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Chapter 104: Lock
🕑 Added 2024-07-31 20:03:54 +0000 UTCWorld: MSS - Loading...
***
Once, when I was fifteen I went to the emergency room.
I had never been in one before. I was used to private doctors, the shiny white floors and clean rooms –all reserved for me. My parents never spared any expenses for me. Never. So when I was wheeled into an emergency room, naturally I was shocked.
First it was the smell. Hospitals have this distinctive smell of disinfectant and old paint. Underlying those artificial man made smells was something much more real, much more primal. Smell of the sick and dying. And your body's naturally repulsed by it. As much as we pretend we are not, we have a lot of hardwiring leftover inside our brains that makes us little better than animals. I remember being frightened about what was happening to me but mostly, being treated like one of them.
Nurses had commandeered beds from whoever knows where and they littered the hallways. Angry family members screamed, more from helplessness than rage. I think they all knew they shouldn’t be mad at the nurses and doctors. And they weren’t. They were angry with themselves, at the situation but it’s always easier to blame someone else than yourself. Even if it is the sick person in question whom you are worried for.
The sight of an emergency room was something I’d never been exposed to before as a trust fund baby of millionaire parents. I’d seen TV shows but they never prepared me for the real thing. The elderly sat and in their eyes you could see one of two things –fear or resignation. Father Death was coming and people reacted to it in different ways. Then there were the homeless people. Smells of sewage and rotten garbage, trying to find someplace warm to spend the night. They had a different look about them, hopelessness.
This raw view of my society, of which I belonged to but at a different class structure, changed me. If I was nonchalant on the drive over, seeing these people planted a seed, growing into a pit of despair that pulled the bottom of my stomach from under me. There was this empty, hollow fear that made me realize I’m not immortal, I’m not special. That I could die and I have been extremely lucky so far. No one lives forever and when Father Time comes to collect his dues, to hand off our carcasses to Father Death, no one is exempt.
No one.
They ran blood tests. Pricks. Needle stabs. Nothing like what I had to go through until now.
Then they wanted to insert a foley catheter in me.
It was this long tube with a urine bag attached to it. Calmly, they explained that they would have to insert the foley catheter up my urethra up to my bladder, to measure how much urine I was producing. They made it sound a lot more complicated than that and I think it’s because they wanted to confuse me, get me to say yes without making too much fuss. You have to understand, I was fifteen at the time and scared out of my life. The crowd, the constant yelling and talking and everything that I’ve talked about until now had set me on full on panic mode. I rejected anything strange and refused to trust anyone.
So I said no.
But they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me until they inserted the Foley Catheter.
So they waited. One hour. Two hour. Five hours.
I didn’t have a room yet, so I was just sitting on a wheelchair outside in the hallway. Apparently you’re not allowed to walk yourself in case you sue. And since they didn’t have enough space… I was waiting on a wheelchair in full view of everyone. Not like anyone cared though, I wasn’t the only one. Finally, a male nurse came to see me. To change my IV drip.
He knelt down to change the IV. I turned my head away as he took the needle out and pressed the bandage to it, before switching over to my arm.
“You should do the foley catheter man.” He said.
“I’m, uh, thinking about it.”
He shook his head. “No one wants to do a foley catheter. But we have to figure out what’s wrong with you. I’m going to give it to you straight, it’s gonna hurt but only for a moment. Pain is just a memory, young man.”
That kind of struck a chord in me. He was right in a way, that pain is just a memory.
Just like how everything else around me would be a memory once they found out what was wrong with me and I was wheeled home. Just like how living in a penthouse suit in a NYC apartment was nothing but a memory. Like how these dying people would be nothing but memories to their loved ones. I don’t think he meant it to be quite deep, but it changed how I looked at my situation –because those words brought together everything I had been feeling.
Nothing is permanent. We ourselves are just memories in this transient world. That my life, my insignificant life, wasn’t anything special. People do foley catheters all the time and I wasn’t any more special for having done it. I would become just one of the many nameless faces who could nod and say ‘Yeah, I have.’ when someone asks ‘Have you gotten a foley catheter before?’. So thanks to that nurse, I said yes and he assured me, he’ll make it quick.
He brought in a young nursing student to do the foley catheter on me. It was her first time. But that wasn’t the worst thing.
She was pretty.
Pretty much a teenage guy’s worst nightmare.
But yeah. I think what I want to share is that, that moment was very impactful to me. I laugh about it sometimes. ‘Pain is a memory’ and I’d often say it, when I went through High School. College. First Job. First Girlfriend. First Breakup. Whenever something difficult happened to me, I told myself: Pain is a Memory. And I took faith in that saying like a little lucky charm, trusting that it’ll pass.
