The Infinite Bk. 05 Ch. 05

The fiends' armor protected them for the most part, but all it took was one injury to have an effect. The result was instantaneous, tearing clothes and snapping straps as the monsters' flesh inflated like a balloon. Anaphylactic shock was setting in, courtesy of the specially-crafted poison. The fiends who received injuries to their heads struggled to see as their eyelids swelled shut, and they coughed painfully as their throats threatened to close. It wasn't enough to kill the abominations, but it made them vulnerable.

Prince Lupin jumped off his horse as he approached and drew his chain whip, swinging it around him to build up an aura of mana. "Steel Stinger!" He twisted his body and jerked his arm, sending the whip shooting forward like a tethered harpoon. It struck one of the fiends in the forehead and blew off the top of his skull, along with a decent amount of brain matter.

Lupin pulled the chain back and turned around, then swung it at a fiend as though he was bringing down a hammer. "Concussive Crack!" The whip struck the fiend's shoulder with brutal force, crushing the bone into splinters. The fiends could heal flesh wounds quickly enough, but bone took more time and energy to mend. The knights finished what he started, hacking and stabbing the monster to death.

The prince and Valia, working together, broke through the enemy defenses, only to find a new foe smashing through their front line. At first glance, he appeared to be a towering warrior garbed in white armor. However, he was not wrapped in steel, but bone. Even the warrior's face was hidden within a calcified helmet. It was an exoskeleton, appearing cancerous and deformed, yet able to easily repel blades and arrows. Knights and soldiers attacked from all sides with magic and weapons, only for their lives to be snuffed out instantly. Every swing of the juggernaut's mighty arms obliterated skulls, pulverized torsos, and snapped limbs and swords alike.

"What kind of animal could he be?" Lupin hissed.

"I don't think he's a fiend. I think he's another ghoul-type host," Valia replied before raising her sword. "Zodiac: Teez! Baol!"

Valia activated her magic and sprinted towards the warrior, leaping into the air and bringing down her enchanted blade towards his head. He blocked her attack with his arm, and finally, his defenses were broken. Her sword cut through the layer of bone and deep into the muscle, but went no further, and with a snarl, the warrior flung her aside. The wound had sealed shut in seconds, and the armor was mending itself.

Turning his head, the ghoul spotted the prince and charged with every football shaking the ground. "Protect the prince!" Paulman shouted. Soldiers and knights got in between Lupin and the charging warrior, and all attacked as one with steel and magic. Fire, water, and lightning splashed off the bone armor, while arrows, swords, and other weapons struggled to crack the white plating. On the other hand, the warrior had no issue slaughtering the seasoned fighters, crushing and tearing through their metal armor like they were aluminum cans. Blood sprayed freely with every blow he delivered, shredding flesh and turning bones into splinters.

Lupin began spinning his whip, building up a charge and then sent it hurtling towards the warrior. "Steel Stinger!" It struck the ghoul in the collarbone and left a fist-sized crater, making him momentarily falter, but he regained his momentum and closed the distance.

Lupin rolled to the side at the last moment, narrowly dodging a killing blow from the warrior's spiked arm, and swung his whip and wrapped it around the ghoul's ankle, trying to trip him up. Instead, it yanked the prince to the ground, barely hanging on to his weapon. The ghoul stopped, grabbed the whip, pulled it from Lupin's hand, then turned and approached the prince.

Before he could get close, an arrow struck him in the face. Rather than a normal arrow, it was tipped with a glass sphere filled with acid. The acid smoked as it dissolved bone and leaked through the gaps in the faceplate into the ghoul's eyes and mouth, causing him to gag and growl in pain. With one good eye, he spotted Shannon, already nocking another arrow. He ducked down to dodge the second but could not avoid the third, hitting him in the knee and eating away at the exposed joint. The wound couldn't heal until the acid ran its course, and there were plenty more arrows where that came from.

The ghoul charged towards her, trying to dodge her arrows as best as he could, but she was no amateur and shot him numerous times. Billowing smoke and dripping with melted bone, he leaped towards her for a killing blow. Before he could reach Shannon, Valia attacked from the side, kicking him in the head with enough strength to knock him through the air and send him crashing into a building.

