Chapter 9


    The next few days pass much the same, with intermittent meals breaking up the monotony. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to the meals, with no distinct breakfast, lunch, or dinner. The food itself is always some variation of bland goop, obviously something that technically provides nutrition, not a food. I keep working out, and slowly regain a little strength. I try to use my Radiance a couple times, which quickly turns into a splitting headache and the realization that I can still sense Radiance passively. That, while not immediately helpful, should allow me to detect when the Twisted are coming.


    I can sense the Twisted, but they don’t seem to have Radiance, more some kind of… inversion of the brilliant power. I guess it makes sense, if anything Evaline, or rather Princess Evaline, told me is to be trusted, Twisted are people that have been corrupted by the Broken Ones. It makes sense that, if everyone in Auron has access to Radiance, being turned into Twisted would corrupt more than just their bodies.


    However interesting that information may be, it doesn’t help me out of my current predicament. I keep paying attention to the Twisted, and begin to notice subtle differences in the not-Radiance. Each one has its own signature, and they walk around the building in a regular patrol, although how fast they complete a circuit varies. I see a couple of bigger concentrations of not-Radiance that must be larger Twisted. They don’t move around as much as the smaller ones, with most around the perimeter of what I think is a building, or at least some kind of enclosed area.


    Every so often, a burst of power will fly from the building. Sometimes it’s normal Radiance, others, the inversion. The bursts seem to come at random intervals, although fewer happen during the day. Whatever is up with that area is on a nocturnal schedule, which makes a sort of sense for the Twisted. I still can’t quite tell what exactly the day guards are, but they seem to be just as effective as the Twisted.


    The routine of sorts goes on for about a week. During that time, the only visitor I get is the student. I try to talk to them, but they seem sullen, probably being punished with prisoner duty. That puts befriending the student out of the picture as a way for me to escape, at least in the immediate future.


    Eventually, a couple of older Broken Ones stop by my cell. A tall, spare man, and a woman who could’ve passed for his twin. They’re both deathly pale, with indigo eyes and teeth that seem just a little too sharp. She looks at me like I’m a fascinating insect, something to be dissected and pinned to a board in her office. It’s unsettling, to say the least. His gaze holds the weight of the executioner, sorrowful and oh so heavy.


    I look back at the woman quickly. She may be unsettling, but I feel some of it may stem from the fact that she seems very familiar. The woman has the same idea, and narrows her eyes at me.


    “This one looks familiar,” she turns to the man, “Shard, what do our records show on a boy like this? Look at the older projects.”


    Shard? It has to be a title or something. Either way, the woman apparently outranked him, as he quickly walked off. She turns her attention back to me.


    “If you could just tell me, that would help. Have we met, lightling?”


    I shudder. The only other time I’ve heard lightling was in my dreams. The word seems to have a weight in the real world. The man comes back, and the woman does… something, waving her hand. Suddenly, it’s like the bars turned into a wall. I can’t see or hear anything past it. Then, just as quickly as it started, I can see past the bars. The woman has a wide, toothy smile.


    “We do know you, lightling. You escaped one of our Earth facilities a long time ago, although you wouldn’t remember that. I happen to have personally oversaw that operation, and I can’t wait to continue my research,” She says with far too much excitement.


    After that, they leave me to my thoughts. If they’re telling the truth, then I need to find Tam even more urgently. I don’t want to find out what her “research” was. I shudder again at the thought. I still have no idea how I’m going to escape, other than to wait and hope they try to transport me somewhere. I keep passively searching for Tam with my Radiance, even if I don’t know how I could tell if it was him.


    Eventually, I pay closer attention to the cells around me. Most of them are occupied, but it seems to be entirely the prisoners that came on the wagon with me, as far as I can tell. Some of them seem to be infected, in a sense. Over the course of the next couple of sleep, wake cycles, that I hesitantly call days with my distorted sense of time, they begin to scream. The screams are bloodcurdling, filling the entire prison area, and the Radiance of the screamer gradually becomes more and more turbulent. At some point, the Radiance condenses and inverts, almost instantaneously. All goes silent.


    Then, it happens to the next prisoner, one that seemed healthy. Then the next, and the next, the infection working its way down the prison, towards me. Every time, soon after the prisoner’s radiance inverts, I see a new Twisted patrolling the perimeter. I see the eerie woman a couple more times, but she mostly ignores me. All too soon, the last cell ahead of mine is emptied as its occupant is turned into a Twisted.


