Born a Monster

525 Skinless

“It’s amazing.” the old man said from outside my sack. “Any human you put in this much pain would suffer permanent mental disorders.”

“And the food requirement?” came a younger, mirthless voice. Military. Stern. “How much does this abomination eat?”

Older man chuckled. “That’s the glory of it; he can eat things that we humans can’t. He gets just enough nutrition to survive, but not enough to heal. And it doesn’t cost us a single piece of food.”

“Is it still dangerous?”

“Oh, no, sir. It’s in far too much pain right now. It probably doesn’t recognize that we’re even here.”

There was a swift kick to where my tail met the base of my spine. “It knows we’re here now.”

“Perhaps not. Did you hear a scream?”

There was a kick to the underside of my jaw, another that sought my groin. “That’s not natural.”

“No, sir. That is decidedly supernatural. We keep it alive, but dormant. Once I train four people to tend the binding circle, they can recharge two wands a day each.”

.....

“Hrm. All right, let’s make that happen, then.”

A woman cleared her throat. “What should we tell the slaves, sir?”

“Tell them? Don’t they know already?” Stern Voice asked.

“Perhaps if someone were brought in to feed it?” the old man suggested.

“It would open expectations of other household chores.” the woman said.

“What do they currently say?” Stern Voice asked.

Old snorted. “The last I’d heard them say was that he’d escaped into the desert.”

“Do you need an example made out of him?” Stern asked.

“No.” the woman said, “Just keeping the prisoners thinking we have limitless reserves should be enough to keep them in line. Have you given thought to the five I mentioned?”

Stern paused. “The ones who survive long enough to pick up skills. Do we know how they’re doing that?”

“They must be accessing their Systems at night.” Old Man said.

The woman cleared her throat. “There are stories of life before the elder races had Systems. It’s not impossible that some manner of otherwise replaced learning method is being used.”

“Ridiculous.” scoffed the Old Man. “If I could just put together a homonculus or two...”

“We’ve neither the spare silver, nor the spare corpses.”

“Possibly after this attack by the beastmen?” Woman suggested.

Stern sighed. “Can you make them from beastman bones and tissues?”

“In theory.” Old Man said. It was clear from his tone that he didn’t like this solution. “Is the regent sending us the requested reinforcements?”

“What do you THINK the answer to that question is? Even if it were yes, do either of you want the quality of guards that would be sent?”

“No sir.”

“No sir.”

“Okay.” Stern man said, walking out of the room. “Strongly worded requests for reinforcements it is.”

The door closed behind two of them.

There was light scuffing as something was dragged near me, and a great weight settled upon it.

“Source of suffering, source of pain,” the old man began incanting, “It is I Bolo the Mastermind, Dark Cultist, who calls upon you. Listen to my commands, and obey. Let the essence of Pain flow from this source into this device. Tap Pain!”

I kept my breathing even and shallow, even as waves of pain washed through my body and out through my stomach chakra.

Bolo? Where was that name from? It sounded like Itenari, but since the fall of their empire...

No, wait, he was speaking in Furdish. Given the travelers upon the trade road between Furdia and Achea (the one I’d traveled along on my way to the Shining Isles), some pieces of the current mystery were revealed. <1 >

He dutifully kept at his enchantments, and I kept my own interior reserves of Pain. I hadn’t dared to use my System with him in the room, not until I knew how the guards were sensing the use of it.

What clues did I have?

Bolo had mentioned homonculi, which were alchemical spirit puppets. Some might follow the magical angle, but I went over what I knew of spirits. Yes, I decided, that was likely the key.

The alchemical bodies were just a matter of husking, a means of making the spirit corporeal. That would muffle, rather than enhance their mystical senses...

Oh. Of course. To include masking the latent feelings that lingered about the camp. Even husking might not be enough for a spirit to persist for long in the mines. No, THAT would require...

Jewelry, such as the copper inlay of the guard’s breastplates.

It wasn’t enough to hold any but the smallest of spirits, but those were also the ones most likely to bond with physical objects, or with physical people. And they would warn the guards if …

Pain Spirits. Phantom Pains.

The Kamajeen weren’t trying to suppress the development of spirits that fed on negative emotions. Rather, they had yoked them, perhaps adopted them as pets.

What tricks would you teach to a pain spirit, to have it demonstrate before guests?

No. No, I needed to focus. Regular, slow breaths.

Gods! So dull! I just wanted to rip open this sack and EAT the old man. They’d intended to leave me famished, but I was literally starving. I knew, on some level, there were reasons I wouldn’t normally. But as he himself had pointed out, I didn’t need my System to tell me I had multiple mental and spiritual injuries. It was maddening, to know the information on what each was and how severe was a single mental question away.

I wanted to scream, so I did.

“Ah.” Bolo said, “You are awake. So very good. Tell me, are you still sentient? Aware?”

I screamed at him, tried to gnaw my way free of the sack, to wiggle my talons free of each other and the cocoon of rope which surrounded them.

“Gya-haah!” I screamed, as he stroked the back of my head and neck. Softly, but enough that I could feel fresh blood soaking into the burlap.

He rolled me onto my back, and then began trying to drown me with a ladle of onion soup. I tried to suck it in through the sack, and the one after that. It couldn’t have been much nutrition; just enough to stoke my hunger, to tease it into thinking it was going to be fed.

He mistook the nature of my crying. “I know.” he soothed. “I know it hurts.”

Then he slapped me; I let him have the whimper that resulted. And then, he was back to his incantations, each one slightly different from the last. <2 >

And I tried, I TRIED to keep my mind busy. I composed songs about bags, and clothing in general. I tried to imagine what a Pain crafter would be like. I planned my escape, and counted sheep...

[You have 34/120 Health remaining.]

More than I expected. Maybe...

The chanting stopped, and with sudden violence a foot descended upon my arm. My arm which still had no skin on it.

“None of that.” Bolo said. “There are still rules. No System time for you!”

I must have performed adequate squirming and groaning, for I was only barely bleeding where he had applied pressure.

“Actions,” he said, “have consequences. Just stop being an idiot. Just roll up in a ball and feel pain. Live and breathe pain. When you sleep, you will sleep in pain. There’s no escape for you, no way out. I won’t let you heal. I won’t let you die. This is your life now, and you will live it out until the day every human in this miserable outpost is dead.”

I almost spoke back to him. Almost. But I did serve a god of vengeance; the more helpless he thought I was, the more rewarding the expression on his face would be when I was loose.

Remember, at the time I didn’t know about the gnoll custom of “talking tough”; I was expecting, if not soon, that there was going to be a wave of gnolls doing serious battle with the camp. <3 >

The day when humans no longer lived here? That day wasn’t tomorrow, but it was coming sooner than Bolo had masterminded it to be.

I suppressed a chuckle, and focused on pretending to be helpless. Which, okay, wasn’t very hard. Say what you want about skin and scale, they keep the blood inside the body. Better than crusted layers of scab tissue, at any rate. And water.

Even under the heavy scent of blood and bile and vitriol, the tantalizing scent of onion soup wafted through. Water. There was water in that soup.

It was hours before Bolo left me, and he left only scents and the chair behind him.

And the seat cushion, there might be some nutrition in that.

What there was, though, in the sack with me, was a bundle of hempen rope. And I am oh so very much more flexible than people give me credit for.

<1 > And others remained maddeningly hidden! Oh, and advice? Don’t try living in a burlap sack; it’s just BORING.

<2 > Because if you use the same words for the same effect, the magic has an easier time breaking loose.

<3 > Which yes, there was. But my point is that because I hadn’t done my anthropology well enough in the limited time of exposure, it was really more likely that it was a bluff.