Hell. That is the only word worthy of describing the commander's dungeon. His experiments were pure torture. Pushing my body to the absolute edge, right up to the breaking point, pulling back just before I couldn't take it anymore. Each day became more horrendous and painful than the last. I don't know how long I was down there but it had to have been years. Many things have been suppressed by my subconscious, but every now and then I will remember.
Flashback
I awoke on the cold black stone table. Leather cuffs holding me down at the waist, legs, arms and neck. Something didn't feel quite right. I crane my neck down as far I can, almost asphyxiating myself on the restraint. What I saw was horrific. An image from the nightmares of the worst demon in hell could not have caused me more terror and fright than this. My torso had been split open down the middle, from the middle of my chest down to my waist. Organs had been splayed out like a dissection. Heart pumping and writhing rhythmically. When I first awoke my body felt numb, like I had just woken up from a deep sleep and was left groggy. Apparently the commander had given me some anesthesia to keep me asleep until he had dissected me properly. Footsteps on the cold stone floor echoed in the chamber. "Oh good you're awake. Now the procedure can begin." He smiled a devilish grin filled with malice. "What are you going to do to me now? What more could you possibly torture me with?" I asked. He face twitched just under his left eye, "Oh my dear boy, we have only scratched the very surface of suffering. But again I will tell you that is not my goal. My goal is to evolve. It is only natural. The animal and plants evolved to thrive in this irradiated landscape. We humans must do the same. Your suffering is just a matter of personal preference." He the cut into one of my organs, I'm not exactly sure which one but one thing was clear. The anesthetic had worn off, the blade sending wave after wave of searing pain through my body. This continued for hours, or it could have been days, until I felt my torso being sewn back up. "Hmm. How very interesting" I heard him whisper. "Well boy it would appear you are very different from the rest. While others who underwent this procedure either never fully healed or died soon after, you seem to already be healing." Again I strained against the cuff, craning my head down. I was terrified of what I might see. From the pain coursing through me, like fire in my veins, I could've been cut in half. I forced myself to look upon my formerly split body. The incision that was made in my chest had been sewn up. But something was off. The stitches were smoldering, coming undone. I figured I wasn't far behind but I stayed intact. The cut was already solid. A thin white scar had developed in its place. In seconds my body had healed. Not long after I began to grow light headed and groggy. I almost fainted. The act of healing such a grievous wound had taken so much out of my malnourished and tortured body. I choked out one last straggling cough before passing out. After what seemed like only a few moments a awoke in pure darkness. Not a sliver of light illuminated the abyss of my cell. For a while I believed myself dead. I don't know how long I was in this cell. My perception of time had been completely destroyed. My mind wasn't far behind it. Days became weeks and weeks were stretched into years. After what felt like a millennia of untainted darkness a small slit of light appeared from one of the walls. From it slid a wooden tray. On it was a combination of what seemed to be pig slop and what I used to scrape off my boots after a hunt. The scent was revolting and it's texture was alien and brought me to a retching mess more times than I can count. A voice could be heard from the other side. "Two days." It chimes in a sing song voice. Two days? Impossible. I had been there for eternity. Later I was told I had been held hostage for five years. Two of torture that I remember. That leaves three for the abyss. Can you imagine? Every single day stretched and warped into an eternity in your mind for years? Shrouded in darkness, the only sound is your own whimpers of pain and the hissing of rabid diseased rats. I thought back to my memories of the day I was taken. Taking my last pained breath before drifting off into the aether. I begged for death. I tried to keep myself from eating just so I could end this nightmare. Each time I nodded off into unconsciousness I hope to wake up back at the lodge, but I am reminded by my dreams, haunted with visions of the lab and plagued by my own twisted mind that contorted my dreams into hellish fantasies that only the devil himself could conjure. I awake each time in a cold sweat, panting and writing on the floor in a fever. I try to starve myself