Chapter XIX: Purgatory

Tymon found himself in a brightly lit room. The room's walls were padded and lined with manufactured rupture prisms that drained energy from the constant lights.

Strapped to an inclined metal operation table in the center of the room was a muscular old man with long gray hair and a short fuzzy beard.

Tymon recognized that the old man was himself.

His clothes were tattered, his skin was cut and scabbed, and he wore suppression cuffs around his wrists. Their glowing green LED light showed they were actively suppressing Tymon's energy.

Tymon's consciousness flowed into his previous self's body, where he began to experience the memory from his point of view.

The door to the room opened as Avarice and Verin walked in.

"Morning, Tymon," Avarice said as he overlooked data on his tablet. "Yesterday, you gave us some interesting results. Mind if we run some more tests today?"

Tymon struggled against the thick cindium bars that restrained him.

"Let me go! What more do you want from me?! Why are you doing this?" Tymon yelled in rebellion.

"You have something I want," Avarice replied calmly while still scrolling through data. "But, before I take it, I need to know what your body's capable of. What are your limits? How much can you withstand? That information is vital to my plans, you see."

Avarice looked Tymon in the eye.

"Won't you help a fellow Primordial achieve his dreams?"

"You're insane," Tymon replied angrily. "This is how you treat a fellow Primordial? Hide your presence, ambush them, then lock them in a creepy room for your experiments?!"

"Our experiments," Verin corrected.

"Would you have willingly subjected yourself to this," Avarice asked.

"Would you?" Tymon replied.

"No, but I have the power to prevent such a thing from happening," Avarice retorted condescendingly. "You, however...."

Suddenly the scalpel on the tray of cindium-made tools next to him was stabbed in Tymon's left hand.

Tymon gritted his teeth to keep from screaming.

Verin grabbed Tymon's face as she leaned in close and twisted the scalpel deeper through his hand.

"It's been nearly a week, and you still ignore me. It makes me feel neglected," she said, feigning insecurity.

Suddenly her expression changed. In her eyes, Tymon saw a sadistic hunger for pain and cruelty.

"So, from here on out, I'll handle your experiments personally. Seeing the spirit in your eyes fade as I break you will be so satisfying."

The two left momentarily after that before returning with more tools necessary to draw blood.

"From now on, we'll draw your blood every morning while it's clean," Avarice announced.

"Can't have it being contaminated, now can we," Verin said playfully.

After getting everything together, Verin gripped Tymon's arm tightly. She showed him the long razor-sharp needle attached to a tube she was about to stick into both arms. When she squeezed the end of the tube, the needle opened outward, revealing five needles that were closed together.

"This'll hurt even worse if you try to heal yourself," she told him. Her words were callous, but she smiled as if she hoped Tymon would try to.

While inside his veins, Tymon felt sharp pings of pain as the needles spread outward. The tips of the needles ejected with so much force that they painfully protruded from the surface of his skin.

Tymon watched in frustration as blood flowed from his body to the bags connected to the tubes.

After four bags were taken, he was left alone for a couple of hours before Verin returned with syringes.

"As you know by now, each of these is filled with a different substance to test your immunities," Verin stated as she squirted a little of one of the syringes on the floor.

"None of them we've tried on you so far have given any exciting reactions," Verin said disappointedly. "Luckily, I'm a patient girl. I'm sure there's something that'll be worth seeing."

Most of the substances tried had little to no effect on Tymon. Avarice wrote them down to be removed, while those with some effects were scheduled to be brought back in high concentration levels with new substances the next day.

The remainder of the day was filled with attempts to break through Tymon's skin using conventional means like guns and blades. Those tests stopped quickly as it became clear that nothing would work.

At the end of the day, Tymon's suppression cuffs would be removed, but the lights would remain on so the rupture prisms in the walls would stay activated. This allowed him enough energy to use meditational healing to heal his wounds.

