Shard, page 11
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
“No. We are Imperial Mages, not fucking street rats getting worked over by city guards!” Blood snarls.
“And we’re locked in the Pit,” Smoke hisses back. Nobody gives a shit about them. Nobody on the outside is going to ask after them. They have no one except each other, and their commanders thought so highly of them they’d pulled them out of the field to lock them in the fucking Pit for a stupid experiment to salvage a bunch of noble asses who bet on the wrong horse.
Blood’s expression burns with humiliation and fury.
Smoke pulls off his top.
Rot turns his body to the side to hide his genitals from the Aethers, but Blood stands with hands on hips, daring them to say something.
A Researcher arrives. The Warden says, “Cavity search. Prisoners. Present asses.”
Smoke turns and braces his hand on the wall and spreads his legs. Blood curses under his breath. It’s true: they are serving Fells, probably with ranks higher than these Aether flesh-bags, and they were about to get their asses plundered like they’d paid for it.
The Blight and anger twists, mingles with his furious pride, and he crushes it all back down. They’ll get Pebbles her familiar, she’ll convince everyone she is a Shard, and they’ll ride off on missions no other team could handle or be assigned.
And if the only thing between him and that is his ass getting plundered? He’s not about to say no.
Resistance was how they held you to places like this. Resistance was how people like the Warden know they’ve won. The harder you fight, the sweeter the prize. The Warden isn’t a man who likes complete, total obedience offered on a platter by a servant with a sweet smile.
The Warden taps his fingers on the iron bars of their cell. “Some prisoners enjoy this. I’ve been offered more asses for inspection than I can remember.”
Blood wags his ass. His balls slap his thighs. “How’s that view, Warden?”
Smoke sighs to himself. Blood just can’t resist. If he’s not careful, his balls are going to be used as fishbait, and he won’t like what he catches.
The Warden’s not impressed. “Your ass is so pale and pert I can see why terrible court bards call an asshole a rosebud. I’d almost mistake you for a noblewoman from this end.”
“Please stop antagonizing him,” Smoke mutters.
Blood turns his head, cheek pressed against the stone like a woman pressed up against a wall. “Did he just call my balls small? I’ve been told they’re of a good size and quite appealing.”
Rot rumbles, “No, he called your asshole cute and extremely fuckable.”
“That’s old news, but I guess he hasn’t had the pleasure before today.”
The Researcher starts with Smoke. No eye contact is made. His fingernails scrape the wall as two dry fingers shove into his ass.
“There isn’t gold up there,” Smoke growls.
“No, there’s a sapphire, I’m told.” The Researcher’s fingers poke and prod like he’s shoving a butter paste under the skin of a hen just before roasting.
He yanks his fingers out, then moves to Blood, then to Rot, before flicking his hands and rubbing them on a strong-smelling astringent cloth. “Nothing, Warden. Only thing up their asses is what you’d expect.”
Blood spins around and tosses his hair over his shoulder. “Hope it was as good for you as it was for us. Just let us know the next time you need a show, Warden. Happy to be of service to the Empire’s many interests.”
Fuck, Blood needs to not antagonize the Warden. The Warden’s eyes are hooded, and his shoulders are tense—he is pissed, and the Aether Guards know it, and they are pissed. Nobody’s happy. Not the Warden, the Aethers, the Fells, the Researcher, or their assholes.
“You have contraband, Fells,” the Metal Aether snarls. “And we’re going to prove it!”
“I don’t have anything that interests you, unless you happen to like my pretty pink asshole. Perhaps you’d like to fish around in my dickhole next?” Blood points to his cock with both hands.
Smoke intervenes before Blood’s temper and pride gets them all fucked in the ways none of them especially enjoys. “You smashed the scales. Leave us alone. We don’t know how we’re supposed to explain that to her when the Warden gives her back.”
“She doesn’t belong in Solitary and you all know it,” Rot grumbles. “Fucking Blight-bitch lackies.”
“What did you call us?” Inferno demands.