"Zodiac: Rakshon!"

Valia sheathed her sword and approached the ghoul, slowly getting to his feet. His neck had been broken, and his head twisted, but he worked it back into place just in time to receive Valia's super-powered punch to the chin. He got to his feet and countered with a punch to her stomach. From there, the two exchanged blows with all their strength and might, Valia's steel body vs. the ghoul's bone armor, her enhanced strength vs. the Profane might. Each punch and kick landed with the force of an RPG, and the two fighters were doing everything they could to not get tossed through the air.

"Valia, move back!"

Hearing Noah's voice, Valia stepped out of the way, and a bundle of acid bombs flew past her, bombarding the ghoul. With his armor broken and the tissue underneath exposed, the acid went to work, eating away his muscles and causing shards of bone to fall away like eggshells. Noah approached, hurling more and more glass spheres, each breaking and releasing their payload, wreathing the ghoul in smoke.

"Now, with me! Go for the arms!"

Noah and Valia drew their blades and slashed the ghoul simultaneously. The armor that had stopped Valia's last attack was no longer an issue, and the warrior's arms were removed. Before the ghoul could react, Lupin cracked his whip and wrapped it around the monster's leg, succeeding in bringing him down.

"Shannon, crush him!" Noah shouted.

She hesitated, unsure of what he meant, then quickly assumed her centaur form. She galloped over, leaped into the air, and landed square on the ghoul's chest with all her weight. All four of her hooves were like blows with a war hammer, pulverizing his ribcage and organs. He vomited a fountain of blood and passed out.

As Noah approached, Lupin looked around, seeing all the other fiends being brought down by his knights and soldiers. "Lord Noah, were you able to secure the middle echelon members?"

"All unconscious and accounted for, just waiting to be hauled away."

"Then we have victory." He raised his fist. "Men, we have just struck a decisive blow against the Profane! The night is ours!" All the knights and soldiers raised their weapons and cheered, and their voices were heard throughout Welindar.

As the captured Pack members were hauled away, Noah quickly collected the vanquished ghoul. Tenacious as he was, his wounds were extensive and healing slowly, and Noah didn't want to lose such a valuable research subject. From previous experiments, he found that the Profane didn't react to healing potions, but gained power by consuming others. He was too injured to willingly eat, but that wasn't a problem. Noah retrieved one of the ghoul's severed arms and forced it into his mouth, guiding the lower fangs into an artery. Immediately, the muscles in the throat began to quiver as they started sucking in the blood, turning the arm into a shriveled husk and restoring some vitality to the splattered ghoul.

Once the captured Pack members were brought back to the castle, those with parasites were separated from those without. Even if they couldn't transform, the hosts received the benefits of their parasites, and Noah was still searching for a way to safely remove them, so regular interrogation methods wouldn't work. He had a couple ideas of what to do with them, but in the meantime, he turned his attention to those with unblocked pain receptors.

The men without parasites woke up in a dungeon chamber, all of them chained to the walls, unable to move. Though facing each other, the gags in their mouths wouldn't let them talk. They could only grunt and groan to express their confusion. What happened? How did they end up here? A few candles lit the chamber, and fresh air wafted through the steel grates of the small windows overhead. Of course, this dungeon was built by beastmen, for beastmen, so whether the prisoners could transform into snakes or mice, there was no squeezing out.

The door opened, and a man stepped inside, carrying a brazier filled with wood. He was older, with icy eyes and a pale face covered in scars. Was he the jailer? The interrogator? He looked like he had plenty of dark experience, but it didn't matter what he tried because they wouldn't talk. They attempted to curse him and spit despite their gags, but he ignored them and set the brazier down in the middle of the room.

"I know what it feels like to be in your position, chained up and awaiting torment, trying to brace yourself against the pain you know is coming," the man said, speaking with a dry, deep voice that forced the Pack members to listen. "Your throat is as parched as the sand under your feet, and your hands tremble in your shackles. You try to leave your body, to separate yourself from your senses, but every twinge of discomfort, every minor ache or annoyance, drags you back to reality and makes you wonder how much worse it's going to get."

