He healed.

  It happened in spite of his own desires. Charred skin renewed. Boiled eyes reformed. Eardrums regrew. It took time. Weeks, maybe months. The only thing that didn’t restore were his amputated limbs. Both hands and both feet had been taken by the Lord General.

  At first they sought to keep him in line with threats to Khana and Darius. Over time, they realized he didn’t resist anything they did. Not that they did much at all. He was given enough broth to eek out a miserable existence. The torture he expected never came.

  Only once did anyone even question him. A teary Zara stood above him and asked, time and again, why he had taken Corey from her. Volithur couldn’t bring himself to answer her. Something inside of his psyche had shattered in the antimatter explosion. He’d taken his shot at great personal cost and he’d failed. The monstrous Lord General lived.

  And everything that mattered to him was destroyed. He knew nothing of the fate of his wife or child. Only on occasion did someone bring their existence up, and then only to ensure his continued compliance. They need not have bothered. He was done.

  The door to the room opened. Volithur didn’t bother to look. He knew who stood there by the sheer presence their level ten soul exerted on the world. Perhaps it was time for him to die.

  “Why did you betray me, Harridan?”

  Because the man killed his parents. The words didn’t come. He shook his head no in a me response. What did it matter? “Just torture me already.”

  The Lord General hissed in a sharp breath. “Jinn loving fools. Whatever they offered you will not come to pass, Harridan. Know that. They cannot pce the mind of a Xian into one of their machines. You will never escape here to experience their technological comforts.”

  “They promised me nothing.”

  “Then why!” The Lord General bent close to his face. “Tell me!”

  “You are a beast, Lord General. Someone needs to put you down.”

  The lord’s eyes narrowed. “You think me a beast, Harridan? I am a man of discipline and strategy. You consort with those who would surrender themselves to cold metal and accuse me of inhumanity? I will make you suffer, Harridan. Most egregiously. With a delicate cruelty that could not be further from the crude outbursts of a beast. I will have my satisfaction in full.”

  Several days ter, Khana entered the room. She spped him, screamed at him, and wept openly at the situation. Volithur cried as well.

  Darius, son of a traitor, had been castrated. Their precious young boy, less than three years of age. Khana and Darius would be incarcerated for a time to ensure Volithur’s continued behavior. Then they would be taken to an unempowered world. One that the Xian had no regur contact with. They would be abandoned there to fend for themselves.

  The grief of that conversation – no, that accusation – lingered and amplified over time. How had he let the hate from his past consume the future like this? He could have suffered in silence. Pretend he wasn’t angry until the act became true enough. Instead, his evil had spilled over his own family and friends.

  Ulysses – dead.

  Corey – dead.

  Darius – mutited.

  Khana – banished.

  What had he gained in return for his sins? Nothing. His parents could never be resurrected by his quest for vengeance. He’d only perpetuated the cycle of misery in his family for another generation. The world would be a better pce had he died alongside his parents, head squeezed until it exploded. If he could change the past by wishing, he’d undo his existence in a blink.

  A squad of men escorted him from the keep one day. They were under the command of Perry, who spoke only once to Volithur. All he had to say was that Yowl and Radish died in battle – and that Volithur would wish that he had as well.

  They traveled for three days, Volithur restrained on a litter and carried like the invalid he had become. At all times, the men watched him as if anticipating an escape attempt. He didn’t have it in him. He’d lost in such a way that he couldn’t even want to win.

  At noon on the third day, they reached their destination. Volithur’s new home. It was a dreary dark tower attached to a pace. The owner of the pce greeted them as they arrived. She was a stout and severe woman. “I am the Lord Ptinum,” she introduced herself. “Your jailer.”

  “Are you going to torture me?”

  She ughed and looked to his escorts. “No one has told him what I do here?”

  “He hasn’t asked and we would rather not consort with his kind,” Perry answered.

  The Lord Ptinum patted his cheek. “I make ptinum psma elixirs, Harridan. It is the ultimate resource for body enhancement. Gold psma elixir is the core of a mammalian beast ground to dust and mixed with its physical remains. In order to make something better suited for human cultivators, though, you need more compatible raw ingredients.” Her smile grew wider. “Do you understand, my dear? You are to become an elixir.”

  Volithur sagged back on his bedding. He would not be tortured. He surely deserved it, but knowing he would be spared brought relief. That relief did not st.

  They pced him in the tower. In a cramped cell where he was bound in pce and fitted with invasive devices. A feeding tube of copper went down his mouth to pump his gut full of whatever they thought best to fatten up his soul reserves before they nded the killing blow. A catheter took care of liquid waste and a bed pan caught anything solid he passed.

  The externality of the Lord Ptinum hung heavy over the tower, a metaphysical bnket that prevented the movement of cosmic energy. He could do nothing. His domain, aura, and externality were all inhibited. Even his body didn’t function properly, making it hard for him to resist on the rare occasion when he wished to.

  The feeding tube dribbled uncut spirits for most of the day. At meal times, broth would come instead. At night, a silver psma elixir would enter through the tube. Lord Ptinum fattened him up for the sughter.

  At first, he didn’t think his torment so bad.

  Soon he realized that not being able to move at all was a terror of its own. The medieval medical equipment would have killed any unenhanced human in a day. He proved far too resilient for such an easy escape. Volithur suffered for weeks. Then months. He only knew how much time passed because the Lord Ptinum visited once a month to decide if he was ready for harvest. She liked to chat during those visits.

  The pain came at about six months. His liver began to fail. It filled his entire abdomen with indescribable aches that made him unable to sleep. Tears dripped from his eyes almost constantly. He could not understand how he yet lived. His soul reserves grew ever rger. He was a mb fattened for sughter.

  The Lord General came at the one year mark. Volithur could not hold back the tears and involuntary groans that were a constant of his existence. The man sneered down at Volithur for at least an hour, savoring the misery on dispy. “This is my vengeance, Harridan. The vengeance of a strategic man. I bet you wish I was a beast, don’t you? I will have to decide what to do with your elixir. I’d offer it to Zara for her loss, but she would probably dump you down a drain out of spite. I’ll find a use for it, don’t you worry. Your legacy will be to make my forces stronger. You lose, Harridan. You lose completely.”

  He began to shiver at all times. The pain and the sleep deprivation and the self-hatred congealed into pure misery. His body was close to its end, he knew. Just as his soul was close to the peak of level eight. He could seize upon chaos and push himself over the edge into level nine. Would that ruin the elixir they sought to make him into or make it better? He’d do it in an instant if he knew for certain it would be a bad outcome for his captors.

  Then, suddenly, they removed the devices.

  Volithur rolled free of the table he’d spent over a year on and smashed his face into the floor. Any joy he’d expected to find in being able to turn over vanished as blood returned to the many bed sores polluting his body. He writhed in agony for hours before his healing eased away the aches.

  The Lord Ptinum arrived after her attendants rinsed him clean with buckets of water. She gred down at him, lips compressed as if in indecision. “I might as well. It’s for the benefit of us all. We’ll bme the reduced quality of the elixir on the extended torture. He might not even ask for a discount.”

  He thought they took him to his death until the moment a porter formed a transit sphere. The Lord Ptinum dragged him inside with a cable of force. Then they were gone, traveling elsewhere.