Despite all my rage, I'm still just a...

[Etheryn]

LANGUAGE WARNING. There's some obscenities in this one. Follows on from my previous quest: http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?22968-The-Woodlands-Run
The chained man couldn’t fathom the difference between reality and dream. It was all the same; a dark miasma of near-consciousness filled by only garish torment. Every nerve was alight with searing pain as needles pricked his skin and his deadened arms, chained up and tied above him, stopped him from flopping to the ground. He flapped his feet uselessly, almost running on the spot, trying to struggle against it all.

A balled fist shoved crawling things with too many legs and wings into the chained man’s mouth. A strip of tape forced his mouth shut and mandated that he swallow. Or choke. It didn’t matter, and in fact, it wasn’t so bad, until the paste of insect guts and hard carapaces hit the back of his tongue and he vomited bile. There was no outlet but his nostrils and for a moment those were plugged too. His lungs burned with the need to breathe.

With a moment’s reprieve he cried out and made no sound. A bag slid over his head, and just for a change of pace, the chained man became a canvas for the captor to illustrate his madness. A bucket of urine and faeces replaced paint and brush.

The chained man was one of thousands swept up as prisoners in the wake of the war between Empire and Rangers. As it blazed on, it enveloped Corone in barely controlled chaos, and took its toll on the population. The same scene had played out so many times before in so many different places. The only thing to differ in that forgotten, woeful cell, was the juxtaposition of the captor and the captive, and their cyclic feeding on one another. It ought to have been the same nation wide. The captor to punish and the captive would beg for mercy, until his own existence became such an intolerable burden that he sought the quickest way to end it.

This time it was different. The captor punished, and the captive resisted. He bode his time, grit his teeth, and endured. He waited for his chance to strike back.

***

Dan always believed creatures of the world were meant to roam free, and nothing was meant to live in a cage. He hadn’t owned a pet in his life, or even boxed up a hen to lay eggs for breakfast. In fact, he’d once been chased out of town for overtly releasing an entire kennel after hearing the owner mistreated his puppies.

He wasn’t self-important enough to take freedom from any other living thing, great or small. It never sat well with him. He wasn’t a pacifist by any means, but taking away freedom; it was somewhere he just didn’t go.

Karma must have a sick sense of humour, Dan mused. I don’t deserve this.

He lay still in on a raised, foldaway stretcher in a rock-walled cubicle of a room, eight feet on all sides and depressingly windowless. He’d been an unwilling tenant long enough to know every inch of it. The grimy walls told a story in fingernail scrapes and maroon stains that could be nothing but blood. A brass oil lantern hung from a ceiling fixture and was dim enough that it seemed to never run out of fuel.

Dan turned over, unable to get comfortable because the stretcher was too small and his neck rubbed against the wooden frame. He ached in three points (the right shoulder, left bicep and abdomen), each an almost-healed arrow wound and reminder of his brush with death in a tooth-and-nail battle in Concordia forest. He poked at the folds of the soiled bandages, testing himself for tenderness, and decided they need changing.

He rolled over again, fitful. It was hard to get real sleep. He stood up and kicked the stretcher it in frustration with the heel of his bare foot. It needed to be another foot long at either end to accommodate him, and a pillow would’ve gone a long way. Most stretchers don’t usually fit men of Dan’s size; just under six feet and two hundred pounds of solid, wide muscle.

Now he’d decided to get out of bed, Dan was faced with a difficult choice.

Do nothing, or…do nothing. Let’s flip a coin, he thought. The boredom was crushing yet somehow, against the usual trend of prisoners in stimulus free isolation, Dan retained his sanity.

He used the toilet, a lidless bucket in the corner that always filled too quickly, and walked an impatient circle. To break the monotony of it Dan dropped for push-ups against his better judgement, a variety of wide and narrow stances, as if the ache of his injuries wasn’t enough.

“Oi! Dickhead! When’re you going to feed me?” he called, half breathless.

A shutter in the rusted iron door opened with a scrape. “When I’m finished my share,” The Jailor replied. His voice was gravelly and hoarse like a career smoker.

“Real funny. Just you wait ‘til I get out of here. I’m gonna do something so bad to you, man. So bad that I…can’t even think of it yet,” he said. He could see The Jailor's beady rat eyes through the slit and urged to jam his thumbs in the sockets.

“You aren’t getting out of here any time soon.”

“Only because you won’t give me any damn utensils with breakfast. Just give me a fork and I’ll tunnel my way out of here like an angry mole,” Dan said.

Constant prodding at The Jailor was his only entertainment outside of perpetual daydreaming.

No answer. The Jailor was wising on.

“In fact, while you get me that fork…how about scrambled eggs too? I’m tired of the usual slop. Maybe a hash brown?” Dan pushed.

The Jailor was still watching him.

“Maybe shit on toast if you keep it up. Shut your mouth and continue rotting, maggot. I’m reading a good book. It’s all about—

“The alphabet? It’s as easy as ‘ay-bee-see,’ man. Read that one when I was six.”

Dan scampered down to the shutter. He pressed his face up against the door to bring his eyes close as they could get to The Jailor's, in a kind of nose-to-nose staring match buffered only by the door itself.

“Torture, actually. They’ve got some good diagrams in here. I was going to tell you all about it, but…” The Jailor paused for effect. “I think I’ll just show you instead,” The Jailor said with smugness.

Dan almost came up with another one-liner before the door shook from a sharp thump. It was hard enough to make Dan recoil and shake motes of rust from the door.

“Seriously though. You’re pissing me off. Shut up or I’ll come in there and tap dance on your face with my fists,” The Jailor warned matter-of-factly.

Like a good poker player Dan knew when to fold. He sat back on the stretcher and looked to the ceiling and the short length of chain and wrist shackles as a reminder of how very serious The Jailor could be. If the memories of hours dangling there weren’t enough, feet not touching the ground, his considerable bodyweight borne by joints that weren’t designed for the task—the bruises were.

They wrapped in mottled bands around his wrists like bangles. Cuts and scabs and filth decorated his mostly bare skin, telling a tale like just like the walls of the cell. He didn’t even notice his own stink any more. Apart from poor hygiene and some grubby bandages, the only thing he wore were brown cotton shorts that were too big and kept falling down. Just a minor annoyance, but Dan didn’t see the reasoning behind forbidding a belt.

“If I’m going to do myself in I’ll just take these shorts off and eat ‘em ‘til I choke, buddy. Don’t think I won’t do it. I don't even need a belt.”

"For the last damned time..." The Jailor groaned, and once again hammered his fist on the door.

It never worked. All Dan had now was all he'd ever be given.

Dan laid down, fidgeting to find that perfect spot on the bony stiffness of the cot. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin and the fuzzy brown of his bald pate. If rope was a big ask, then a cutthroat razor would be plain out of the question. Apart from the Friar Tuck hair-do (cruel genetics for a twenty-two year old, Dan thought) he was pretty much hairless, like the follicles had been burned out to accommodate his deep boater’s tan. It was bizarre, really, how he still maintained the bronze-olive tint after what seemed like years underground.

It’s probably been a week at most, Dan. Don’t be a sook, he told himself. He often reminded himself that only the crazy prisoners speak their thoughts aloud, and for his own impression of sanity, fought to avoid the cliché.

His mind wandered, drifting in thoughts of the long, hard journey that’d led here. It could’ve been minutes or an hour. He didn’t know. He could’ve even fallen asleep and been dreaming about doing the exact same thing he’d been doing while awake. Nothing. Dan was always a dreamer, able to pass the time with naught but his own imagination for entertainment, and perhaps his ability to occupy himself and live in those constructs was the only thing gluing him together right now. Apart from irritating The Jailor as much as possible, of course.

Sure enough, his circadian rhythms well and truly shot by lack of exposure to the natural cycles of day and night, Dan dozed off again for what could've been minutes or an hour. He woke to the tinkle of a key ring, followed by a rattling padlock and slide of a deadbolt. The door swang open on squeaky hinges.

Dan rubbed crust from his eyelids, shifted on his side and away from the door, and raised a middle-finger over his shoulder.

“Time for your check-up,” The Jailor said. “The Doctor wants to see you.”

[Etheryn]

Dan stubbed his toe on a length of timber and quietly hissed into the hessian bag that covered his face. The Jailor jerked him along blindly along a narrow passageway, and took pleasure in introducing to Dan’s comparably soft skin to the ample hard and pointy things that decorate a miner’s pit; pick axes scattered about; low hanging awnings just high enough to clip a forehead; and rail cart tracks, conveniently placed to cause a face-plant.

Salt was the primary commodity, Dan assumed, as his fingers always tasted of it after a sojourn down the claustrophobic, winding tunnels. All the salt mines he knew of were coastal and the distinctive smell of low tide confirmed it. He'd remembered looking at a detailed map in the northern reaches of Corone, and spotting an Empire tactician's marking of each major resource hub and their current activity level. A series of inactive mine pits dotted the south western peninsula of the continent, spaced evenly enough around the peninsula of the Bradbury River bight.

There was no sound of movement, of life, apart from their own footsteps. Dan guessed they were in one of the inactive ones.

His thought process broke from a pungent blast of halitosis as The Jailor burped.

“I've figured it out why this place is abandoned,” Dan said. "You burped and everyone dropped dead. Brush your damn teeth, man."

He didn't didn’t bother telling Dan to shut up. He just jabbed him in the kidneys with the butt of his torch, which was no more than an accelerant doused rag on a stick, and shoved him into the wall. Dan's head bounced off unforgiving stone and became President of the Club For Aching Body Parts. Yet, he sucked up the pain. He’d grown tough to the sufferances.

“You don’t have to be such a dick," Dan complained.

“Oh, but I want to,” The Jailor sneered, and kept dragging Dan along.

Dan counted his steps as routine. He’d visited The Doctor three times now and each time came up to roughly one hundred and eighty paces from cell to clinic. The counting marked certain numbers as navigation prompts. Twenty paces and they turned left, stepping over an ankle-breaker pothole. At fifty they turned right, then at ninety another right. Straight on until one hundred and eighty and the second door on the left was The Doctor’s office.

“Do we really have to do the whole masked and gagged prisoner thing? I get it; you’re some super bad secret organisation. You’ve got top secrets stuck all over the walls. But I promise…I promise I won’t tell.”

Dan hit bull’s-eye and all the right buttons at the same time, it seemed. There was a clatter as The Jailor dropped his torch, gripped Dan about the shoulders and slammed him with unyielding strength onto an abandoned work table. No easy feat against such a heavyweight.

“Listen to me, and listen well, you little—or should I say big—piece of shit,” The Boss snarled. He could’ve been three feet tall yet his voice was utterly dominating.

Dan’s blindfold came off in a stiff yank. The Jailor threw it aside and pressed his face inches from Dan, breathing heavily through his crooked and repeatedly broken nose, recessed brown eyes almost boiling with anger, and his long, scraggly grey hair and beard trembling enough for scraps of old food and dandruff to fall from them.

“There’s a reason you’re here,” The Jailor said.

“And what reason is that?” Dan countered, using his labour hardened hands to pry and slap away The Jailor’s hold, then shove him away entirely. Dan shimmied off the workbench and took his feet. He outmuscled The Jailor by at least forty pounds and stood six inches taller.

“No matter how much I ask, you or The Doctor won’t tell me anything. Who are you? What do you want?” Dan said, glancing towards the dropped torch and either way down the oppressively dark mine shaft. He could brain The Jailor, arm himself with a pickaxe and take off to escape.

He knew that it could've worked, but he also knew he'd get no answers that way. He waited, examining The Jailor’s profile through dancing shadows cast by the weakening torchlight. Dan didn’t get to see much of his captor. He was always blinded on walks through the tunnels.

Dan viewed The Jailor as an oddity, like the head of a crotchety old dungeon master had been superimposed on the body of a much younger athlete. His arms and legs bulged against the hems of a long-sleeved shirt and trousers, all blacks and browns, and his wide shoulders tapered down to a thin waist like an upside down triangle. A pair of cruel hatchets hung from a buckled duty belt, with low profile pouches and empty leather holsters strapped to his forearms and thighs like he spent a lot of time carrying weaponry.

“You know who we are,” The Jailor spat, hot flecks of spittle landing on Dan’s bare chest.

“I know what you’ve told me before. But I don’t want to believe you,” Dan challenged. He folded his arms.

“I’m a Senior Sergeant of the Corone Rangers, boy,” The Jailor rumbled. “I’ve given my whole damn life away to clean up Empire filth like you, so my kids, God’s bless ‘em, don’t have to grow up in such a putrid cesspit of corruption and greed.”

“You’re a freaking basket-case, man. ‘Empire filth.’ Ha!” Dan said with sarcastic emphasis. “I haven’t thrown my lot with anyone. I’ve got no more allegiance to the Empire than your children. And, if you think holding innocents prisoner is the best way to clean house, then you're just as God damned stupid as you look,” Dan said.

“Think carefully. I dare you to mention my kids again.” The Jailor threatened, every syllable deliberate and venomous. Dan watched while The Jailor's hands reached to cross-draw the hatchets, knuckles popping white with tension.

Dan silenced himself. The Rangers don’t do this. This guy is absolutely deranged, he affirmed, knowing that someone close to him was a member of their faction. They don’t treat civvies like this.

“I’m done, man,” Dan said, again admitting defeat. He even volunteered to gag himself, walking to a derailed rail cart where the hessian bag hung on its lip. The coarse fibres tickled his nose and he held back a sneeze. “Let’s go. This thing is uncomfortable.”

The one hundred and eighty step journey continued in silence and ended shortly. Dan stood in place and waited patiently near another wrought iron door, his hands folded behind his back, like his posture alone was satire of what Dan thought The Jailor expected of him.

The Jailor struck him right in the solar plexus as a reward for the wisecrack. Dan buckled over and gasped for breath like a landed fish. To finish it all off, The Jailor used an almighty boot to the backside which sent Dan tumbling head-first through the clinic doorway.

“That’s for being such a smart arse,” The Jailor said with a wicked, self-amused chuckle. He dumped his torch in a nearby brazier, pulled up a stool and sat facing in to the clinic through the doorway. He watched Dan and stuffed tobacco into a pipe.

Dan laid still, eyebrow bleeding profusely, all confused about which way was up and which way was down, and his body rocked like he’d just stepped off a week long cruise.

The Doctor stood from his desk and closed the door. “I’d almost feel sorry for you if you didn’t bring that on yourself, you know,” he said, and slid an interior deadbolt shut.

Dan removed the hessian bag, held it up to admire how well he’d saturated it with his own hot blood, and tossed it aside. “Yes mother,” he groaned.

“Don’t push it, Dan. Drag your sorry self to the table and let’s get you patched up.”

[Etheryn]

Dan kept still on the sheeted hardwood table. The cold draught of the tunnels was gone, along with the salty smell borne by it, to be replaced with perfume of sterile soaps and ambient warmth that came from a well-stocked fireplace; complete with mantle and chimney that vented into the stone. During his time on the surface world, Dan loathed visiting any kind of clinician, but he took the brief visits to The Doctor as a respite from the dank plainness of his cell and the rest of the prison.

"Do you feel sick?" The Doctor asked, picking up some metallic instruments from a tray at his desk.

"Like, sick of being buried underground for no good reason? Or I’m-gonna-spew-all-over-your-shoes kinda sick?" Dan said, holding a wad of gauze to his split brow.

"Guess that’s a no," The Doctor agreed, pulling Dan's hand away to clean the split and begin sewing it up like the torn seat of a pair of pants.

Dan puzzled at the callousness and strength in The Doctor's grip. It wasn't something common among office dwelling, white collar professionals.

Dan kept quiet and distracted himself from the pain by looking about The Doctor’s office, who was focusing on threading Dan's flesh back together. It was at least three times the size of Dan's cell but mostly empty. Only a desktop with a disorganised mess of candles sunk into mini-volcanoes of melted wax and playing cards halted midway through a game of Solitaire. Dan could’ve sworn there was a new dent where his head struck the door.

“When are you gonna pull off that mask so I can see what you look like?” Dan asked, wincing.

The Doctor paused and regarded Dan through thick, round bifocals and periwinkle blue eyes, alert and intelligent and all the while tired. A cloth face mask that hooked about the ears with elastic muted the shape of his nose, lips and cheeks, and a tight hair net enveloped every strand. He was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years old with too many stress wrinkles that told of hard times. Small scars had healed over light pink, standing out against the otherwise olive skin, much like Dan’s own.

The white cloth gown billowed out to mask his actual frame (he could’ve been skinny or fat) and ended in blue rubber gloves, now stained yellow with sweat about the armpits, and crusty red about the wrists. His lace-up black leather boots practical and well worn in.

“You know the deal,” The Doctor said, and with a hard yank finished off the suture. Dan yelped. “You don’t ask questions, I patch you up, and you don’t get pummelled.”

“I seem to get pummelled regardless of what I do or don’t do,” Dan said and stood up from the examination table. He paced on a rug of some unknown animal’s fur and rubbed his heel against it. It was the only soft, gentle surface in the subterranean dungeons. Dan savoured it.

“Good point,” The Doctor agreed. “How long has it been since we changed your bandages?”

“Too long, man. They stink so bad it wakes me up,” Dan answered, inhaling deeply to confirm. “Yep. They’re rank.”