“You heard me. Blight-bitches. Who’d you piss off to get this duty? You making full combat pay down here? Impressing all the women with that Yeah, I’m an Aether Mage, I’m stationed at the Pit? I bet they just can’t wait to hop on your cock or shove a dick in you.”
Metal shouts and metal lashings fling forward and smash Rot back into the wall, clamping down over one arm and his throat.
Rot reaches up with a free hand and grabs the collar suffocating him, and clenches down on it, Rot magic burning through the metal faster than Metal can reinforce it.
“Enough,” the Warden snaps. “Aegis, control your Mage.”
Aegis and Frost grab Metal and pull him back.
Rot burns through the metal, rips it off the wall, and throws it against the bars. It bounces and clatters to the ground. It promptly dissolves into ash. “Fucker.”
Metal spits at him.
The Warden says, “We’re done here. You Aethers have explaining to do.”
“They had them,” Frost insists bitterly. “I swear it, Warden. Storm gave them the sapphires.”
“I do not enjoy looking like a fool in front of my prisoners, Frost. And you took me away from something far more important than these Fells.”
The Warden leaves, and the Aethers slink behind him, Aegis visibly sweating with the effort of protecting them from the Blight.
“Watch them, Aegis,” Blood warns Aegis. “This place is going to warp them from the inside.”
“Don’t need your advice, Fell.”
Smoke grabs his clothing. The Blight whispers to him, strokes his anger, and he curses that too. He can’t even get angry about his ass being violated without this place telling him to go kill someone for it.
“That fucking whoremaster,” Blood snarls, spinning around to help get the last metal band off Rot’s wrist. “Either of you hurt?”
“Nothing but my butthole and my dignity,” Smoke mutters.
“He can’t do this. She’s allowed to have a familiar.” Rot rubs his now-free wrist. “He has it out for her. He’s got her in solitary, he’s destroying her familiar. Why does he have such a hard-on for her?”
Smoke starts to right the cots and re-hang the wall hangings with care. He smooths one in particular. Not damaged. Good. Blood getting bent about the obvious exhausts him. They all know how shit rolls downhill right onto Fells. “Experiments.”
Blood tosses one of the other cots over, and drapes himself over it. “He knows the military is keeping an eye on this. You think he’s dumb enough to think he’s going to be able to keep her here like his own personal pet Aether Mage? He’s got pet Aether Mages. Every sorry ass Guard that comes through here because they pissed someone off.”
Except the Warden doesn’t own those Aether Mages, and they cycle out in a few months. Nobody got sent to the Pit for guard duty that was a high performer or hadn’t shit in someone’s porridge. The Aethers that were here were the bottom-feeders, but they wouldn’t stay long. The military hated fuck ups, but they hated corrupted Aethers more. “Because she’s a Crystal, and she was a Heart.”
Crystal had been a shitty Heart, but the knowledge sat uncomfortable and ill-fitting in his chest. She hadn’t had a fair chance. She’d been handled very badly. Everything from military service as a child to being told to shut up and take a dick like the most unfortunate of wives, all the while being told it was all her fault. There’s more she isn’t telling them, and none of it could have been healthy for a Mage expected to be the loving center of a team.
And no matter how shitty she was at being a Heart, she is stupidly, obscenely powerful. Far more powerful than anyone probably knew. She tumbled that Ball-Blightling almost entirely on her own. Now her summoned crystal sticks around.
Smoke drops himself down on his own cot and schools the churning, dark emotions from his surface. “Do you think the Warden told the military about those conjured crystals we hammered into buckets?”
“Considering none of them had their mouths firmly closed over her clit and she’s still locked down here? Not a chance,” Blood says. “She knew it too.”
“Exactly.” Crystal’s in trouble, wherever she is, and he hates knowing that, and hates knowing he cares. He’s spent the past four years shutting out the guilt about their last Shard, and more pointedly, ScatheFire drawing the short straw.
It should have been him.