The process would take most of the night, but by morning he was healed. This was his hellish life for months of being prodded and tortured.

At some point, Tymon grew numb to pain and no longer resisted their merciless trials.

One day, Avarice and Verin walked into the room. Verin carried a single syringe that had a golden-yellow aura around it.

"You've done a magnificent job! We only have one more test for you," Avarice stated. "That syringe is made from a platinum-chromium alloy. Inside is a controlled solution of polonium-210 and Fluor antimonic acid that's so potent, it took me to reinforce it with my spirit energy to keep it from dissolving."

"We're going to inject you with it," Verin said with a wicked grin. "Sadly, if this doesn't kill you, that means nothing apart from another Primordial can."

Tymon knew that injecting acid into his bloodstream would be severe even for him. But he also knew from experience how hopeless begging them would be.

He was past that anyway.

Tymon sat forward and silently stared at Avarice.

"Someday, I'm going to kill you," he said with a deadly conviction.

He turned his gaze to Verin.

"All of you," he threatened.

The door to the room opened, and a Japanese man in dark clothing leaned there.

"If you could, you wouldn't be in this state," he stated bluntly.

Verin laughed as she proceeded to inject Tymon.

Tymon immediately felt his body begin to burn as the acid coursed through his body. If it weren't for his durability, he would have already been a pile of goop.

His veins became visible under her skin as he felt the excruciating pain of them bursting.

Tymon howled in agony as large pustules formed on his face and arms, then burst as his blood spilled out of his pores.

The pain was unlike anything he'd ever felt and became too much for Tymon, consequentially causing him to pass out.

Tymon woke up later that night, still strapped to the table. Every breath he took sent a wave of stars-inducing pain through his body, but at least he was still alive.

He spent the remainder of the night healing himself.

The following day, Avarice, the Japanese guy, and a new guy entered the room.

The new guy was about six feet tall, wore dark and loose pants, combat boots, a white loose-fitting shirt with his chest and abs visible, an orange and green overcoat that hung over his shoulders, and dark shades over his eyes. His demeanor gave off a young and arrogant vibe.

"Damn, old man! You're a hard dude to kill–trust me, Verin and I gave an extra effort with that last one," the new guy said as he took more of Tymon's blood.

Tymon hadn't even noticed the needles.

"Father, now that we've completed testing, wouldn't it be best to kill him," said the Japanese guy.

"In due time," Avarice responded. "I thought he'd be dead by now, but I suppose I'll have to rip what I need from him while he's still alive."

After collecting Tymon's blood, the three left Tymon on his prison-style bed, promising to put him out of his misery tomorrow.

Fortunately, in a stroke of luck, a massive storm rolled in that night and caused a brownout in the area.

It only lasted a second before emergency generators kicked in, but one second was all Tymon needed to escape. In that second of complete darkness, the rupture prisms deactivated, and since he wasn't wearing the cuffs, Tymon felt all his power return to him.

The future Tymon within observed as he used an ability he referred to as Dark Shift to melt into the darkness and emerge from a shadow somewhere far away in the middle of nowhere.

When Tymon turned around, he saw he'd been held on an enormous site with the letter "T" engraved on the largest tower.

Tymon quickly flew away from the site, moving at Mach 11. However, before long, he felt something with tremendous force smash his back, sending him crashing into the ground. Before Tymon could move, Avarice landed next to him and placed a foot on his back, preventing him from getting up.

Even after transforming into a monstrous figure, Tymon's past self still couldn't budge Avarice.

Suddenly, Tymon felt his body become incredibly heavy to the point that he couldn't move his limbs.

Avarice removed his foot as he thanked someone too far behind Tymon to see. Someone had enough power to pin him to the ground even while he was in his hybrid form.

"I told you: you have something I need," Avarice reiterated as he bent down and placed his hand on Tymon's mark.

The last thing Tymon remembered was a flash of existential pain that could only be described as having his soul ripped from his body.

Then, there was nothing.