Chapter 2
In another world, another time, one that gleamed of rubies
or sapphires, one that was laden with silver there would have been another
ending to this story; another world where rich, powerful men did rich, powerful
things. In this world there was only X.
X clawed at his cage with the little strength that he had
left. He felt betrayed to his core. The king whom he had sworn absolute loyalty
to had abandoned him in a heartbeat. Every ounce of courage, determination, and
respect that was in X had been given to that man. Now he clawed at his cage,
scooping up the last of the crumbs that he could find. They were dry and harder
than rocks but they were something where he otherwise had nothing.
Hunger and thirst were now his bed partners. It wouldn’t
have been so bad if he was just left to rot but they kept him alive and active.
X was forced to dance and juggle for that bastard when he could hardly stand
under his own power. This kept him hungry and suffering. It had been four
months now and he was desperate. The thought of death was such a welcoming one;
to end all of this torment was equal to bliss at this point. It was so much so
that the lives of his family were insignificant compared to this. His resolve
never let him die though. He stayed alive in captivity far beyond when other
men would have been broken. He held what little spit he had left in him back
when he saw Charles knowing the consequences of dribbling on that man.
The mask that was soldered onto X’s face covered his mouth.
Slipping food in was no easy task. There was just enough of a hole in the
bottom that he could wedge small pieces in and slide them through the steel
wires where he might choke on them. Every taste was painful without a tongue
but it kept him nourished enough to keep going.
In the months that passed X learned to juggle with his
decrepit body and failing health. He taught himself to stand again and where
his ligaments failed him he reinforced his bones with his own mental powers.
They were faint and weak at times, so he did his best not to stand when he
could. By all means he was actually a skilled performer by the time that
Charles grew tired of him.
Charles was a man with no taste for mercy. Everything needed
to be calculated. Every move needed to resonate with his genius for he needed
to be powerful. It was his birthright to be ruler, though he was not born of
royal blood. His birthright came from his willpower. He was determined and he
knew the weaknesses of men. He knew how to inspire them and how to break them.
The humiliation of one murderer is enough to gain the absolute loyalty of an
army. It just needs to be the right murderer.
For many years Charles had lived in a small town, too young
to act of his own accord but too big of a thinker to be content with that.
Whenever he could, he wished to test his limits and the limits of others. He
would secretly abuse the other children until they broke and then he waited to
see how they broke. First he wanted to see the effects of physical abuse. When
you beat someone to within an inch of their life they will do anything and
believe anything. No matter who it was, it was just a matter of how many bones
to break and how deep the lacerations needed to be to achieve this. They’ll
promise the world and even sometimes come through with it. It was an
inconsistent means of getting what you want though. The adults would find out
and punish you. There would be a great amount of sympathy for the beaten child
and anything that you did gain was taken away. It was miserable.
The next option was an emotional play. Charles would harass
and belittle the other children until they could take no more. He would strip
them of their friends with nasty lies and rumors, belittle them before their
parents, and verbally abuse them whenever he had the chance. Threats kept them
in place. Here the problem was the death rates. If you break a man too much
then he kills himself. Charles had pushed a little girl just a bit too far when
he learned this. She broke. The light left her eyes. She walked off of a bridge
without hesitation. This was useful to Charles but it also did not give him
what he wanted. He wanted to be a ruler and dead men weren’t worth ruling over.
God that was exhilarating though.
It took five weeks of abuse. First he hurt her subtly. He
began to cut her and bleed her. She had to promise to tell no one. He made her
believe that this was right and necessary, that she was doing a good thing.
Then he told on her, told her parents she was hurting herself. Word spread like
wildfire that she was crazy and trying to summon monsters. No one would believe
the stories that she spun to them as she tried to create a web of lies to
escape from this nightmare. Next he spread rumors to her friends. He shared his
candies and sweet words with them but only if they stopped associating with the
creepy girl. When they teased her, he gave them more. Then there was no one for
her. She was alone. Three weeks of absolute loneliness and taunting was all it
took for her to kill herself. Those were perhaps the three most fun weeks of
Charles’s life.
Finally he began to manipulate men socially. Where there was
no desperation he would make desperation before and when the dust settled he
would offer them an out. Not everyone would be given an opportunity of course.
Those that were given more were the most loyal only if they were above other
men that they thought were less worthy than them. Charles learned this through
a trial of fire.