The Doctor nodded and began snipped the dressings away neatly with needle-nosed scissors, tossing them to curl orange then black then to nothing in the fire. Dan trusted The Doctor’s quick work, as his hands moved about the routines with quick, consistent precision.

"You heal well," The Doctor remarked. There was a squidge-squidge of antibacterial ointment from a pump bottle, and then an icy numbness as the doctor applied it to the wound sites. The dull sensation soon became a spreading sting and ache all at the same time, and the scissors started snipping away again.

“What’re you doing, Doc? That hurts.”

“Although the wounds are closed up there’s a slight infection,” The Doctor answered, pausing to adjust his stance to guide the scissors better. “That’s why I asked if you feel sick.”

Dan felt warmth dribble down his leg and followed the sensation with his eyes. Blood matted the fur rug. “Look what you’ve done, Doc. Someone’s going to be pissed at you.”

“I’m going to be pissed at you soon. Turn a little bit to the left,” The Doctor said, furrowing his brow and continuing to work.

The process was quick and fluid and artistic, like a scribe printing perfect calligraphy without watching the tracking of his brush. The Doctor padded around Dan, the rug masking the sound of footsteps, neatly clipping and cleaning and redressing the each of the wounds. In less than five minutes they'd been irrigated and washed out fully.

"Keep still. This one is gonna hurt plenty," The Doctor warned. Dan didn’t get a chance to tense his buttocks as a long, thick syringe plunged in through his shorts.

"Congratulations. The last metal thing to go into your butt. For a while, I hope. Unless you like that sort of thing.”

"Good one, Doc,” Dan said. He liked him. “How much longer 'til I’m completely recovered?”

"I give it two weeks provided you don't receive any significant stress to them. The discomfort you're feeling is more so through weakness to the muscles as they knit," The Doctor said, deep voice trailing off to pause for several moments. “But these bruises all over you. They’re showing ‘significant stress’ to me.”

“I am, in fact, significantly stressed. I need two units of de-stressing. Stat.”

“Uh huh,” The Doctor mumbled, while drumming a little rhythm on the clipboard. He disposed of his gloves. “Give me a minute,” he said, and walked out of the room, opening the door and closing it behind him.

Ordinarily, in a normal person's world, someone leaving the office isn't anything of significance.

To Dan, this was like being left alone in a loaded bank vault with an empty money bag. Not once in all the times he'd been taken out of the cell had he been left alone anywhere, because God’s forbid, he might do something terrible like snoop around and escape. There was a preoccupation with secrecy despite there being nothing to hide but clumps of salt, out-dated earthworks equipment and bad smells.

Between the closed door and the rest of the room, there was clear line of sight and nowhere to hide, and should The Doctor, or worse The Jailor, enter to find Dan snooping about, the punishment would drag on for hours. Days, even.

Don't even think about it, he thought. Dan kept still. His eyes tracked about, taking in everything as quick as possible, trying to find something to rummage through.

He spotted a multi-tiered, cantilever leather bag by the foot of The Doctor’s desk, loaded with razor sharp and plainly nasty surgical equipment. Most of it was stained. There was even a miniature hacksaw with blunted teeth and only one purpose; amputation.

Dan took a punt and shot his hand into the bag, pilfering a short-handled scalpel and secreting it in the folds of his bandages. He didn’t know what he’d actually do with it. He wasn’t planning to slice anyone up yet being armed was comforting.

"...I don't care!”

Dan heard The Doctor raising his voice, almost yelling. He pricked his ears up and listened intently. The voice resumed a hushed whisper, and Dan had to edge closer to the door to pick up snippets of the conversation.

“I don’t give a toss who you might think he is. I’ve got every right to flog that little piss-ant within an inch of his life, and you know it,” The Jailor said. Dan heard a stool scrape and tip over. Tempers were running hot.

“Actually, you don’t,” The Doctor defended. Dan could’ve cheered for him. “My orders are to keep him alive, and thusly, so are yours. If you even think about taking another swing, so help me—

“You’ll what?” The Jailor interrupted. “Do you even remember what happened to us? To our men? All because we took him in?”

There was a long, deliberate pause.

“Don’t you dare,” The Doctor said, subdued.

“I figured as much. The truth hurts, and I know what the truth is. You know that I know. You're tied up in this too.”

Their voices became too hushed to make out the words. Dan caught pieces but rendered no meaning. He looked around, frantic, to find way to disguise his eavesdropping, to get closer to the conversation. There wasn’t much to do apart the shifty-eyes and whistle a tune. Instead he gave up, and his mind buzzed over the implications of what he’d heard. He resumed his seat on the examination table.

The door swang all the way open and crashed into the wall, reverberating and rebounding almost all the way back in the frame until it closed again in an absolutely Olympic tantrum. The Doctor marched in seething. “Sorry about that,” he said, and closed the door properly.

“About what?” Dan said, feigning ignorance.

The Doctor looked at him and quirked an eyebrow behind his glasses.

"Pull your head in, idiot...freaking baby...god damn," The Jailor trailed off, sulking his dismissal loud enough for Dan and The Doctor to hear it.

Dan looked to the door, then back to The Doctor, who was standing open armed. That faux-pas, forced posture someone adopts when getting ready to deliver bad news. “I’m sorry, Dan. I had to wait,” The Doctor said. He pulled away his cloth hairnet, face mask and glasses, and dumped them atop the mess of cards.

Dan stopped breathing, almost choking on the lump in his throat. His fingers shook and balled into fists and he squinted his eyes shut, hoping to reopen them and end the dream. Dan’s eyes roved with disbelief over The Doctor’s angular cheeks, the thick blonde hair, and the three pigmentation spots around the corner of the lip. It couldn’t be real.

Dan knew there was something familiar about The Doctor from the moment he met him; the way he spoke; the way he moved, precisely and quick; his prim and properness, and; even the roll of his eyes and shake of the head when Dan cracked a bad joke.

Aaron didn't speak. He simply raised his finger to his lips. Dan didn't need to be told to be quiet. Every word in his vocabulary was instantly sucked out of him by the vacuuming weight of seeing, and truly knowing, that his brother stood before him.

[Etheryn]

The gamut of emotions that all people feel in their lives—hot love, all the way down to cold, bitter hate—should’ve left Dan some time ago, sapped by the uncounted days in his oppressive prison. In fact, his spirit should’ve vanished entirely. There just wasn’t any reason to feel anything but apathy. Resignation to death and the comfort of acceptance would’ve made it all easier.

The only issue with all of that was Dan didn't know how to quit. He'd claw his way out if he had to. He'd make things change. Until then he'd do everything he could to keep it together. He made a conscious decision to smile when there was even the tiniest reason for it. He'd force back and forth insults from The Jailor, just to keep abreast of how to converse with another human being. It wasn't an option; it was compulsory.

Despite that hardiness of spirit, and his sanity-saving resolve to continue to feel, to laugh, to poke fun, to get mad and upset, he was gobsmacked into blankness. Like he’d been struck in the back of the head and concussed into non-thought, his brain cranked and turned and tried to function, but there wasn’t even a spark. It took a minute of staring like an invalid before his mind rebooted.

Meanwhile, Aaron idled about the room, busying himself with nothing in particular, speaking words that were simply hollow echoes to the thunderous pound of Dan’s heartbeat in his ears. Aaron picked up a few scalpels and tools and discarded sutures, and put them back in their places.

He’s been here…he’s been here the whole time, Dan thought. The few garbled sounds of the world around him came back. Dan felt his fingernails digging into his palms, shaking against his side.

“Hey? You there? Are you even listening?” Aaron said.

Dan snapped to it. “Uh, yeah…yeah. I’m listening, Doc,” Dan said in the most controlled way he could, playing along. A game was afoot.

“So, we’re done here. You know what you need to do. Keep quiet or someone’s gonna make life hard. You get it?” Aaron resumed with veiled disinterest, looking away from Dan while scribbling final notes onto parchment and clasping shut his cantilever bag.

“Got it.” Dan gulped. He wanted to vomit.

“I’ll make sure you get a decent feed,” Aaron said, returning to Dan’s side, looking past him at nothing in particular. “Put this on. Please. Just to keep him happy,” Aaron beseeched, tentatively passing another mask to Dan as if wary he’d try and suffocate someone with it.

The hessian was replaced with something softer and a cloying, oily smell that Dan was familiar with but couldn't quite place. Aaron gently pulled a drawstring to secure the mask. “We’ve just got to keep him happy. You know, to make sure you actually get something hot, eh?”

Hot food didn’t matter. A switch flicked and the floodgates opened, and a turbulent animation of seething emotion swelled inside of Dan, filling every sinew with a hot, righteous fire. His fists urged for something to break. The injustice of all of this was a base level cruelty. Intolerable.

This is all a sick joke, he raged in the privacy of a his thoughts.

He’d rather die and be devoured by maggots and worms in a shallow grave than know that his own brother was somehow involved, even employed by, by this gutless mob who decided Dan deserved to rot underground. The sting of irony was incredible; Dan’s journey to find his brother was what ended in his capture and imprisonment in the first place.

“Up you get,” Aaron said, guiding Dan to his feet and shuffling him to the door, and back out into the draughty tunnel.

Had Dan the strength, he would’ve pounded everything around him into dust. He would’ve ripped the top off Aaron’s head, off The Jailor’s, and shook out answers. It wasn’t time. The Jailor took over, and with a brusque grip around the upper arm and shoulder, marched Dan back to his cell.

There was an echoing warning from Aaron, “Treat him well or you’re done. Got it?”

“Go fuck yourself,” The Jailor shouted in reply.

Dan kept his mouth tightly shut and the walk was done before he knew it. The Jailor shoved him through the door and locked. Dan slowly pulled off the bag covering his head. He tossed it aside.

Once more, he was filled with disbelief. A series of warming lamps were lit and hung on hooks drilled into the rock walls, and cast a pleasant, balmy glow. His cot was replaced with a stained, lumpy mattress and pillow. Every surface and smelled of something acrid that slightly stung the nostrils yet took away the pungent odour of before. A meal of beef, bread and fruit sat in a tray, accompanied by a jug of water, the lip and handle dripping with condensation. The chains and shackles were gone from the ceiling, and the powdered grit from freshly removed boltholes piled on the floor like talcum to prove they were really gone and not just hidden.

Dan didn’t smile. He didn’t cheer. He should’ve been elated, but he knew, above all else, that this could only be another thinly veiled torture mechanism. He imagined himself shovelling in the first mouthful, and The Jailor storming in to dump the rest of the tray on the floor. He’d find himself collared and swaying in irons, watching The Jailor rest upon the mattress and recite new manners in which to torment Dan, straight from the Little Book of Agony.

Dan investigated further and tossed aside the pillow to find a toothbrush and some paste, and a change of clothes. Even the bucket he’d been using for a toilet had been replaced and now had a lid.

Dan snarled at nothing in particular. To avoid the disappointment, he didn’t consider even consider partaking in the surprising new comforts, lest he grow attached to them. He couldn’t miss something he never had. He sprawled down on the stone, face up, and tried to sleep. He couldn’t even get close despite the pleasurable warmth of the lamps. He swarmed with thoughts and shook with tension, knowing that when he woke, it’d all be gone, and he’d be flogged silly for being such an ingrate. He was furious.

And his own brother that he'd searched far and wide for was part of the group to put him here.

Dan tried everything to slip into sleep. He counted to one hundred, then to one thousand, then back again. He spread out in every which way possible, then stood up, then lay back down again. It wouldn’t work. The allure of that stale old mattress was becoming irrestistable.

No. He stood up again, stretched and exhaled deeply, and fixed his gaze upon a square of nothing in particular. Something caught his eye. The covering Aaron put on Dan’s head before sending him back to the cell.

It felt like leather when wearing it, and now looking at it, definitely was.

“What the fu…what…how?” Dan sputtered.

That simple leather bag was the most beautiful, most radiant and amazing thing he could’ve hoped to find. He could’ve sang and whistled and clapped and jumped up and down and it took restraint not to. To Dan, it was his sword, his beacon of light with which he could strike back at those who’d wronged him, and burn away the darkness.

He picked it up and kissed it. He felt and heard and knew and loved, all at the same time; a powerful bass note. The sound grew louder around and within him. It was a familiar thing, almost forgotten, yet now fully remembered and realised.

The bag, plain brown and uninteresting, excluding the braided drawstring and faint, almost invisible embossing of runes, had been the channel for feats that could only be described as magic. Dan’s brooding anger was replaced with capability and ambition now he’d gotten it back. It lacked the drama of a wizard’s staff, or the flash of a stole and robes, but it was all the same, thieved from him along with all of his other minor possessions when he’d been imprisoned.

“You beauty... You little, magnificent thing...” Dan bubbled to himself, and crossed the cell in a few long jubilant steps, almost bouncing as he paced about.

He flopped down to smother his sore muscles against the mattress, knowing that he could lash out at anyone who tried to take it from him. Dan knew that he could defend himself now. He could fight back. The Jailor wouldn’t dare touch him should Dan show just a hint of his power.

The scalpel blade Dan took from Aaron's office was still folded away in his bandages, and he transferred it from there to the inside of the leather bag. Now, Dan was armed with the capability to manipulate any like objects, through exercising his will.

Somewhere between talking to himself like a madman, bursting with excitement, and pondering in confusion about why it’d all happened, Dan almost made himself sick from eating and drinking so fast. He inhaled the meal and sculled the water in just over a minute and set the empty tray at the bottom of the door.

The nerve-wracking crossness Dan felt for his brother, like Aaron’s presence was an unforgivable betrayal on its own, faded away. It made sense now. He wasn’t here to continue Dan’s imprisonment, to keep him in good enough health to drag the pain of living out even longer. He wouldn’t have returned Dan’s most prized possession otherwise.

Aaron was here to get him out.

It wasn’t long before Dan was asleep again. Truly asleep, not fitfully tossing through waking dreams and half-consciousness. He dreamed of the open sea and hauling in giant marlin, one after the other, until his boat slowed with the weight of his catch. His subconscious revelled in panoramas of verdant hillsides, pocked with sheep and cows. He looked down upon the surface world from his loft in the clouds, knowing deep down that as long as he drew breath in the dream world, he wouldn’t let anyone deny it from him.

[Etheryn]

Dan was thinking of what to say for close to an hour before The Jailor turned up, holding a pair of sandals in the crook of his arm. He tossed them to Dan. Dan looked him straight in the face and didn’t move.

The Jailor stared back, nonplussed. “You think you can do what you want now, boy?” he said. There was no aggression, no warning, not even a challenge.

Things were different now. Dan could fight back in a way that The Jailor wouldn’t expect.

He stood upright and front on as The Jailor opened the door for another visit to The Doctor; to Aaron. Dan’s posture was not defiant, not aggressive, but confident.

“You want to know what I think?" Dan said. "I think you got forced to clean up my little bachelor pad here because you aren't as high on the food chain as you think you are. I think that, if you come near me, I’ll smash your head into fucking paste and smear a novel on the walls about how you never should've crossed me."

The Jailor turned up a corner of his lip while Dan put on his sandals.

“Very good, boy,” the Jailor said, stepping through the threshold. “I bet you practiced that delivery for hours.”

Dan ignored him. He looped the drawstring of his leather bag around a finger and pulled it tight. “Are we going?”

“Not yet,” The Jailor replied.

Dan didn’t move. He readied himself, and coursed his will into the scalpel blade he was carrying, radiating it out into the nearest thing of similar make. The Jailor’s hatchet had traces of similar steel, and like a severed rope being spliced back together, Dan made a link. Just by thinking about it he could pull that hatchet from its rest and force it to carve its owner to pieces.

“You’re going to make The Doctor mad if we’re late, mister,” Dan said.

The Jailor responded with a deep bellyful of laughter. No virulent anger, no brutal sucker-punch to the guts, and no sick torments. It dragged on and on, almost sounding forced, until the Jailor composed himself enough to say “Wrong!”

“Wrong what?”

“Oh, nothing too specific. You’ve just got this silly idea that all of this happened out of courtesy,” The Jailor said, walking past and behind Dan, looking around as if inspecting the room. "Neccessity, not courtesy. Once we've made use of you I'll be resuming my full time hobby of belting you witless."

The Jailor grabbed at Dan's arm and he tore it away. “No."

“No?” The Jailor said.

“You heard me,” Dan said, his will at the ready, bursting to strike some vengeance back at The Jailor. "Touch me again and I'll smack you so hard you'll be out cold and snoring before you hit the ground."

“Then no it is, boy,” The Jailor said with a thuggish smirk. “Walk yourself out the door. I’ve spent weeks watching you cry and beg and piss yourself in fear, and I know you want me to give you a reason. But I won’t give you the satisfaction. I’ll have you again soon enough."

The Jailor spat on the ground as he walked past Dan and back into the tunnel. “In fact, find your own way. I don't think I could stomach another bout of your lovey-dovey-long-lost-brother crap, were I forced to come with you.”

With an exaggerated, mocking gesture like he was guiding someone to their seat in a theatre, The Jailor ushered Dan from the cell.

Dan picked up a lit torch from a nearby brazier and made his way through the dusty dark, the smug stare of The Jailor burning holes in his the back of his head. Dan paid him no mind.

