The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Fourteen

Pain is most commonly described as a sensory and emotional experience of discomfort, but it is so much, much more than that.  Over the years, philosophers, clerics, writers and great thinkers have had much to say about the nature and the value of Pain and, in the end, it call comes down to one thing...  It, Pain, is almost an entity and a State-of-Being all to itself.  It is an ever-dark and angry nation counting all who live amongst its imprisoned populace.

 Aboard the Dryfftnaught, Adam Wilder, Ryonne, and Ryan Carmoody had been made aware of their citizenship to that dread nation.

 Pain threatened to become the whole of their very Reality.

 That was often how events played out when one dealt with The Pilgrim.

 Wilder's vision was slightly blurry, but he could see Lord Cr'Aughtin sitting calmly next to a long table in a wide, high-backed chair decorated with elaborate, gilt-edged carvings.  A woven wall tapestry hung behind the chair.  A blindfolded, slender woman of timid disposition dressed in a form-fitting, head-to-toe leather jumpsuit knelt next to the right-hand side of the chair.  Her chestnut-hued hair was tightly pulled back into a twisted bun and held in place by a decorative hair pin.  Cr'Aughtin's thick-fingered, pudgy fist was wrapped around a length of linked chain that was attached to a hinged metal pin piercing the exposed skin at the nape of the young woman's graceful neck.  The anchor-end of the metal pin came out the front of the woman’s skull, protruding slightly from her forehead.  It was apparent from the scars at her neck and forehead that the pin had been very carefully surgically implanted to avoid destroying her brain.  It was clear from her facial expressions, occasional uncontrolled body tremors and the persistent line of drool running down her chin that she had experienced some level of brain damage, but it was also evident that she still retained enough of her faculties to make her remain … interesting.  She was not Cr'Aughtin's servant.  She was not his pet.  She was a victim with whom he was not yet finished inflicting pain.

 Yet, despite that, the arrogant nobleman did not appear entirely comfortable with being in the presence of The Pilgrim.

 “… screaming, so much screaming…,” the blindfolded woman muttered around a swollen tongue.

 “Hush now, m’dear,” Cr’Aughtin said softly, not bothering to look at her.  “Wouldn’t at all do for you to overstate the obvious out of turn.”

 Lumynn and three of Lord Cr’Aughtin’s personal guards were in the chamber, along with Cr’Aughtin’s Page, Fahria, and the masked Interrogator.  Lumynn had not seen the Interrogator engage the prisoners at all.  He seemed to be in the chamber for some ceremonial reason or out of some sense of constitutional propriety.  Fahria had taken her place along the back wall and, after picking up a writing implement, concerned herself with a large, leather-bound cloth and paper ledger, almost as if she were recording the proceedings.

 Lumynn had seen The Pilgrim do things to the Earth human, the one who said his name was ‘Carmoody’ that had threatened to turn his stomach.  Pilgrim had burned the man’s exposed chest several times and had hit him so hard that the man had been knocked unconscious, resulting in one of his eyes immediately swelling shut.  But the Upworlder had not broken.

 For her part, Ryonne had gone silent and Pilgrim had not expressed much interest in bedeviling her with physical torment.  Her sightless red eyes, revealed after the sinister sorcerer had removed her visor, had apparently told him all he’d needed to know.  He’d knelt in front of her and stared a few moments into her face.

 “Poor little blind rabbit,” he’d said enigmatically.

 That had left the Traveler, the Upworlder once known as Adam Wilder, and Pilgrim had, so far, taken great joy in slicing, ripping and stabbing the tall black man as he’d questioned him about his connections to Kolag Y’phree.  When Wilder’s strange, supercharged alien metabolism had kicked into high gear to repair his wounds, healing his body before their eyes, Pilgrim had expressed delight and attacked him with renewed vigor and imagination.  That he was enjoying things a little too much was evidenced by Lord Cr’Aughtin’s silent, but very visible expression of disdain from across the room.