#nothingboy

“On your feet, prisoner,” a dour-faced priest snaps, grabbing Nix by his scruff and hoisting him to his feet. A hard shove has him stumbling back into line. The fresh scars in his back throb in protest. Nix keeps his head lowered, matted locks obscuring the jagged lines of fury. One step after the other, weighed down by heavy chains around his ankles and wrists. And for him especially, a unique gift from Oman (who else could it be but that hateful little bitch?). A collar fixed around his throat, constrictive and uncomfortable, and serving no other purpose than to humiliate. 

It’s been a week now of the same, mind-numbing routine. Wake up. Eat the gruel they call food. Do whatever mindless labour they assign. Eat the gruel they call food. Try to sleep. Wake up. And repeat. 

And no sign of Artemis, which Nix had expected. Whatever promises and sentiments the foolish priest may have made, he evidently had no intention of following through. Indeed, Nix may have simply been a vanity project - an exercise in charity to inflate the priest’s ego. The warden knows the type. He’s tortured many such men. 

And so it’s with a hollow bitterness that he regards his ‘good intentioned’ captor. Those rending words and deep brown eyes are nothing more than tools of entertainment. And Nix…Nix had almost fallen for it. 

Another stumble. A hard breath and moment to steady himself. 

He hasn’t slept properly this entire week. For whatever reason (again, probably that bitch Oman) the magical walls around his cell have lost their sound-proofing effect. Which of course means that while the other prisoners cannot hear him, he very well can hear them. Their foul, incessant vitriol keeps him awake every night, his torturers delighting in their new favourite activity (surely this retaliation is the sweetest kind). 

In a way, he understands. He himself had ruthlessly tortured every subordinate in that stockade, so there is no shortage of hatred festering against him. But in that cold hard rock in place of his heart, he silently cultivates his own seed of hate. In time, when it finally blooms, he will have his own revenge. 

Until then he’s relegated to the role of warden-turned-prisoner, and like with everything else in his miserable life, he endures. 

The warden straggles at the end of the line as the prisoners are given their morning gruel. 

Nix isn’t much to look at. A thin, pale creature with dark shadows under a pair of impassive blue eyes, glassy from exhaustion. His clothes hang off his malnourished frame in tattered rags, and if not for their prior knowledge of his countless sins, his captors might have felt a glimmer of pity. 

As it were, every single warrior of light knows of this warden's sins, each gruesome detail collected and recorded from Oman and the other survivors. None of the warriors have met evil like Deimos and his ilk - and Nix is the worst of them. 

“Next.” 

Nix holds out his hands for his bowl and instead, he’s given two handfuls of boiling-hot gruel. Molten agony shoots up his arms, but he keeps his hands still, trying to show no hint of weakness as he raises his head. 

The young warrior drops the ladle into the giant pot and gives him an innocent smile. “Anything wrong?” she asks, brows knitted in false concern. 

“Not at all,” Nix smiles back, coldly. “I was just surprised that you knew I preferred to eat with my hands.” He slurps the gruel from his filthy hands with relish, making sure to splatter some onto the young warrior’s boots. 

Disgust ripples through her features. She quickly grabs the empty pot and stalks off in a huff. 

The warden watches her go, licking the tasteless sludge from his fingers. It isn’t enough to soothe the gnawing pangs in his shrunken stomach, but he couldn’t complain or ask for more. How could he? When he’s guaranteed a vat of poison instead. 

It’s cold today. The kind of cold that burrows into his bones and makes every motion stiff and painful. After breaking his fast, he throws himself into his assigned work, hoping to chase away that terrible chill with exercise. 

The warden is tasked with unloading goods from a wagon and carrying them to the supply tent. Each crate weighs twice more than he does (at least it feels like it), and every trip leaves him trembling and gasping for breath. He’s not given a partner to assist him. All other jobs assigned that day are given to a pair of prisoners, but as usual, Nix is alone in his burden. 

He’s only halfway through unloading the wagon, when he finally hits his limit. 

Nix reels at the sudden vertigo and crashes into the side of the wagon. The crate slips from his numb hands. Smashes upon impact. Apples scatter in every direction. 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” a familiar voice barks from a distance. 

Shit. Here comes the bitch. 

Nix slumps against the wagon, panting. He leans his spinning head against the wooden side, cold sweat springing from every pore and soaking into his clothes. 

Heavy footsteps draw close. A large hand grabs him by his collar and heaves him to his feet. 

“Trying to sabotage our supplies now, are you?” Oman growls, black eyes hard like flint. He brings his spiteful visage a mere inch away from the other’s. “I should have known better than to leave a rat like you unsupervised.”

