughts stampeding through her harrowed mind. She didn’t know what to do, but do something she must, for Legion would waste little more time waiting.

  As she was about to cry out, another voice, almost imperceptible amongst the numbing din of the others, softly reminded her, “Do not worry the future, for only the moment have you mastery over. Do what is right with your heart and permit the Fates to choose your path. Set your sails and allow the winds to direct your course.”

  Sirion quietly sighed, one last spasm of remorseful dread shivering down her spine. She looked toward the floor, shaking her head. “No. No. I shall not betray all that is right and surrender what is good to shame and evil.”

  Legion screamed in rage, grabbing her by the arms and yanking her up hard and slamming her repeatedly against the prison wall. “You Bitch! Worthless little bitch! You think you can best me?! I’ll make you wish you were dead, over and over, before I’m finished with you!”

  Sirion’s mind was confused, she being nearly knocked senseless, but Legion’s threats were clearly understood. With what little strength remained in her voice, she answered, “I already wish I were dead… and you with me.”

  Cursing in out-of-control madness, Legion began to savagely pummel the woman, his fists repeatedly smashing two giant, raw wounds upon Sirion’s chest. Legion’s new, ornately tooled leather shoulder purse trimmed in thin strips of curly golden hair, filled with talismans and mummified trophies, bounced on its silver chain as he worked his violence on her. The leather of the purse was once the very skin covering Sirion’s breasts, the areolas and nipples now positioned and dyed so as to appear like eyes looking out from the front of the cover flap.

  Before Sirion could fall back to the floor, Legion clasped hold of her face, fingers spread, his thumb driven deep into a socket, severely bruising one of her eyes. He smashed her head into the wall, holding her there, leaning close, seething with anger, hissing, “I do so wish I had the days needed to bring you to a finish as I’d like, but an hour or two is all there is for it. In that time, I will slowly remove from your mind all that is yours, one tiny memory after another, until all that remains is a skeletal ghost of yourself. I only need your flesh this day
- flesh filled with morbid fear - and that is all that will exist!”

  Legion intended to do this to Sirion anyway, her confession of fealty only something for his gloating ego. Way too much effort had gone into breaking this deplorable creature to just hand her over to his brother should she have surrendered to the moment. Alithea would have never known Legion’s real intent was to only deliver up to him a body of flesh from the very beginning. Indeed, he had only called for Sirion to give a loyal cry to Alithea rather than himself just in case someone else was listening. No need risking oneself for foolish glory...

  Reefing Sirion around, Legion shoved her into a corner and slammed her down onto a torture stool, pushing her head back and locking her into a neck ring that was bolted to the wall. The stool’s spike tore up through Sirion’s flesh, sending a shockwave of burning distress up through her belly, exploding into a blinding ache in her head.

  (Author’s Note: A torture stool, Roman stool, or better known as an ‘inquisition stool’, was a small, backless chair with a large spike of wood or metal about a handbreadth in height sticking up through the bottom of the stool. Used primarily for interrogations, it was designed to force the victim to painfully sit erect while being physically questioned, or else suffer excruciating agony. A bout upon the stool often led to the person’s eventual death.)

  Legion retrieved a valise from the opposite corner of the cell, pausing to admire his handiwork before returning. Sirion looked a fright, appearing more like a living abomination drawn up during some unspeakable nightmare than a once dreamily beautiful woman, a bloody and bruised head shorn of its hair, ears torn away by angry beasts, smashed mouth with shattered teeth, blinded in one eye, scars, cuts, and lacerations too numerous to mention, some fingers and toes taken to make amulets from, as well as her breasts cut away and loins scalped to create Legion’s new purse. Heaped upon these atrocities were the rapes, tortures, deplorable living conditions - the girl having to live in her own filth - and the forced starvation. Sirion’s appearance was more that of a tattered scarecrow than any living being.

  Legion grinned, pleased with himself. Few had received this much extreme torment and survived, but he had known the level of this woman’s endurance. True, he had pushed the limit, risked her death, but in the end had won the contest. Satisfied, he decided to deliver this one final insult, to kill her mind so that only a living shell of a person, an empty house, would be returned to the approaching rescuers.

  Pulling up a small chair, Legion sat down in front of Sirion. Opening the valise, he removed from it a slender, hand-held tool having a long needlelike probe at its end. Musing, he explained, “This, my dear little one, is an exquisite boring machine. I shall pass its end up your nose and into your cranial cavity. Then, with this smallest of viewing sensors mounted at its end, I will search out your memory centers and abolish them one by one with the machine’s tiny cutter.”

  He laughed. “Your thoughts and recall, all your lovers and companions, your adventures, everything that was you, will gradually fade from your consciousness, like a million candles being slowly extinguished one by one until all that remains is but a single flame, that of fear… morbid… dreaded fear...” He laughed again.

  Sirion did not react, at least on the outside. Her heart raced with panic, constantly having to remind herself that the Web of the Minds would hold her true self until the day Mother would return it to a new body. She dared not even imagine the agony such an operation would induce. Besides, what could she do to stop it? Her strength was exhausted, the fastened collar all that was holding her head up and keeping her sitting. The one satisfaction she felt was that Legion would not hear any screams or pleadings for mercy this time, the woman having no energy to waste upon them.

  Legion placed the viewer over an eye and adjusted its focus. Pushing a tiny button, the machine sprang to life, its minute motor nearly inaudible. Slowly and deliberately, he lifted the probe up to Sirion’s face. “Do you wish to see the weapon of your demise? Its sight and sound and the way it feels when tearing away your thoughts will be the only thing you will forever remember.”

  Suddenly Sirion gasped, her head snapping up as she opened her good eye. From a garish, grinning mouth a hideous voice, as though come from the nether world, hissed, “It has come! The destroyer of demons and maker of nightmares wakes. From its lair, it waits upon the moment to seek the flesh of the one murdering it, to drink the demon’s blood. Arise! Arise! Oh father of gorgons, deliver the flesh of ruler and slave to your daughters so that they may feed upon the living dead. So shall become the fate of the king of Memphis… It wakes!” At that Sirion, began to cackle in a most hideous way.

  Legion bolted backward in his chair, dropping the boring machine. Without bothering to pick up his valise, the man jumped up and hurried from the cell, not stopping until he was some distance from the prison car.