CHAPTER 5: Pain

_____________________________________________

Bercoven Woods, Kingdom of Maceria, Obsidian Empire

Circa 1293 AD

_____________________________________________

Pain ravaged Iseriel's entire body. She drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness but the pain was constant. Her arms, her torso, her hips, her legs, her head. Everything was screaming for release. Screaming to burst. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to just rest. She wanted to just die.

'Pain is life,' the words of King Merleon coursed through her wandering thoughts – harsh words spoken by an equally frightening rough voice to a naked cowering slave. Memories of all those nights of abuse coursed through her consciousness unbridled.

'Pain is a gift. Pain is Pleasure.'

She disagreed. Every encounter was pain. Every pain is death. She died several times. What does an inflictor know of the pain of the inflicted?

The maniac cackle of the king resounded in her mind. Iseriel screamed. She wanted the memories to stop. No. She wanted the memories gone.

As if in defense, her mind pulled up another memory. This one is less scarring than the other.

"I won't hurt you," the Emperor's deep voice was kind and soothing.

The half-naked slave cowered by the bed stand. A gentle hand lifted her trembling chin. Her gaze looked into those green eyes. They were hard and intense but at the same time gentle and kind. A deep inviting ocean. So different from the King's cruel blue.

"You have had it rough," he smiled. "I hope to change that."

What followed was Pleasure. Intimate pleasure. She never thought something so frightening could be so wonderful. The memory eased her pain. Iseriel cherished that memory. It was way different from what she always experienced at the hands of the king. She did not want it to end. But even the replays in her mind followed time's linear flow. Thus this memory was subsequently replaced with another.

The scream of her mother echoed throughout the square. Iseriel's mind back then could barely comprehend what went wrong. But her heart betrayed her raw emotions and she struggled to keep herself from wailing at the scene.

Iseriel watched in horror as the people watched with indifferent expressions the public execution of an allegedly thieving slave. Even from a safe distance, Iseriel could feel the heat of the pyre. She remembered the horrible stench of the smoke that emanated from a fire burning flesh.

'Mother.'

Iseriel always thought the king was a demon. But she never thought someone so young as the king's son could surpass the cruelty of the father. Moreover, she remembered the mixed expressions of the four men of Royalty who oversaw the execution. How could she forget the cruel snicker of the Merleon father and son monarchy? Then there was the uncaring expression of the Obsidian Emperor. And finally, she could never forget the conflicted expression of the brown-haired handsome royalty beside the Emperor, who seemed to be the only one who cared about the execution.

Her mother was no thief. Iseriel knew. Iseriel was there. It was all her fault. Her mother just covered for her daughter.

That kick in her belly. The memory of that pain.

'My belly!'

Iseriel's mind snapped back to the present. The memories stopped replaying and she was just surrounded by darkness. Iseriel tentatively felt her belly out of habit and surprisingly felt no pain. Well, everything else hurt except that one part of her body. The flesh on her back still burned. A part of her wondered how mangled it must appear right now. The skin on her arms, her legs, her chest, and even her neck and face throbbed.

Then slowly the pain surrounding her abdomen began to disintegrate. A soothing wave of energy flowed from her belly outward. Towards her limbs. Towards her head. The energy throbbed in waves, like ripples in a bucket of water caused by a dripping faucet.

"I still need you alive," an icy voice whispered from the darkness, in a language that she did not know but surprisingly understood.

____________________

Iseriel woke with a start. Her eyes opened to blinding sunlight and she immediately squinted at the yellow beam radiating from the tree canopy directly above. Trails of dust could be gleaned from these beautiful rays that pierced the forest leaf crown.

The winter air seeped through her nose and down to her lungs. She coughed at the cold's bite in her chest. Mud splattered at her face, stinging her eyes.

She was lying on her back on something cold. No. She was submerged in something cold. Now that she realized it, Iseriel felt the cold seeping into her skin, numbing her body, replacing the pain from the Unburning Flame.

'I'm alive?' she thought. She should not be. This must be the afterlife, then.

The Unburning Flame was poison, disintegrating every tissue, working its way through the body until there is nothing left. And as far as her memory serves, she was hit by it not once, but twice. No, she should not be alive.

Seffer Merleon regularly inflicts it as the inevitable punishment to gravely erring house slaves. Her mother was one. Before she was burned, the king struck her hand with the Unburning Flame out of spite in the throne room.

Iseriel vividly remembered how her mother's hand had to be amputated by the Captain of the Guard before the decaying magic could creep throughout her entire body. That amputated hand slowly withered away. It didn't matter because she was already set for execution anyway. A day after, her mother died on the pyre.

'Mother.'

The pyre. The abuse.

Iseriel blinked it away and focused on her immediate surrounding.

Only then did she understand the cold. Mud covered her entire body, save for her face. She felt her fingers, her toes. Intermittent flashes of pain from the Unburning Flame would spark but she felt its gradual recession. She was lying on her back, on a sort of mud bath apparently on the ground. She tried to sit up.

Pain shot from her abdomen the moment she used that muscle.

Iseriel cried at the sudden burst.

"She's awake!" a voice cried nearby, that of a young boy.

"Hush," a woman's voice, "let her rest."

Iseriel could not see them but she heard approaching footsteps. The silhouette of a woman covered her view of the green canopy above and she felt splashes as something was poured into the mud bath directly above her abdomen. A soothing sensation enveloped Iseriel and she once again closed her eyes, embracing that restful comfort.