The freedom seemed out of place and Dan couldn't quite appreciate it without knowing the ulterior motive. Things had been the same for so long and now, with no real prompting, they were changing. The vernacular of a prison doesn’t really accommodate the inmate being given free rein to wander about. He was apprehensive and guarded, walking carefully and unwittingly making efforts to keep quiet, as if the leave given to him was only for the purpose of guiding him into some horribly gruesome, violent trap.

There was nothing of the sort. He made it unmolested through the tunnels, and now with free eyes to see it, could appreciate the age and state of abandonment of the mine. Everything was coated in a patina of rust, or broken beyond repair, or on the way to it. Masonry tools, hard hats and long dead lanterns lay dropped out of place, as if one day a hundred years ago, whoever was holding it suddenly vanished from the face of the world.

He'd never been scared of the dark before, but places so eerie were always the breeding ground for phobias.

Dan picked up an ancient, brittle looking pick-axe from an overturned mine cart that'd spilled a dune of lumpy salt and powdered rubble. He tossed it over in his hands and considered the cracked and splintered handle, and as he walked, swung it like he was a shadow boxer warming up for a bout. He was still healing, but his wounds weren't restriction his range of motion any more.

Soon, Dan stood near the doorway to the office. He walked slow and stopped shy of the entrance as if trying to be stealthy but the crunch of his sandals on the gravel and glow of his torch would surely give him away. It was hesitation. Aaron’s voice called out to him. Against all reason Dan didn’t want to go in.

He froze, and suddenly found himself debating the solace he’d found in thinking that Aaron was here to save him. Dan wanted to turn around, march back to his cell, and just avoid the disappointment.

“Are you coming in?” Aaron said.

Dan’s choice was made for him. “Uh, yeah. I was thinking I might hang out here a while longer. Admire the scenery, you know.” Dan stepped in. “Hello, Doc.”

Aaron sat at the desk shuffling cards, wearing only a loose doublet and trousers that were neatly pressed and ironed. They were too short in some parts and too long in others. The impression was odd, like Aaron had scavenged someone elses business attire. It just didn't sit right.

Dan didn’t know what to feel. Since waking up here, he feared he’d never see his brother’s face again, and now here Aaron was; still as obsessively neat and compulsive with his grooming. The grit stuck to his face contrasted with the creases starched into the front of his trousers.

Aaron was the mountain cat to Dan’s trudging bulldog. His face was angled, with a small and pointed nose, thin brows, and high-set cheek bones. His eyes darted about with youthful alertness, yet the crow’s feet told of a contrasting weariness. Despite the lacking His hair, full and blonde and cropped close, would suggest to other’s that there was absolutely no relation to Dan.

Just about the only similarity they shared were three freckles placed identically around the corner of the mouth, like a common birthmark. Apart from that they were polar opposites.

Dan opened his mouth to speak and clammed up, gaping like a goldfish. He simply walked to the examination table, sat on it, and dangled his legs over the edge. Aaron stood up and walked over to Dan, never once taking his eyes away. Dan locked up all over.

“Are you okay?” Aaron asked.

Dan rubbed his meaty hand over his head and tried to subdue his rising frustration. “Really?”

“Really. Are you?”

“That’s how you’re going to open this up. That’s all you’ve got to say and you’re saying it like you actually mean it. Like you give a damn,” Dan said through clenched teeth.

It wasn’t that he really believed his brother didn’t care. Dan had the childish urge to make someone else feel guilty, to pity him, to know how absolutely betrayed he felt.

Aaron’s facade didn’t falter. “What else am I meant to say?”

“I don’t know. Start with some explanation. Shed light on this little game I’m tied up in. Days ago your sick colleague was forcing me to chew insects. Now, I’m apparently free to come and go as I please.”

Aaron looked at his feet. Dan knew what his brother meant by it; embarassment.

“You don’t even know, man. I’ve hung for hours in chains. It might’ve been days. All the same after a while,” Dan continued. “Had my own shit thrown on me. Been pounded on more times than I could count on all my fingers and toes. I’ve had it all, man.”

“I do know what you’ve put up with, Dan. Trust me. I do,” Aaron said, looking up with sincerity. “But please just show a little more patience here. I’ll answer all the questions I can, I promise. But just give me a little context. Tell me about yourself. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Are you serious? Are you actually, one hundred percent, fucking serious? Are you insane? I’ve been chased and shot at and almost murdered so many times that—

“Just answer me. Tell me about yourself.”

Aaron hesitated. Dan picked it, and on a hunch, he knew what to say, all at once.

“You want to know about me?” Dan asked. His ears almost billowed steam.

Aaron looked up once more, regret plastered all over his face. “As I said. Just give me some context. There’s a lot to figure out.”

“You want me to volunteer it all. You’ll find no integrity in my answers if you lead me to them by questions. Free recall,” Dan said. “That’s what you mean when you say ‘tell me about yourself.’”

Aaron looked at the floor again. Dan knew of this kind of patient, drawn out method of extracting information without poisoning its reliability. He remembered two Empire guardsmen of a garrison in Radsanth telling him a story about it, and how they'd spent two weeks sitting in front of a hostage, not speaking, not even acknowledging his existence, just waiting for him to divulge all his secrets. It was something so very silly. So simple, so pedantic, so bureaucratic and procedural and routine and so utterly typical of military types. Unwavering in their adherence to the rulebook and the orders of business.

“My entire stay here has been an interrogation. That’s it. That’s how you do it,” Dan raged. The boiler switch flicked and his blood ran hot. His teeth could’ve shattered into splinters if his jaw clenched any harder.

“Prisoners will say anything their jailor wants to hear, if the jailor asks the question. They’ll lie. You think the best way you get the real answers, in absence of corroborating evidence…” Dan paused, trying to compose himself. “Is to take away the question.”

All Aaron could do was nod.

“Then I’ll tell you everything. The abridged version.”

He stood up, and advanced half a step towards Aaron, and summoned his will. It had pooled up in him without an outlet for far too long, and now it stirred to life like a flooded river, bursting over the banks to begin digesting the plains around. Dan’s knees shook under the overwhelming presence of his own power.

The metal objects in the room started to twist and bend, levitating and floating about as if carried by a possessed wind. Sterile trays, a stethoscope, safety pins and metal buckles, and anything with a trace of steel in it—anything like the scalpel blade hidden in Dan’s satchel—took on its own anima.

The colour drained from Aaron’s face, and he recoiled, shuffling backwards, as if he’d never seen anything so frightening in all of his life.

“I’m Dan James. Son of Roland and Julia James. I have a brother, too, coincidentally enough named Aaron James,” Dan paused, allowing it to sink in that he’d finally named the relationship to his brother, as if the timeless walls needed to be silent witness to the truth.

“I grew up in Baitman’s Bay at the mouth of the Bradbury River. My father was a fisherman, and I followed him in that. My brother left to join the Empire Guard. My mother got sick. When I turned eighteen, my father left and I’ve never heard from him since, and my mother gave up and died. An old man named Ross gave me two gifts that birthday. I’m still holding one of them right now,” Dan said.

He held up the leather pouch and like it was a signal, all of the objects floating around him in a slowly rotating column of restrained force, suddenly shot towards the stone ceiling, clanging and pinning themselves to it as if magnetised.

“That day, I found out I could do things like this. I ran away. I didn’t know what to do about it my power. I wandered. I went to find my brother, because I knew he’d have come home to see the mess I left behind. I owed it to him—I owed it to you—to explain that didn’t know why Mother died, and that I didn’t know why Father left too or if he was even still alive. I went to Radasanth and looked around there,” Dan said.

There was a deep, reverberating rumble in the air, yet Dan’s voice cut through it clearly, without any effort on his part. A metal tray folded up, imploded to the size of a golf ball, and shot at the wall like a bullet. Dan was enjoying the righteousness, the absolute justification he had, in showing the depth of his anger.

“I had to fight my way out of Radasanth after I got word that you were in danger,” Dan’s said, briefly flashing back mind to the unforgettable memory of a man’s face melting off like candlewax on a wick. Sympathetic to Dan’s memory of the fire, an oil lantern cracked and burst under the pressure of the seething energies building around Dan. Aaron’s hair and clothes flapped and pressed away from Dan as if he were a cyclone.

Dan saw someone else standing in the door way out of the corner of his eye. He assumed it was The Jailor, and feeling self-indulgent in the dramatic effect, Dan continued his tirade, hoping to cow that sick bastard of a man with all of his sound and visible fury and strength. Dan didn’t even look.

“I fled from Radasanth, and went south, through Nelligin, and got on an escort convoy. We got ambushed in Concordia forest, north of Underwood, and chased down. I fought my way out of that too. The convoy leader was crooked and was using civilian passengers as a deterrent to stop the Rangers—to stop you—from taking out one of their commanders, as he rushed to lead of a battalion fighting just north of Underwood.

“You got him after I threw him right into your lap. I got away and killed the man who dragged me into that mess. He wounded me and I blacked out. I woke up here. This was where I ended up, for trying to find you. To pay my dues.”

Dan let the gathering storm of power die away. The sound and sight of it was all Dan needed to show his conviction, like the power itself was a testament to his honesty. All of the metallic objects he’d been casting about the room crashed to the floor and sung like cymbals.

“Why don’t you believe me, Aaron?”

“I do, brother. I do. It’s not me you’re trying to convince,” Aaron said, looking to the doorway.

Dan’s eyes tracked along to the silhouette of another man, tall and strong and wide, hidden in the elongated shadows.

“It’s me,” the man said.

The Boss stepped in, dressed in a modified, armour-plated version of the camouflage sneak suits Dan had seen in Concordia forest, this one all blacks and brown. He carried close to double the previous arsenal as if it hadn’t been enough before. Grenades, bands of crossbow bolts and knives hung from weaved pouches and straps all over, and he looked absolutely ferocious.

“That was all very touching, but I’m not buying it,” The Boss said, standing toe-to-toe with Dan.

He was every bit as large, if not a little bigger, and absolutely rock-hard. His square jaw, piercing eyes with gaze that could cover a thousand yards, his buzz-cut salt and pepper hair, his impeccably cropped beard, and chewed cigar in his teeth; all of it reeked of tough guy.

“You’re in bed with the Empire,” The Boss said. He blew a plume of smoke in Dan's face.

“I’m not,” Dan said with a cough.

“Bullshit,” The Boss said, and slugged Dan with a blurring uppercut that sent him tumbling to the floor.

Dan sat up, spat a mouthful of blood, and touched at his split lip. He kept still, weighing his options. There was room for words. “Why do you think that?” he asked.

“Because two hundred Empire troopers and a handful of freaks that can do the same stuff you do are waiting at the entrance to this mine. They set my men on fire and sealed us in this fucking tomb after we fled in here. We were dodging lightning bolts and all kinds of biblical shit,” The Boss said, voice oozing with venom and disdain.

Dan took a moment to process it, climbing to his feet and swaying on the spot. “What does that have to do with me? You dragged me here, right?”

“Don't play dumb. They’re here to rescue you,” The Boss said. He narrowed his expression, face all scarred and leathered. He looked like an elder wolf, wisened and sharp with the experience of countless battles, as he regarded Dan. “Why else would that amount of muscle be here?”

Aaron interjected. “Boss, that isn’t how it is. I know him. He hasn’t been alive long enough to climb ranks high enough to warrant this kind of rescue effort.” He stood off to the side as Dan and The Boss eyeballed each other, as if poised to intervene should The Boss strike again.

“You think you know him because you share your parent’s blood, Aaron?” The Boss said. “How long has it been? Years? He’s a mage, man. A wizard. Whatever the fuck they call it. He probably tracked us down using his blood relation to you.”

Dan was stumped. He couldn’t deny having magical abilities. He’d just shown them off.

“Boss, I…” Aaron started.

Dan glanced sideways.

“Tell me this,” Dan queried. “Why do you think they’ve come for me? Because you took me prisoner, after you annihilated everyone on Prester’s Escort?”

“You tell me," The Boss said, and lit another cigar.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Dan said. “They’ve come for you and I’m simply your accessory. You chased an Empire commander for days. You’re the leader of a freaking hit squad that likely cost them an entire battalion after you sabotaged the arrival of their leader. Except, when you did it, you did it so openly and missed the mark by so far, that even a plebe like me got away from it.”

The tension was sticky like the humidity of a jungle. The Boss’s footsteps padded from stone to the soft rug and back to stone again, as he paced in thought.

“No one saw us,” The Boss said. “No one saw us at all. We hit our mark, found you in the aftermath, and we took you in. We got out. We holed up without anyone seeing us, and the next thing you know, we’re getting slaughtered.”

Aaron shot Dan a look that said, “Sensitive subject. Shut up.” Dan ignored the suggestion, and instead took it as affirmation to keep going. He realised something and laughed at the simplicity of it.

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re shifting the blame. You're too arrogant to think you made any kind of mistake, and that the only reason you—sorry, we—are in this mess, is because I’ve somehow called in an extraction? While I’ve been locked away underground? An extraction from my non-existent friends? A privilege of my non-existent rank, that I hold in my non-existent position within the Empire?” Dan said incredulously.

Dan looked to Aaron, smug with confidence in his assumption, and stood up, turning his back to The Boss and walking towards the door, just about ready to leave. He hadn’t finished yet.

“What a stretch! What an absolute crock! You just can’t accept responsibility for failing for your men, and you’ve been ordering my torture for weeks while you try and figure a way out, hoping that I’ll somehow donate an excuse to cover up your failure!” Dan barked, triumphant. “The Empire doesn’t even know I exist! You’re an idiot!”

At that moment, he knew why Aaron was afraid. It wasn’t because Dan made a few things float around and melodramatically showed off his ability. It was because of what might happen to Dan, should during this exchange, he figure out The Boss’s game and mark him out for it—exactly what Dan just did. Aaron looked at his feet, shifting idly, arms folded.

Dan stood in the doorway, waiting for a response. “Well? Am I right?” he pushed, with great satisfaction.

There was no telegraph of The Boss’s answer. Just a small puff of smoke from his hip, a whisper of rushing air, and a great whiplash to Dan’s head, as a thin wire with lead sinker weights fixed at either end took Dan about the throat and bowled him over. In a moment The Boss was above him, pointing a wicked dagger at Dan’s eye. The tip was still as a surgeon’s needle.

“No, you’re not,” The Boss said.

Dan didn’t even realise he was unable to breathe before the pressure on his carotid tunnelled his vision into an inky blackness.

[Etheryn]

Idle threats were something of a routine now. Fearful as one could be with pointed steel hovering an inch before the eye and choke-wire around the neck, Dan found the presence of mind amidst all of the heart-pounding reactionary fear, to reason.

I can get out of this.

Dan kept still and thought of something most wouldn’t in a life or death situation. He thought of tying knots. A half-hitch, a full-hitch, a granny knot, a bowline knot, anything. He thought of rope tangling into irretrievability.

With a minor effort of will gathered like a breath to snuff out a candle, Dan called his magic to the ready. Again he thought of the rope in a complicated mess, but substituted the image of the rope for The Boss’s dagger.

Like the material world was physically connected to Dan’s thoughts, the dagger’s steel twisted and contorted, groaning and squeaking until it would've functioned better as a spoon. The Boss considered his newly ruined dagger with intrigue while Dan clawed away the weighted choke-wire.

Aaron hadn’t moved and was absolutely silent. He just knew better. Dan gulped down air.

“Impressive,” The Boss sniggered. “But don’t forget.”

With a punch so fast that Dan wasn't sure if it even happened, The Boss literally cracked the stone next to Dan’s ear, sending up a small plume of dust. “You are my prisoner.”

Dan had tumbled with men of fearsome strength before who’d made his knees knock at the thought of swapping blows with them. He’d seen feats of raw, animal power that bordered on inhuman. That single punch was a demonstration of dominance, and showed Dan that no matter how much metal he could bend, The Boss could still break him.

“We meet at the barracks in one hour,” The Boss said, looking down on Dan like he were an ant. He sparked an oil torch and marched down the tunnel, muttering curses to himself all the way.

Dan began to regret his cockiness as the adrenalin faded and the pain set in. Still, he wore a goofy, slightly dazed smile.

“I swear it, brother,” Aaron said with relief. “I spend this much time patching you up, and what do you do? Try and get beaten up again.”

Dan took Aaron’s extended hand, pulled himself up and patted away the dust from his back.

“What can I say? My face is very, uh, punchable? Yeah. Punchable. And I’m still better looking than you,” Dan quipped. He needed some lame humour to balance out the drama.

“Are you sore?” Aaron said, rolling his eyes.

“No more than usual,” Dan said, and looked himself over. There was no fresh blood from the arrow wounds. Surprising, considering the proper beating he’d just received. “What now?”

“We do what we’re told,” Aaron said, stepping back inside the office to pick up his bag and a few scattered bits of equipment. “Thanks for throwing my stuff everywhere, by the way.”

“No problem. It’ll give you something to clean up, you obsessive compulsive freak,” Dan said, nudging a twisted up tin with his foot.

"Like I'm not already busy cleaning you up," Aaron sighed. He closing the door behind himself and Dan as they both stepped back into the tunnel.

Dan shivered and wrapped his arms over his chest. It’d gotten cold. “But really. What’s now? What does he want from me? If we're stuck in here and he thinks it's my fault, then why is he even keeping me alive?” he said.

“I thought a son of the James clan was supposed to have his wits about him,” Aaron chastised. "It should be obvious."

"Maybe he wants to use me as a bargaining chip? Throw me in the shark pit for in exchange for free passage."

