Lionhearts ||Skephalo||

25

A/N: This chapter, once again, contains themes of torture.

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Bad takes a deep breath, laying on his back, staring into the eyes once again. He asks softly, in a whisper feather-soft and too quiet for anyone to really hear,

"What do you want from this? What do you want from me? Why do you keep following me like this?"

The eyes blink, and Bad yawns. With Assu's promise that she would get him out one way or another, a dull sense of acceptance has fallen over the healer.

He stretches out a hand towards the roof, towards the eyes. There's no answer from them, of course.
He feels a weight on his chest, feels exhaustion setting in. His arm hurts so badly, but he can't do anything for it. His so-called magecraft wouldn't heal it yet, despite it having eaten away at the burns on his side until they vanished.

He closes his eyes for a few minutes, licking cracked and dry lips with a tongue that's almost as dry.

The door jitters and he jerks up, eyes open, distantly noticing that the eyes are closer, or, were.
The hissing, babbling, whispers of the dead begin to wrap him again, and he fights them off with a hiss of,

"No! You can't take me this time!"

He hopes it would be Assu's kindly face he was met with, but no such luck. One of the brutes peers in, and watches as Bad shudders back, pressing to the far wall.

"Yer still kicking, huh?" The brute grunts, and Bad draws his knees to his chest, paralyzed, staring at the brute with eyes so wide that they sting, biting his lip in fear to keep himself silent.

He wants to run farther away from the brute as it looms in the door, farther than he can even imagine. Where he'd run to is irrelevant; he just wants to flee.

"Ye can come here or ye can be dragged out by your arm, ye choose." Given that choice, enveloped by his terror, Bad feels a warmth down his thighs that he would rather not be feeling.

Did I...oh...I really just peed myself? That's...oh my goodness. That's humiliating.

His face burns with shame, eyes cast downward to avoid eye contact, but the brute beckons,

"Now or never."

He struggles to his feet, hating every second of this. His arm is burning with pain again. He wants to lay back down and feel humiliated and abused on his own, far away from the brute, but he knows his arm can't take being yanked on like it would be if he didn't come.
So he follows like a lamb to slaughter, the brute taking hold of his good wrist and dragging him along.

"Ye healed yer bloody burns again," he sighs, "so ye ain't broken yet. Disappointing, I'd say. But ye've still been doing the things ye need for that..."

Bad's blood runs cold as they enter another dark room, but this time he can see shackles dangling from the ceiling, a chain clearly attached to a winch. It takes him a few more scans of the room to get truly terrified though; the tables around contain everything from buckets, to strange glimmering bottles of liquid, to matches.

"Arms up," he's ordered, and when he struggles to do it himself, the brute yanks them up on his own, shackling them in and adjusting the chain length until Bad is forced to tiptoe up, his weight straining against the restraints.
He takes careful breaths, trying not to panic, or hyperventilate from the pain of his arm being forced into this position.

"We'll start with this," the brute remarks, calmly lifting a bottle of dark reddish liquid, tipping it to run over Bad's exposed skin.

He had expected something warm, or something chilly-
Not THIS.