The Last Heretic

WELCOME TO EULAN

He heard glass shatter somewhere. Darkness surrounded the young man like a foreboding hug from the void. His head felt like he had smashed it into a wall.

"Aaron!" Someone whispered, "Aaron, wake up!"

He knew that voice. It was familiar to him - the voice of a dear friend. The voice of his best friend. He groaned and tried to rub his head, but something tugged at his wrist. It wouldn't budge. He was tied to something. He opened his eyes, wincing at the piercing bright lights of a few lanterns.

Irvine was clinging to his wrist, fighting with a rope keeping him secured to a table. The young man was completely tied to the table by his wrists, arms, and legs. The coarse rope binding him to the wood had rubbed through his skin. Dried blood colored the grain. The little guy managed to break the thin rope securing his left wrist and spit out the rope fibers. He was chewing through them.

"You're finally awake! Come on, help me out!" he whispered to the young man.

Aaron ignored the throbbing pulse in his temples and looked around the room. Various bottles of different colored liquids covered the desk nearby. It reeked of blood and death. Papers and books lay strewn about the floor of the room. He tried to raise his arm, but it was exhausted. The muscles of his limbs were tired and worn. The binds didn't help, either. Irvine scampered to the tie on his bicep and started hastily gnawing through it.

"What...fuck happened?" He mumbled. The rope over his bicep popped as the tension tore it apart in the little guy's teeth. Irvine spit out the rope, "A lot - just help me out! We need to get out of here!"

His friend was always quite the talker. The spider-like creature could converse forever without tiring - and for once he was in a hurry to avoid an explanation. Aaron labored his left arm over to the ties on his right wrist and fiddled with the tie - inspecting it. It was several loops of tightly bound rope. He glanced around the room as Irvine ran over to the tie over his right bicep. Aaron noticed a dark stripe down his arm. Was that a...tattoo? How long was he out? He spotted a small metal tool on a nearby stool and reached for it. It was the size of a pencil and just within the reach of his fingertips. He pulled it closer to his face for a better look as his eyes focused on the tool.

It was a scalpel, stained with the dark red crust of dried blood. He reached over to his right wrist and put the tool to the rope, vigorously sawing at it. The scalpel was dull, but definitely sharper than his fingers alone. The rope loosened as the tool sliced through it after a few seconds. Irvine jumped off his friend and hit the floor with a thud, scampering off into the corner of the room. Aaron cut the ties around his legs, finding more tattooed lines going down his legs as well. His limbs were covered in the strange, simplistic tattoos. The dark stripes all stemmed from somewhere on his chest, around where his neck met his collarbone, but he didn't get a good look as he was hunched over and sawing at the restraints around his ankles. It was then that he noticed he was naked.

Something scraping across wood caught his attention. Irvine was hastily dragging his handgun to him across the floor. The little guy had his back legs wrapped around the pistol with his front legs dragging himself across the floor. The restraints fell apart and Aaron reached for the weapon, ejecting the magazine and checking the ammunition. Full. He slid the magazine back into the gun and half-cocked the slide, peering into the ejection port. There was a round chambered. Still. He went to tuck the weapon in the back of his belt as he sat up, but remembered he was still naked.

"Where are my clothes?"

Irvine pointed a little tentacle arm at the corner of the room he had just retrieved the weapon from. His backpack lay on the ground half unpacked and strewn about the floor. The young man stepped onto the cool hardwood planks, avoiding a few fragments of a shattered jar. A metal lid with a few holes poked through it lay on the floor near the pile of broken glass. He walked over to the backpack and pulled out a pair of jeans quickly shoving his legs through them.