He burned and stole everything he could from his neighbors
one night. The poor couple lost their daughter in the fire as well as their
worldly possessions. Charles continued to rob them of their dignity by shaming
them for letting their daughter die. Publicly and privately he harassed them
and made them feel like the entire community was against them. Soon he turned
them against their friends and well-wishers until no one was left. Lies and
words are some of the most powerful weapons one can have. Through their trials
they persevered but grew bitter of those that turned their backs on them. The
next test needed to be whether he could supplant himself as the one and only
friend. He could. He did. Charles could take anything from them then. He could
rule.
Soon he was old enough to do as he pleased and the adults
and the authorities no longer mattered to him. Charles went around them and
began larger experiments. The most efficient means of desperation was poverty
and sickness, so he spread diseases and tainted wells. Any money that he had
went to hire men to act as bandits to cut off any relief. When things were
grimmest he would step in and offer not the cure but an alternative. A way to
get even with those that had abandoned them. He created a problem and thus a
need for him. Time and time again he proved he could care for these people
where no one else could.
It was only a matter of time before X broke from the torture
that Charles put him through. Unfortunately, that was unacceptable. As powerful
and accomplished as X was, he had too much loyalty to the former king. Even if
he was made loyal now and his body miraculously repaired, he would be a
liability that Charles could not risk. Instead he would be a pawn. The boy, X,
would be sent to the south as a token of lasting peace. If the accounts were
true then X had killed thousands of men on the battlefield. Some say his fury
was beyond even that. He’d be tried as a war criminal and put to death. Even if
they wanted to salvage him there wasn’t much left to salvage. This token would continue
to buy Charles time to consolidate his newly acquired resources.
X was loaded into his next cage. It was dingy, small, and
smelled of fear. Eerily it was a step up from the cell that he had been living
it. No food provisions were provided for him, “You’ll have to beg for anything
to eat dog.” He was told. The ounces and scraps of pride that X had left
wouldn’t allow it. The men guarding him were not the soldiers he had grown up
knowing. They had not fought any hard battles and they did not work towards the
good of their nation. Instead, these guards were absolutely loyal to a wretched
man and they had a grudge against him.
Forcing the crumbs from under his nails, where they had
stuck fast in his desperation over the last few months, X was able to lure
vermin and bugs to him. They made a richer meal than he had been used to for
quite awhile. At the very least they were enough to sustain him until he
reached wherever he was going. No matter what, he needed to survive and endure
so that his family would be alright. Amazingly Charles had not killed them yet,
if only because of how insignificant their deaths would be.
Day dawned on X for the first time in a long time. While he
was being shipped off to who knows where, he thought of many things. Was he really
just X now? Francois Tulavont was actually a rather marvelous name and he would
miss it. The man he was most loyal to though, his sovereign, had stripped him
of it. One day he would earn the name back but until then, he would respect
that he was truly no longer a person in the eyes of his country.
His next thoughts were of how he was going to escape. It was
difficult to formulate proper thoughts and keep them when so malnourished
though he did his best regardless. Survival was mostly likely if he could
escape and repair himself. It’d be better if he could kill the guards too but
that was unlikely. Perhaps a smoke screen that would make it appear as if he
had died? No matter what plan he went with, it would be complicated if he
intended to keep his family alive and escape successfully.
The cage around him wasn’t much of a cage at all. The steel
was firm and the bars tight but it still had a lock. Within moments of being
thrown in there he had groped it with his mind. The lock and its mechanism were
already intimate with him. In a moment he could slip it open and crawl away
with any strength he could muster. Now just would be the right moment.
With bated breath X waited for that perfect moment to
emerge. Something drastic needed to happen that he might egress into the
shelter of a nearby forest. It needed to be a forest that he might dig himself
in. It wouldn’t take long to catch him and find him otherwise. The trail that
he would undoubtedly leave he could cover up and mislead with, with only a push
of wind. Once he had a hole to hide in he would be in the clear. The last part
of the puzzle was finding some way to make it seem like he hadn’t escaped and
was instead kidnapped or killed.
Through the fields and mountains he schemed away. Rivers
crossed and moons rose and set. Soon the arid lands of the south were upon them
and the last forests they would see would be soon. Years ago a magical taint
had grown in the south. It shifted the dirt and grew mountains and volcanoes
where there had been only fields before. A desert woke in the presence of these
new elements and this land was known as the cursed land.
Here children were born with magical corruptions much like
X. Most were physical and they were put to death as monstrosities. Sometimes it
was horns or extra limbs, other times it was writing on their body that spoke
of evil things. Assumedly, if they were left to grow they would have begun to
manifest abilities as X had. It was doubtful that they would make much use of
them though. If the old stories were to be believed, the first people who grew
up in such conditions manifested magical abilities that defied logical
convention. They were mighty in what they could do and in exchange made
sacrifices to the dark gods that fed them. When they were tested against
trained combatants though, they were pathetic. Yes they did have much power,
some spouting fire and others growing stones like flowers, but they were not
men of mettle. Their abilities granted them no boons when they were met with
steel. As far as X was concerned, he was one of a kind.