"Could be," Aaron said. "It could also be that he plans to make a suicidal dash for escape, and wants you to help delay our unavoidable deaths."

"And how would I do that?" Dan asked.

"By contributing your sword arm."

From there on they walked in silence, and Dan trailed a few metres behind. He rolled his shoulder to loosen it up and wondered if he'd be of any use. Apart from that, he just felt guilty that he didn't have much to say. Dan had spoken at length about his campaign across the continent to find Aaron, and now he had, there was an awkward muteness growing between them like mould. The passage of years, stretched out by turmoil and instability, had driven a wedge between them. An outsider would've seen them as strangers.

“I…I still can’t believe what I saw, you know,” Aaron said as he stopped to scavenge a length of greasy rope from a discarded, broken pulley.

Dan paused. The perpetual draught in the tunnel blew louder, sounding like the moan of an ethereal spirit. “It sort of happens,” he said.

“Like an accident?”

“Not accidental. I can control it by thinking about it,” Dan clarified. “I use images. Sound. Things I perceive in my mind, but mostly visual.”

Aaron lowered his voice like the subject of the story he was about to tell might be offended. “I saw some mercenary goon do things like you. All black robes and pale face. Except he tended to play puppet master with people's minds and make them jump off cliffs.”

"Funny that," Dan said. "I've met someone similar. He wasn't very nice to me."

"Reckon it was the same guy?"

"I killed him, so wouldn't be able to ask," Dan said bluntly.

They resumed their uncomfortable silence and took a right turn at a fork in the tunnel where left would’ve been back to Dan’s cell.

“But the difference between you and him…you’re my brother," Aaron said. "You’re a fisherman. You cast nets, not magic. How did you learn?” Aaron asked.

“I didn’t. It just came to me. Like it was always there, hidden away, and I never knew about it.”

Magic, Dan thought. That’s what Dan was supposed to call it. The blurry, out of focus shape of a wise little man in green robes shimmered in his waking memory. There was some connection he was supposed to draw between his abilities and that almost forgotten, yet peculiarly familiar face. Dan couldn't be sure if he'd actually met him or not.

Still, it just made sense. Magic was what he'd call it.

“I haven’t always had it you know. And it doesn’t work without this,” Dan said, holding up his leather bag for Aaron to see.

“No wizard’s staff? No mystical wand?” Aaron said, looking back and raising an eyebrow. “What’s so special about it?”

“There’s a bit of steel in there. I pinched one of your scalpels. So, I can do things to steel,” Dan said, and swung the bag by its drawstring.

Aaron went mute for the rest of the walk as if their parents were a taboo subject. Shortly, the tunnel widened and gave way to an open cavern and the largest space Dan had seen since the outdoors.

“Where the Hell are we, exactly? And where are we going?” Dan said, and looked up into the blackness. The light of their torch didn’t carry to the ceiling.

“Coastal salt mine. You would’ve figured that out by now. If you kept digging through the rock…this way, I think?” Aaron said, pointing to Dan’s left and down at a forty-five degree angle. “You’d open up to the ocean and drown us all.”

Dan took this opportunity to cup his hands and shout. “Hello!”

Sure enough, there was an echo. As they walked, the ground gave way to a winding track that rose up then sank down, like they were cresting hills into valleys. There wasn’t enough light to see exactly what sort of environment they were walking through, and blackness pressed in on all sides.

Eventually, when the echo of Dan’s greetings to no one in particular grew shorter, the cavern shrank in kind. The echoes were replaced by running water, but not the soft burble of a creek. Loud crashing and powerful turbulence like storm water crashing into a break wall.

“What kind of mine has its own underground river?” Dan asked, starting to feel uncomfortable. Although he’d travelled far, it’d been on open ground where nothing can fall on your head apart from rain or bird droppings. This was the first time he’d been underground, and the oddity of encountering a subterranean river system brought a newfound apprehension of the thousands of tons of solid rock replacing the gentle blue sky.

“Don’t ask me. We didn’t exactly know where we were going when we came here. Personally, I was occupied with the whole trying-not-to-die thing. Had a ten to one handicap when we were sprung by the Empire, and we were towing your sorry carcass around as well. Do you know how lucky you are to have only three bandages on you at the moment?”

“Yeah. Real lucky,” Dan said. “Thanks. You could've just tossed me into a bush and kept running."

Aaron’s torch lit the mouth of another tunnel that was too narrow for Dan to fit through without turning his thick chest sideways. He ducked down and shuffled along for what seemed like ages.

“Where the Hell are you taking me, man?” Dan complained. The washing sound of water hitting stone kept getting louder and Dan found himself shouting to be heard.

They shimmied out of the tunnel. Dan looked up, and saw a cascade of water in the torchlight, at least fifteen metres high, with thin fingers of purple and violent and orange radiating through the spray. Some of them blossomed into short lived rainbows and faded away before Dan could focus on them.

God, Dan thought Light. Actual light. It was beautiful. He did circles on the spot, holding his arms wide, deeply inhaling the redolent scent of salt water. It conjured up memories of home and the open seas and all the places he’d rather be. Aaron grabbed him quickly.

“You don’t want to do that,” Aaron shouted over the din. He pointed his finger.

Dan followed it and looked to the base of the waterfall and saw nothing but an open cavity that dropped away to the very bowels of the earth. Anything that stumbled into it would fall for a long, long time.

“Right. I don’t. This place is freezing, man,” Dan said.

“It’s dusk. That’s why you’re getting colder,” Aaron said, pointing his torch to the rays as if they weren’t obvious. “It’s how we track the days. There’s an opening up there somewhere to let the light in, and no Empire goons have come through it yet.”

“Why don’t you just climb that waterfall and walk out? If they haven’t come through they probably don’t know about it.” Dan shouted in return. Aaron cupped his ear to listen.

“Not that simple. You see the consequence for failure?” Aaron said, edging toward the crevice, holding his torch over the edge. “One slip and you’re gone for good.” He lit a match with difficulty, the column of water displacing enough air to make the flames flicker, and tossed it down.

Dan peered over and saw it fall a hundred feet before disappearing. The flow of the waterfall was strong enough to peel away anyone who tried to scale against the current, just as it was strong enough to smooth away any footholds on its face. Climbing it would be impossible.

“Noted. Pass that here,” Dan said, motioning for the torch.

Dan stepped away from the waterfall, and back towards the cramped tunnel they’d come through. He followed the bedrock wall, running his fingers along it, until he came to what he’d assumed should be there but wasn’t quite sure. Drilled and masonry bolted into the rock was a massively thick brace paling, made from some kind of ashen grey, enduring wood. It rose up and followed the cavern, like a pillar to stop the very roof from collapsing.

Dan decided that he definitely didn’t like the place.

There was a small shape like something fixed to the top of the brace. It was too small to see but definitely there, and metallic enough to reflect glints of the torchlight.

“How far do we need to go from here to get to the barracks?” Dan called to Aaron, who’d crouched down on his haunches to watch Dan. “And can we do it without light?”

“I know the way. Why?”

With a wide, underhand heave, Dan tossed the torch straight into the air. It tumbled end over end, tatters of the oiled rag scattering in thick embers, and at the top of its arc illuminated a swivel hook drilled into the timber. The torch landed and bounced into the endlessly deep crevice. Apart from the dwindling rays weaving through the vapour of the waterfall they were engulfed in darkness.

“Did you see that?” Dan said.

“Yeah. Now I can’t see anything,” Aaron replied, slightly panicked. “So?”

“Just you wait and see,” Dan said. He rubbed his hands together.

[Etheryn]

Aaron and Dan fumbled through the dark. They'd come to a cavernous hall, long and rectangular with a low ceiling, that'd been appropriated into a makeshift mess hall, as evidenced by the scattered furniture, empty cups and stoneware plates that clattered and broke when they blindly stumbled into them.

Aaron paused and struck a match to illuminate some timber chairs and tables that were flimsy, as if made by an apprentice carpenter. They were irregular and too low to the ground to be practical. Dan would've needed to be half his height to sit comfortably on one of the several scattered and overturned stools.

Dan looked around. “We’ve got work to do. No time to—

Aaron’s match flamed just long enough for him to see his brother trip over, deviously placed by some unknown offender with full intentions of making Dan give the dusty cobwebbed floor a considerable taste test.

Aaron scoffed.

“Not funny! I could’ve broken my neck! You’re supposed to go all sympathetic doctor on me and offer me a bandaid!”

“Want a lollipop as well?” Aaron laughed.

“Shut your face, man. Let’s do this.”

With surprisingly little effort, they assembled a serviceable fire by amputating the limbs of the long disused furniture for use as fuel. The acidic fumes of old varnish burned their throats, and without ventilation, they were moving quick to avoid gassing themselves.

"This would've been easier if you hadn't thrown out my last torch," Aaron said, as he smashed another chair to add to the pile. "Much easier." He caught a splinter in the thumb and sucked at it, pained, then bit it out like a real soldier would.

"Maybe you should've brought more torches. This can't wait," Dan said, joining in the chair-smashing festivities.

"When night falls there'll be no light to see where waterfall opens up. Besides," Dan paused, grunting with effort as he overhand bowled a stool at the wall. It came apart with ease. "How can you say smashing stuff with your only, your most favourite brother, is no fun?"

"Oh yeah. I can think of nothing I'd rather do. I would absolutely hate to be sitting in a warm bath with a flagon of wine in my hand, for example," Aaron said, rolling his eyes.

"You think you can keep that going for a while?" Dan asked. "I shouldn't take too long to get this done."

"Yeah. Just hurry up, man. I might cry if I get another splinter," Aaron said. "Here's the rope."

He tossed the greasy coil he'd scavenged earlier on in the tunnels. Dan caught it and sat down to work. Aaron watched in silence, every few minutes threading a splintered piece of timber into the fire stack.

In short order, with no tools, a single length of slippery rope and a chair leg, Dan tied up a harness like a child's swing seat with knurled grip knots every few feet to assist whoever was doing the hoisting. His hands were lathered in cloying, black grease, and he didn't bother rubbing it off.

"You should be able to fit your skinny backside on this," Dan said. He held the harness out to Aaron for inspection.

"How is it, exactly, that you're going to make use of that?" Aaron asked.

"We throw it over the hook we saw on the bracing. Once it catches on you’ll take a seat on this here, I’ll lift you up, and you hold on for dear life while you take a peek at this supposed entrance.”

"And we do all this in in the dark. While I dangle over the crevice of certain doom," Aaron said, deadpan.

"Absolutely," Dan replied with a rogue's grin. He flexed his bicep. "Trust me?"

Aaron sat down and planted his forehead in his palm. "Let's just look around a bit before we try. Perhaps there'll be something to put my percentage chance of survival into the double digits."

"Quick. There wouldn't be much time 'til dark," Dan agreed.

Aaron tore off a strip of his trousers, rubbed it in Dan's open palm to catch the globs of grease, and wrapped it around yet another splintered chair leg. He dipped it into the dying fire and another torch sputtered to life. They walked the perimeter of the room in a search pattern.

"Haven't you already picked this place dry?" Dan asked. He kicked at a pile of chains at a corner, and found one end bolted to the wall, the other ending in what looked like a collar. He picked it up.

"Slaves," Aaron said, exchanging a grim look with Dan. He tossed the collar away like it was some poisonous, nasty animal.

Dan was repulsed by the idea of holding the bindings of some long dead soul. Not out of genuine concern for the wellbeing of someone he never knew, but because it brought recent memories flooding back. Horrible, black, tormented memories, of the hours he'd spent hanging from irons in his cell.

They combed through as much as their fading light allowed until happy there was nothing of use. Dan looked back to the corner and chains, and pictured some broken, malnourished wretch shaking in the collar, begging for scraps from his masters. He lost himself to those images for a moment. He’d never know the men who committed the crime, and he’d never know the victim, and he still yearned to make someone pay for it.

“Anyone in there?” Aaron said and literally knocked on Dan's cranium with his knuckles.

Dan snapped out of it, knowing he didn't have the luxury to lose focus to morbid ponderings. He made a cursory check of the rigging he'd just tied, as Aaron's life depended on the skill of his handiwork. Still, every so often, he dropped the leash on his own mind and his thoughts scampered off in an uncontrollable wander.

He'd pushed away the constant dread, the terrible, lonely anguish, that a futureless prisoner feels. He'd been given a reprieve from that isolation and torture. He'd been given a choice, and the opportunity to do something to better his situation. In the first few days of his stay, he'd truly accepted death. Not just for melodrama, in the vain hope that someone would realise it and rescue him out of pity, but truly accepted it. He'd found the drive to fight out of that mindset, and it was too hard of a fight to let himself slip backward because of a few jangling chains.

More important than opportunity, and more important than respite, he'd been given answers. Not all of the answers, but some. At least he knew why he'd been taken. At least he knew why he'd been kept. Soon, he'd know if he could get out.

It was hard to recognise his own personality traits at work. Dan had a pretty good concept of his own morals and behaviour, but wasn't deluded enough to say he was perpetually self-aware. He knew that people act the way they do because it is ingrained in them and autonomous as breathing. This time was one of the times he didn't pick up on it, but right now, Dan was doing what Dan always did; getting things done by working with his hands.

"You haven't spoken a word for ten minutes," Aaron said, as they breached through to the waterfall from the awkwardly narrow tunnel out of the mess hall.

Dan cursed as the torch flame dimmed in the breeze cast by the fast moving waters.

"This isn’t really the time for it,” he said as he inspected the brace paling.

Aaron stood next to him, and dropped the rigging and harness.

“Brother. How do you know there'll be another time after this? For all you know I’m about to fall a thousand feet through the dark and go splat."

"You always were a giant sook, Aaron,” Dan said. “We’ll talk later. I promise I won't drop you.” He jabbed Aaron in the ribs.

Aaron flashed a smile of his own. It would've looked bizarre to an onlooker. Two estranged brothers in a hopeless situation, sealed in a dark, watery, salt mine tomb, their only light waning, with a host of armed soldiers and battle mages waiting at the exits. Despite all of that they had time to play.

Aaron took the first throw, Dan took the second, and Aaron scored a hit on the third. "A-ha!" he whooped. "Did you see that!?"

Dan applauded with two fingers, like a spectator at a golfing tournament.

"Yeah, yeah. I would've gotten it eventually," Dan said, knowing full well that Aaron had always been more skilful and nimble than he was.

Aaron passed the lifter's end of the rope to Dan, who started to lower and feed the harness through the bow of the hook. He jerked and whipped it to make certain the line was tight and safe enough to use.

"That feels pretty solid," Dan said.

Aaron fitted the harness under his legs and sat on the crossbar. "I'm good to go,” Aaron said.

"I've got you. Just call out if it looks like it's about to break. I'll, uh, try and catch you," Dan said.

Aaron just shook his head, and Dan leaned back, heaving and intermittently stomping down on the slack of the rope with his foot to maintain Aaron's elevation, while coiling up the excess length around his elbow and open hand.

Aaron weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds to Dan's two hundred, with less muscle and more fat. Dan wasn't cut by any means, and with his still-healing injuries wasn’t at peak performance. Still, he'd developed a slow, untiring strength about him, and this kind of drawn out labour was easy. Without too much effort Aaron was level with the waterfall top, dangling idly and rotating with the twist of the rope's braid.

Dan saw a shaft of orange light illuminate Aaron's face. At that moment, Aaron pressed a finger to his lips. The glow vanished and a moment later reappeared, like something stood between the source and Aaron's face and blotted the light out. It happened once, two, three times, and then Aaron frantically motioned for Dan to lower him, who did so expediently.

Satisfied the sound of water splashing on rock would mask their voices, yet still cautious, Aaron whispered.

"Rivulet at the top, about forty feet, with two or three feet of clear footing either side. There were collapsed support beams and that's why this entrance is all caved in. We'd have to move tons of stone by hand or blow it apart," Aaron explained, looking up at the top of the waterfall.

Dan sat on his backside and gathered his breath after the lifting effort. "Anything else?" he asked.

"Yeah," Aaron said. "I saw someone's silhouette between cracks in the rubble. He kept walking back and forward like he was looking for something."

Dan said, "You sure it wasn't just cloud or a tree branch or something?”

Aaron unhooked himself from the harness and took the torch from Dan, shielding it briefly as it almost blew out. "Cloud would've just dimmed it and not blocked it out entirely. And cloud doesn't clank like sword and shields do."

"Yeah. It doesn't," Dan said, disappointed their efforts to secure an exit met with the same consequence as all the other exits apparently did; Empire soldiers.

"Let's get out of here. You need food and I need to check you didn't just bust your stitches open. The Boss is going to want to hear this," Aaron said, while extending his hand to help Dan up again.

Dan rolled his shoulder and stretched his neck. They squeezed their way back the way they'd came, whether it was north, south, east or west. They didn't know. They made good time back to the fork in the tunnels where left went to Dan's cell, and right was to the waterfall.

"We've got to walk past where they chained you up and keep going. One right and a left, and we'll end up where The Boss wants us," Aaron said.

Dan remained mute, until they got to his cell.

The door was ajar. He nudged it open with a foot and peered in. Suddenly, like opening a bottle of expired milk, it all came wafting back in a putrid stench of awful memories. That tiny, horrible box just wouldn't leave him.

"Come in," he said to Aaron.

"Why?"

"Just do it," Dan persisted.

