Joined by Chains

Chapter 1

Silence screamed inside of her mind. The pain of the hooks slipped into her flesh echoed against the walls, the stinging aches reverberating off of the stone walls. Her heartbeat sent wave after wave of excruciating torment throughout her flesh, the burning sensation mounting against her mind and clamping down on her bare chest.

Breathe, just breathe, one at a time, in and out, in and out. You can do this. You can do anything. Even in the darkness where not even a water drop broke the tormenting silence, she tried to survive. It was all she knew how to do, try to survive. The streets of Halafar where she had been abandoned had been the unforgiving mother where she had survived as a child. Cherlie's slave caravan had been the father of her adolescent years, rejecting and beating her, yet she had survived. She could survive this. She was a survivor. Just Breathe, one at a time. You are stronger than this, you can do this. You will live.

The pain, and the silence, carried on.

It wasn't that she couldn't cry out, or struggle, or fight. She had spent her entire life fighting against forces and people and circumstances bigger and greater than she was. The city could come crashing down on you like a dragon, laying its full weight of thugs or the guard or a passing rumor upon her, crushing her to death. Cherlie's caravan had been a serpent, ready to sting with the whip for disobedience, or break you with starvation for a lack of work. There had been a thousand other moments she had survived and she knew one thing that most did not account for; this too, shall pass.

Despite the cold chill slipping over her naked body like a hand caressing her filthy flesh, sweat beaded on her chest, the effort of staying alive and sane wearing on her soul. Every so often, a trickle of sweat running over her skin reminded her of how she was suspended in the room. Hooks with sickle sharp points were snaked into the skin and sinew of her wrists and ankles. Chains linked to those hooks stretched to each corner of the rectangular room. Six more dug into her along her sides. Two were nestled painfully against her rib cage near her armpit, two created bloody yet supposedly harmless piercings just over her hips, and two more made a home in her thighs. The last two had a unique sensation of burning and she suspected that it came from the muscles being pierced and pulled. When the drop of sweat on her chest slid down her thin torso, tickling her ribs, the twitch reminded her of just how acutely each hook in her flesh pulled. The tension of every chain kept her body taught and suspended in the air.

She twitched. The chains clinked and rattled and terror imploded her heart. The icy cold fear sucked her breath inward and every muscle, already tense from being drawn and pulled taught in mid air, tightened impossibly, giving the metal links another tiny rattle.

Her breath started coming faster and she had to remind herself to slow down or she would panic. She looked down her ripped and bloody body, watching her chest rise and fall.

It might draw him back. Fear of being left alone in the dark, starving or dying of thirst was horrific. The sounds of her torment could call the Sorcerer back. Her silence was all that kept him away. She wanted him to stay away for as long as possible. He had cold promises of using her body while she screamed and had left her to imagine what that could mean with a scythe like smile.

Her breasts were heavy on her chest and she focused on not lifting them with each breath. The weight of them rested just below her collar bone and she remembered once the comforting feeling of a thick heavy blanket resting on her chest. She cast her mind into that memory while staring at her chest, letting herself get lost in the past, if only for a second.

In Cherlie's caravan she had been slave labor. Winter had set on but Cherlie hadn't bothered to offer warm clothes or fire or even a blanket. More than one of the slaves had died in the cold wind, huddled under the wagons that carried his goods. One of the guards had found her huddled against a wheel in a shallow pit she had dug with her bare hands to block the wind and given her a blanket. She remembered being terrified as a mouse caught in a cat's paw, mewling like a babe when he reached under the wagon to offer it to her. She hadn't taken it, but he eventually left it on the ground and walked away from her without a word. A scarf was wrapped about his mouth, under his helm and all she could see were his bright blue eyes, hard as rocks she had thought at the time.

That same blue eyed man had been the one to teach her how to use a knife and how to kill a man, and what men would want from a pretty girl like her, and what they would expect from her and how she could use that to live; to survive. The memory faded and the stones of the dungeon like room erected themselves around her again.

Light lanced into the room, sudden and unstoppable. Her heart leapt into her chest but she managed not to twitch, the chains silent and still. The doorway was across the room from her feet. She could look down her body and a little to the left to see it. It was an arched doorway, the door made of wood planks and iron strapping. Its hinges were silent while it swung open, light entering the room in arrogant fashion, as if to say it belonged here, and everywhere, in spite of the stones blocking it out.

