Chapter 2 : From the Ashes

As consciousness returned, Damien felt an odd numbness where agony should be. Peeling open heavy lids, the sight that greeted him was even stranger - an austere chamber lit by flickering candlelight.

His wound had been dressed and bruises tended, though bonds kept him secured to the cold slab of rock beneath. Muffled voices drifted from beyond a sturdy oaken door.

In the latency, fragmented memories emerged. Moonlit waters claiming him, waking to find the lady's betrayal, and icy steel piercing flesh as dark secrets crawled into view.

Questions now burned within his troubled mind. Who were these enemies haunting the wood? What vile acts had Damien borne witness to in those fated glades? And what role would fate decree in this tangled web of lies and torment?

All seemed lost...until the door creaked open, and figures emerged from shadow bearing answers - and new threats to test his mettle and thirst for vengeance. The game had only just begun, and survival demanded that Damien now become a player more cunning than any adversary.

Through the door came two hooded servants bearing a tray of herbs and tinctures. One began examining Damien's wound while the other stood guard, athame gripped tight.

As poultices were applied creating fresh agony, Damien struggled against restraints, demanding to know where he was being held. But the servants remained as silent as the grave.

Once treatment finished, the larger guard leaned down, rasping "The Master will see you now." Damien was cut loose and dragged down twisting corridors, past locked cell doors holding ghastly screams.

At last a towering double door loomed, opened to reveal a pentagonal chamber within. Candles burned upon a sinister stone altar at its heart, surrounded by robed figures masked in ivory.

Damien steeled himself to face the fell Master. But the fiend upon the ebony throne surpassed all terror of mind.

Beneath brass talons glinting cold, was no man but a hellish mockery - where flesh should be, only matted fur and viscera remained. Eyes of burning brimstone peered into Damien's soul, and the monster smiled.

"I sense magic within you, little mage. You will serve me well." The beast's chilling rasp caused Damien's blood to turn to ice. "Bow and be my slave or die now in agony."

Rage and defiance swelled hot in Damien's breast then. After all endured, no man would claim him so. "Death before slavery, Beast!" he spat.

The monster howled in fury. Chains were clamped around Damien as he was dragged below, thrown into a cell of bones and screams. His torment had only just begun.

Though broken bodily, Damien's spirit remained unbound. In tortured darkness between torments, he meditated upon flows of time within - and without.

Progress came slowly, but our mage learned to quicken moments, clinging to secrets in snatched fragments of eternity. One night, as jailors goaded him before the Master, Damien chanced a weaving.

With flickering gestures, he sped the dust motes dancing in thin light. Then, focusing that inner rhythm outward, the very flow of moments warped for brief seconds. His captors' jeers turned to mud, unaware of the distortion.

From this, Damien grasped hope. If he could twist time more, opportunities may arise. But such workings drained him; he must gather strength and find the chance to strike. Patience, it seems, may prove another kind of power in this bleak place.

Weeks passed in torture's haze for our embattled hero. Yet through each fresh torment, Damien inwardly honed his ability to subtly distort local moments in time.

One night, as jeering guards dragged him upstairs, Damien clung to consciousness through will alone. With what little strength remained, he warped the seconds surrounding one guard's manacles just long enough for the rusted cuffs to release.

Seeing his chance, Damien then struck the fool hard, but lacked strength for more. Fleeing unseen became his only hope. Summoning his last reserves, Damien twisted flowing time to draw ahead unseen through shadowed corridors.

Emerging finally upon the parapets, escape still seemed beyond his broken form. But there, amid the night, a lone figure caught his fading gaze - an ally, perhaps, to aid his escape from this hellish place at long last.

Drawing upon wells of willpower untouched in his agony, Damien staggered toward the cloaked figure tending balefires in the dark. Behind, baying hounds and hoofbeats echoed ever closer.

His bleeding feet near gave out yet still our mage pressed on, pleading for mercy in a hoarse rasp. As the figure turned, Damien collapsed into waiting arms – and found not foe, but friend.

"Be at ease, brother, you are saved," spoke a calming female voice. With her aid, Damien was borne swiftly away, the cries of pursuers fading into the night.

In an abandoned folly they took shelter, where healing draughts and soft words saw our hero pull from the brink. Though broken, spirit yet burned in Damien – and in his rescuer's eyes, a kindred flame.