He lit a fire and continued to talk, never taking his eyes off the fledgling flame. "You ask yourself what's at stake, what you lose if you give in to the pain: your friends, your cause, your dream of being remembered as someone who stood on the right side of history. They kept you motivated through mayhem and struggle, but that's because you had the option to run faster, to fight harder, to end your own life on your own terms. What happens when your only options are to talk or suffer? How hard will you resist for something you'll never live to see?"

Once the fire was burning healthily, the stranger revealed two knives and stuck them in the radiant heart. "In a moment, I will commence torturing you all for information. Before I start, I will explain the process so you all understand what you'll experience with complete clarity. Then, and this is important, I'll remove your gags and give each of you the chance to talk, to save yourselves and your friends. I strongly advise you to use this chance wisely.

Should you spit, curse, or tell me anything I don't want to hear, then the gags go back in, and you'll no longer be able to stop the pain. Inevitably, it'll become too much, and you'll beg me to stop and spill all your secrets, but to me, it'll all just sound like muffled screaming, so I won't have any reason to stop. I'll just keep torturing you, even after you give up, until I finally decide to remove the gags.

Now, the method I'll use is one I devised while helping a friend torture the guy who raped his wife and killed his daughter. He got a big saw to hack the limbs off the criminal, and I almost had to smack him for being so wasteful. Every time you cut off a body part, you're losing all those precious nerve endings, those pain receptors that can be better utilized to make the victim spill their guts. Why remove someone's hand when you can break their fingers, yank out of the nails, mince the flesh, and so on?

The process is straightforward: just cut and burn, cut and burn. I will take these knives and start carving off small pieces of your flesh, almost like whittling. The hot blade will cauterize the wounds as they're inflicted, so you won't pass out or die from blood loss. When one blade gets cold, I'll stick it back in the fire and switch to the other. I'll start at your fingertips, which are one of the body's most sensitive areas. The cuts will be tiny, but even a hair's breadth will feel like a slash running down to your elbow. Just the tip of one finger, that's all I need to make you howl in agony.

Cut and burn, cut and burn. I'll remove the flesh from your fingers, the muscles underneath, and the nerves and tendons, just stripping the bones clean. It's a slow, tedious process, requiring a whole hour just to do one hand, but that's the beauty of it. You'll be able to watch the entire thing. You can watch me slowly move down the length of your fingers, palm, and wrist, like watching the incoming tide wash away a sand castle.

The hand you've had all your life, the hand you've used, cherished, trained, injured, the hand given to you by your mother when you were growing in her womb, you get to watch me slowly take it from you, one tiny sliver at a time, and you'll never get it back. Of course, you can close your eyes, try not to look, but you can't block out the smell of burning flesh or the sound of the sizzle."

As the man spoke, the captured Pack members stared at him with growing fear. He pulled one of the knives out of the fire and walked around the room, letting the prisoners see the glowing edge. A simple scrape was enough to make them yelp in pain and twist their bodies, but they couldn't get away. It wasn't just the knife that scared them. Everything this man did was unnerving, from his gait as he strolled around the room, to how he flashed his teeth in some kind of demonic attempt at a smile. Even with a fire burning in the middle of the room, his presence chilled the air.

"After a while, something will change. You'll start going numb and feel like you've gotten used to the torture. You'll feel like you can handle it, block it out, and endure. You may even get a little smug and righteous about the whole thing. What's happening is your body is producing something called endorphins to block the pain. It does it for all injuries. However, it doesn't last forever. Eventually, your body runs out and can no longer produce more. Once that happens, oh boy, that's when the pain really gets raw. You'll want to scream harder than ever in your life, but you'll already be all screamed out by then.

I'll work my way up from your fingers to your shoulder, and the fun part will be watching you lose sensation and use of your arm. If I cut it just right, I can completely remove all the skin and most of the muscle, but you'll still be able to wiggle your thumb. Once your arm is done, I switch to your other limbs. Once those are finished, I can get started on your face and genitals. However, that's not to say I'll spend all that time on just one of you. I'll carve down your arm, switch to... you, and start with your leg. You can all watch each other get tortured and really share the pain.