Dan sat on the mattress and Aaron remained standing. Both looked at the floor, quiet, waiting for the other to speak first.

"You know what happened to me in here," Dan said. "You know how long it went on."

"Yes," Aaron said. He was ashamed. That single syllable shook with guilt.

"I saw those chains, and that collar. Man, I...I saw myself. I saw myself hanging here while The Jailor smashed me up," Dan started. "The one you were arguing with after you changed my bandages. I saw myself hanging there while he'd flog me."

"His name is Gahn."

"Whatever his name is. I know that you know, Aaron. What I don't know, is why you stood accomplice to that. To what, uh…Gahn? To what Gahn did to me," Dan finished. There was no accusation in Dan's voice. No anger. Just frustration and disappointment.

"Really, Dan. I understand why you'd ask that. I would too. But do you think that had I the chance to get you out? To stop that?"

"Surely you could've stopped him."

"I couldn't. It was out of my hands," Aaron sighed, only briefly meeting Dan's expectant gaze.

"You couldn't stand up to him? Do you even know how many men I've stood up to, how many men I've had to kill? All because I was trying to find you?" Dan said.

"I don't know. But I didn't ask you to come looking for me, either."

"Don't even think about it, brother," Dan said with menace.

"I made Gahn clean this place up, if you were wondering. Made him think that if he didn't clean up I'd gut him," Aaron said to quickly change the topic.

"You didn't make him do anything else when he stuffing insects into my mouth and making me eat them," Dan said.

It was hard to keep composure. Dan knew his brother would take any opportunity, any risk, if need be. Still, something just didn’t sit right about it all.

"Listen, Dan. Do you know how long we've been down here?"

"No."

"Tomorrow marks week three. It'd been just over one day since we found you. We got sprung in our sleep, and somehow managed to flee here without getting massacred entirely. All of our squad got cut down before we sheltered here mand they sealed us in. Nine men of a squad of twelve. Out of nowhere. Just dead."

"Where is this going?"

"Just shut up and listen," Aaron said, preparing himself for a long spell.

"You were found unconscious next to Prester's corpse. Prester, who was on Empire payroll and smuggling their military leaders through civilian channels. We cut down everyone, man. Except somehow you wind up next to his corpse. It doesn't take a master of investigation to see a connection between you, Prester and the Empire, when you've got his intestines tangled around your feet."

Dan briefly thought of the fight he'd had, and thought of dodging phantom arrows of green fire. He thought of opening Prester's bowels with a magic propelled blade, split in half and superheated by Prester's own projectile.

"I could see that connection being made, yeah,” Dan conceded.

"It's a fair call. They were all convinced that I, being so obviously your blood relative from those very covert bounty flyers you were carrying around, was colluding with you. It was far too convenient. Our raid on the convoy had been botched from day one. You know how long we chased without getting the job done."

"Wait. You said 'we cut down everyone.' You said 'our raid.' You said 'we' chased. When you're saying 'we,' do you mean you were part of it? That you were there? That you were firing bolts and grenades, trying to take me out too?" Dan said, his voice rising.

"Wasn't that obvious?" Aaron said, raising an eyebrow. "How could I have possibly known that after four years, after you just packed up and left, you'd insert yourself in front of my target in the middle of a damn forest?"

"I just..." Dan said, pausing to realise his wilful blindness.

It was simply frightening to consider he'd almost been offed by his own brother, and considering the irony of recent events, having been imprisoned by the superiors of said brother, he didn't want the trend to continue. It was a strange circumstance to be in denial about and was an even stranger circumstance to be in.

"I...yeah. Of course. You're here. You must have been there, too. I never saw you."

"I hung back. No way was I going to take pot shots at civilians," Aaron said.

"I'm glad to hear that," Dan said.

"As I was saying. We get sprung in the middle of the night by a freaking horde of Empire steel, and to top it all off, when we start to run we're dodging lightning and fireballs and all kinds of mystical freaking wrath. Everyone gets butchered except us four. You, me, Gahn and The Boss. Who do you think they blame?"

"You and I," Dan said.

"Spot on. The only reason we're not dead; that I haven't had my throat cut as I sleep, is I suggested..." Aaron paused, swallowing hard. "I suggested that you get the full interrogation from Gahn. I knew you'd live. I knew you'd tough it out. I knew you wouldn't quit. And I knew that sooner or later, we'd be here. It was the only way to prove we aren't part of whatever imagined plot The Boss cooked up."

Dan was the one who felt ashamed now. He felt ashamed that he'd doubted Aaron, when really the situation was just a horrible mess of bad luck and inconvenient coincidence. A difficult concatenation where Aaron was forced to make hard choices for the best long term result.

Yet, simultaneously, he yearned for someone to blame, some names for the credits of his nightmarish film of memories in the cell. Dan pushed it aside. It wasn't Aaron's fault. He did the best he could.

"I'm sorry," he said. It was hard to sound sincere.

"We both are," Aaron said.

They left. There was nothing to take from it and plenty to leave behind. Aaron made way along the tunnel and another route Dan hadn’t been down. He remained at the door.

“Are you coming?” he called out.

"Give me a bit, I'll catch up," Dan said.

Dan was alone again. He stood in the tunnel, staring back in to the cell. A hyper-edited montage of flashbacks took his breath away and he shuddered. He could still smell it, see it, feel it, and hear it. He could’ve sworn there was some half-chewed insect skittering around in his gut. He knew that every time he’d hear the jingling of chains, from this moment on, that it would chill him to his feet.

He closed the door and hurried off after Aaron, fixing the image of that foul place in his mind's eye. It wasn't hard. He'd never forget it.

With an outpouring of will and a familiar rumble in his ears that he felt as well as heard, Dan buckled that door and jammed the hinges. The metal cracked and shook and screamed, and in the echoing tunnels, sounded like the roar of some inhuman monster.

No one would open that door again.

[Etheryn]

Dan didn't know what to expect as he and Aaron left the tunnels to enter the barracks. He hoped for a warm fire, a bath, or just a taste of something from the surface. A last meal, a woman’s touch, any of those comforts that even an executioner affords his victim as he edges to the chopping block. It only seemed appropriate.

All he got was a thick, almost tangible cloud of hostility, projected from the body language and still, concentrated stares of both Gahn and The Boss, who sat on a footlocker each at the base of the many double bunk beds lining the walls. They were lost in maintaining an array of weaponry spread on a cloth on the stone floor.

The beds faced opposite each other in two rows, perfectly mirrored and neatly made with military discipline. Dan thought it looked spooky, considering they hadn’t been touched in years. Dan couldn't decide which one to take. He decided on a bunk that was two over from The Boss and Gahn, and pulled down the sheets carefully like he expected to find a skeleton tucked beneath them.

He wandered the room and saw that, despite the many beds, there were remarkably few tokens of anyone ever using them. Holy leather boots here and there, too flat and wide to fit human feet. A cracked horn cup. A diary that'd never been written in and a quill long dry. There were absolutely no descriptors to assume anything about the miners and their origin, apart from they were short.

Each man sat by a lantern, solemn light glowing in small domes like lonely stars in an empty sky. Dan shivered against the cold. After seeing the others pull on furs and extra layers, he followed suit and pulled the coarse blanket from the bedspread and wrapped it around himself. Then there was nothing to do but listen to the rhythmic scrape of whetstones against blades.

"You're late," The Boss said, breaking the silence.

"I know. We found something," Aaron said. "Another opening."

"Where?" The Boss asked.

"At the top of the waterfall."

The Boss put down the ornate silver sword he'd been honing and sat up straight. He wiped at the grime and dirt on his face with a hand and came away no cleaner. "You climbed up?"

"Sort of," Aaron said, looking to Dan, who was trying his best to go unnoticed, staring blankly in the complete opposite direction and keeping quiet. "He helped."

God damn it, Dan thought. Soon as I open my mouth he'll find something to stuff in it.

There was a pause. Gahn muttered something under his breath about maggots and screaming children and the pissing of pants, altogether directed at Dan.

"Well?" The Boss said, impatiently.

Dan took a deep breath. "I improvised some rigging and caught it on a hook at the top of the bracing," Dan said.

The cockiness he'd demonstrated in his last exchange with The Boss had been completely humbled now Dan knew the context of their predicament, and more importantly, had seen the awesome force of his stone-cracking punch.

"How strong is it?"

"Strong enough to get all of us to the top," Dan answered.

"And why would we want to?" The Boss asked, like the idea for escape sounded sillier than growing wings and flying away. “So you can drop us down the gap and save your troops the trouble?”

"Because it's our best chance of getting out alive," Aaron butted in. "There's footing on either side of the water as it flows to the fall and. It leads to a collapsed entrance. We could blast our way out. There’ll be some risks, of course."

“And the risks are if we use charges to blast out that the passage won’t be stable,” The Boss said, pacing his thoughts out between the two rows of bunks.

Dan thought back to the fantastic shocks of light and sound he'd seen from the Rangers' grenades, and the destruction they'd wreaked on armoured wagons. He'd seen first-hand how their explosives could split thick oak into pine splinters, or shear solid steel like a scissors on paper.

"That. And someone is waiting on the other side. I don't know how many or if they're armed," Aaron said. "Still, it’s the only option we’ve come up with in three weeks. All the other entrances are guarded and we know it for a fact. There'll be a swarm waiting for us if we try to make it out through there.

“A swarm of this piss-ant’s personal troop,” Gahn joined in. “Just waiting to lick his boots. We ought to cut him down right now. You too, Aaron. You’re no bloody different.”

Dan stood, cast off his blanket, and rubbed at his throat before speaking again. There were red marks and bruises developing from the choke-wire.

"Tell me this," Dan said, mirroring Gahn’s disdain. "What choice do you have? You fight out with us at your side, or you leave us behind and fight out with your back exposed, all the better positioned to shank you when you’re not looking."

The Boss stood as well. Tensions rose and tempers flared, but he remained relaxed, folded his arms and leaned back against the bunk frame, one foot casually rested on the locker. "Or we kill you and leave you here.”

“Or that,” Dan said. “Or, better yet, you hear me out.”

“I’m listening,” The Boss said. “Gahn, go check it out this lift he’s set up.”

Gahn stalked out into the tunnels and spared a thug's glower for Dan on the way.

He wouldn’t have batted an eyelid over opening Gahn’s gullet as he slept, and that was a big call from someone who’d made a lifelong commitment to being a somewhat decent human being. Yet, he knew what had to be done. Hard men don’t appreciate a silver tongue. They don’t melt at praise and they don’t take coddling. They don’t appreciate anything apart from strength, from conviction, from action.

Dan took a breath.

“I’ve said my piece to you. I’ve explained what I can. Yet here I am, somehow trying to appease your misguided belief that in all of this, you’ve made the right assumption about who I am and what my motivations are.

“There’s nothing more I can say apart from I’m an honest man. Sure, I’ve stumbled into some webs spun by people and powers that are above me, bigger than me, and it might look like I’m holding hands with the enemy. I know you blame me for the lot of this. Still, I think your reasons are bullshit. But that’s fine. Believe what you want. Just don’t call me a liar because it isn’t in me, man. You ask him,” Dan said, cocking his head towards Aaron.

“You would’ve heard of me by now if I was someone important enough to cost the Empire’s resources to retrieve. You would know my name, you’d have heard the things I’ve done, and you’d have known the beds I sleep in. But you haven’t. You’ve never heard of me. No one has. I’m a God damned nobody, man. I was a fisherman and I was happy being one.

“But you know what? I’m a nobody who knocked down men who thought they were somebody. Men who swang big sticks. And I broke ‘em. I burned ‘em down, bashed their brains in, took their wicked fucking swords and made them fall on them for all the badness they spread. I stood up to them because I made a promise to myself that I’d be a good guy for no other reason but the sake of it, and here I am. Still breathing. Still kicking. I’m going to do what it takes to get out of here, and what it takes to get my brother out of here.

“And if you get in my way, I’ll break you too. You might be the most savage special forces ninja that Corone ever saw. You might be able to shoot the apple off a man’s head from a hundred yards or ride for days without sleeping. But I’ll still break you. You might kill me first, but I’ll come back from the grave and haunt you. I’ll hide in your closet and whisper in your ear when you sleep. I’ll watch you and follow you of every minute, of every day, of every year, until you jump of a cliff just to be rid of me. And then, when you’re dead, I’ll follow you into the afterlife and do it all again. I promise you that.

“So, if you want to get out of here, let me help. I’m the biggest advantage you’ve got,” Dan finished, resolute.

He hoped it would work.

"And what can you offer?" The Boss said, looking Dan up and down. “I’ve seen you throw a few things around the air, sure. What use is that in a fight?”

Dan turned around and took a lantern with him. He walked the length of the barracks and searched the floor along the way. He found what he was looking for.

"I can offer this," Dan called, far enough from The Boss and Aaron that he needed to raise his voice to be heard.

A vibrating pressure filled the stagnant air like it was being displaced by the sudden presence of something terrible and huge. A blurring shape zipped through the small patches of light offered by the lanterns, leaving a swirling wake of dust, and impacted heavily against the barracks wall with a tinnitus-inducing smash. The entire room shook.

"I can bend the world around me," Dan said, panting with the exertion, after having placed a pebble into his leather pouch and exercised his will to hurl a shoot a minor boulder like it were a whippy arrow.

"I can open your way without everyone in ten miles knowing where you are by lifting the very rocks away. I can fight back against the ‘freaks’ that sizzled your men to crisps."

The Boss cautiously moved to where the stone hit and paused to look back at Dan. The wall was a moon, scarred and cratered by an astronomical collision, and The Boss coughed in the still settling cloud of debris and powder. Fragments and shards of rock scattered about the floor in all directions.

"What are you?" The Boss asked

"I told you. I'm a fisherman," Dan said while resuming his seat at the bunk. "A fisherman with a big bag of tricks. And I’m learning more every day.”

Dan returned to his bunk and nodded once to Aaron, who nodded back, his chest puffed and eyes twinkling with pride. No more words needed be said. Aaron’s smile told Dan well enough, that he was glad he got the chance to see the strong young man he’d grown up to be.

"I’ll be damned," The Boss said, fixated on the deep gouge in the wall. He was humbled with respect. Not for Dan, not for Aaron, but for the strength and ability he’d seen. He wanted to see more.

"Aaron, get him what he needs. Give him the spare serums and gear. We'll need everyone fit and ready in less than twenty-four hours. We're getting out."

[Etheryn]

“Is it supposed to be this uncomfortable?” Dan asked, looking over himself.

He felt ridiculous in the skin-tight, olive drab camouflage suit. It hugged in places that should remain loose. The material was like leather yet porous, somehow uncomfortable but not at the same time. The half-finger black leather gloves barely fit around the paw of his hand, and the flat soled boots felt absolutely bizarre. The sensation was like walking barefoot.

“Yeah,” Aaron said. “You’ll get used to it.”

Dan raised his arms over his head, then lifted each leg up and down as if doing martial arts kicks, and shrugged. “At least I look cool.”

He walked and stretched, waving his arms shaking out his limbs like a sprinter preparing for race day. There wasn’t much space in the room, which was more or less a circular alcove that reeked of old sweat and poor ventilation, located above the barracks and connected to it by a rope ladder.

It reminded Dan of a gymnasium without the typical barbells or boxing rings. There was only a recessed pit full of sand and great atlas stones of varying size, and even fully recovered, Dan would’ve thought twice about lifting one. Aaron perched on the rim of the sand pit, watching his brother settle in to the uniform of this elite division of the Corone Rangers.

“So why do you guys wear these? Are they custom made?”

“They’re one size fits all. Big money in that suit. Waterproof and wicks the sweat away. You’ll stay warm in the cold, cool in the heat, and besides; there’s no way to get easy access to your gear if it’s stuffed away in your pockets.”

“And you want to look like the baddest dudes out there. Right?”

“Right,” Aaron said, absentmindedly dragging a blade across his thumbnail to test the sharpness.

Dan nodded, frisking himself over to keep tabs on where each item was located. He was decorated with all kinds of sharp, expensive and lethal equipment that he hadn't the least idea how to use.

The gear was impressively crafted, made of metals and polished ivories, and Dan felt unworthy of it. He’d never received any formal combat training, always getting by on raw vitriol when a fight started. He knew how to wield a knife yet even then his experience went as far as filleting fish and skinning boar.

“And you’re certain these won’t go off unless I pull this thingy out,” Dan asked, cautiously looking at his hip and the bandolier of small, bumpy ceramic baubles that were reminiscent of pinecones. Dan unhooked one and held it up at arm’s length as if it were about to bite him.

“Absolutely. You better mean it if you’re going to throw it. Once you remove the ring pull at the top you’ve got five seconds before it goes boom,” Aaron explained. “And if it goes boom, someone’s day is getting ruined.”

“And I can just screw them on to a bolt?” Dan asked for the third time now as he rolled the grenade over to inspect the screw threaded recess opposite the ring pull. “And then it’ll go off whenever it hits something?”

“Yep. The ring pull will compress and activate a separate detonator.”

“No wonder you joined the Rangers, man. I’ve never seen an Empire soldier with this kind of gear,” Dan said.

“It’s not widely available,” Aaron said. “The dwarf clan that crafts it for us is constantly on the move. They’re not exactly, uh… Let’s say no one likes them very much.” Aaron stood up from his atlas stone, pulled a folded cloth from his back pocket and tossed it to Dan who caught it one-handed.

