Split of the Worlds (18+)

Red Depths - Past - Part IV

As soon as he lay down, he could no longer move. He couldn't even make a sound.

Indeed. Why bother with captains and chains when he can just bind me like this.

The demon shackle made it so much easier for his master to torture him. He didn't even have to listen to his adjutant scream.

N'Arahn struggled to remain calm. He could still breathe, so he tried to let the air flow evenly and calmly inside him. His vision blurred somewhat as he was unable to focus.

Pay no attention to it. Brace yourself for the pain. It will come. It will go.

"You can start. He won't shout or disturb you with his movements."

A brief pause, during which only the soft clang of metal on metal could be heard near N'Arahn's head. Pirou had grabbed his tools.

"Ah, just take one out for now. And carefully. I want to see if the color is fully preserved, then maybe we can sell it well." What? "Whether only half-blind or completely blind, we can test his fighting skills and his sense of direction equally afterwards."

He had really intended to just bear it all. To find a way to escape the demon shackle. Maybe find something he could bargain with and prove his worth.

They want my eyes.

Ice crawled through his veins. The panic he hadn't wanted to allow was now unstoppable. Flooded him, filled him. Broke something inside him.

He doesn't even do it himself. I'm not even worth that to him.

The fear and despair that wanted to take his breath away and paralyze him for good were suddenly pushed aside. All the anger that had been building up inside him, which he had suppressed so carefully, burst to the surface.

Yes, he was just an adjutant. But he wasn't just livestock who gave up without a fight.

The rage inside him turned to heat, cutting like a blade.

I deserve better.

It's enough.

I won't let it happen.

Not this.

Fire in his blood melted the cold that had gripped him, erased the last remnants of his fear.

N'Arahn felt liberated as he surrendered to the core of his nature, letting the burning rage within him take control. It flared up...

...and glowed through the grip of the demon shackle.

The moment Pirou brought his tool, a kind of sharpened, very deep spoon, into N'Arahn's field of vision, one of the gems in the metal band shattered with a soft crack.

The intriguer didn't have a chance to react. N'Arahn grabbed his wrist, yanking it upwards so that the sharp side of the tool did not plunge into his eye, but only split the brow above it. At the same time, he reached for the other demon's throat, squeezing, stopping any sound until his fingers sank into skin and sinew, meeting in the other's flesh. Blood flowed down his arm, streaming red and hot from the mortally wounded man's neck.

The smell fueled his rage. He had never felt so strong, so filled with confidence and the knowledge that nothing could stop him.

There was more, even more. His skin tightened as if something was trying to break out from underneath.

Later.

He straightened up, the dying intriguer still in his iron grip. It had happened so quickly that Pirou hadn't even kicked out. He had simply frozen when the supposedly defenseless warmonger aspirant had attacked him. Their gazes locked for a blink, then N'Arahn dropped the adjutant.