Boxes of Delirium Chapter 1: Torture

Chapter 1: Torture

I knew the arm was broken long before he stomped on it again.

Shock and the vague sense of nausea seized my brain almost immediately when his black shoes ground into my aching shoulder the previous time. The joint was out and no matter how I urged myself – I could not force the limb to move.

They finally captured me, and now I was at their mercy – what little they possessed. I had eluded them for years now, but this was how everything was to end. However, Sinalmas were not the type simply kill for pleasure or revenge. Every movement was calculated, deliberate. They made sure that their victim was aware of their misdeeds andthey suffered immensely. Sinalmas massacred everything within their prisoners – soul, heart, desire, wants, passions – then they focused on the flesh only when a husk of skin remained. They were not human and their motivations were not like ours.
But they needed me to help them. They needed me to disclose what happened with Legion. I knew that for now, I was safe. They had not broken me, and I still held information they desperately needed. I will not deceive myself though. My death will come at their hands; maybe not today or anytime soon, but my fate was decided for me the moment I made a deal with Cecil. I gave him Legion’s box in return for –

Well, the deals I made a century ago no longer matter. Cecil sold me out, and now I would pay for my transgressions against Legion with my personal sacrifice. Legion was no longer bound to protect me, and that had allowed the Sinalmas to find me. He would be destroyed if he knew that they finally discovered my hiding place in the Barrens, and I am glad he wasn’t there to watch them drag me off.

He would’ve fought them. He would’ve lost.

Although he is immortal, Sinalmas know dark magic that could have easily banished him to somewhere else; or the old Relic legends tell of ways to kill a Marquain: one exploits their human tendency to fall in love and the other characterizes their mortal lust for more power. I guess despite their infinite life, their flaws are often similar to our own.

Legion once explained to me his curse. He did not like to discuss his immortality, nor the Marquains. He was one of the last of his kind, and I could see the pain consume him every time I asked him about his people. My curiosity always amused him, but I knew that each question hurt him more than I would ever comprehend. He would never admit it, but Legion hated me for my prying.

I once considered Legion my only friend. Wise and kind, with a soft and loving voice, he never grew weary around me like most people. My peculiar ways and downright odd behavior made children my own age shy away from me; and my wildling ideas and fancy for adventure forced adults to dismiss me. There was no time for idealists inside the caravan where I grew up. I regret not listening to Legion more in my childhood – he was thousands of years old and had lived through the Apocalyptic Wars. Instead, I squandered my time with him by prattling away about myself. The silliest thing I ever told him was that I wanted to change the world. Laughing at me, he mumbled something about us being two of the most unlikely heroes, and something about how if anyone could do it, why not a prodigal immortal and an adventure-imbued Relic?

In bout of frustration he once told me, “My people hold the power of the universe, but we are slaves to whoever owns us. We are the Creator’s joke, his jape to teach the world that although you have power, you are still nothing.” People often mocked him, calling him ‘genie’ or ‘faerie’; these awful insults enraged him, and I would sometimes catch a moment of him wincing at the words. “We were not meant to grant wishes or be at the whim of some heartless, power-crazed mortal. I have protected honorable champions of valor, that is what I was created to do,” he confessed after a particularly painful run-in at the market in the settlement of Quhet. His people were once respected, and now they lived torturous lives of servitude. After he got so upset in Quhet, I inquired more and more about the Marquains, but often found only more uncertainty arose from his answers.
As I began to witness the times that Legion and I spent together flicker through my head, I remembered him fondly. He was patient and covered in scars. I long to once again touch those scars on his cheeks, and apologize for my betrayal, for Cecil’s betrayal. Legion explained, after an evening full of my prodding, that the scars covered because of the shape-shifting he had done. Shape-shifting was a natural gift of the Marquains, and they could change into any living form. However, every time he would change form, he felt the skin ripping away and forming again. He said they felt all the magic they used – both the divine and arcane, both benevolent and destructive. Everything – good or bad – they felt everything. I did not understand the gravity of the burden, but Legion would spend a lot of our time together attempting to explain.

Legion was truly innocent in all of this.

I regret every moment of lying to him.

Sensation began to tingle up through my arm again; the numbness placed tiny cold pin-pricks on my skin as pain engulfed me once again. Trying to move my fingers, I felt a sickening lack of control in my extremities. A moment was all I needed to evaluate the physical situation: the arm was broken, black eye, ribs on both sides were bruised, and the ropes had dug into the skin and cut off most circulation to my hands and feet.
It was grim but it wasn’t the pain that that made the torture unbearable. My previous encounters with the Sinalmas had long since made me accustomed to the searing agony of mangled appendages and the scarring processes of mutilation. The fact that I knew they were not going to kill me yet and that I was far too stubborn to break made everything seem even more horrible. This twisted game of grueling chess was quickly approaching a stalemate. My captors were not going to be pleased with an unproductive outcome. I had to be careful which member of the Sinalmas I angered: they were not known for the patience or mercy.

“Do you know where his box is located?”One of them had come forward to speak with me. His voice seemed louder than it needed to be almost like he was performing for the others. I knew that voice – it was embedded into the back of mind. His name was … something. I could not remember but I knew that the Sinalmas were growing impatient with me and my condescending defiance. I heard the urgency in their voices now. Each one would approach me individually, then in pairs, then in groups, the alone once again. It was almost like they were not positive which intimidated me more – all of them huddled over me – staring down with those vacant, expressionless eyes; or the threat that one of them alone would lose their temper and
go too far and accidently kill me.