That Atrament Fell, too. The one with the noble speech and bearing. The Warden rules this place, and he has the military and the nobility there for his amusement, and trotted them all out for show. Smoke strokes his pendant. “We saw what was happening downstairs. That room with the hooks and meat. That Atrament Fell. The Researchers. The Priests. They make Blightlings here. We saw them do it. That cow wasn’t some overgrown roach. It was a cow, and it was brought here and made into a Blightling.”
“I wonder if he was a Researcher that got upgraded to Warden,” Blood muses.
“Hmm.” Smoke agrees.
“Fuck.” Blood casts a burning glance at the locked cell door. “That is our Aether Mage, and I don’t plan on letting the Warden take her from us.”
“So let’s bust out of here and go find her,” Rot says.
“I don’t think committing crimes while we’re here is going to get us out of here,” Smoke says dryly.
“So we just have to sit here and wait for him to finish plundering her ass?” Rot demands.
Blood crosses one ankle over the other. Now he’s simmering again. Smoke breathes a mental sigh of relief. It’s so much easier when Blood’s plotting and not just pissed. Blood’s petal dragon coils around one upraised finger and Blood gives it a little drop. “We have to let this play out. I may be a monster for saying we have to leave Crystal where she is, but we do. For now. She’s an Aether Mage. She’s tougher than most of them, and she’s got a mean, cunning streak.”
“That’s a thing to say about an Aether Mage,” Smoke says warily.
“She’s not mean,” Rot disagrees.
“She’d put a sword through your neck if she thought she had to,” Blood informs Rot. “But that’s not what I’m going to argue with you about. We know two things.”
“Yeah, that Researcher’s two fingers.” Rot holds up one hand with his first two fingers raised.
Blood’s lips curl with a grim smirk. “We know the Aether Guards are ass-kissing gossip whores. We know Storm snuck those sapphires into the prison. I thought the Warden knew, but I guess not, and that’s got him pissed. Storm flashed those sapphires right in front of him, but I guess he didn’t realize those were for us. But the Aethers here gossiped with the other Aethers and sold us out after Crystal pissed them off. If they’d been good little tattles, the Warden’d been down here sooner. But their default mode isn’t loyalty to the Warden.”
Smoke strokes his pendant thoughtfully. True. Very true. “How is this useful to us?”
“It means the Warden doesn’t know everything happening in his domain. It makes him pissy. He’s worried. There’s a Storm out there at court telling people who knows what, angry noble families, military breathing down his neck, and he wants very much to keep his pretty Crystal pet.”
There are cracks in the Warden’s plans. “So we press him. Force him to get out ahead of himself.”
“Poke him like a snarling dog and dare him to bite.”
Rot shakes his head. “That’s going to end bad for her.”
“It’s going to end bad for all of us otherwise,” Blood states.
Blood is correct: the Warden wants Crystal for himself, and he’s willing to cross the military and a lot of the imperial court to keep her. He’s going to have to spend his entire life covering his tracks with every gossipy Aether team and regular foot soldier that come through here, explaining the presence of the innocent Fells and the Crystal-without-a-familiar.
Smoke says, “Blood is correct, Rot. As dangerous as it is, right now the Warden is keeping track of too many stories and lies. If we push back and push through, he’ll have to deal with us too.”
The Warden is losing control of his prison.
Now they just have to find the weak spots… and exploit them without mercy.
What Fells do best.
14
Crystal
I shouldn’t be making Aether lights, but I can’t not make them either. The darkness is too oppressive, and the little ball and dancing shadows are my only company. Sanity has to be a priority, of course.
The shadows play like petal dragons bouncing a puff-blossom between their snouts to amuse their ladies.
Everything else looks like food or water. I mistake the shadows on the wall for water sliding down windows and lick them before the shadows push me away.
The shadows flick and move, dancing and swaying, causing the Aether-light to be shaped like a campfire.
ScatheFire.
He’s alive. The shadows say he’s alive.
As soon as I find a way out of the box, I am going to find him.
He saved me. I’ll save him.
The Warden won’t let me die here. That’s not part of his plan. He just wants me to think it is.