So I tried, I tried really hard to stay tough when Coum tortured me.
I cannot put words to the things he did to me.
He… he did things to me.
And Coum taught me how weak and pathetic that saying really was. The elven mage taught me that pain is not just a fucking memory. Pain is everything. Pain lives inside of us all. Pain is hurt and hate and loathing and depression and burning sensation that envelops us all. Pain could reduce a millionare to nothing more than a whimpering, wet-bloodied fucking animal. Pain could elevate a hardened man into someone screaming in confession, that he’ll do anything to be released.
Coum let me know the power of Pain and when he was in the room, nothing mattered but what he was about to do next. He used pain to blot out Arrosh, Skaris, Kyrian, Aurora and Stole. He used it to make me forget that I was in MSS, that I was Lock Slaveborn, not Han. He made me forget all the Cores I had collected. He reduced me to this bag of flesh whose basic instinct was to whimper and try to edge away from him when he came near.
Then it ended when he healed me.
My god…. There’s no words to describe how that felt. To be brought to the brink of death and then healed by the same person who was about to kill you. It’s like becoming light. It’s like… like an ice cold drink of water on a hot day, intensified a hundred fold so that the crispness lingers in the back of your throat. It’s like sex but better.
He did that so many times.
I broke.
I fucking broke.
And I wanted to die.
When he was done, he said this.
“Now, we will move onto your hands.”
My God.
I begged him to kill me.
I begged.
God, I’d never begged before.
***
The crackling of the fire awoke me.
My body reacted with immediate adrenaline and screamed for me to run –to try and get as far as I could. There was a shout and then I whimpered like a rodent, scurrying to the side to try and look for somewhere to hide.
His voice stopped me cold.
“Hold, child.”
It wasn’t Coum’s voice. Coum’s voice was a raspy, rattling little thing like a rattlesnake poised to strike. A light thin needled sound that grated on the back of my mind like nails on a chalkboard and just evil. Coum wasn’t evil in the sense that he was a torturer, he was one of those evil guys that was all practicality and efficiency. If Coum wanted to slit my throat, he wouldn’t engage in banter or last minute gloating. He was the type who was fine slitting my windpipe with a knife himself or killing me from a distance with a Fireball.
But this voice…
This voice was authority. It was power and there was hardened strength beneath it. Some part of me that was buried longer beneath the layers and layers of pain induced haziness told me that this man was a warrior. His voice was deep and held steady like a swordsman holding his sword in the basic stance.
Then like a scared puppy in a new place for the first time, I studied my surroundings to see where I was. To see if I was safe.
I was in a clearing in the middle of the woods. Tall pine trees surrounded me in every direction and when I looked, they were so densely packed that I realized there was no way out. When I turned my head to look for a path, they shifted so that the direction of my gaze was filled with strong trunks. I put my hand on the ground and soft soil crumbled in my hands. My fingers came away from the ground, splattered with dark –almost black soil.
It was night because the orange glow from the campfire was the only thing illuminating this place. I turned to see who it was that I was trapped here with.
There was a man sitting on a log, staring at me.
But he wasn’t human.
His face was made out of granite, harsh lines and a solidity that didn’t exist in normal flesh. Two fangs jutted out from the bottom of his lips, pressed into the chin but failing to pierce the stony skin. The grayish complexion continued until his neck where his skin suddenly shifted to black and brown. His arms were laden with thick, ropy muscle. One made of labor and training, but they were pale white with violet lines of tattoos running over them. He was bald and in the process of looking at his face, I met his eyes.
It was like looking at a being from times gone. Like how I look at the picture of a mammoth and decide that it's an earlier ancestor of elephants; when I looked at him I was reminded of what orcs were and should be. He oozed physical power and warlike presence, but tempered by years of wisdom and patience; a raging storm tempered by time and a tall peak mountain, eroded by the years.
Two molten orange orbs like miniature suns, giving off languid waves of orange-red heat that leaked out of his eye sockets and faded away from his face. Like a big lava lamp.
“Sit.” He gestured to the log across from him.
I didn’t even have time to think. I shied away from him, curling up into this fetal position.
He sighed and looked at the sky. “I cannot heal him. His mind is broken.”
There was a flash of thunder and lightning overhead.
The orc sighed once more, staring at the fire.
Then he waited.
I don’t know how long he waited. But eventually, eventually, I half-crawled near the fire. But I didn’t sit on the log. I made sure it was between us, like a shield. Then I reached out my hands over the wood and felt the warmth of the campfire with my palms.
Like I said, no matter how much we pretend we’re not, we’re hardwired to be animals. There was safety in this fire. Warmth. Nostalgia. And as strange as he was, he gave me a sense of companionship. Atleast, someone who wasn’t an immediate source of pain at the time. Long ago, when mankind was still fearful of things that go bump in the night, we took solace in these things.
