Chapter 314 - 314: Lords of the Dark
Torix escorted the chain-gang down the spiraling stone steps into the subterranean depths of the Tarnstead palace.
As the torches grew sparse, Torix abandoned the floor entirely. He scaled the sheer masonry with effortless grace, his spider half clinging to the vaulted ceiling above the prisoners.
Jason shuddered, listening to the terrifying skitter-clack of Torix crawling directly over their heads in the gloom. He remembered the reports of the Tarnstead aqueducts and how this exact monster had dropped invisible wires from the dark to dislocate his friends' limbs just for the Vanguard's entertainment.
"End of the line," Torix announced from the shadows. He dropped gracefully from the ceiling, landing right in front of the heavy iron door of the deepest containment block.
He raised one of his lower arms. The Mythic-tier Arachnid Silk-Spinners mounted on his wrists gleamed faintly. With a flick of his wrist, a microscopically thin, completely invisible thread of monomolecular webbing wrapped around the heavy iron locking wheel.
Torix yanked his arm back. The razor-sharp silk spun the wheel effortlessly, the steel mechanism groaning before the massive door swung open.
A blast of freezing, stale air washed over the eleven prisoners. Absolute darkness pooled inside the cell.
"Get in," Torix commanded, his mandibles twitching in a cruel smile.
The Deep-Weave Hunters shoved the group forward. They stumbled blindly into the pitch-black room, tripping over a tangle of limbs and chains already occupying the floor.
"Hey! Watch it!" a voice snapped from the dark.
Jason froze. "Marcus?"
A spark of desperate hope ignited in Jason's chest, but it died the moment he heard the rusted chains rattling. As his eyes adjusted slightly to the sliver of torchlight bleeding in from the corridor, he saw the horrifying reality.
Marcus, Elena, Ethan, Liam, Maya, and nine others were huddled together on the freezing stone floor. They were covered in dried blood, sewer muck, and absolute despair.
"Jason..." Elena whispered, her voice cracking. "They brought you too."
Julian pulled himself off the ground and backed away until his spine hit the damp brick wall. He was trapped in a locked box with twenty-four other people who knew exactly who caused the botched ambush in Aethelgard.
Torix gripped the edge of the iron door with his upper hands. His six eyes glowed in the darkness, sweeping over the twenty-five pathetic, powerless mortals huddled together.
"Look at you all," Torix purred, the clicking in his throat echoing off the damp masonry. "Twenty-five invincible champions. Twenty-five supreme rulers of Aethelgard. Sitting in the dark, shivering in your own filth."
Marcus gritted his teeth and looked away, unable to meet the Arachne's glowing eyes.
"You broke the world for a crown," Torix whispered, slowly pulling the heavy door shut. "Now you get to rot in the basement. Enjoy the reunion."
CLACK.
The locking mechanism engaged. The sliver of torchlight vanished. The twenty-five former Heralds were plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness with no magic, elemental auras, and no one to rescue them.
For a long moment, the only sound in the cell was the frantic, panicked breathing of the Earthlings.
Then, Liam's voice echoed from the corner, cold and hollow.
"Julian. Is that you over there?"
Julian pressed his hands flat against the brickwork, his breath catching in his throat. The sound of chains dragging across the stone floor began to slowly close in on him.
"Julian," Liam's voice cut through the dark. It was completely hollow, stripped of the aristocratic arrogance he usually carried. "I know you're sitting right there."
"Stay back, Liam. We are all on the same side."
"Are we?" Jason rasped from the center of the room. The sound of heavy chains dragging across the floor followed his voice. "Because I remember you taking the soul crystal and teleporting away. You and your sister abandoned us in the capital."
"Derek's squad was already surrounded!" Julian shouted, his voice cracking with panic. He scrambled sideways, his bound hands scraping blindly against the wall. "We were trying to survive! That spider and Troglodyte were going to kill us all!"
"We weren't dead," Derek growled from the darkness, his voice thick with raw fury. "Not until you took the barrier with you, Vance."
A heavy chain whipped through the pitch-black air. It slammed directly into Julian's shoulder.
Julian shrieked and crumpled to the floor. Before he could crawl away, two pairs of hands grabbed him by the collar of his torn tunic.
Jason and Derek dragged him into the center of the room. Fists began to rain down on him in the absolute dark. The sickening thud of knuckles hitting flesh echoed off the damp masonry.
"Stop it!" Marcus yelled, dragging his own heavy restraints across the room. He shoved blindly into the fray, catching a stray elbow to the jaw. "Get off him! They locked us in here to break us! If we kill each other, we are giving them exactly what they want!"
"Shut your mouth, Marcus!" Ethan screamed from the corner. "You started this! You volunteered to sacrifice Red!"
"I saved your lives!" Marcus roared back, his former booming authority fracturing into absolute desperation. "If I didn't offer Red to the Royal Mage, the summoning ritual would have collapsed! We would have all died on that altar!"
"And look where your brilliant leadership got us!" Liam shouted. He lunged through the darkness and tackled Marcus by the waist.
The two boys crashed hard against the wet cobblestones. Elena screamed as the sprawling bodies slammed into her legs. The remaining Heralds panicked, swinging their bound fists blindly to defend themselves.
The cell devolved into absolute chaos. They were gods no longer. Stripped of their radiant swords, their teleportation, and their divine elements, they were reduced to feral animals fighting over scraps of blame in the dark. Nails clawed at faces. Rusted chains were used as garrotes.
They wept and bled, tearing each other apart out of sheer terror.
Outside the cell, the dim torchlight of the corridor flickered.
Torix stood near the heavy iron door, his six crimson eyes locked on the small, barred viewing slit. The Arachne commander clicked his mandibles together, thoroughly amused by the muffled screams and the wet sounds of violence echoing from within.
Up in the sanctuary, Rubedo watched everything.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the console as the primary monitor projected a live feed directly from the cell as Torix was present there.
Because the subterranean room was completely devoid of light, Rubedo swiped a finger across the interface, switching the optical feed to thermal imaging.
The pitch-black screen instantly illuminated with twenty-five glowing red and orange silhouettes thrashing against the cold, blue thermal outline of the stone floor.
Through the high-definition audio relay, the sickening thud of knuckles hitting flesh echoed perfectly into the quiet sanctuary.
Rubedo watched the feral brawl unfold on the glass screen. He saw the glowing heat signature of Derek pinning Julian to the floor, driving his knee repeatedly into Julian's ribs.
He watched Marcus struggle to push Liam off his chest while Ethan kicked blindly into the pile of tangled bodies.
In the far corner, the smaller thermal signatures of Chloe and Elena huddled together, sobbing hysterically as the boys they once fought beside battered each other bloody in the dark.
They had spent the last five years living in palaces, draped in silk, playing god with a stolen soul. Now, they were rolling prison, fighting over who was to blame for their own cowardice, reduced to glowing red smudges on a monitor.
Rubedo watched the pathetic display for several long minutes until exhaustion finally overtook the cell.
Marcus lay curled on his side, coughing up blood, while Julian remained an unmoving, rapidly cooling signature on the wet stones.
Satisfied, Rubedo tapped the console, muting the audio feed but leaving the visual feed running in the corner of his interface.
He leaned back into the shadows of his throne, a cold, hollow smile touching his lips.
"I will keep them exactly like this," Rubedo muttered to himself, his voice echoing softly in the empty sanctuary. "I will keep them in a state where they wish to die. But I won't kill them. Killing them would be a mercy, which I don't do."
He turned his gaze away from the monitor and looked out toward the crimson skies of his empire.
"Because they are in for a long suffering, and it hasn't even actually begun."