The shadows dance about, creating more flame silhouettes.
I stare, tucked in my corner like always, legs out in front of me, head turned towards the wall, and staring, dully, jaw slack. I’ve stopped drooling. Now it’s too much effort to keep my jaw shut.
The grind and shuffle of the door starts. Maybe the Warden will bring me some water and a bite to eat.
I’ve already eaten down my fingernails. My little toe on my right foot looks tasty. It’s clearly fatter than the one on my left foot. I squint through my blurry vision. Yes, clearly plumper. I can start with the right one, then go for the left one, but perhaps the fourth toe before the left pinky.
Why is my right foot so much more delicious than the left? Why haven’t I noticed that before? These are important details and here I’d just been wandering through my life like which toe to eat first didn’t matter.
I’d start with my breasts, but I’ve got Aether in my breasts. Fucking Aether. I’m not using my tits for anything and they’re a lot meatier than toes. Toes are like something I’d pop in my mouth at a court dinner. Like little pre-meal snacks.
The light grows brighter and the door opens.
It’s the Warden. No bucket. No cup.
Bleh. I look back at the shadows, but the light from the hallway has chased all my little friends away.
Awww.
The Warden glances up at the Aether-ball. Can he see my little shadow friends? I squint at him.
“How do you feel about the Fells now, Crystal?” He squats down next to me.
I try to speak, but my throat is all gummy and dry. I croak something.
“I see you still have enough strength to create a little light in here. You know that’s cheating, don’t you?”
Yeah, well, he never mentioned that, so he can fuck right off back to wherever it is he’d come from. I like my little shadow friends. They dance for me and keep me company.
“So clever,” he croons, and he touches my hair. He caresses my slack jaw, and brushes his thumb along the inside of my cracked lips. “Do you know how long you’ve been in here?”
Long enough to plan a meal from my toes.
He stands. “Bring her.”
Two guards—not Aethers—come into the box. One takes my arm. I croak something because it hurts and I swear my arm nearly comes off. He drags me out into the hall, then the other grabs my other arm, and together they drag me down the hall and up the stairs.
Finally free. Back to the Fells. The shadows race along the ceiling, their tendrils churning and knotting.
Don’t worry, shadows, everything is fine. I won. The box didn’t break me.
The Warden strides after us, and in my blurry vision, I make out that he’s pretty annoyed. He doesn’t think I can read him, but I totally can. He’s aggravated.
Neener, neener.
I flop my head back, too exhausted to hold it up, and now I’ve got an upside down view of the oncoming hallway. Neat.
But we take a sharp turn to the left and down some stairs.
Wait, I don’t remember this part of getting to solitary. Maybe I’m misremembering.
We go down three flights of stairs illuminated only by torches until we come to a new room. They heft me up to my feet. My head spins, and my legs refuse to cooperate, and my hair is everywhere, but I make out that it’s another stone room, lined with torches in iron brackets on the wall, and there’s a large, heavy wood table in the center that’s on a slight incline and has grooves cut in it, and a weird iron wheel on one side, and all—
Oh. Wait. It’s a torture chamber.
Bit slow there.
Takes another few minutes—and me being shackled to a cross made of heavy, splintered wood—before I realize I’m about to get tortured.
“You can’t do this,” I manage to rasp with the last of whatever strength I’ve got.
“You’re my prisoner, Crystal,” the Warden says. “And you need to learn that I own you. All of you. From Aether to vagina, and it will simply be easier for you to cooperate.”
“Kill them yourself.” It doesn’t make any sense why he wants me to kill the Fells. None of this makes sense. The shadows dance wildly from the torches, anxious and urgent, and I croak, “Don’t be scared, it’ll be okay.”
The Warden sighs. “It’s never as much fun when they’re incoherent. I do hope you remember this little lesson.”
The shadows keep dancing. I croak, “ScatheFire.”
The Warden pauses.
I fight through the cobwebs in my brain and force my swollen tongue to shape words. “He’s alive. He’s alive.”