A black cloaked figure, hooded with face hidden, shuffled into the room without a hurry. White bony hands perched in front of him, fingers hanging down like icicles dangling from rooftops. He didn't bother to shut the door as he shuffled up to her. He didn't voice a sound but his mouth sucked at the air, his chest crackling with each inhale.

She didn't twitch, the pain from being held taught by the hooks a constant reminder of her helpless position. She wasn't able to control the shuddering revulsion that crept over her skull and down her spine, like ice water poured down her back.

The sorcerer reached out a pale bony hand and placed a finger on her chest between her bare breasts. "Yes, I think you are ready now," his voice was harsh, like rocks grinding against each other, but weak. He spared a moment to grope one of her breasts with a cold flaccid hand then disappeared behind her slowly, placing himself above her head.

I will survive she told herself silently. Muttering began from out of her view, coming from the Sorcerer. She tried not to listen, instead speaking to herself. I WILL SURVIVE, I WILL! I can do this, the pain is nothing, the position is nothing.

Cold fear bloomed in her belly, like a flower formed of ice crystals growing in every direction. Each point brought a question and uncertainty with it. What was he doing? Why had he taken her? What did he want from her to hook her body with chains? On and on the questions formed, one on the heels of the next but his mutterings and twisted presence offered no answers.

A tiny flicker of angry heat formed at the center of those frosted questions. She would survive. She pushed his voice out of her mind and fed that tiny flame. I will survive and I will kill him. I will torch his body and bring these stones down on his ashes! With every pointed question of frost, she blasted it with a challenge of fiery anger. I will show him pain, more pain than I ever felt, more pain than THIS!

His mutterings halted and she could hear the question hanging in the air. He was uncertain. I will destroy you into nothing when I am free! Her anger had turned into a rage, consuming her fear and filling her to the fingertips with ferocity. She dared not pull on the chains, the pain was still too much, but she wanted to scream at him.

An unseen hand seemed to grasp at a place just below her heart, staggering her rage and raising a different kind of question. Then it began to pull outward, tugging on her insides. She felt her body press inside of her ribs, her back beginning to arch. The hooks slipped a little further into her flesh, tearing at her. Blood began to flow out of them again.

Where was her rage? She needed it now. I will survive, she said to herself. I will live. There! That small bubble of heat came back, next to the invisible thread next tied to her spine. It was a flame, and required kindling in order to grow, I will kill you. I WILL END YOUR LIFE. I will lay waste to everything you have worked for and created. Your existence will all but be erased.

The sorcerer's voice turned into fully formed words, the language unknown to her. The thread binding her spine grew in strength, bending her back even tighter. Blood ran in tiny streams from every hook biting her flesh but the anger was next to it. She fed it with more elaborate fuel, I will bash your skull into the stones repeatedly, mushing your face and brains into soup! Not before I saw every limb off of your body and cauterize the wounds with pitch and flame!

On and on she raged. Adding her voice to the threats, mixing the sounds into the air. A battle formed in her body between the thread yanking her spine and the anger she boiled inside of her. Her spine undulated, the bonfire rage allowing her to relax it or the thread pulling her body into an arch. She screamed out words until it her anger and hatred burned her thoughts away. Her voice vibrated as she shrieked in agonizing rage.

It slipped. Her voice cut off, choked out as it felt like her spine split her flesh and began slipping out of her body. She looked down and didn't see bone but she did see red and grey wisps of something sliding out of her body, like smoke or thin cloth. It was more real than smoke but ephemeral. Like a ghost, she imagined.

She let her head lull back as it slid out of her, slow and deliberate. Closing her eyes, she felt the pain of release. A small smile tugged at her lips. It was done, she had lost. She was going to die. She would never feel pain or remorse or regret again. People would stop hurting her and using her. She could stop feeling all of it.

No, a tiny voice said in her head. It was her voice, but not of her own volition. It was tiny, like that of a child, a small girl. It was her voice when she was a child, desolate and abandoned in the streets with nothing and no one. I will live and I will stop the bad people from hurting the people like me.

