Holy Opposites 66

	I squealed in pleasure and pain as a massive pile of hooks and chains wrapped itself around me and ripped into my bare flesh.  My fiendish body twisted and healed around the cuts.

	Behind the noise, though, I felt control return.  My reaction in the dream wasn’t me.  The noises I was making weren’t mine.  I scratched and clawed at the illusion, trying to escape, but the vision of my body wasn’t my own.


	Axio gently set Cavria down on the stone floor and stood.  “Luanea, can you tend to her?” he asked urgently.

	“I can, Axio,” Luanea said.  “Go to Triera.”

	Axio took off down the hall as fast as his injuries would allow.  He wasn’t ten steps out of the office when he heard the distant screaming.  His heart broke as he heard hundreds of children – at least a hundred – yelling.  He heard cries of pain, indistinct words, and the word ‘mother’ in about ten languages.

	He nearly flew through the temple, down through the barracks, and the armory beyond.  His legs were aching, his heart was hammering in his chest, and he felt the unpleasant cramping of fading adrenal shock in his entire body.  His half-closed wounds all over were opening as he ran, but he didn’t slow one bit.

	He bolted through the antechamber and slowed to a halt at the railing of the great open dungeon.  Hundreds of eyes tracked him, and the room filled with gasps of fear and hope.  He gripped the railing, feeling his head spin with helpless rage and relief.

	The children below were alive.  Each had droplets of blood emerging from their heads where they had been impaled, but only a few were dead.  It was obviously a few too many, of course, but still…

	He raised his voice to be heard over the cries.  “Children, my name is Axio.  I’ve come to bring you home.”

	“Axio!” Triera shouted.  Axio ran down the stairs and slowed as he approached his sister.  As conscious as he was of how it looked to be ignoring the others and moving straight to his blood relative, in that moment he didn’t care at all.  He knelt by his sister and grabbed the iron bolt that held her arms down to the floor.  He tested it for yield, and growled in his throat when he didn’t feel any.

	“Can anybody tell me which of these dead people has the key?” he asked over the general noise.

	A human boy spoke up from the front row.  “That one!” he said, jerking his head at the man Suivi had flipped over the balustrade.  Axio walked over and quickly patted the man down, and sure enough, he had a small bronze key in his pocket.  Axio tested it on the nearest child’s restraints.  They popped off at once.  The boy’s hands flew to his forehead, but Axio caught them and held him still.

	“Please do not touch the probes, young man, I don’t want you to dig them out,” Axio said.  His voice may have sounded ragged to his ears, but to the little boy, he certainly sounded convincing.  One by one, Axio freed the children.  Some were so traumatized that they didn’t even move, while others immediately hugged him, or pulled the prongs out of their foreheads even as he cautioned them not to.  Most simply cried and cried.

	Triera was actually one of the older children present.  Some were as young as four, and barely fit their hands in the restraint shackles.  Axio lined the children up against the far wall as he opened the shackles.  Tears poured down his face the whole time, though he had stopped sobbing, at least.  He just felt numb.  Grief washed away his hate, and left him feeling weak.


	Suivi emerged from the portal and ran headlong into the Watch.  “Hey!  We need healers and sentries, right away!” he said to the assembled Watch on the other side of the magic passage.  “We found the children, but we’re all hurt, and the kids are all kinds of fucked up!”

	The Watch officers on the other side looked amongst each other as Suivi blew out a shaky breath and brushed his hand back through his hair.  “I need to get to the Ryaire Temple, okay?  I’ll be right back!”


	Bastienne Toller sat still in his cell in the Watch post.  He had to serve the Master, of course, but he also had to serve himself, and Vorthane.  He had to stay put until somebody contacted him; it was the only way-

	Toller blinked and the world looked different.  He opened his mouth to scream as the entirety of his torture and breaking on the Harness rushed back, all at once, but no sound came out.  He choked on his suppressed terror as Darius Vorthane died, and all his trauma smashed into his damaged mind at once.

	The Watch officer outside the cell looked up and recoiled at the look on the cleric’s face.  The antimagic field over the cell was holding, but he looked like he’d been shot.

	Toller’s mind heaved and shifted under the sudden absence of his psychic block.  Vorthane had actually been blocking some of his pain!  He collapsed sideways, grabbing at his head and wailing.

	The Watch officer shot to his feet.  “The hell’s going on in there?” he demanded.  Toller rolled onto his side and convulsed once.  The wailing stopped and he simply lay there, shivering.

	The Watch officer backed off from the bars and ran for a healer.  Minutes later, he returned with the cleric of Torm who served as their de facto doctor.  The cleric unlocked the cell and crouched by the shivering Baneite.  “Now, let’s see,” the Tormite said distractedly.  “Detect Magic.”

	The anti-magic field of the cell held, and the Tormite frowned.  “He’s in shock, I believe,” the cleric said.  “He’s had some horrible-”

	A horrible what, he never got to say.  Toller’s elbow came up in a thrust and snapped the other man’s mouth shut.  Blood squirted through his teeth as the Tormite bit his tongue.  The cleric rocked back, stunned, as the Watch officer scrambled for his blade.

	Toller was faster.  Burning with pure, psychotic rage, the cleric leaped over the bleeding Tormite and punched the Watchman square in the jaw.  The Watch officer stumbled back, and Toller rammed his head against the bars.  He grabbed the unconscious officer’s blade and ran for the door.

	The only thought in his ravaged mind was vengeance.  Against Vorthane for torturing him, against Axiopistos for capturing him, against –

	No.  It couldn’t have been.  It couldn’t!  Toller gazed with his jaw agape as Suivi Embersson skidded to a halt in front of the Watch post.  The two former allies stared at each other for a long moment, before Toller let out an anguished scream and charged the former spy.

	Suivi drew his own weapons and sprang back out of the old cleric’s path.  He lashed out with one boot and knocked the Baneite out of his bull-rush.  A space cleared in the crowd as the two men clashed.

	“Toller, what the hell are you doing out of your cell?” Suivi shouted.  “Somebody go in there and get the Watch!” he yelled to the crowd.

	“YOU TRAITOR!” Toller screamed.  He slapped his hand against the flat of his blade and sent a wave of burning radiance at the rogue.  Suivi rolled away and lunged forward, stabbing deep.  Toller yelped as the impact broke one of his ribs.

	“I’ll send you straight to Bane!”  Toller threw a handful of magic flame at Suivi, who didn’t manage to dodge that shot.

	Two of the crowd members darted into the Watch building and started shouting for help, but all they could find inside was the two injured men.  With the majority of the Watch dispatched elsewhere, there was no help coming.  Suivi batted out the flames and swung his blade at neck level, but the cleric ducked back, and he only cut cloth.  “Stay down, you old bastard,” Suivi growled.  Before Toller could react, Suivi stepped in to stab with his off-hand weapon, sinking it up to the hilt in Toller’s chest.

	The older man gurgled and collapsed to his knees.  Suivi ripped the blade out sideways, and his former boss died.

	Suivi let out a long, shaky sigh.  He never really liked killing, and killing somebody he knew, even a person he didn’t especially like, wasn’t any easier.  With an effort, he forced the emotion back.  He still had work to do.