41 The Best of Times

It had been twelve full hours since he had been tortured, a period which seemed like an eternity to Stanis who hadn't been able to drown himself in thoughts all this time due to the constant pain. But now the pain was gone, mostly anyway. His body was still bloody, sliced and burning with pain, but he was so desensitised to the pain that this seemed normal now. What wasn't normal was the thoughts he now had to fight.

"You're just going to die from torture anyway. Just kill yourself now."

Stanis muttered back to it, "Ma—". He couldn't even create an argument against his first thought; he was already hopeless…

He continued to lie against his manacles, which were in fact too large for him now as his body had grown gaunt from all the slicing and starving he had been through. If there was one good thing about the torture he had been through, it was the fact that his pessimistic thoughts couldn't cause him to commit suicide; he was far too apathetic to care that much about future pain.

Time continued to tick and Stanis continued to lie against his manacles, despite the fact that he could slip out of them anytime. But his body didn't want to: there was safety in the chains he were in. What was he meant to do even if he did slip out?

And then a part of his brain ticked back to life; how long had it been since he had been last tortured? This question confused and puzzled Stanis, his idea of time now vague, but the sight of healing flesh gave him a clue. Usually, the torture was frequent enough that he didn't have to worry about his regeneration, but now he did as he realised that his roommate nor his slicer had come in quite a while.

A small part of his mind, the daring part, told him to slip out of his manacles. He could do it, so why didn't he? In response, his fearful side started screaming all types torture he would be put through. So what? He was so drowned in pain that he no longer feared it, what could they do that they already hadn't put him through? The answer was a lot and would have terrified him back to his manacles, but he didn't know that as he slipped out, hitting the ground with a thud.

It took time for his brain to command him to walk and not just brood, but to no avail anyway as he flailed about as he stood up, before crashing back down. Perhaps the pain meant nothing as he was so desensitised to it, but his pain-resistance didn't give him any strength. In fact, his body was so low on strength that his legs couldn't even support his bony torso…

But he had time, more time than he knew what to do with and so kept tying, crashing and diving countless times before he regained his torture-prior balance, well, maybe not that high but good enough to stand up. He walked over to the bones as some still had rotting flesh on, flesh that he happily gnawed on. Stanis guessed that it smelled bad but he wasn't really sure anymore after spending so long in here, after all he had been lying next to his own shit all this time…

After tearing off as much meat as there was, he found himself once more lost for ideas. His room-mate usually came in with food sometimes, and so Stanis hoped his roomie would come back, even if he didn't have the time to play games. And so he walked over to the door and waited there. And waited. And waited. But his roomie didn't come and so he was lost again.

Stanis guessed he could open the door, but what for? This room was his safe-space, and he didn't care much about what lay outside. Amidst his hours of waiting, Stanis, in his half-conscious state, realised he had a full tank of mana inside of him. He decided he would waste time by using it until his roomie came back.

The first thing he did was Light healing, even in his broken mind it seemed a good idea and so he went for it. He had multiple hours free and so this bony man looked alive again by the end of his use, by which time he was bored.

He went through his Status, half-ignoring everything until he came upon Basic Transformation. Thinking that was a good idea, Stanis used it on his left arm as he always did. Due to his Constitution, his whole body had healed quite fast on the whole, but his left arm had always been much slower for some weird reason. Added to the fact that the slicer had basically cut off all his meat off his bones at one point, his arm looked deathly right now. But the transformation quickly got to work, his left arm back to its former glory with dark-orange, thick, leathery skin and the menacing red claws at the end. It was to be noted that most his muscle mass had died since last week, but his arm looked impressive nevertheless.

As his body was healing, his mind also started to partially restore itself. No longer was 90% of it dealing with constant pain, 5% delirious and only the last 5% actively thinking, now it was closer to 50/50. It would be a lie to say that his body was fully healed by the hours, but it was still pretty good as his body looked whole again. And yet Stanis remained sitting by the door because if he had learnt one thing from his torture, it was a type of twisted patience as the passing of time no longer disturbed him.

Unbeknownst to him, it had been a whole day since his last visit that his roomie finally came, a pot of glob within his hands. His roomie was humming, finally happy to leave his station at the front of the Mountain. It was fair enough that Rak wanted strong defence at the front of the tunnels, but did all of them have to stand there in silence? He had better things to do like playing games with his good prisoner-friend.

He opened the door, the door loudly creaking as it slid to a halt. Damn, he would have to fix that sometime. He walked into the room, only to see that his prisoner-friend was no longer by the manacles, and so he walked in further, peering around the piles of bones, looking for his scrawny friend.

"Roomie!" came a spluttering, rough voice behind him, the guard turning around to face his prisoner-friend by the door.

One simply cannot blame the guard for his following actions, after all the image of his prisoner-friend healed and whole was enough to put some very bad ideas in the guard's mind. The guard dashed towards Stanis, cuffing his face before kneeing his groin.

Stanis became very confused as to why his Roomie would attack him like this, and the small rational part inside of him screamed rage, a bit of which permeated into the real Stanis as he punched the guard with his left arm. It was this very arm that could go head-to-head with a strength-based tier-two and still come out even. Thus the guard stumbled back, his eyes venomous as he looked at Stanis.

"Yurr gong fuckng diee for dis." hissed the guard, shielding his face as he charged forward once more.

Stanis, half-dazed, looked at the Zelt sprinting towards him and wondered what to do. One part of his mind said to stop and to talk his friend out of his rage. The other part said to rage himself, teach his friend a lesson. Perhaps swap roles in the games they always played. Since neither option really mattered to Stanis, he decided to go with the second one as it sounded more fun and fair.

He was clawed across his chest, but the pain felt like a comforting stab, nothing more as Stanis punched the guard once more. Once again the guard stumbled backwards, but only this time with Stanis hot on his heels, using his left arm to pick up the guard. His menacing claws twisted around the guard's head, the guard crying tears and violently struggling as his grip only tightened.

"It's only fair to switch roles from time to time" said Stanis casually as the guard whacked and cut him with his claws. His working memory showed images of him crying and bawling his lungs out as they had played, but the guard had never stopped, so Stanis just presumed this part of the game.

Stanis's upper-chest and arms were raw and bloody as the screams stopped, Stanis calmly dropped the body which collapsed onto the ground. The guard would wake up a bit later like Stanis had always done, right?

He then walked over to the pot of glob the guard had brought in and ravaged the food, his blood dripping into it multiple times. Afterwards, Stanis went over to the door and once again sat down, patiently waiting for the guard to wake up. A bit of time passed before Stanis decided to heal his raw chest. But a feeling kept barraging him as he continued to heal, a feeling that said something felt off. He merely dropped down and waited after he had healed, but the feeling wouldn't go away.

It would be minutes later that he stood up, before looking down his body. It was bruised, sliced and coloured a rainbow, but it had no clothes on… The idea of clothes quickly brought him to his Malitsa, the last memorabilia he had of his mother and his old life.

Life…

Stanis began screaming, his body raw to this type of pain as he tightened the grasp around his own head as he lay in a foetus position, blood quickly dripping down as the memories came back.

An unknown amount of time passed before he stood back up, uncaring about his bloody scalp. There was a glint in his eyes, one that hadn't existed before. He looked towards the downed guard who was barely wheezing out breaths at this point.

His good friend would no longer have to struggle against death; Stanis would give him a helping hand…