The Cursed Throne

Chapter 1

Cold, unforgiving, and grotesque. Those were the first words that came to mind when Thane met his captor at eye level. A jagged slithering scar wavered from his temple to the opposite cheekbone, its end hiding in his unshaven cleft chin. The skin at the scars center had protruded slightly leaving a solid line across his face that held a clear message: I am to be feared.

Intimidating, was the next word Thane thought of when the man walked slowly behind him to strengthen the ropes which held his hands firmly pinned behind his back. Pain etched its way up his arms as the ropes clawed their way through his skin, eating it away the same way fire disintegrates a forest. He could feel the individual twines of rope as he imagined them burning away and falling to ashes on the floor beneath him.

"Where is that wretched accomplice of yours?" The man questioned leaning against the wall twirling the point of a pocket knife on his index finger.

Thane kept hoping it would drop from his hands and nail itself into his foot. If it had it would hopefully be enough of a distraction for him to try and break free. It was a stretch but other than watching the knife in this stranger's hand there wasn't really anything else to look at. It had taken him just a few seconds after he had awoken in this room, to memorize the ironclad door with vertical bars a few inches wide, and the rusted chair which he was currently occupying.

"You're going to have to clarify," Thane said, his voice raspy from the substance they must have slipped into his bloodstream to get him to wherever he was cause he sure as hell would never have gone willingly.

"I don't want to have to repeat myself," the man snarled inching himself closer to Thane. He now held his knife firm in his hand, the tip pressing lightly into Thane's thigh mere pressure away from tearing his trousers.

"Not the trousers man. I just got these," Thane whined. "They were limited edition. Found them off the eastern coast at a shop in Quintyn."

The man clearly flustered by Thane's careless attitude raised the knife to get just the right amount of velocity as it buried itself deep in Thane's thigh. Thane grunted loudy in pain, leaning over slightly to try and relieve the pain, but his attempts were futile. His eyes were pinned on the knife that stuck out of his leg, the blood trickling out of the wound and down his leg pooling on the floor. The smell of tinged copper collided with the already musty stench creating a wretched concoction that nearly had Thane gagging had he been lucid and focused.

"Now I'm going to ask you again, but more clear this time." The man twisted the knife in Thane's leg earning a sharp cry and a string of words he was sure his teacher back at the orphanage would have sat him in the pits of Tamrum for. "Where." Twist. "Is." Twist. "The Malison?"

The name these people had given her never ceased to amaze me, Thane thought knowing she enjoyed the shiver of fear in people's eyes hearing her name. It wasn't so much the fear as it was they only knew a fraction of what she could do. The fact she could shatter them in seconds with one breath. They knew of her work but how she completed the work was unbeknownst to those who didn't work beside her like Thane did.

"It's really hard to focus on the answer with a knife buried knee deep into my thigh," Thane spat out through gritted teeth, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead.

"If you had enough focus to come up with that thick headed remark you should have enough focus to rack your brain and tell me where she is." The man released the knife from Thane's leg a whole ripped clean in the thigh of his pants. Though right now that was the least of his worries.

"Why do you want to know?" Thane questioned knowing this was a two way street for information.

"That's confidential," he sneered.

"Then I guess the information I may or may not have must be considered confidential too," Thane shot back.

"You're strapped to a chair, a knife wound in your leg, your face pale from dehydration and starvation, and you think you're in a position to make those kinds of statements," he said in awe, a slight chuckle escaping him.

"I'm not going to tell you anything," Thane said with as much confidence as he could muster his eyelids closing slightly, his blinks becoming longer.

"Then it would be no issue if I were to slit your throat now," the man said holding his knife up against Thane's jugular.

"I—I don't know," Thane conceded. "The last I heard she was in Blodmony dealing with a croupier," Thane whispered his sham betrayal out loud.

"Hmm...," the man contemplated. "So you just so happened to be wearing her cloak?" He finished a terrifying suspicion gleaming in his eyes as he lifted up a velvet burgundy cloth with a wolf embroidered in gold string on the thick material.

"I found it a few years back at some auction," Thane continued spewing lies he knew would catch up to him sooner or later but he didn't care.

"Must have been some auction," the man said, sauntering closer to Thane shoving his knife into his other leg as if to even them out. "Hold this for me will you?" He said as he opened the door leaving Thane with white spots doting his vision sweat beginning to pour down the sides of his face in buckets.

His blood boiled, sizzling in his veins with every slight twitch. Thane cried out hopeless calls for help that were stopped by the thick cobblestone walls he was hidden behind. His blood was on fire. He was a volcano about to erupt his blood churning beneath his skin turning to a molten flame that couldn't seem to contain itself anymore. It needed a way to break free. He glanced down at the knife stuck in his leg. Just when he thought the bleeding had stopped a black liquid began to pour itself from both his legs in place of his blood. The liquid sizzled against his skin as grunts of pain following each fry of his skin as he fidgeted in the chair in certain positions hurting his legs more than others. The hands tied stiffly behind his back were no help.

The knife must have been dipped in poison. A poison that seemed to disable it's enemy, disarm them of their most valuable sense until it killed slowly and painfully. He had only heard about this kind of poison on the streets. The Throne had become more creative with torture techniques upon the influx of rebels throughout the streets. All it had taken was one whistleblower before word was spread about a poison that killed its victims slowly and painfully twisting skin tissue until they had believed their skin was turning inside out.

His captor had nearly made escaping impossible at this point and impossibility wasn't something Thane had much faith in. He believed the impossible was a challenge regardless of the drastic measures that deemed it impossible. Thane was not thick willed but cunning playing out a play by play move of every factor that went into a mission. It was one of the reasons he had been able to keep up with The Malison for so long, but now he had no plan. Instead, he let that fire he felt in his veins sink deeper to a familiar impulse one he had learned to control and bury. He angled that heat to his wrists and the uncomfortable fabric wrapped around them. Though it would have been easier if he wasn't nearly unconscious he slowly felt the rope disintegrate from his wrist falling away like sand in an hourglass to the floor.

"Should have used metal", he whispered to no one in particular.