Mad Maedus

The sound of whirring machinery and gears permeated the air as Maedus opened the door to the laboratory, Aesus and Chalea in tow. His mind was on fire, fueled by vengeance and rage. He sneered at his wife, tossing her into the corner where she crumpled to the ground with a yelp.

"Pitiful bitch," he replied as she whimpered quietly to herself, "you are deserving of every minute of this, and so is your whelp. And should you decide to meddle in this process, I will ensure that you never again doubt the meaning of true pain."

It was easy to prompt her to stand aside, as he had grown accustomed to threatening no subtle manner of pain should she decide to disobey his directive. Aesus moaned groggily as his uncle tightened the last strap, slowly coming back to consciousness.

"...yes, this does bring back memories, doesn't it? You remember it well, I'm sure." Aesus heard his uncle talking as he woke, slowly registering muffled voices into coherent speech. "Just as he will when I'm finished."

"I will help him to forget," Chalea hissed with uncharacteristic determination, hidden somewhere out of Aesus' view. "There won't ever be a need unfulfilled, or a duty left undone. He will not remember this torture through all the love I shall supply him with. And there is nothing you will ever be able to do about that. Because although you may think you have forced my heart into your hand, your fingers have barely grazed the surface, Maedus."

"What are you doing!?" Aesus shouted, as he began his first attempts to break free of his newly discovered bonds.

Chalea started for him immediately, but was frozen in place as Maedus' eyes pierced her own. She took a hesitant step back as the glowing embers of hatred pushed her away, and had she been in the possession of her soul, then it would have been shaking.

Aesus' gaze shifted around the room. Maedus had ignored his plea and was walking across the room to a cluttered workstation. He did not notice his nephew's eyes landing solely on Chalea's face peering back at him from across the laboratory. Aesus' expression was erratic as confusion, desperate regret, and fear battled to dominate his face. But the look on Chalea's face was all the more haunting and in turn, brought Aesus' temperament from desperation, to rage, and finally revenge.

When Aesus looked at her, the desperation emanating from his features was nerve-wracking, especially since Chalea knew that what was about to happen was something he would never be able to emerge from intact. This was the last time she would see him as he was, and she was unable to comfort him, to tell him that she would be there when he awoke. No, she was bound in silence knowing that no amount of reassurance would help him now. And besides, what certainty was there that she wouldn't succumb to Maedus whilst the process went forth uninterrupted?

"Let me out of this thing!" Aesus shouted, being interrupted - or really, overpowered - by Maedus' reply. A blast of fog erupted from a metal cylinder that the alchemist had retrieved from a secure locker. He pulled the cover from the cylinder he produced a tiny, tear-shaped glass vial.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked his nephew, though he threw a sickening glance at Chalea too. She knew very well what that vial contained.

It was her greatest regret, and what kept her trapped in Maedus' grip. She had accepted years ago that her life teetered precariously on a string, and even the smallest gust of wind jeopardized her existence, especially now that her entire essence was concentrated within the glass container that Maedus was now holding in his long, pale fingers.

"...It's the human soul -- well, fairly close to human, I suppose," Maedus continued, ignoring Aesus' plea. "This, in my hand, is the very essence of our existence. And with it, I know a power that rivals even the gods."

Maedus held it to the artificial light in the room, appraising it as a man would his finest acquisition. The material inside the vial reacted to the light immediately, beginning to glow white, sending inorganic waves of white light all around it.

Chalea screamed as a searing pain shot through her body. Being that a soul was meant to be confined in the depths of the human being, any contact with light sent it into a frenzy... and stabbed her with a sharp pain that darted around the empty hole within her, tearing at her flesh with resentful vengeance at being ripped from the womb of her consciousness. She leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. A bittersweet triumph; the pain was unbearable, but she now knew where it was that he had hidden it away.

<Do not speak...> she thought to no one in particular. <Words are useless in situations such as these...>

"Stop this, let me go!" Aesus barked slowly with a deepened voice. He clearly wasn't interested in his uncle's ramblings, but Maedus was enjoying himself to be frank.

