Ozymandias
Day after day, week after week.
It’d be an eternity of torture. One of slowly more aggressive acts that broke him down, not only physically but mentally as well; a cruel combination of outlandish behavior found only in the deepest hell’s of the underworld. Something few light hearted individuals could even conceive, let alone understand. Though, to The Slave it mattered little now; as the concept of time seemed to fade as each cut into his flesh was made.
It wasn’t the first time he was tortured, and likely not the last, but he couldn’t quite remember a time that was worse than this. They’d soaked him in bacta more times than he could count, and his body was now more riddled with scars than it ever had before; and it was hardly a clean canvas to begin with. Dull knives had been used to cut meat from his thighs, while electricity was forced through his body time and time again to understand nothing more than a simple question;
Where was the Darkforge?
Perhaps at the beginning, he enjoyed it. The aching echoes of pain kept him alive, while the drugs they pumped him with not only made thought impossible, but sleep unbearable. Existence was pain, and as the meat from his back was cut along his spine, he couldn’t help but to whimper ever so slightly in his weakened state. Blood pooled beneath him as the masked assailant gave low and pained breaths, each heavier than the last as he struggled to inhale through the thick filters of the respirator he wore. It was to protect him from the nerve gas that hung in the air, one that penetrated The Slave’s skin and made him more sick than he could imagine. If it weren’t for the already empty state of his stomach, he’d of gagged up what acid it had made in the last few hours before shuddering to a stand still.
It wasn’t a fair existence, this life The Slave knew. Since his childhood he had been nothing more than a target for the malevolent and psychopathic. From torture, to utilization as a tool, he was forever in a cycle of mistreatment that never seemed to let up; and as such it made a jaded and poorly adjusted individual. One that knew no name, no semblance of self worth, and took it out on the innocent and unaccounted for that spread across the galaxy.
Perhaps it was karma, what for his wanton murders and untold amounts of destruction. If nothing else, it was what he was famous for; the ever hungering malignancy that he was. A force of nature few got in the way of, and he was nothing more than an acolyte; a blade so dull that nearly all could consider themselves on his level of refinement. And yet, despite that, he was a weapon so forceful in nature, so disgusting in its creation, that even the most sharpened blades seemed to fall flat when given the chance.
He was unadulterated fear, sin, and evil inhibitions made manifest into a pale alabaster kid made of crimson stained silver and endless ambitions.
In a different world, he might have done the galaxy some good. With his dedication, his need to push forward, there would be few challenges the young man likely could not have faced; yet the universe deemed this reality too facile, too neutral for our would be anti-hero. No, it had for him a lifelong destiny of pain and suffering only the most hardened could face, and even then fewer would make through without an eventual long walk off a short bridge.
This was something even the captors he faced now noticed. It had been nearly a year of constant torture, fillets and stabbings that made him a mere shell of who he once was. Yet, each blade brought this no closer to the answer they sought; and only once did they get even the closest idea of where it was. A glimpse into the nebula it was contained in, but no sooner would it help them than it would confuse them. It wasn’t enough information to find the forge, and the leaders of group were becoming fatigued with the once thought to be sure fire lead to the unholy artifact that it was.
Instead, they moved past the stage of truth and led straight to breaking who he was. Although far from whole prior, even the most foolhardy can take only so much punishment before they simply give in. The heavy metal alloy of the mask locked to his face reverberated each cry, each murmur of pain back towards him two fold; forcing him to face the weakness they brought out of him. With chains on his wrist, he was unable to move, let alone even attempt an escape; all the while a small container of Voidstone was kept nearby to keep him in the dark of the metaphysical.
It made him sick, being disconnected from the force. Far sicker than the nerve gas and torture could ever hope to cause, and it was perhaps in this that he lost himself. It seemed the longer he was kept from the Force, the worse he got, and with each rotational prison cell he was kept in he would lose just a tad bit more sanity, a touch more of his being. Who he was faded with each passing hour, and his body seemed to understand this as well as he did.
Everyday it threatened to fail from cardiac arrest or complete organ failure, yet the finely paid doctors of the syndicate seemed hell bent on forcing him to live through each grueling second of his punishment. They were skilled in this, keeping him alive and halfway focused through the sentence he served, but it wouldn’t stop him from being as dissociated as he was. His mumbling and rants were nonsense, each a random string of words of various languages and unknown tongues that seemed to hold no intrinsic value, let alone any coherent thought.
But to him they did.
Each was a call for help. From [member="Joza Perl"], [member="Irajah Ven"], even [member="Cerbera"] and [member="Darth Imperia"]. Not to pull him down from the clutches of pain, but to kill him. End the suffering, let him finally sleep from the nearly infinite struggle that had become his life. He couldn’t take the fight for dominance over his existence any longer, and pleaded into the darkness for the sweet release of his being. All the words he spoke were for death, and yet death never came.
Another cruel joke The Universe chose to play on the boy, it would seem.
A shift change later, and a fresh torturer had come in to dish out the next wave of agony he was to face. With the first cut, his voice fell silent. With the second, the first tear in years fell down his cheek, wetting his skin in a salty layer of repressed existence. With the third, his dry-skinned lips cracked and bled as another cry for help was made through semi clenched teeth.
He had given up on help long ago, but the prayers he made to the void seemed to be the only thing grounding him anymore.
