Chapter 116: Torture
The sun had barely risen over the cold, merciless horizon of the draconic kingdom when dragon guards smashed open the cell doors without restraint, brutally dragging the gladiators from their sleep. Mordred had barely closed his eyes all night, haunted by the king’s chilling promises. But even this brief sleepless night could not have prepared him for what was to come.
Barefoot on the frozen stone, Mordred and the other gladiators were pushed roughly toward a new courtyard, much larger and more isolated than any he had known before. Thick walls surrounded it, topped with rusted spikes. The sky above was covered in a uniform, dreary gray, as if the gods themselves were averting their gaze from the atrocities about to unfold.
The sky, like a mirror of the souls who would suffer in this place, was a visceral gray, almost alive in its malevolence. Low clouds, gorged with rain that refused to fall, weighed upon the courtyard like a lid sealing a tomb.
Awaiting the gladiators stood figures, motionless as statues. Their ink-black cloaks rippled imperceptibly, though no wind blew within the enclosed space. Their faces disappeared behind sculpted helmets representing dragon skulls, the empty eye sockets revealing nothing but impenetrable darkness. These masks were not mere metal protections, but morbid works where every detail every scale, every fang had been chiseled with maniacal precision. Ancient runes, engraved in the metal, seemed to pulse with a sickly light of their own, illuminating nothing.
Among them, one figure stood out. His armor, so deep black that it seemed to absorb the surrounding light, was covered with crimson runes that pulsed to the rhythm of an invisible heart. Each beat momentarily cast bloody reflections on the surrounding stone, as if the armor were bleeding through its inscriptions.
He advanced with measured steps, each movement calculated with inhuman precision. When he finally spoke, his voice rose, devoid of emotion but charged with an icy authority that penetrated the very souls of those who listened:
- "You are here to become something other than what you are. Forget your previous lives. Forget your name, your dreams, your fears. From now on, you are nothing but weapons."
No sooner had these words been spoken than a group of servants emerged from the peripheral shadows. Their movements were strangely jerky, as if their joints had been broken and then imperfectly reconstructed. Their bloodshot eyes stared into the void. On the trays they carried rested vials of black glass tinted with greenish reflections, within which bubbled a thick liquid. The substance seemed animated with a life of its own, pulsing against the glass walls as if seeking to escape.
Before Mordred could anticipate what would follow, two guards with steel grips seized him. One grabbed his jaw with such force that the bones painfully cracked, forcing his mouth open. The other threw his head back, exposing his vulnerable throat to the dim light. The servant then approached, holding the vial whose bubbling contents now emitted an acrid, sulfurous smoke.
The liquid was poured directly into his throat, immediately burning everything in its path. It was a transcendent agony, as if every atom of his being was consciously torn apart and then resewn with incandescent thread. The poison for poison it was seemed endowed with a malevolent intelligence, methodically exploring every corner of his body to inflict maximum suffering.
Mordred collapsed onto the icy flagstones, his body contorting at impossible angles. His muscles contracted with such violence that distinct cracking sounds echoed through the courtyard his own tendons tearing under the pressure. His skin, turned translucent by the poison’s effect, revealed the network of his veins, now black and bulging, carrying the abomination through his system. His throat tightened in an inhuman spasm, choking the scream that desperately tried to escape.