The darkness in the room, looming shadows climbing from the corners, always seemed to engulf the man when he spoke this way. It was as if the evil permeating his every fiber, had began to saturate even his home. This room, the home of his darkest aspirations, could be said more a torture chamber than a laboratory... and his anger was deep, and his fury vengeful.

He would harvest a soul, and it would aid in his work, yes - but Maedus' true intent was aimed solely at his wife. For longer than he could remember, he was content to ignore her all together. But Aesus and all his dreadful similarity reminded him of what he could still never escape to this day.

Her flesh still haunted his dreams, and his jealousy was fueling a deep seeded loss and desire. Everything he had done so far was an extension of the work the book set him on - a dedicated, but dark directive down a self-destructive path. But in this moment it had changed, and the same mind-numbing shadow suddenly seemed to feed a sort of selfish drive in Maedus. Today would be a day he'd likely never forget, he was sure of it... and he was mad enough with anger not to care.

"Why are you doing this to me?" Aesus asked, still straining against his bindings weakly and half-heartedly.

"Timing, I'm afraid..." Maedus replied nonchalantly, replacing Chalea's distilled soul back in its protective container and back into the vault he kept it in. "Hers is a prize I revere, a testament of my first triumph. To use this essence for my continued progress is something I'm just not willing to do."

He paused distinctly, as if lost in a daydream, before responding in a wispy, lofty tone, "...she is precious to me; make no mistake about that. I was racking myself with an internal fury as to whether I stop what I'd started before it even began, or waste my only resource on foolhardy experiments, destroying her in the process. Then you came along, and with your mother so conveniently disposed, it was an opportunity too good to pass up."

Chalea listened to his babbling with a bitter expression on her face. What was he blathering about, that she was precious to him? Lies! The only thing he found precious is her obedience. Well, there was a slight irony in the fact that he didn't want her to die, seeing as he had threatened to kill her multiple times, and had never once hesitated in voicing his thoughts about her lack of usefulness in this world.

Maedus chuckled darkly to himself. "You see, it's been made apparent to me that though I can remove the soul from a body, I can never sever the bond they share. If I use the essence of Chalea's soul, she will die, which is something that even I cannot bear."

Maedus placed a small polished blue stone on Aesus' chest, positioning it properly before lowering an all-too-familiar module with a crystal to only a few inches away. He chuckled gleefully; he had used it with success the first time, and now it was finally time for its second trial. Chalea bit her tongue as she watched her master work, and immediately the small white scar in the center of her chest began to throb, as though someone were taking her breath and sucking it out through that small circular mark. She inhaled weakly, feeling as though she were suddenly being attacked by someone sitting on her chest, and crept into a corner as she heard the machine starting to work its hellish magic.

"Unfortunately for you," Maedus continued, fiddling with a dial in the corner, "... I really don't care if you live or die, so I will use your essence as I please."

With that, Maedus turned around and activated his machine with no delay.

Electricity jolted through the arm, gathering in the crystal at the end before a beam of white light bridged the small gap between the blue stone and the crystal. Aesus lurched up against his bindings immediately, letting out a blood-curdling and raspy scream as every fiber of his being felt as if it were boiling and melting into that searing point on his chest. The process only took minutes, but seemed an eternity from the agonizing and disturbing image of Aesus vocally enduring the pain. Maedus kept a watchful eye on Aesus but easily monitored Chalea as well, ready to act immediately should she seem to resistant to watching what she'd wrought.

The terrified woman shut her eyes and clasped her hands over her ears as he began to scream, and was unable to think of anything to do but to wait until it was all over. She knew better than anyone what he was feeling, and it was causing her the greatest pains sitting there and reliving it all over again. In the agony of the present, she could hear her own screams drawn out of his, and it took her a moment to realize that what she thought was only a memory was, in fact, reality - and that while she was crouching in the stone corner being eaten alive by the rabid shadows that infested this place, she was crying and begging for mercy on Aesus, on Maedus, and on herself.

This was her own fault, she knew, and so she deserved to listen, to watch as he was destroyed before her very eyes... and yet, she could not bring herself to do it, because something in her mind was telling her to be a coward, and she was listening.