Nix blinks blearily at the irascible warrior. Nausea wells and churns his guts as the world gives a sickening lurch. “...accident,” he pants, trying to shove Oman away. The man’s built like a mountain and just as unmoving. “Let me go…asshole…” He raises his shaking hands to yank uselessly at his captor’s instead.

A sharp pain cracks against his cheek and his head snaps to the side. Fire corrodes his flesh. There’s a high pitched ringing in his ear.

He goes limp in Oman’s grasp for but a second, before he whips his head to glare at the smirking man. “You dare strike me?” he hisses, bloodshot eyes gaining a wild edge. “Think I won’t strike back? You may have me in shackles, priest, but I am still your warden and you my prisoner!”

Oman’s pupil shrinks. His face blanches a shade or two. Sure enough, scenes of his own horrendous torture under this man’s hands inundate him like buffeting winds, scouring away every inch of hardened skin until he’s left raw and bleeding, trembling in his shock. 

Nix laughs caustically, stifling a wince when he agitates his swollen cheek. “You see? No matter where you are, you will always be in those dungeons.” A jagged grin, dripping with venom. “Even if you kill me, I will never stop being your warden. I have placed my hands upon you and marked you as my own. That means that you will never be rid of me. Neither I nor Lord Deimos. You have become us.”

Nix barely registers the pain when he lands on the hard-packed soil. Pure, bone-deep exhaustion has long addled his mind, and he’s bordering on hysterical. He drags himself to his feet, laughing and cursing out the warrior, his voice wild and careening as though he’s gone insane. 

Oman draws his sword and white light erupts from the blade, humming and pulsing with lethal intent. 

The warden staggers back, grinning, grabbing the closest thing to a weapon he can find – a pitchfork. He meets the arcing steel with the prongs, and the impact judders up his arms. Sparks of ember spit from the metal as Oman pulls his sword through the prongs and slices the air. 

Nix finds himself with only half the pitchfork, wood cut clean through. Now it resembles an oversized stake, and he uses it to his advantage. 

Even a warrior like Oman, who had been admired by his peers for his combat prowess, would admit that he’s been blindsided in battle. Though these occurrences are few, they have been during combat with notable warriors, including his teacher. 

So to say that this mangy warden, who can barely keep himself upright, could ever blindside him – Oman would have laughed at the sheer absurdity of such a statement.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times when the warrior’s humour fails him, as Nix throws himself at Oman and his drawn blade, as though he were intent on skewering himself. 

He’s not sure why - perhaps because of his training under her light (or Art’s terrible influence) - but Oman instinctively lowers his sword to avoid impaling his ex-warden. 

In return, Nix barrels into him and stabs the stake into his chest, frothing and screaming like a madman. No, not like. He is a madman. The warden has gone utterly insane. 

Nix is lost in his tempest of madness. Nothing exists outside of this noise, this chaos, that assaults his every sense. He screams to make himself known, but his voice is lost to the howling winds, so he just screams and screams and screams until he’s coughing blood. 

He’s dyed red inside and out. There’s nothing, nothing, (he’s nothing), but the countless souls he’s ripped apart with his hands (bloodied), and suddenly (oh gods, what has he done, what has he done??) he knows terror. 

Countless hands grab him from all directions. Drag him off Oman’s blood drenched chest. He screams at them to leave him alone and what comes out is a ragged, torn sound. His throat’s ruined. He’s ruined. He curls into a tight ball, hands clutching at his face, trying to stifle the sobs that wrack his body. 

Those hands are unsympathetic. They force him upright, cutting his misery short, and drag him through the camp. Through the haze of blood and tears, he can see their faces. The same expressions that he’s so familiar with. Hate. Anger. Fear. He can replicate every line from memory, with the same confidence he knows that the sky is blue. 

…But Artemis doesn’t look at him this way. 

(Neither does Lord Deimos)

He’s thrown into another tent. Forced to stand upon his shaking legs. Tied to the post in the centre, so tight he can barely expand his lungs. 

The tempest lulls to a merciless blizzard, freezing all that it touches. There’s a featureless tundra that goes on eternally in all directions and blazing white light that sears his eyes. They leave him there, ordering him to endure her cleansing light and reflect upon his sins. 

Her light, he cries and groans, straining against his bonds in mindless desperation. Her light hurts. It hurts so bad, I want to die.

For this warden, there is no mercy. Not from death nor from oblivion. 

Minutes tick by. Hours. Days.

His eyes swell and go blind, retinas scorched by her holy light. Skin blisters and peels, and he loses all feeling in his body. He floats there, in the terrible, sickening whiteness, suffering a kind of torture that is far beyond his understanding.

His sins, presented before him one by one in a gruesome exhibition, until the entire stage is painted red. . Part 5

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Taglist:

@shydragonrider

@whumpsday

@pale-is-the-prison

@whump-queen

@wolves-and-winters

@extrabitterbrain