“Those are the serums,” Aaron explained. “Jab one of those in your leg if we meet solid resistance. Should minimise the effect of your injuries for a while and give you a one hell of a boost.”

“A boost?”

“Ever eaten one of those green and yellow wild berries back home? The ones the barkeep used to grow and keep under his counter.”

“Yeah,” Dan remembered. “Well, no. I remember them but never tried one. Saw this guy, once… He had a few and he was running around like a madman until someone clubbed him.”

“Think of that to a factor of three,” Aaron warned. “Don’t use more than one in a day or your heart might beat so fast it’ll fail.”

Dan unravelled the cloth and saw three small wooden tubes, like bamboo stalks, tied together with string. Each tapered into a stubby needle with a dab of wax at the tip.

“You know I hate needles,” Dan complained, and stowed them in a button down modulated bag secured to the small of his back.

“I’m sure you hate dying even more. Let’s see you reload and fire one more time. I’ll feel more comfortable knowing you’re less likely to pop me in the back,” Aaron said.

Dan unclipped a small, matte black crossbow from a thigh holster, and held it tight in his right hand. The weapon looked more like a black powder pistol than anything else with only crossbar only half as long as the stock. A kind of miniature gas cylinder hung off from the side.

“So you just push a bolt down into the breach face, and hook the flight onto the string. Like I showed you,” Aaron said, slowly demonstrating each movement in the process with his own crossbow.

Dan watched once and then tried as well. He fumbled the bolt when he withdrew it from the lidded quiver next to the crossbow’s thigh holster, and dropped it in the sand.

“Damn it, man. My fingers are too fat and these gloves feel weird.”

“You can practice that later. All you need is some confidence. Now, when you want to fire, just press the button next to the trigger, and the cylinder will make a little noise,” Aaron explained.

His crossbow made a whirring sound, followed by a hiss and brief expulsion of sour smelling gas. The drawstring cocked itself automatically.

“And the motor will prime, then when I want to fire…squeeze the trigger gently,” Dan finished, as he followed Aaron’s example and loaded the weapon without incident.

He pointed at the sand pit and fired. The bolt instantly appeared at its target with a quiet thud, without so much as a whisper from the crossbow, and only a minute recoil. Dan retrieved the bolt and practiced loading, taking aim and firing, until he felt proficient enough.

“I still don’t get how it shoots so quietly,” Dan said, impressed.

“Like I said. Big money. Let’s get back down there, brother. You need food and sleep. We don’t know what’s we’re running in to.”

Dan and Aaron climbed down the rope ladder and set about packing their gear, giving it a once over to make sure everything was set. Coiled, high-tensile ropes, flick blades, rolled up tarps and collapsible tent posts compressed down into packs that would fit in a shoebox.

Satisfied that they were as prepared as they’d ever be, they wordlessly sat to a meal of beef, slightly stale sourdough and canned potatoes. Dan puzzled at how the meat kept for so long, considering they’d been underground for close to a month without a fresh kill.

“Big money at work, eh?” Dan scoffed through a mouthful. “I’m not complaining.”

“Check your pack. You should have a few sealed cans in there. It’ll keep for months as long as you don’t open them.”

Amber glows of torchlight belied Gahn and The Boss’s arrival and they entered the barracks from the tunnels. Both were wringing wet.

“Your work is solid,” The Boss said, and those were the last words anyone spoke before they all wrapped up in their bunks, armed to the teeth.

Aaron held a sword crossed over his chest. The Boss turned his dog tags over his knuckles like a poker chip. Gahn snored like a pig grunts, and smelled just as bad. The ever present dark masked a common expression that each man struggled to suppress.

Fear. Primal, sickening, gut-turning fear. The kind that makes grown men wet themselves and run. The upwelling of anxiety and apprehension that questions the drive and commitment of those who count themselves ready to charge headlong into a veritable wall of enemy blades.

Butterflies filled Dan’s belly, and his mind raced with thoughts of what was to come, yet he fell into a heavy sleep as soon as he closed his eyes.

He should’ve known better than to think he was dreaming when there was a great shaking in the stone, and a grinding crunch as something in the mines collapsed. Caked on dust fell from the ceiling and Dan shot up as it tickled his nose.

“Get up,” Aaron breathed, voice taking on a warning tone.

He was already out of bed and crouching down as if a lethal projectile was about to zoom overhead. “Someone else is inside.”

[Etheryn]

The Boss moved quick to light a lantern and dim it low as possible, taking point as the four filed into the cramped passageway leading to the waterfall.

“One light,” he mouthed, raising a finger to indicate the singular and pointing to the lantern. There were faint echoes of rumblings and cracking rock, and infrequent shakes like the aftershocks of a greater earthquake.

Aaron was last in the column, walking backwards with a short blade drawn in reverse grip and held out defensively. In the other hand he raised a primed crossbow, resting it above his knife hand, as if to steady the shot. “Listen to The Boss,” he whispered to Dan, who was next in line. “And keep your eyes on Gahn. Your job is to cover him until we can spread out.”

Dan’s fingers trembled sympathetically, and he fought to keep his fear from bubbling over. He needed to control it, to shape it into something useful. He thought of the rapid thump in his chest as a tool to sending more blood to his legs to keep them running, and not just a sign that he was in over his head. He took a deep breath, concentrating on avoiding the shallow gasps that precede hyperventilation. He’d felt it before, and it never got any easier.

Dan nodded, slowly withdrawing a plain dagger from a sheath on his forearm, keeping it low by his side. His pouch remained at the hip and held a several tokens of stone, primed and ready to link with the earth around them. Conscious of the risk of bringing down the roof, he didn’t dare ready his will.

They edged on ever so slowly in deliberate silence, stopping and dropping to their knees each time The Boss raised a closed fist above the shoulder. The sound of rushing water overwhelmed any chance to hear enemies approaching, and so intermittent pauses had to do. Their only choice, once the tunnel opened up to the waterfall, was rush for the exit before getting caught in a choke point, or entombed in the rock as someone dropped it on their heads.

A violent boom quickened their pace. It sounded distant, as if detonating from some far section of the mine. “They’re blasting in through the main entrance,” Gahn hushed, passing a message down from the boss like Chinese whispers. “Double time.”

Dan relayed the message to Aaron, who fixed a grenade to his crossbow tip. They picked up pace, and in moments they entered the waterfall cavern, fanning out. The Boss tossed his lantern into the crevice to cloak the group in darkness, just after he pointed to Gahn and Dan’s hoist. Gahn climbed in and motioned to Dan to start the lift. The Boss took a knee, holding his crossbow in tight against his chest, and squinting one eye at the landing atop the falls. Aaron covered the rear, knife and crossbow replaced by a kind of thin, collapsible baton with a hammer claw point.

“Up,” Gahn mouthed.

Quick as he could, Dan powered his oak bannister forearms to the task of hauling him up. He dropped at the end of each draw on the rope, using his own bodyweight as an anchor. In moments Gahn dangled like a chandelier at the hoist’s peak, and kicked out to swing as a pendulum, each stroke sending him close to the waterfall’s precipice. With an abnormally agile leap for someone of his age, Gahn landed on the footing at the shoulder of the rushing torrents.

He disappeared for a moment and then returned with a thumbs up.

Dan knew something was wrong. “There’s too much light,” he breathed to Aaron. “We shouldn’t be able to see. Someone’s opened up the rubble, man.”

His instinct was spot on, and from that moment everything went to Hell. Gahn gurgled and spluttered as a javelin lodged in his throat, spilling a brief red highlight into the falls. He tumbled from the precipice and broke horridly on the stone floor, flopped into the deep chasm, and was never seen again. A single silhouette appeared where Gahn had been standing and drew his arm back as if about to throw. Everyone flicked in to overdrive, no time to consider the formalities of their first casualty.

In a blur of action that made four separate movements look like one, The Boss lowered his crossbow, strafed to the left, unhooked a pipe shaped launcher from his hip and fired a weighted choke-cord—the same one he’d struck Dan with earlier—and took the shadowy figure about the knees. The projectile wrapped around in a bind, and the sheer speed of it took the enemy’s legs from under him. Just like Gahn, the figure fell into the crevice, uselessly flailing his arms to catch on to something and stop his mortal fall.

Dan heard the tiniest scream over the crashing water. His gut curdled. Aaron hadn’t moved from his rear guard, and The Boss stuffed a reload into his launcher. “What now?” he whispered.

Aaron didn’t say a word. The Boss looked back and held a finger to his lips, his eyes ablaze with concentration.

They waited. Nothing happened. Another distant explosion shook the walls, and made the empty harness swing and dance like a wind charm. It took The Boss what seemed like an eternity to climb into the harness, and whisper to Dan on the way, “Was a scout. Edge me up slowly.”

Slow and steady, Dan hauled The Boss up the waterfall, panting with the effort and ignoring the build-up of lactic acid. The Boss gripped the rope and went rigid for a steady shooting platform, his crossbow warily poised to fire at anyone at the top. He pointed a thumb up and Dan slowly increased the speed, drawing hand over hand and leaning back for leverage. Cautiously, after a quick scan, The Boss repeated the same pendulum swing and jumped at the end to the landing.

The Boss and Aaron made hand signals to each other. It must’ve meant “advance” or “clear,” because Aaron abandoned his post, putting away his weapons to free up his hands and shoved Dan towards the harness as The Boss tossed it back while retaining a hold on the rope so he could do some lift work of his own. Aaron grasped the rope and looped one leg over the seat before Dan could do the same. “Take the other side,” Aaron said quietly. “Quick.”

Dan copied Aaron and didn’t get a moment to think about how The Boss was going to lift their combined mass on his own. With a dramatic, fearless swan dive, The Boss soared from his perch, never releasing the rope, and the inertia of his own body being pulled to the ground by gravity was all that was needed. Aaron and Dan shot upwards, and followed through with an ungainly swing to the landing. The counter balancing act between Dan and Aaron’s combined weight and The Boss’s downward plunge was enough to slow his descent, so he could dismount and break into a roll and take up rear cover.

In a hurried flash Aaron halfway to the collapsed rubble and the outside world, not once looking back. Dan lingered to look down at The Boss, who stood fast against a rising, clattering of swords and armoured footsteps that were closing in on them. Before even seeing them, his knowledge of battle tactics and smooth ability telling him strike at the most effective movement, The Boss fired an explosive bolt into the narrow passageway. In the split-second it left the drawstring and tore through the air, a swarm of combatants burst from the tunnel.

A flash like the sun and a wave of awesome heat accompanied the boom, and bits and pieces of charred, flaming body parts flew like confetti from a bon-bon. Dan couldn’t pull his eyes away. The spot fires, fuelled by bits of newly made corpses, bathed the visceral combat scene in an eerie glow.

The walls shook again with more intensity. Shouts and cries and clashing steel sounded from below, and Aaron jerked Dan by the shoulder. “Move! There’s no time!”

Dan turned, ducked down, and hustled up with his brother to the blocked exit. There was a tiny, impossible gap through which the forward scout must’ve squeezed, but otherwise there was no room to get through. Great boulders and sheared cuts of ancient piled in a wall to stop their escape. Reactively, Dan gathered his will, closing his eyes and ears and mind off from the world around him. The job at hand demanded utmost attention.

He focused on the nature surrounding him; the coolness of the water splashing around his ankles; the sweet salt spray; and the delicious, long missed taste of fresh air. His mind’s eye saw each of those great boulders as mere skipping stones, their weight no more than feathers. He drew on memories of days gone by, when he’d spend hours practicing his throw, trying hard as he could to get more bounces than Aaron.

Dan set his will free and opened his eyes. Only one of the stones had rolled down. The rest remained unmoved. “Uh…”

“Is that it?” Aaron said, frantic. “Is that all you can do?”

Aaron glanced over the shoulder just in time to catch an Empire soldier, shirtless and bloodied and red feathered helmet dented all over, climbing up the rope. Easy as breathing Aaron ended him with a well-placed throwing dagger to the chest.

Dan clenched his fist and tried once more. He met a resistance, like his mind and his magic was set in an arm wrestle, toiling to offset the stubborn mass of the rocks. It was a battle of wills against the unyielding stones, and he fired every cell in his body towards the idea of them who was boss around here. With teeth clenched and a growl, Dan’s potential ran at full throttle, coursing out of him. The magic found the point of least resistance, a crag somewhere near the bottom of the pile that was acting as a cornerstone.

It tore free of its resting place and hurtled forward, end over end, landing with a splash and sucking, muddy thud into the opening mouth of a clear, salt water creek and the source of the waterfall. The rest, but not all, of the other rocks fell down as a consequence. The opening was big enough for Dan and Aaron to fit through side by side.

The first thing he saw of the outside world was absolute wonder. A setting sun above rolling green hills, picturesque as an oil painting, cast its romantic amber and violet light across Dan’s skin. It was beautiful and vibrant and warm and he shielded his eyes to with his hand to stare at it longingly through the cracks of his fingers. Dan could almost taste the freedom. He crawled beneath a low hanging section of the tunnel and shot towards the exit as fast as his legs could take him, until Aaron caught him and held him back.

“Wait,” he hissed. “Just wait.”

“What for?”

The music of crossing swords and dying men rose to a crescendo. Guttural screams and ripping flesh contrasted starkly to the loveliness of the setting sun.

“For me to say otherwise,” Aaron said, pressing his back to the stones and aiming an eager bolt at the rope. “This is my element, brother. Not yours.”

The crossbow’s motor whirred and cocked, and Aaron sat deathly still. Time and time again, half-dead Empire soldiers clawed up the rope and were sniped by Aaron’s precision shots, falling like rag dolls, their helmets no use as their heads cracking open on the rock like melons.

Dan saw, in briefly intimate moments where they locked eyes, that each Empire soldier—some men, some just boys—was possessed, filled with brainless terror as if fleeing from some great predator. He puzzled at the thought that The Boss could still live against such a stream of attackers, and at the same time dish out such great punishment. Yet, each of the soldiers proved it so, and had their armour caved in around them or skin sliced open to spill out vital organs, bleeding profusely or tongues lolling with concussion.

Still, even over the volume of the tumultuous falls, Dan could hear great blows raining down upon The Boss’s enemies. Shortly they stopped, and Aaron swept out of cover to spot the outside landscape for threats, moving in a quick strafe across the opening and pressing his back to the opposite side. “You ready, Dan?”

“No,” he said honestly. His hand fumbled with loading a crossbow bolt of his own, and he looked down to make sure the pebbles within his leather pouch were still there. He swapped them out for a box of matches, switching the focus element of his potential from earth to flame. “I’m not.”

“Too bad,” The Boss said, and stealthy as a mountain cat he appeared by their side, dripping wet and not all of it water. An open cut on his chin dyed his beard and hair crimson.

“Out,” he breathed heavily, and Dan saw pure murder in The Boss’s eyes. They were bloodshot and wide, and veins bugged out from his neck. He was different, somehow.

“I’m point. Aaron is last in file,” The Boss ordered, reloading his crossbow and searching the field. He didn’t even blink against the sunlight, having not seen it for close to a month, and scampered through the cavity.

Dan followed and stuck close. They splashed and ran awkwardly through the creek and tore away for the nearest cover in a thicket of bushes and trees on the left side, rustling through the tall grass until hunkering down. Dan could see the boulder he’d tossed like a tennis ball, and where it came to rest. There were twitching limbs visible from beneath it. He swallowed the grisly image to digest it when there was time.

Dan’s eyes darted around, and saw they were in the pit of a minor valley and any direction was an uphill climb. Aaron unfolded a map and traced his finger along it, cross-referencing landmarks to find their position. He looked to The Boss and simply pointed to Dan’s left.

“Six hundred metres to coast,” Aaron said. He pointed in the opposite direction. “Inland for two miles until hitting road.”

“We take to water,” The Boss said, rotating on the spot in constant vigil for attackers. “We’re too slow on foot and we can hop ships for disguise. Move.”

Dan looked up as they shot through the landscape, and only briefly considered that he was running without effort in spite of the injuries and weakness he’d suffered while imprisoned. His legs pumped like pistons and carried him with speed through the hilly terrain, dashing and zigzagging between underbrush and low hanging branches. He felt like he was on another planet, looking up to a flock of white seagulls overhead. He’d known only stalwart stones and jangling chains for such a long time, and just seeing the endless sky was strange, like claustrophobia in reverse.

Dan’s reverie broke on a tangle of limbs and flashing steel, as an Empire fighter wrapped in a camouflage ghillie suit dropped from the trees and dragged him to the ground. Dan felt a hot line drawn across his cheek as he rolled and tumbled, his fists thrashing about for something to break. With a ruthless backhand he caught something fleshy and heard a whimpering cry as ribs shattered, and the Empire ambusher sagged to the earth unable to breath. Blood oozed from his nose and his lungs pooled with blood. Dan got to his feet and stomped the ambusher’s throat three times, then once more to make sure.

“Get moving! Go! Go!” The Boss shouted, he and Aaron both engaged in melee combat of their own with ghillie suited attackers. They danced and weaved with short swords and daggers like their bodies were liquid, avoiding each and every stroke by the enemy, and returning two slashes for their one.

“We’ve got to keep moving!” Aaron called.

Dan sprinted towards Aaron to peel away another ambusher who’d landed an effective chokehold, taking the much smaller man by the head and neck and twisting hard, snapping his neck on the spot.