Sordid sands sifted sinfully scalding sore sinew. Any
strength that was still in X needed to be steeled now that he might make his
escape attempt when they saw green again over the rusty yellow dunes. He
breathed nervously, ready to test his luck. Luck was a commodity that he had
precious little of but he intended to spend it all here on this gamble.
And then something that he never thought would happen
destroyed his plan with an eruption.
“How dare you whip my horse!” A voice that had gargled
brimstone spouted like thunder.
As the voice echoed the guards replied in whatever bravado
they could muster. They spouted about their importance, “If you stand in our
way you declare war on the northern lands,” they protested any action against
them. X had heard this kind of voice before. Perhaps it did not carry the same
frightening weight but it was a commanding voice of a father caring for his
child. Someone had just done something very stupid.
Stupid could not be reiterated enough as spikes of fire
erupted around them turning the sand to glass. For a moment X could see his
visage. He looked broken. To anyone who could not hear his thoughts he must
have looked absolutely pathetic. Just as the simulacrum was birthed in the
glass it was shattered into a thousand pieces as molten stones clashed against
it. Wait. Those weren’t stones. Very carefully X examined a few fragments that
sputtered into and around his cage. These were parts of a human skull; probably
one of the guards.
No wonder there wasn’t visceral screaming or tearing.
Whoever was doing this was collapsing these men with the same unholy powers
that X himself contained. Perhaps theirs were even mightier than his. Not that
his were truly splendid, to be honest. He could exert a small force on the
outside world with his mind. Whoever was doing this just turned the desert into
glass.
Then he saw him. Her? It. Whoever was doing all of the
killing appeared to be done. They rode atop a giant flaming steed which spat
flames when it neighed. It neighed a lot, even for a horse. The rider was
clearly insane, dressed head to toe in deep red plate armor, slightly adorned
with robes in the desert. It was when they finally spoke without that maligned
anger in their voice that X was finally able to pin them. The rider was a she
and she had just killed his captors.
For months X had clawed at his cage to scrounge for scraps.
For days he had clawed at his head to help him think and concentrate. Now he
clawed at his bars that he might escape away from this creature.
As the last of the blood on her broadsword burned away she
took notice of the man dressed as a jester locked in a cage. Even through his
baggy clothes she could see his bones. Perhaps he was a slave. It was unlikely
that anyone traveling with the guards would be this emaciated or locked in a
cage. With the hilt of her sword she smashed the lock on his cage open.
“You are free. Be gone.” She said not realizing that he
probably couldn’t walk and they were deep within the desert.
X inched his way out of his cage and into freedom. When the
woman and her horse turned to leave he made the only sound that he could to
grab her attention. It was a mumbled gurgle as a plea for help. Neither the
woman nor her horse recognized it. It wasn’t until there was an unpleasant
chill in the air that someone recognized his grief. A man dressed in rags
beside something clad in the thickest blue armor he had ever seen. The man in
rags lifted X up and quickly examined him.
“His arms no longer have full function. His legs may not
function at all. At the very least his feet are shattered. Possible cracked
ribs that have healed improperly. How are you alive?” The man in rags stopped,
“No matter. We should bring him with us so he doesn’t die here. No point in
rescuing a slave if all you’re going to do is kill him with the elements.”
The woman in red disagreed, “You’re too sentimental. We
cannot care for everyone.”
The man in rags gave a disgusted sound, “Then why are we
traveling at all? We save everyone. If not everyone, then everyone we can. You
promised me. You promised me you were nothing like the heartless demons.”
There was a moment of silence where X held his breath. This
determined if he lived or died. “You talk too much. Fine.” She said,
dismounting from her flaming horse. The ragged man lifted X onto it and to X’s
surprise he wasn’t burnt to a crisp. Instead, the horse felt rather cool, as if
it was siphoning heat from him. Perhaps it fed on the warmth around it? That
wouldn’t explain its physiology or the fact that it probably didn’t have
physiology and was just fire in the shape of a horse; things that didn’t matter
right now.
Happy sighs escaped X. He finally had time to think about
things that didn’t matter. It had been so long since he could think like these.
Even if everyone moment he lived from this moment was in peril, he would
cherish these few thoughts.