    I have little hope. I’m no closer to escaping, and as far as I know, my Radiance will be agonizingly corrupted until I succumb and turn into a Twisted. Apparently, Mrs. Creepy Lady has other plans. She comes to my cell one sleep cycle after the last prisoner is turned.


    “Lightling, today is the day I get to continue the research I started all those years ago. You had been one of my most promising subjects, at least until you escaped the compound.”


    Her words slide off me without registering, and that seems to make her angry.


    “No witty comeback, no retort? You were much more entertaining during your childhood. Here, let me remind you what fun you used to be.”


    She opens the door to my cell and approaches. I still don’t move, silently clocking the fact she left it open. Overconfident. I let her get within range, then lash out, sending a vicious left hook at her face. It turns out that I was the overconfident one, as she takes the hit, placing her hands on my temples. Excruciating pain surges through my mind, and I begin remembering everything before that day I escaped.


    Images flash by, remembered but not processed, at least right now. I see the woman, younger, happier. I feel a sense of love, of attachment to her. It repulses me. I see myself riding the wolf-like Twisted like a strange pony. I see a white room, with the woman calming me and strange men with needles and glowing hands. I remember pain, being bedridden for nearly a year, and gradually getting better. This and more, all in an instant, forcing me to my knees.


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    She lets go of my head, and I collapse. She kicks me contemptuously, and calls in a Twisted. She sighs,


    “Lightling, you just caused yourself a world of trouble, if you had only cooperated, you could’ve had your childhood back, and a place at my side. Now.” She tuts, “Now you leave me with no choice. My orders were to, if you caused me any trouble at all, you were to be sent to the Maw. And this is quite a bit of trouble.”


    She touches her already swelling left eye, and I feel a small amount of smug satisfaction at having hurt her. However, that is quickly overpowered by fear and pain as a large Twisted comes into the room and picks me up, none too gently. I’m carried along a confusing maze of perpetually downward-sloping hallways, the woman leading the gorilla-like monster onward. As we keep going, I feel a presence watching me, getting progressively more uncomfortable. The woman quite obviously feels it too, and even the Twisted seems nervous, having to be coaxed onward a couple times.


    We make it to a small platform, more of a ledge, on the edge of an abyss. It has one very dim torch, lit and burning with eerily red flames, and a cage mounted to somewhere above with a massive chain. I don’t think it could possibly seem more evil. The Twisted throws me roughly into the cage, and the woman closes the door.


    She grins at me again. “I’d love to continue my tests now, but the boss insists that I test all new arrivals in the Maw. Also, the insane keep wonderful secrets.”


    With that, she stalks away and I’m left alone with my thoughts. After a while, I feel a presence, malevolent and old, very old, with me. It feels like a sleeping giant, one that has existed since long before humans. I sense I wouldn’t survive its full attention. Even the small fragment I can detect is making me feel ill.


    The goliath’s attention shifts away, and I can breathe again. The torch on the ledge has burnt out, forcing me to rely on my other senses. I smell old stone and moisture, and a slight smokiness from the torch, as well as my own unwashed scent. I hear nothing, the darkness smothering all sound. The cold bars press against my back as I reach out with my Radiance senses.


    I feel… nothing. No Radiance around me for seemingly miles, but that can’t be right, shouldn’t be right. Nothing isn’t entirely true however, as the presence in the darkness does leave a remnant, and I can feel my own Radiance. However, I should still be able to sense the Twisted in the tunnels and the people in the base above. Nothing is detectable through the all-encompassing darkness, however.


    I sit in the darkness for an indefinite amount of time. I sleep a few times. It might total out to about a week of time, but I’m not sure. I notice the darkness has a smell. It smells like age and death, with a hint of something else underneath. I never get fed, and I begin to feel the bite of hunger. However, I’m not nearly as hungry as I should be, and I am not thirsty at all. It’s strange, but I ignore the feeling.


    A few more ‘nights’ pass, and I fall into a stupor. I stop truly sleeping, alternating between a light doze and periods of awareness that are a notch above it. I don’t feel like I’m dying, moreso that my mind is trying to preserve itself from sensory deprivation. It seems to work. Time passes, I stay in the trance-like state, and at some point I begin turning my attention inward. I’m not consciously thinking, and I begin to mess with my Radiance. I instinctively begin changing the channels that my Radiance flows through when I use it. They are almost… tangled, in a way, and it seems like they shouldn’t be. I also end up smoothing them out, streamlining the flow of my Radiance along them.