So returning to my baser instincts, I did the same.
Still, the man waited.
“I know who you are.” I blurted, after a time.
A faint smile graced his lips and a little bit of the fear disappeared from my heart. “Who am I, child?”
“Khan.” I swallowed, nervous. “Orcish god.”
His eyes shone. More so than they had been. “Yes, I am.” He said very quietly.
My mind started to turn. The rusty gears starting to move once more. The logical part of my mind was moving and pushing back against the animalistic side that was only concerned about survival. There was… there was something here. Like a treat? If I got it correct, I’d be rewarded. Yes. Something good.
“This isn’t real. It’s my mind. Or a dream. Something.” The words spilled out of me.
“Also true.” His voice was gentle, mirth entered the fringes of his tone.
There was pure joy in making someone laugh, of being funny and entertaining. I was never that sort and it happened so rarely, that I didn’t take it for granted.
I think I smiled.
He smiled back and it should have been horrifying.
But it reassured me.
“There is hope for you yet.” He rumbled. Then he reached into his pack and brought out some fried fruits and meat.
He reached out with his hand.
And my god, panic flooded my fish brain and I scrambled backwards until I was pressed up against the trees. Eyes wide and breathing heavily, my fingernails scratched against the bark and bled, trying to get away from him.
Khan didn’t say anything. He looked at his calloused hand at the food. He snorted and walked over to the log I had been at and placed the food there. Then he returned to his seat and sat back down, staring at the fire again, his movements soft and graceful. It marveled me that someone so big could be so still, frozen in time, reminding me of a glacier that exuded danger and beauty.
After a time, I crawled over to the log, hiding behind it. Then I took the food he left and took a nibble.
It didn’t take long for me to finish the whole thing.
I wanted more, but I was too scared to ask. So I waited behind the log, staring at the fire with him and watching out for any more sudden movements.
“You are hurt.” He said after a long time.
Something stirred in me.
“Yes.” My voice was wet with…
With sadness.
“You gave them something of yours.”
I closed my eyes as the fire became blurry. “Yes.”
“Not something they took. You gave them. So that they’d stop hurting you.”
I had.
“You gave them something that made you human. You gave them… your pride and dignity. What separates us from animals.”
I took my hands back from the fire.
More emotions, long forgotten, returned to me.
Shame. Disgust. Revulsion.
“You begged to be killed, didn’t you?” He said softly.
Then deep, deep sorrow and humiliation.
I started crying.
He let me.
I didn’t cry quietly, sobbing into my chest. I wailed and yelled out incoherent thoughts, unable to express exactly why I was crying. Memories of Coum returned to me and I screamed in fear while hot tears streaked across my face. I punched the log a few times and at my chest, grabbing where my heart was and trying to tear it out with my bare hands. Long red scratch marks were left there.
I just kept crying and crying and crying.
“You broke your vow. Even though you never said it, you vowed to be a protector. Protector of your friends. Of your master. Of the remnants of the orcish people whom you brought out of the desert.”
Absently, I noted there was distant thunder rumbling overhead.
“Patience, Oung.” Khan snapped, annoyed. “The child has given up what makes him a warrior, a protector. He has given up what makes him, him. It will take time for him to be back to what he was.”
A crack of thunder and lightning brightened the sky.
“Before he is yours, he is a warrior and I am the god of warriors. He is my charge.” He snarled.
Then he said, “I will protect him from you, the same way he protected my people, if I must.”
I don’t know when he walked over, but he sat on the log where I was crouching behind. There was a thumb and I realized he put a humongous axe –about three times as tall as he was– on the ground next to him. Then I saw him cross his arms.
“Cry, warrior.” Khan said, his voice laden with barely contained anger. “You have protected my people, saved them from certain doom. Cry. And I will stand watch over you. You have done right by my people, fulfilled my duty in my stead. Cry, protector of the orcs. Cry, you who is called the [Slave King]. Cry, legacy of the [Sword Saint]. Cry as much as you need.”
“I will stand watch, until you can pick up your sword once more.”
So I did.
And for the first time in a long while.
For the first time since I was tortured by Coum.
For the first time since I was in the Twilight Maze.
For the first time since I was in the burning city of Samak.
For the first time since I was pushed into the tunnels as a Slave.
I felt safe.
So I cried.
***
Comments
Dane Dunlop
What an awesome chapter
Eli Gray
Beautifully done. I teared up a bit reading this chapter.
kaijinterror
BEAUTIFUL chapter. This is a great depiction of why out emotions shouldnt be bottled up
Jahtdiel Ahian
Cry warrior🫡