Aaron didn’t even turn to look before he’d eviscerated another with a quick forward thrust. “That’s all,” he said, shoulders rising and falling with the labour of his breath. He didn’t look tired. He looked like he could persist for hours.

“Didn’t you say there were two hundred waiting for us?” Dan said. He searched ahead around and saw a break in the tree line, as the ground flattened out into a long, wide clearing.

“One sixty left, then,” The Boss snarled, and took off at a run.

Aaron and Dan struggled to keep up, and once they burst into the clearing, followed The Boss’s lead by diving into the cover of the grass and scrambling on their bellies. The smell of campfires and rhythm of oceans licking the sands told Dan they were getting close. They hit another row of trees and hunkered through them, slowing the pace for a better look at their destination.

Dan’s spirits sank at the sight of a full Empire encampment some one hundred and fifty metres away on the shoreline, a minor tent city complete with a dry-docked warship and a much smaller schooner anchored a hundred metres from the sand. Red banners blazed and flapped in the breeze, and scores of men sat around smoky bonfires with horns of ale and cold blades alike, completely unaware.

“They aren’t on full alert,” Aaron breathed, relieved, scanning with a collapsible eyeglass. “They don’t even know there’s fighting going on. They must’ve assumed we starved out by now and sent a routine skeleton crew and some scouts to clear out the mines.”

At one end of the camp, separated from the rest, were brightly coloured huts, a mixture of red and what seemed like actual gold trimming, complete with stained glass windows and chimneys, corrugated iron roofs and timber walls. The structures seemed impossibly impractical for transportation, yet here they were, like their occupants demanded the housing as a right and not a privilege.

“Mage quarters,” Aaron assumed.

Dan was jealous. He didn’t even have a pointy had, and these guys had full on portable homes.

“We can’t sneak through,” The Boss said. “Too many.”

“Agreed. We need a distraction,” Aaron said. “What’ve you got, Dan?”

He didn’t answer. He thought of the way a campfire protects the weary traveller and soldier alike, as he saw the ignorant troops sitting around them. It raises their spirits like the warm column of air above it. The light, the crackling embers, the smells, all of it; there’s no threat in a campfire. Dan knew how to bend the innocent flames to his will. He’d done it before and lost nights of sleep as a consequence. He’d rather be tired than dead.

“Get me within fifty metres of one of those fires,” Dan said. “I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

The Boss and Aaron, masters of stealth and guerrilla combat, picked a line through the scrubby spinifexes that covered the dunes to the descending shoreline.

“Follow quick,” The Boss ordered, and they abandoned their cover to run the final leg, covering a hundred metres in short order. They paused and scanned ahead every so often and with relaxed skill made the border of the Empire encampment undetected. Three weeks of boredom tends to dull the otherwise sharp senses of soldiers, Dan reasoned.

“We’ve got a hard swim, boys,” The Boss said. They were a short sprint from the first tent, and Dan could even see the thick rope stitching around the tent poles and mend-patches of boar hide on the canvas. “Only way we get out of here is by sail. Better take your shots now.”

Dan watched as The Boss retrieved one of the bamboo syringes, removed the wax stopper, and jabbed it through a chink in the armour plating of his black and brown suit. He gasped as if sucker punched, and shivered all over for a moment. The redness of his eyes doubled and he almost instantly started to grind his teeth in a substance-fuelled tic. Still, despite the pent up energy that flowed through him, The Boss’s hands remained perfectly still.

Dan was hesitant. He retrieved one of the syringes, picked away the wax seal at the tip, and hovered it above his leg. He saw Aaron dose up as well, quivering as the chemicals pumped through his veins and sent his eyes rolling back. Dan didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to do a lot of things.

“You’ve got five seconds before I leave you behind,” The Boss growled, looking back with a twisted up face and bulging eyes red as a demon’s, the pupils almost completely swallowing the iris. “Take your medicine, boy.”

Dan looked to Aaron, who nodded his approval. Dan plunged the stinging needle in to his thigh, and all at once, faster than he could’ve possibly expected it, was truly filled with contentment. Not the kind of happiness a drunk feels, all empty and sluggish, but a satisfaction with the situation that brought absolute clarity. The world around him made sense and deep down he felt that there was no place he’d rather be, apart from here, bunkered down in the sand, plotting the destruction of dozens, if not hundreds, of his enemies.

Dan was unaware of the unnatural power that ripped through every sinew, every aching fibre, of his muscular body. The chemicals washed away the fatigue and weakness and replaced it with strength. Even his magic swelled within him, and as he looked down, he saw the spindly weeds blowing away from him in concentric circles like he was exuding a breeze of his own. Each step cast up small swirls of sand like gravity didn’t apply any more.

“Do it,” The Boss said, pulling the pin on a grenade and tossing it further than any normal arm could manage.

Dan followed the grenade’s trajectory with ease, even as it shrunk to a pinpoint in the distance, and sailed out of sight behind the triangular outline of a tent. He loaded his will to bear, and felt it almost bursting through his nose as he held it back to be unleashed at the right moment. He withdrew one of the matches from his pouch, struck it alight with a flick of his fingers, and dumped it back in.

The grenade detonated and sent a mushroom cloud of sand and white thunder into the air. A horn sounded, and a hundred swords scraped from their scabbards. Soldiers cried and shouted in unison, scrambling to the ready. As the sun finally sank beneath the hilltops, the lingering orange glow fading to a bloody red, Dan closed his eyes and saw the flames of Hell tearing open from the earth and swallowing everything in sight.

Aaron and The Boss watched with fascination, even admiration, for Dan’s amplified power. The sand swirled up in a vortex now, framing Dan’s body in an undulating twist of pure magical energy, and he felt absolutely righteous, like a painter dashing his magnum opus onto the canvas.

Every individual flame within the Empire’s encampment—from tiny candle to high-stacked bonfire—blossomed tenfold. What was a lazy congregation of soldiers only moments ago, was now a blazing battlefield, smoky and black and red. Men ran screaming and dived on their bellies, trying to bury themselves in the sand in the sand, struggling extinguish their flesh as they roasted in their tin armour like loaves of garlic bread.

Dan heard The Boss cackling like a maniac, as they all sprinted from cover and threw themselves into the chaos.

[Etheryn]

The Empire camp barely knew what hit them. Shock and awe tactics, in the absence of any room for stealth, were something that the Rangers specialised, and the three-strong squad of The Boss, Aaron and Dan cut a path through the tent city like they were strolling through a daisy field.

With calm precision and veins full of performance enhancing chemicals, Aaron and The Boss fired off lethal crossbow bolts and followed up with speedy cuts from their tactical knives. The Boss kept cackling, not entirely the image of sanity, as he tore down red-feathered soldiers before they could even strap on their armour. They moved in a tight knit group, back to back, covering all angles while they marched through on.

Dan felt like a juggernaut, and knew he wasn’t himself. He was vaguely aware that in such a horrible storm of violence, surrounded by smoke and flames and flashing blades, that he ought to be afraid. He knew he should’ve wanted to turn and run to the hills and hide in a ditch until the fight was over. A fisherman by trade with no combat training should take no pleasure in the systematic murder of faceless soldiers, who, just like Dan, had families and friends they believed they were fighting to protect.

This time, his mind overtaken by the blood thirst inducing substance of The Boss’s “serum,” Dan indulged in that pleasure with no abandon. His healing injuries were of no consequence and he forgot they were even there. His feet glided and stepped with agility that someone of his bulk shouldn’t have and he was reminded of days spent filleting fish at home, when he opened up a soldier’s carotid and the arterial spray splashed on the sand in thick spurts. One more fell to a terrific uppercut, a second by summoned flames, and the third with an armbar takedown that popped joints out of their sockets. The soldiers toppled like dominoes, all absolutely outclassed by Dan's ferocity, each death or incapaciation trumpeted to all nearby with a bellowing shout.

“Keep moving, boys,” The Boss said, ducking a clumsy overhand swing from an Empire claymore. The soldier was wearing full plate, including a helmet, but it didn’t protect him from a bludgeoning hammer strike from The Boss’s fist. The helmet spun all the way around and the blow sent him careening to the ground.

Aaron stepped over the downed soldier and with an absentminded flick of his hand tossed a needle-thin knife into the eye slit. Like he’d forgotten his house keys, Aaron turned back to retrieve the blade with a life-ending twist. The soldier screamed like a child does for their mother and went limp.

Two minutes elapsed since the first battle-horn sounded, and The Boss reasoned that, sooner or later, the unprepared Empire force would catch on to the direction and number of their attackers. Dan knew that the initial surprise, and sheer light and sound display from the fires he’d wrought, gave the impression that a much larger force was invading. It was a matter of time—of which there wasn’t much—before the soldiers wised on and swallowed them by sheer numbers.

“Unbelievable!” Dan shouted, lifting a man clear above his head and throwing him through a table, then as an afterthought, using his will to scorch him with a spear of fire borrowed from the nearby embers of a smouldering tent. “This feels unbelievable!”

They were almost through to the other side of the camp, ready to burst onto the shore-line and take an almost suicidal chance at swimming beneath the surface all the way to the waiting schooner, all the way to their escape. They almost made it to the water. It wasn’t overconfidence in their combat prowess that ended their violent charge.

It was sheer probability. No matter how strong, how fast, or how good they were, there was always going to be someone better. Someone who saw them from an angle no one else did, who had the counter to their guerrilla strike. They were outnumbered, and until now, had been fighting against unorganised and terrified men. The Boss, Aaron and Dan should’ve known better than to keep running when the battle mages joined the fray.

The ocean rose up before them, some magical manipulation of the liquid tension allowing it to spread thin and long like a glass window, and stretched over head like a blanket. It covered the entire encampment, at least a hundred metres on each side, and then all at once collapsed, extinguishing the raging fires that masked their intrusion. Clouds of steam billowed up and timber shattered into splinters from the rapid cooling. Soldiers preoccupied with spot fires swapped buckets of water for swords, and joined into hunting bands, marshalling each other into some semblance of unison.

“There!” Dan cried, pointing to a distant huddle of robed figures near the timber huts, just barely visible through the haze of steam and smoke. “We’ve got to take them first!”

“There’s no time!” Aaron shouted, diving into a sideways roll to avoid a shot from a longbow. Their position was compromised, and now the mass of soldiers was mobilising into a singular force. Commanding roars sounded through their ranks, passing the message around. “Three at the shore! Three at the shore! Kill them!”

The Boss and Aaron both loosed crossbow bolts as fast as they could, aiming the missiles higher to account for the arcing trajectory. They simply bounced off a shimmering wall of thin air protecting the huddled mages, and a flickering blue light rippled back from the point of impact and illuminated the dome shape of the barrier. The Boss tried a grenade which detonated in a resounding boom against it, before imploding uselessly into nothingness like the blast went off in a vacuum.

Dan knew, somewhere in his adrenalin fogged mind, that the group of mages were combining their energies like a force multiplier, becoming a single unit with more potential than the sum of their parts. Brute force and physical attacks would be ineffective. He had to come up with a plan.

A wave of rushing soldiers, axes and great swords and speeding arrows showing their intention, rolled towards Dan, Aaron and The Boss. The battle mages called down a shower of flaming orbs of almost nuclear fire that carved and the pummelled the sand like artillery strikes, leaving glass craters behind. The sound was incredible, like a screaming whistle rising in a crescendo before a concussion-inducing thunderclap.

“Run!” The Boss ordered, and they turned towards the water and took off at a sprint.

The Boss stumbled as an arrow caught his back, then another, then a third. He jabbed himself with another dose of serum mid-stride, reaching back to snap the shafts of the arrows and toss them away. His face was red and dripping with sweat, mixing with the dirt and streaking down his cheeks like war paint.

Dan guessed which direction to step, and the erraticism of his movements did the job. He scooped up a handful of sand without slowing down and dumped it in to his pouch. The element of his focus switched from fire back to earth. His mind’s eye saw the beach opening up like the jaws of a shark, and when combined with his magic, the vision became real.

The battle mages fell into an open, swirling pit as the sand beneath them sucked downwards. Their joint focus broke and their weaving energies dissipated. Dan poured his will into the image in his mind, and and saw the jaws snapping shut. Simultaneously the beach closed over like a healing wound and buried the battle mages alive. As Dan released the spell, he, The Boss and Aaron made the waterline, wading until it was deep enough to dive and swim.

The cold of the water was almost sobering.

Even still, the fight had almost been easy, Dan thought. He wasn't silly enough to take the water for granted as a finishing line. He knew there was a hundred yards to swim underwater, with boots and bags and heavy weaponry slowing him down. He’d lost passage of time, and saw far out in front to see that the stars and moon had come out, while the sun at his back hadn’t yet fully sunk below the horizon.

The three escapees toiled with their ballast, briefly looking back to signal each other with a thumbs up. The water was clear, and somehow he could still see as they dived several metres below the surface. The Boss and Aaron were were nearly ten metres ahead. Each man produced a small metal tube and bit the mouth piece, breaking the seal for air to flow through and kept powering along without the need to breach the surface and their cover.

Random arrows streaked a trail of bubbles here and there yet posed no threat. The kelp choked ocean bed gave way to brilliant, jagged corral of yellow and purple, and clouds of colourful baitfish being herded by their superiors in the foodchain. Shortly, the reef bottomed out too, and there was nothing below them but untold volumes of deep, dark sea. Dan sped up when he brushed again an anchor line, and shortly after saw the rudder and hull of the schooner.

Still, Dan felt something was wrong. He shouldn’t be able to see anything. The sky overhead had gone dark and speckled with stars, and the half-stunned Empire camp so easily gave up their chase. He expected at least a few dinghies to pursue when their intent to steal the schooner was so obvious. He somersaulted in the water, from breaststroke into backstroke, and could’ve blacked out with dread when his prediction came true.

Three bright lights had been tracking their swim, and then Dan knew why they’d been able to see. Dan panicked, not sure how to fight in the water, continuing to swim subsurface backstroke as fast as he could, unable to peel his eyes from the three hulls and three pairs of oars churning the surface some twenty metres behind. Blurry shapes loaded each boat. Sound carries well through water, and Dan could hear the muffled and ravenous shouts for revenge.

Dan saw two grenades floating past him like driftwood. He looked forward to see why Aaron and The Boss would jettison the lightest (and arguably most precious) of their gear before the heaviest. They were doing something with their hands, out of sight, while treading in place beneath the hull of the schooner.

Dan puzzled and took another look at the grenades. They were missing their pins. He almost choked and double-timed his strokes until his lungs were burning and the air tube started to empty. His jaw ached from biting down on it so hard.

The grenades went off, sending a turbulent shockwave out in a visible sphere of bubbles that walloped and tumbled every person and thing it touched. Dan was upside down when he saw the Empire dinghies capsize and their passengers splash into the water. Methodically, with lazy grace that looked like slow motion, Aaron and The Boss fired bolts from their gas-drawn crossbows that flew through the water easy as they did in air.

Red mist spilled from the dying soldiers, yet they didn't twitch and flail as they would've on land. They simply went limp and floated to the surface to be found by search parties, or sank to be eternally forgotten.

Dan joined in, missing all of his shots except one. His air ran out. There was no choice but to slice the anchor rope and get moving. He made it to the schooner, fumbled to the side of the hull opposite the waterline, and found a rope ladder. He clawed his way up with urgency and rolled onto the deck. He spluttered and coughed a gutful of salty water up all over himself.

The Boss and Aaron made the deck just as the schooner’s already raised sails caught wind and carried it away from the coast at surprising speed now it was no longer bound by the anchor. Dan quickly inspected the state of the spars and hanks. Dan was experienced enough as a boatswain from his years as a fisherman, and felt confident he could navigate by the stars well enough to guide them out.

He couldn’t be sure of his waterlogged ears, but Dan heard no sound of battle. Only the soft slap of water against the hull, the gentle rocking, and a stiff breeze remained.

Dan’s eyes feasted on the starry sky, and as his exhausted breath formed mist above him, he dared the question. “Did we make it? Did they give up?”

“You two did,” The Boss gasped, rolling to his side.

Blood slaked the deck from the three arrow wounds in his back, lit up by the just risen moon. With an inhuman tolerance of pain The Boss pried an arrowhead out with his fingers, barely making a peep. The colour drained from Dan’s face as a few spurts of hot blood poured out.

“Stop whinging,” Aaron said, unclipping several pieces of equipment from his suit and tossing them aside. He fumbled through a sealed zipper-bag and produced dry bandages. “You’re fine.”

“I’ll be dead in an hour,” The Boss said, fumbling with shaking fingers as he pulled off his gloves. “It’s cold.”

The surging drug in Dan’s veins was relentless. “I can cover us if anyone catches up,” he said, and after a few moments of stillness felt strong enough to keep fighting.

“The stimulant will fade, Dan,” Aaron said. “Don’t try another round. You won’t handle it.”

The Boss rolled over for Aaron to work. Dan was shocked by the thick spidery veins clawing down his forehead and cheeks, meeting the thick bruises under his bloodshot and glassy eyes. In the course of that single battle, he’d gone from a warrior full of life and fury, to almost terminal, in a matter of minutes.

“That’s what it does? That's what the serum does if you take too much?” Dan asked.

“Yeah,” The Boss said, reaching back to swat Aaron’s hand away. “Save the supplies for someone else.”