    I spend a lot of time meditating like that, until all the channels are uniform and streamlined, and I return to awareness. Suddenly, the torch that was there, but undetectable, ignites. It’s blindingly bright after so long in near-total darkness, and the smell of burning wood is similarly strong. The crackles and pops of the wood sound like gunfire, and I can feel the heat like it’s a bonfire.


    Soon, the terrifying woman comes into view, monstrous Twisted in tow, and looks out at me. Suddenly, the cage shakes, and moves toward the ledge. She inspects me like an insect pinned to a board, and surprise flashes across her face, if momentarily.


    “Well, you’re in much better shape than I would prefer, and far too sane, but I’ll make do,” her voice is like thunder, and begins to hurt my ears.


    The large Twisted opens the cage and picks me up in a fireman’s carry. The motion is dizzying, and the sensation of the Twisted’s fur on my skin is horrifying. I can feel every muscle beneath its skin, twitching and writhing unnaturally. I’m carried through the halls, overstimulated and dazed. My sense of Radiance is swamped like all my others, and I can see the Twisted and people in the facility with much more detail than before my isolation.


    It overwhelms me, becoming painful. I’m carried for a while, and we begin to approach the building that had been releasing Radiance when I was in the first cell. We pass over the entryway, and for a fraction of a second, I feel the regard of that same ancient presence in my mind. Howevers the feeling leaves so quickly that I convince myself I imagined it. I’m carried into what seems to be an operating room, with large tables full of an eclectic mix of common medical tools and things more likely to be seen in a witch’s cauldron.


    The Twisted lays me down on the table, and the woman tightens thick leather straps around my ankles, waist, and wrists. I’m too dazed to even struggle, and the woman and Twisted both leave fairly quickly. Eventually, I can tune out enough information for it to not be painful. There isn’t exactly much to be seen in the room, just white walls, and a mirror that definitely has a room behind it. A large claw arm is mounted into the ceiling, and threatening looking medical implements are mounted into it. The machine whirrs to life, a needle tip locking into place. It sinks into my arm, and I feel a burning sensation as some kind of drug flows into my veins, and consciousness slips from my grasp.


    When I next wake up, there’s a deep ache in my abdomen, and I see the remnants of a large incision under my sternum, exactly where the core of my Radiance sits. I doubt it’s a coincidence, and reach out to my Radiance. Surprisingly, I can access it, and I summon a small flame and start trying to cut my bindings. I am easily able to, and stand up. It seems like the Broken Ones are letting me escape, and I’m instantly suspicious. As I look around the room, I realize I can’t see the door. It blends perfectly into the walls of the room. I begin feeling around with my Radiance senses, and am inundated with information. Apparently, my sensitivity to Radiance from not having access to it makes it so my senses are picture-perfect when I do have access to my Radiance.


    I can see the entire facility outside of the white walled room. The stone walls have small remnants of earth Radiance within them, and everything living appears as a brilliant mixture of colorful pools of power, intermingling but never combining. The Twisted appear as that same unnerving void as my own dark Radiance, which is not a comforting thought. Like I thought, there is a room behind the mirror, and multiple people are standing in it, perfectly stationary. Other rooms, similar to mine, are all around me. I look further into the facility, finding larger experimentation tables and what looks to be some kind of altar. Even further in, there are heavily guarded holding cells, and my heart stops when I see their contents. The first few cells all contain one person, seemingly unconscious. I look closer, and I can see Dark Radiance slowly taking over their wells. The final cell holds Tamarin, still grievously injured and far thinner than when I last saw him.


    The sight confirms my suspicions that this place is the base Evaline had been talking about, and shifts my priorities to include saving Tam in my escape plans. He seems to be completely unresponsive, which means I’ll have to plan on transporting him away, at least until I can figure out how to heal him. I still don’t know what the Broken Ones did to me, and I intend to find out. I begin turning my senses inwards, and immediately detect a small… seed of Dark Radiance tucked away within my well. I begin messing with it, and manage to trigger it somehow. It swells within my well, pressing my own power out. However, the Dark Radiance I have control over seems to stop it in its tracks, pushing it back. Eventually, the ‘seed’ is ejected from my body as a small pellet of pure power. It detonates, sending me flying, and I hit my head on the wall. Darkness takes over my sight for the second time that day.