And then, if by some miracle, I've whittled you all down until you're barely alive and still refuse to answer my questions, I guess I'll just have to bring your families in here and start the process again. I already know your names, so sending soldiers to your homes to seize your loved ones will be easy. Now, as effective as this method is, it always leaves me with a painful knot in my shoulder." The man twisted himself and pointed at a spot on his back. "Yep, right there, that's the real torture. I can already feel the muscles tightening up in anticipation. I can always get it rubbed out later, but all that cutting really does leave me sore. So, how about you all spare me the effort of torturing you for hours and hours and spare yourselves the pain of getting burned down to a nub like firewood? Anyone ready to talk, start nodding. Anyone who isn't, I'll get to you momentarily."

All the prisoners started nodding, several while shedding tears. The man pulled the gag out of the nearest prisoner. "Now tell me about the Liege."

He was quick to speak, giving Noah everything he needed. After he had finished questioning the prisoners, he went to find Lupin. He was directed to a door where two guards stood watch. Behind the door, Noah could hear the jingling of chains and the crack of a whip.

"Is His Highness available?" Noah asked.

"The prince is currently training. He requires absolute privacy," one guard stated without looking at Noah.

"Sir Noah, over here." He looked down the corridor and spotted Nell sitting on a bench.

"After that big battle, it's the middle of the night and the prince is training?" Noah asked as he sat down next to her.

"He's always been this way. After every fight, he'll spend hours in that room, practicing with his whip, striking targets, and honing his magic."

"Impressive dedication. And you? Don't you think you should get some sleep?"

"I'm his attendant. When he comes out, it is up to me to greet him with water and a towel, and should he injure himself during training, I must heal him."

"Your loyalty is commendable. You're both two of a pair."

Nell averted her gaze. "A-anyway, what are you doing here?"

"I wanted to give the prince an update on the prisoners. They've been quite talkative."

"Thank you, by the way, for all your help."

"It's my job, isn't it? To help Uther defeat the Pack?"

"I'm not thanking you on behalf of Uther. I'm thanking you as His Highness's attendant. He's lost many good men since this darkness started, and more than that, he's lost friends, and he's been blaming himself for being unable to avenge them. No, that's not right, it's not about revenge. He wants to make sure that they didn't die for nothing, that losing them was a sacrifice for the greater good, and every moment that he's stagnant in this new war, I think he feels like he's failing them. You've given him more than just a few victories, you've given him his hope back."

Noah chuckled and got to his feet. "You're a good woman, Nell. I wish you luck with him. Let the prince know I'll speak with him tomorrow. Right now, I think I've earned some sleep."

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Tysinger walked silently down the dimly lit corridor, each step quieter than a whisper. He was not sneaking around for espionage or assassination; it was simply in his nature to remain stealthy and battle-ready at all times, even here, in the main base of the Profane. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of a seamless, synthetic material, with light from cables running along the corners.

A set of double doors opened ahead of him, and he stepped into a large chamber filled with cylindrical glass tanks. Floating in the liquid within were numerous beastmen and parasites, all in various stages of transformation and disfigurement. Pipes and cables led from the tanks into the floor like tree roots, all coming together at a large technical interface built into the wall at the end of the room. The massive screen, the malleable controls, and the keyless keyboards combined mechanical designs, magical power, and even organic appearances.

"Curcio, have you lost track of the time? We've been summoned."

He spoke to a dwarf working at the computer, dressed in a white coat. At first glance, he appeared to have a shaved head, but it was more than simply the absence of hair. His entire scalp was missing, exposing polished cranium and muscle, and though his pale complexion looked to be a side-effect of his work and environment, his sharp fangs gave away the actual cause.

"Ah, I suppose I have. Still, I will say there are few pleasures greater than getting so wrapped up in your work that all else falls away."

The two walked side-by-side through the chamber to another set of doors. "Any luck finding a suitable replacement for Deacon?" Tysinger asked.

"None. Elves are hard enough to capture, and very few can wield a piece of Somerset's power. Oh well, we still have Dradam. His armor abilities are better than I could have hoped for." Curcio stopped and looked at the beastman floating in the tank beside him, seeing his brain extending out of his ruptured skull. "Oh, when did this happen? Let's see... D-327, yep. I had a bad feeling about this one. I guess it's the grinder for him."