She remembered a solid man with grey blue eyes shaded from the Sun smiling at her. "We must all change what we wished had been changed for us," he had said to her. "We are what we choose to be, and what we choose to do."

"I will live and stop the bad people from hurting people like me," she had promised him, the smiling stranger she had called him, and she had promised herself too.

Her eyes bulged open and she let out a scream of anger and pain that drowned out the blood in her ears the sound of her own dying body. The red and grey ephemeral mist coalesced into the shape of something beast and human like, a mouth forming just below black eyes. It roared too, the echo of her own bellow of rage. Whatever she had felt slip out of her, began to suck back into her. She took a breath and contorted her body, pulling inward and letting the hooks rip away her flesh.

She took a breath, the being sprouting out of her spirit pausing as well. Its chest heaving above her, a spirit form breathing with her. It was part of her, it was her spirit, her fiery, flaming, raging soul of anger and pain and vengeance. Together, with renewed strength, they roared. In her mind, the words I will live, I will kill you all, sounded over and over again.

Her ankles came free, the clatter of chains and clank of the hook encouraging as her legs hung free. Then her arms and chest and finally her hips all fell away in series, her added weight tearing them out of her. She fell to the stones in a crumpled heap, her bellowing roar cut off.

Her flesh burned in pain, the rage that had fueled her stoked while she realized that she was free. It was the pain of freedom. Freedom came at a cost, and at a risk, but it was worth the price. Choice was worth the price.

She had to move, had to rise, and using the power of her anger, forced her body over and her hands under her.

"No no no!" his tiny yells were mewlings compared to her. She heard him begin to shuffle towards her.

"I will live," she said. She brought her knees under her and watched his robe sway frantically as he moved towards her. Mutterings began and more tiny threads, weak in comparison to before, tried to grasp her arms and ankles. She ignored them and planted one foot then the other. She noticed blood all around her, her feet set in the red liquid. It didn't soften the grit of the blocks, but it did remind her that it was with her own blood that she rose. A silent fury mounted again, like a wildcat mounting to pounce on its prey. "I will kill you all." Her voice mixed with one she didn't recognize, but still came from her own throat.

In a burst of lightning speed she reached out and grasped the Sorcerer by his robes with both hands, twisted and with a cry of fury, threw him against the back wall. He didn't resist her hands or the throw, but in mid air he threw his hands out and slowed himself, righting himself then floated to the stones to stand. His fingers flashed out and the chain to her right slithered like a snake at her. It coiled into striking shape and snapped out, hook bore like a fang to sink back into her.

She watched it and reacted without thought. With both hands, she caught it in a tight grip. It began undulating and trying to loop around her wrist but was bound to the wall, unable to wrap around her. It stopped and another slithered, faster this time. The second hook snapped at her and this one she didn't even bother reacting too, it was too short to be a threat and his miscalculation was her opening.

Turning, she grabbed the first chain with both hands and pulled. A grunt of effort and the bolts holding the chain to the wall let go, a shower of grit and pebbles coming with the tiny explosion. She twisted her body and swung the chain around, sweeping the distance between her and the man with deadly links of steel. She felt a push on her body but ignored it until the links smashed into the frail man's side. He was crushed and crumpled to the ground with a spew of pained spittle. Without waiting, she stalked to him, his voice already muttering despite the hoarse breathing.

Before whatever he was doing could be finished, her rage took hold and felt herself reach down to his face. His mouth was open and she used her fingers to fill the cavity. Curling her fingers around the bone, her thumb wrapped around underneath, she took hold and with a heave, pulled.

Blood and gore erupted as he his flesh and sinew let go of his jaw bone, forced to release it by the shear force of her rage. Then, with a bare foot, she began stomping on his face. Immediately she was covered in gore and blood.

This time it was not her blood or pain. She was done surviving. She was going to live. She was going to thrive. Vengeance and raged roared inside of her, raining down stomp after stomp on the frail body. She felt his skull crack open, then every bone in his ribs break, and then his side split as bone protruded from the belly, his lowest rib. She didn't know how long she had trampled him, but he had been sufficiently turned to mush. She still held his jaw in her hand. Dropping it, she turned and walked towards the light.

She imagined it was a light, of her infernic rage, giving birth to her anew, set with new purpose for life to live and scour the Earth of the bad people who did the hurting.