but each time that slit opens I cannot help the most primal parts of my being. The person I once was had died. Replaced by a ravenous beast. No longer was I human. I had more in common with the animals I once hunted. No more than a beast I had become, inhuman, a demon. That is until one fateful night. Or day. I couldn't tell. My dreams were uncharacteristically bright. My usual haze of devils and hell-spawn had faded. In my dream I awoke in a place all too familiar. It was Aloura's home. In her common area sat the hide rug and wooden bench that I had grown accustomed to. A strange smell wafted in from her room. It smelled of smoke and brimstone. I followed it. A strange light emitted from behind the wolf skin curtain that sealed her room off from the rest of her house. The light was beautiful. It reminded me of the aurora borealis. Swirling from a greenish blue to an icy white. That then became a harsher, more illuminated image, not unlike the bolts of lightning that came from the heavens. Cracking apart the atmosphere and shattering the sky, if only for a brief second. The light soon dimmed down into a calm golden hue. I pulled back the curtain and saw her kneeling down before a circle inscribed upon the floor. It had runes written around it. Some familiar and some completely alien to me. She was whispering some arcane language, the strange tongue sometimes rolling off her own smoothly like a melody, and sometimes harsh like she was choking out the words. Her eyes were closed as if she were praying, but upon my circling around to her front, they sprang open and stared into my own. Piercing into my very soul. Gone were the entrancing golden rings surrounded by the sea of emerald. They were stark white and sparkling like diamonds. The whites of her eyes were replaced by a galaxy of colors, as if she took the cosmos and stored them into her head. She looked older, more mature. Looking to be about 16 or 17. Even more beautiful than I saw her last. Her auburn hair now faded into a bronze at the end, coming almost to gold at the tips. It billowed around her head as if she were under water. She could've claimed to have been a goddess of the sun and I wouldn't have questioned it. "Kaine" she spoke aloud staring directly at me. As she said that the glow faded and her hair fell back down. Her eyes returned to the color I knew. She attempted to embrace me in a hug but her arms passed through me, my body meting into smoke and reforming back into shape. I thought I had died but, as if reading my mind, Aloura said "Oh thank the gods that worked. You're not dead after all" she laughed, wiping a tear from her eye. "Kaine there's something you need to know. The last few years you've been gone, the prince has taken over. He's rounding up people like us. The marked. The guards have already found two more of us in this area. He's also taken the family of the marked, yours included, to study them. Or so he says. It won't be long before they find me. I'm going to try to get you out of there but I can't promise anything." The entire room flickered for a second, everything melting into smoke like I had moments ago, before reforming back into place. "Shit, it's fading. Kaine, I'll see you soon. If something goes wrong you need t-." Then everything faded to black as I awoke back in my cell, writhing in a feverish aching pain. But there was something different. My fingers emitted a dim glow. A deep orange, almost red, radiated from beneath my skin. Illuminating veins, bones, sinew, and muscle beneath, all the way up to my elbow fading into my upper arm. A long forgotten energy flowed through me once again. Though before where it felt uncontrolled but paltry, now it felt more frenzied and raging than any wild fire I had encountered. My blood began to boil and my clothes smoldered. My tunic caught ablaze and fell to the floor, nothing but ash. I couldn't see it but I could feel the heat in my mind, a glow emanating from my eyes and my hair smoking. The energy within me grew, like a pot boiling water. Sooner or later the pot would boil over. It was only a matter of time. The glow beneath my skin crawled up my arms. The fading ends dancing around like flames. The glow spilled into my torso filling my chest with the rage of a thousand flames. The light shone out of my mouth now. Finally my entire body shined as bright as the sun, flames billowing from my arms and from my hair. My eyes shine a deep crimson. Eventually the energy became too much to hold, I let it out in one blast. The shockwave itself was devastating. The stone wall that kept me imprisoned all these years had finally been destroyed. It's remnants strewn about the courtyard. Nothing but shards of rock and bits of metal. For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I saw the sun. I was free.
