The Path of Dreams

Chapter One-4

“Still some fight left in you, Obrett? Or have you decided to give in.” A widening of eyes was enough reaction to tell him that there was understanding. “Yes, I know exactly who you are.” His words made the room all the more stark, the walls colder and the emotions much more negative as his intended victim suffered. “I could end it you know. It would be so easy to let go.” Garias tried to sound compassionate, but the tone of his voice was alien to him, and he could not manage it. Instead it came out more like a sarcastic statement.

It did not have the desired effect. The limp figure in front of him started to shake, wheezing, until Garias leaned in closer to discover that it was a harsh dry laugh the man was trying to bark out. The laugh became a racking cough, and Garias endured the delicious sight of the man in agony as he tried to master the pitiful excuse that was his own body. The cough passed, and the old man looked up, tears in his eyes from the effort.

“You…could…end it?” He rasped, his voice dripping with irony. Obrett trembled once more, but his head never dropped back down. With a Herculean effort, Obrett looked at him and Garias found his gaze being held by someone who should not have had that much will left in him.

”You could never end anything if you tried, not if your life depended on it. And it will be your downfall. I have seen your work from within this room, and you are already out of your depth.” Obrett was quiet for a time, but he never dropped his gaze. Garias stepped closer, and let fly with a slap to the old mans' face, hard enough to rock his head back against the cobbles in the wall and off again. The prisoner shivered, wincing at the new pain, but he still held his gaze.

“You will not get anything out of me, so called Witch Finder.” The anger coming from this husk of a man spoke of untapped resources; he was becoming more animated by the moment. “You are right though, master of lies, scum of the earth. I can let go, and if I chose to do so, there will be not a thing you can do about it.”

This time it was Garias who chuckled. A chill forbidding sound that came from deep within him. The grin across his face was filled with the tinted insanity of a maniac. This old man had the temerity to try and match wills with him? Garias, the master of Raessa?

“I think my friend that there is a lot I can do about it. You are in no position to tell me what I can and cannot do. You know very well that I have the means at my disposal to make your life last a very long time, every moment in agony. You have seen my creature, for I have seen it watching ever since it captured you. It hungers for your soul. It knows, as I now do, that you are stronger than you seem even in this state. If it could speak it would beg me to give you to it, to feed its life force. You would live for a very long time, wailing out your bitter pain as part of its spell.” Garias reached down suddenly, pulling Obrett taut against the chains by his face, and breathed the words to him.

“You can die in peace, quickly, but if you do not tell me what I wish to know, you will regret having ever looked upon me.”

The prisoner edged his face around, and spat at him. Garias jumped back, wiping his face clean. Nobody had ever dared such a thing, not in the centuries of his existence.

The prisoner sneered at him, defiant eyes wide in hollowed sockets. “You do not want answers you piece of filth,” he hissed, “You want me to fear you. You want a supplicant that you can draw from in order to bolster your own measly attempts at focusing.” He turned his face away, contorting, as if he were reaching with his teeth at something inside his mouth. He turned back and spat a tooth at Garias. “Well you shall have neither.”

Garias burned with a barely contained fury, to the point that he would have stabbed the prisoner, had he but had some kind of blade to use. Unfortunately there was not even a spoon in this cell, as the old man had barely eaten since his capture. Refusing to lose his temper and give the prisoner a sorely fought after victory, Garias calmed the stab of fury in his belly enough to whisper quietly in his ear. “You will rue this, forever.” He then turned, and in a flash of robes, left the room, not even bothering to shut the door.

In the hallway, Garias stopped one of the guards. See to it that the prisoner is fed and watered. I want that cell in a fitter state when next I see it.”

“It will be done, my Lord.” The guard stood to attention.

“What good will that do?” Said a voice from within the shadows. “His life is all but spent. He is too weak to survive much longer. Why prolong it?”

“For exactly that reason. For the sensation.”

“Then why do you need us if all you are going to do is sit in a torture chamber living off of other men's wretchedness.”

“You are here at my bidding, to serve me. Always remember that. Question the motives of anyone with more wit than you again, and you shall find yourself a permanent resident down here. You have been summoned to bear witness to the re-emergence of another type of magic. The days of sifting through rocks will soon be gone.

Caldar stopped. “You have found the secret to emotive magic?”

Garias smiled. “Prepare to say goodbye to your Old Law Gods, Law wizard. They are about to be handed their notice.”