Spitting out some blood, I writhed on the ground a moment contemplating the best response that I could offer to their question; because even if I desired to betray the information that they sought, I didn’t know the answer anymore. The last time I had held onto the box was in the middle of the summer. I remember well the sunrise that morning: hues of lavender and yellowish orange masked the haunting nature of that dawn. I’d held the box so close to me for a long time that once I pried the parcel from my chest, I felt empty. Once Cecil had it in his hands I felt the sense that something stirred inside me, a hollowness that would soon be filled with bitterness and callousness. Cecil swayed back and forth among the ashes of the dead; burnt flowers crumpled under his feet as I watched him saunter away with the box. His coyness exuded from him as I witnessed his disappearance into the distance. This is what must be done, I repeated to myself over and over again. I ached with the knowledge I was now void, and meaningless.
That emptiness did not leave me.

A sharp pain exploded upwards from my forearm. The same Sinalma from before grabbed me up, jarring the dislocated shoulder and dislodging the memory I was reliving. I was thankful that I did not continue much further into that memory – I would’ve seen Legion’s realization that I had lied to him. Pain was pulsated through me as I squirmed, but the resistance simply made the ache in my joint unbearable. For the moment, I must surrender to the will the familiar stranger that kept pulling my arm upwards. Managing to find the ground with my blistered feet, he released my arm – I had no control of it as gravity grabbed hold and it plummeted downward. A moment of wincing pain flashed over my face, but I quickly composed myself.
Now was not the time to forget whose presence I am in. They gained power in knowing they were inflicting pain.

As the blood from my head and face heated the cool of my skin, I knew that absolution was being served; this was my punishment, my condemnation – this was the sting, the agony, of witnessing death without being quenched by it. I wonder if this is how Legion felt when he discovered the treason I committed against him. Despite the overwhelming desire to slip into complete numbness, there was a sensation inside me. Through the dried, cake blood enlaced into my eyelashes I could see the face of my betrayer staring vacantly at me as the he held me. The face was hollow and void. It possessed no remorse, no grace, and no reconciliation. I then remembered his face. His name was Judas, and he was the reason I got captured.

That was the exact moment I realized – none of them were going to kill me.

They were going to recruit me.

All of these years, I had spent assuming they wanted me dead and eliminated. Perhaps they only wanted to offer me a job, but I convinced myself of the absolute worst. After all, their kind was not known for their diplomacy or their tolerance. Was it that I believed the stereotypical stories and warnings and forgotten to seek out the common enemies of my adversary? Was this the only way that they could capture my attention long enough to actually make their proposal?

My greatest fear was staring directly back at me – I was so close to becoming one of them.

Judas – a name fitting for him – slinked closer to me, and the other Sinalmas retreated back slowly. A victorious smile crept over his face. “I know you don’t know,” he whispered to me. “In fact, that’s a little piece of knowledge I have keep to myself until now,” with his eyes he motioned back towards the rest of them. Following his gaze, my eyes adjust on the Sinalmas for the first time since my captivity. There were four of them, excluding Judas, and only one girl in the group. She appeared too young to be damned to the fate of the Sinalmas, but there she was – her face just like theirs. All of their eyes had lost pigment, and the skin underneath seemed taunt and darken like they had not slept in weeks. “You there, Sammy?” Judas asked as he flicked my dislocated shoulder. “I asked you a question!”

“Ow, son of a mother, yes!” I retorted back. The cocktail of exhaustion, hunger, and pain were providing me with a delirium that rendered me
incapable of focus.

“Yes … what?”

Pausing a moment, I strained to recall what was asked of me, and I came up short, “I do not remember.”

“Tisk, tisk. Wrong answer, Sammy,” as my name rolled off Judas’s tongue, he lifted his hand. A flash of intolerable hurt encompassed me with a swift slap to my shoulder. I fell instantly to ground, huddled over wailing. Attempting to breathe in air, a sob escaped. Judas leaned over to whisper in my ear, and only the knowledge that he would step on my arm prevented me from attacking him. I breathed heavily trying to maintain some level of control. “I ask a very simple question – will you help us find Cecil?” He smelt of lilac. I dreamt of lavender sunrises and flowers – and smiled.
Then I remembered the desecration of Cecil’s footsteps on burnt grass and his dance on the bones of the dead; I remembered his arrogance as he pranced away. I would kill him for ruining Legion. I would kill him for crossing me. “Yes,” I breathed heavily out. “I will find Cecil Lithguard.”
A smirk and snicker fell from Judas as he leaned in a graced my hot cheek with a kiss. “Good.” A tear fell from my face, and I knew what must be done. Balance must be restored to the broken world in which I lived. The world already teetered on a delicate scale, and one wrong movement would launch the entire planet into oblivion. There was no good that would come out of this battle; rather two evils would fight one another. Cecil Lithguard was nefarious and power hungry while the Sinalmas maintained a chaotic dying world and forced it to remain on the brink of extinction.
Cecil must pay his tithe to the Sinalmas, and I would – somehow – find Legion and regain my possession. I would reclaim the box. It would be mine again. The Sinalmas appear to the lesser of the two evils, and it is up to me to chose the fate of not myself, Legion, the caravan, but of the entire world.

I hope I choose correctly.

But I get ahead of myself – this is the end of my story. We should start somewhere near the beginning.