Soon, the white light being drawn out of Aesus' chest oscillated in reverse, now flowing back into the machine. Maedus was busy making adjustments to his contraption, watching adamantly and excitedly as a coiled drip-line funneled Aesus' distilled soul one drop at a time into a readied vial identical to the one containing Chalea's. By now, Aesus had gone limp and silent, nearly unconscious as the worst was over for him; only minutes later, Maedus carefully lifted the readied vial out of its collector, sealing it immediately before hastily readying another protective cylinder for it.

The screaming stopped and Chalea forced her eyes open. Maedus was fumbling around near the machine, and Chalea dared not approach him for fear that he would take the vial and crush it, then and there, in his bare hands just to spite her. When he removed himself from the machine, something within her spurred her to act, and she bolted for where Aesus hung lifelessly from his only strand of willpower. Her hand reached out furiously, and she flung the cursed stone across the room, praying it would shatter into a thousand pieces. She didn't care what Maedus would do to her now; nothing could possibly be worse than this.

"Aesus..." she whispered, tears in her eyes as she gently brushed a strand of hair from his moistened forehead. "I'm so sorry... I wish I could have... I just..." Words failed her as she unhooked his restraints carefully, her eyes lingering on the bruises on his wrists and ankles, bruises that she herself had nursed in the earliest days after her transformation. From across the room, Maedus showed no contempt for any further level of affection she portrayed. To him, it didn't matter. What he'd done would seal any fate the two could share together.

"Stop your blathering," he ordered almost absent-mindedly, investigating his newest success. "Get him out of here and see that he's comfortable. You know what a toll it takes to have your very lifeforce ripped from your still-living body." Poisonous words, they were.

Chalea shook, partly with fear, but mostly with rage. A whisper entered her mind and she paused, attempting to block it out.

<Revenge, child...> it cooed, and Chalea resisted the temptation to give in. <Look at what that monster did... it's only fair that you do the same to him... look at the poor, innocent boy... he didn't deserve that, did he? No, of course not... go on, child... finish what you started...>

<No, leave me alone!!!> Chalea thought, and the strange voice fell silent. The girl knew it would return, but for now she had her peace.

Aesus moaned, still clinging to a resistance that was far too late to help him, and Maedus couldn't hide his grin. The pause that followed as he allowed Chalea to tend to Aesus, would only give his next words more power and dread.

"...I'll deal with you later," he said to her with a new malevolence he'd never seemed to possess before. He turned back to his workstation, moving to reopen his vault and place Aesus' essence with its sister vial.

She reached over to slide the limp body off of the examining table, but as Maedus hissed his warning at her, her hand, poised to lift Aesus arm over her own shoulder, froze in mid-air. Deal with her? Well... whatever he intended to do with her wouldn't matter as long as Aesus was safe and resting. His voice was somehow colder, and Chalea shivered as she stood, gently coaxing Aesus to move his body alongside hers.

It was everything Aesus could do to avoid going mad; he felt as though he were freezing, yet every fiber of his being still felt the hot sting of what Maedus had done. His emotions were reeling, yet felt so empty and hollow. Anger, agony, resentment - they still burned like wildfire as Aesus' mind replayed what he'd just experience over and over. The memory he could see with his waking eyes, and the images replayed over and over as he felt the sore sting of his bindings being peeled from his bruised and raw wrists and ankles, followed by soft quivering hands, pulling his body off the table... Aesus stood with a wobble, left with no alternative but the rely immensely on Chalea for support.

"I'm sorry..." He mumbled compassionately, as if it had been her thrust back into that machine. "...I'm sorry..."

He repeated the words almost incoherently, as tears began streaming down his cheek. He felt so vulnerable, as every emotion was running haywire and he had no control over himself. Chalea wasted no time in shushing him; begging him not to speak, as she continued painstakingly guiding the man out of the lab. Aesus went silent, and dried his tears; her soft voice, even filled with the anguish and pain, also carried a comfort - reminding him that he wasn't alone, that someone else had lived through this and had come out of it with strength and resolve.

"I hate you," Chalea whispered as they departed, not knowing if Maedus could hear. Not that it concerned her; she did not need him to hear, as it did not make her statement any less true.