“Shut the hell up. You don’t get to just die and feel like a hero because you don’t feel like helping anymore,” Aaron spat. “We’re not done yet.”

“Fuck’s sake, Aaron!” Dan shouted, ducking below the lip of schooner’s stern. “Good one. 'We're not done yet.' I wish you didn’t just say that!”

Four streamlined, dark shapes approached from the shore, like torpedos fired at an impossible speed. Dan popped up to look and spied a foamy wake stirring on the water’s surface, trailing behind the figures. Dan saw two pinpricks of red light at the tip of each, growing larger as they closed in, and for the life of him, Dan had no idea what they could’ve been. He’d seen a Great White charge down a seal before.

No shark has glowing eyes. No shark swims that fast, he worried.

Assuming the the worst and only possibly explanation—a preternatural threat—Dan drew upon his magic. Until today he'd never fought against another practitioner of magic, and although he'd been lucky in his first encounter, he didn't expect the trend to continue. Ordinary men couldn’t seem to fight back his flames, but those who could lift oceans to smother said flames were another ballgame altogether. Dan didn’t know what to do. His will was useless without a direction to send it in.

“What is it? Are we boned?” Aaron shouted, dragging The Boss from the deck and into the flimsy cover of the cabin.

The four battle mages burst from the water like robed dolphins, somehow dry, floating above the surface in a sentinel’s line with the very air shimmering around them in a show of mystical force. Apart from different coloured robes (red, blue, yellow and brown), each was a perfect clone of the other, and their movements mirrored with a freakish matching of detail.

As one raised a single, almost skeletal finger to the sky, they all did, and suddenly clouds formed in from nowhere, coalescing into a winding twister that plummeted from the sky and brought a deafening sound of shearing wind. Rain poured in sheets that stung like hail, and soon enough, the hail came too. Dan’s stitched up eyebrow split open once more with a flinch inducing impact.

There was nothing to do but marvel at their imminent destruction.

Dan, Aaron, and The Boss, all knew the odds when they’d chosen their paths through life. Soldiers waive their right to easy living and an assured retirement as soon as the ink dries on their duty contract. Dan gave up his simple days as a wandering handyman for hire, at the second he decided to butt heads with the crooked men of the world. Neither of them knew they'd face down nature itself, manipulated by the desires of Empire wetworkers.

Dan didn't even think of quitting.

It’s easy to accept death. It’s easy to be afraid. What’s hard, is taking that fear and giving it shape, moulding it against the anvil of will and stoking it in the white-hot fires of tribulation and conflict, then submerging it in the cold water of self-doubt. What’s even harder is picking up the giant hammer you get at the end of the process (otherwise known as courage), and dropping it on the heads bad dudes who deserve it. Then picking it up and doing it again, and again, and again, until there's nothing left in the tank but emptiness and the urge to quit, and all the bad dudes know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, "You don't mess with the good guy."

Dan would be damned before he went back on his rousing speech in the barracks. No one calls him a liar. And he didn’t like bad dudes, anyway.

So, without any choice but to take a gamble, but to grin and bear it, Dan got on with it. He reached into the zippered satchel mounted on the small of his back and ripped out another dose of serum, sticking himself right in the neck. Instantly, his perception of time warped and the world went red, moving in slow motion like he’d been dumped into a jar of jam and was looking out of it. He caught a hail stone, no bigger than a ping pong ball, and switched it into his leather pouch.

The tornado spun the schooner on the spot, and Dan slid as the deck angled sharply, scrambling for something to hold on to. He caught stray cordage from the jigger-mast and held on for all he was worth. The battle mages turned their fingers towards Dan, levelling an unintelligible accusation in some monotone, horribly evil sounding language.

Lightning struck a gaff and exploded it in splinters, one of them catching Dan in the arm that held the cordage. He cried out in pain, and just barely managed to swap arms, clawing himself up and as the schooner tipped in the opposite direction, and Dan used the momentum to roll to his feet.

The second dose took full effect, and Dan’s head felt ready to explode with the pressure building up. He opened his palms to the stormy sea, and thought of an arctic shelf rising from it like a great landmass.

Aaron cried out for help, defenceless as he tried to drag The Boss below deck, and another nearby strike of lightning hit the deck. It flung him ten metres to ground zero of the tornado before he vanished upwards. Dan let a bloodcurdling shout, and generated more juice from the immediate need for vengeance of his brother’s life.

The Boss flopped around in the cabin, now unconscious. It was ironic that the last person Dan had left to defend was also the one he liked the least.

Dan linked with the melting hailstone in his pouch and raised a new ice shelf in the sea, forcing the water to freeze and form immense, colossal bergs. He added a final layer to his mental construct, of countless fragmentation grenades—the same ones they'd made liberal use of—dotting the ice shelf. He unleashed his will in the biggest flood of magic he’d ever performed, and shattered the bergs to millions of tiny splinters and thin sheets, sharp needles and frozen blades, and sent each one homing in at speed to mince the battle mages into non-existence.

The tornado dissipated into wispy trails. The rain stopped, and hailstones rattled about the deck. A distant yell and a splash caught Dan’s attention but he was too drained to even look. As he sagged to his knees and tried to stay awake, he saw ribbons of tattered cloth and tiny, bite-sized chunks of soggy flesh floating by like leaves on a pond.

The schooner sailed on with a mind of its own, carrying Dan and The Boss away from the coastline. It didn’t matter where they went.

[Etheryn]

The noon sun beat down waves of relentless heat and Dan sheltered in the cabin, plotting their course upon an unrolled canvass map. He used his experience as a boater to navigate from the southern eastern peninsula (their point of escape) all the way north and past Radasanth completely, out into open waters. They'd made good progress until now.

The schooner drifted slowly, the sails slack and lifeless. There was nothing to do, and even if there was, the basting summer forced each man aboard into laziness. Sweat dripped down to tickle Dan’s nose, and the caw of a sea eagle circling overhead brought him to the deck to look.

“Cold nights and hot days, man. What I’d do for some middle ground,” Dan complained. He screened his eyes with his palm and caught the eagle's silhouette between his fingers. He held it for a moment, then it was gone.

“What I’d do for a bath,” Aaron added, his face grimy with caked on filth that never washed away without actual soap. He wiped at it with a soiled towel and just smudged it around.

Dan’s rolled down his camouflage bodysuit to give his oily skin some time to breath. It was strange, that even surrounded with so much water he felt constantly unclean. Apart from the jag of splintered, hot timber that'd cut his arm, his wounds didn't even need bandages any more.

“Are you going to check on him?” Dan asked, referring to The Boss. “Haven’t heard a peep.”

“He’ll be fine,” Aaron answered. “I knocked him out with some sedative. If he keeps moving around to show us how tough he is, he’ll do something stupid…like drop dead.”

“So you drug him?” Dan asked, walking across the deck to pull at some cordage around the mainsail, still looking up to the circling eagle while doing so.

“He needs rest,” Aaron said. “You do too. Have a look at yourself, man. You’ve lost weight.”

Dan leaned over the starboard bow to look at his wobbling reflection on the still ocean surface. Like a true goon, he struck a double bicep flex. He’d dropped fat and a bit of a muscle, yet gained vascularity all over. Veins popped out where they never did before. “Still got thirty pounds on you. At least.”

“One pound for each hair on your head, Friar Tuck. Time for a shave,” Aaron quipped, opening the hatch and climbing below deck to monitor The Boss.

“Time for shut the Hell up,” Dan called down to his brother as the hatch closed. He ran his hand over his bald scalp to the stubble growing from the rear and sides, and agreed, jealous of his brother’s locks of thick blonde hair.

Dan rummaged through trunks and drawers in the cabin for a straight razor, and surprisingly enough found one complete with a glass jar of shaving cream. Without a mirror, he set about the risky task of shaving his head and face while on a moving boat. He cut himself twice. It was only now, floating somewhat aimlessly in an environment so very opposite to the one he’d come from—wide open, bright waters compared to the pitch-black, narrow tunnels of the salt mine prison—that Dan had time to reflect.

Dan was a visual thinker, and his memory bordered on eidetic. Even his magic relied upon imagery and thought, the vividness and intensity and subject of those images directly correlating to the effect of his magic on the world around. He spent his first moments of true privacy to let it all sink in.

He recoiled at nothing but a flashback of his own hands bound above him in biting iron, his toes scraping against a mildewy floor. He shook it away, knowing it was over. Still, despite all the good around him, it just oozed right on back. Perpetual black seconds that he'd be forced to relive over and over again. He accepted it. All of it. It was his, right through to the montage of the men he’d cut down and immolated to escape. The world is a horrible place, and people die on both sides of the fence. What matters is where you sit.

In contrast, there was light to draw the shadows. Dan rejoiced that he’d finally found his brother, and a little piece of sanity and familiarity in the turbulence of his life. There was a time in Dan’s past where he’d questioned his own drive, his own motivation, to do—not because it was convenient, but because it just had to be done—the right thing. In those days of self-doubt, he’d questioned what he would ever get in return for his charity. This was it. His family. The only one and best one he ever had.

Dan went to the deck, opened the hatch, and ducked in. Aaron turned and burst out laughing at Dan’s upside-down head still pocked with clumps of shaving cream moulded into a pretend beard. The Boss stirred fitfully, gaunt and pale and shivering beneath a blanket.

“You never asked why I came looking for you, Aaron,” Dan said.

“Because I already knew.” Aaron looked back to the mortar and kept grinding a foul smelling tincture, still chuckling.

“How?”

“It’s what you do. You’re the good guy, little brother. You get a whiff that some poor sap is in trouble, and you show the world to the bottom depths of your retardation, going balls-to-the-wall to help.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Don’t you forget it. I saved your arse. Might have attracted a couple hundred Empire dorks to skewer said arse on a pike, but…I saved it.”

Dan left Aaron and The Boss in peace. He dove from the deck and tucked up like a cannon ball, whistling all the way down to the splash. He swam, face plastered with a smile, but couldn’t shake his mind from something that niggled him. His arms and legs carved the water and he did laps of the schooner, speeding up to overwhelm his mental toil with a physical one.

Despite idling somewhere north-west of Corone, far from the bindings of the Empire, no longer sandwiched in their conflict against the Rangers, he still felt trapped. Dan heard the clinking of chains, and a rusty iron door slamming shut. He smelled the mildew and horror of the inside of a fetid, lifeless room. It would follow him until the day he died.

He held his breath, diving deep to suffocate the thoughts, drinking in the sight of a technicoloured reef and thousands of exotic fish, full of life and splendour. For only a brief moment, the image of the room was replaced by beauty. Only a brief moment, until it came back.

Never, ever, ever again, would Dan let it happen. No one would lock him away like a rat in cage.

[Sagequeen]

Full Rubric, Full Commentary – Considering I did not have the pleasure of reading the first two quests, there were a few blanks; however, the action of this story answered most of its own questions, and I am enticed to read more of Dan's history. This is the hope of any sequel, and you were able to create a well-paced, compelling tale that stands on its own.

Plot Construction ~ 25/30

Story ~ 8/10 – At no time did I ever feel that you were flying by the seat of your pants here; all the events were logical and many of them seeded within the story seamlessly. You began this quest with a man tortured in a number of gritty and excruciating ways. The plot was thickened and furthered by the revelation that Dan's brother was involved in the events of the story, and through this middle section, you slowly revealed why while keeping the tension of whether or not Aaron was well-intentioned or not. Added to the characters' plotting to escape, there was no loss of momentum that can easily happen in the middle of a story. The climax was incredibly satisfying, although I'm not sure why the Empire would send 200 for a single unit; was it 2 surviving 14? I am assuming, and treated it as though, it is one of those blanks, because what was mentioned by Dan to The Boss seems... a little hollow. As for the ending, it seemed a little awkward. After an amount of time on the ship, Aaron is back without explaination, The Boss survived, and Dan is making shaving cream beards so his brother will laugh.

Strategy ~ 9/10 – Each of your main characters in the story played an important role in moving the action along. Dan was helping people, and that's how he got into this mess. Later, with his unique skill involving his leather sack, he was the only one who could get all of them out, and you used this well both with the rocks, the fire, the sand, and the ice. The preview with the pilfered scalpel was a nice introduction to the skill. Aaron's part in this was to keep both himself and his brother alive. The Boss and The Jailer were both interested in self preservation and anger directed at Dan, even if they were a little one-dimensional – but that, I believe, was intended, hence the names.

Now then, back to Dan – my gripe here isn't a huge one; I think in almost every story, there comes a time when the author asks the reader to accept something that is difficult to swallow. The best authors wrap an amazing story around it like a sweet, delicious coating. Yours was the coincidence that Dan, who was driven to look for his brother, was found and held captive by him (well, he participated for his own reasons). Due to my lack of knowledge in the backstory, this could be very plausible; in his search Dan was sure to have narrowed down where Aaron was, and went there. So it wouldn't be such a coincidence to run into him.

Setting ~ 8/10 – On the whole, you did a masterful job of conveying the salt mines and the various areas within them – I could almost imagine I was there in your use of the senses, and at times, I had the coveted moving pictures in my mind as the action played forward. There were a few times, however, where the setting disappeared. While you did a good job of not simply front-loading a description of an area then forgetting it completely, there were also times when you zero-focused in on a single thing; while the writing and imagery was excellent, it just wasn't enough to completely sustain the world in my mind you worked so hard to build in the first place.

I'm not saying that every description should be a check-list of the senses, by any means, but by integrating these sensory things into the action of a story goes a long way in sustaining the world. I know you are capable of this because I saw many great examples of it.

Characterisation ~ 27/30

Continuity ~ 10/10 – I enjoyed how your story was wrapped within the current events in Althanas, and specifically, the civil war in Corone. You brought it to life in the telling of your tale, gave it life and breath and a heartbeat in the intertwined fates of Dan, his brother, and the others. You gave it a richness not only with the single characters, but also in your description of the sides, the Rangers with their superior weaponry, and the Empire with their camps and battle-mages. Very well done and in many cases, extremely imaginative. I cannot offer a single piece of criticism on this, hence the '10.'

Interaction ~ 8/10 – As far as characters, the interaction between Dan and The Jailer were excellent, as were those between Dan and The Boss. While I understand the interaction between Dan and his brother are meant to be tense and awkward, it fell a bit short of the mark. It seemed to me there was a lot of potential there for some excellent dialog, but mostly it focused on Dan's thoughts and doubts, and was not demonstrated enough in what they said (which fell flat, lacking the ring of truth in the situation). Granted, it's difficult to get mushy while holed up in an old salt mine, then bashing skulls in a drug-induced blood-rage, but at the end, Dan's revelation of family being most important and the ease with which he was around his brother struck me as quite illogical. It was odd how this paralleled Aaron's being sucked up into the tornado, then he's inexplicably back on the boat.

As far as how your characters made use of their setting, well done. There were too many good things to mention all of them. My biggest issue here I already mentioned: Aaron and the tornado. A simple and plausible explanation of how he survived would have sufficed here if you were to keep the ending you have.

Character ~ 9/10 – Masterful. You explored the depths of Dan's psyche in a way that was compelling and interesting. So many of your insights were very poignant and so true. For him, I have no critique, save what I already mentioned about the ending. I'd also like to mention your use of The Jailor, The Doctor, and The Boss. These characters were one-dimensional as the names suggest, and I think that was your intent - if so, well done. Then, bringing The Doc forth and giving him dimension as Dan's brother – wonderful! However, I just couldn't get a grasp of Aaron, and there was potential there to develop him further. Again, this could have been accomplished through dialog with Dan.

Writing Style ~ 24/30

Creativity ~ 9/10 – From beginning to end, your style of writing and attention to detail were stunning. I don't think I need to tell you to use metaphors or anything like that. There was a time or two that the introspective nature of your writing did take a small amount away from the story and the pacing, but nothing beyond nitpicking.

Mechanics ~ 7/10 – I didn't see recurring errors, just several that were overlooked and could have been caught with a thorough proofreading.

Clarity ~ 8/10 – Again, most of the action was clear – with the exception of The Boss and his exit after the swan dive to lift Dan and Aaron. I read it several times, and still am not sure how that worked. Otherwise, some of the overlooked mechanical errors did trip me up, and I had to go back and re-read.

Wildcard: 9/10 – This was a wonderful read! There were many times I found myself thinking that I was reading a novel, and I rarely had a difficult time immersing myself in the story, even during frequent interruptions. I looked forward to continuing and finishing this story!

Total ~ 85/100

Etheryn earns 1870 EXP and 640 gold.

Additionally, spoils requested:

- Gold found in the schooner

300 gold awarded above

- Gas-powered pistol crossbow with a small amount of ammo left

I think the crossbow, considering the rounds are armor-piercing, is a bit overpowered. I know that Dan didn't use it a lot and isn't terribly proficient, but I hesitate in awarding it. Let's just say it's currently broken and needs repairs.

- The last remaining "serum"

You'll need to have some limitations on this in your character update, considering the power it gives, which was displayed in the thread.

- The bodysuit

Make sure to declare the relative strength (assuming leather) of this in your character update. Also, I am assuming it's just the bodysuit and not all the fun little weapons stashed in it.

- A single grenade

Heck yeah! Make some mayhem! But since it got wet in Dan's swim, it's not nearly as effective. At most, the shrapnel will be the worst of the blast.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.