Heroes Never Die ✓

Chapter 23 Soul Siphoning

The stones were cold and hard. Skylar was slowly getting back to consciousness. The place she woke up in was dark, with only an eerie yellow luminescence dispersing the shadows. Her nose tickled from a heavy chemical smell mixed with the stench of dried blood. She tried to heave herself to a sitting position, but she couldn't feel her right arm. Wonderful.

She propped herself on her left hand and managed to sit up and take a better look around. She was sitting in a small prison cell, separated from the rest of the room by sturdy iron bars. The chamber itself looked like a cross between infirmary, alchemical workshop and torture chamber. In the middle of the room, a big wooden table stood with leather straps that could be used to keep the patients in place. Several tubes hung from it, ready to be plunged into the body and then led away to the back of the room to disappear into the wall.

Next to the table was a small cabinet with a tray of silver utensils that glimmered in the flickering light of the candles – knives, scalpels, bone saws. Further down the room, several more tables were laden with glass vials and alchemical apparatuses. Several of them were turned on, and colourful potions were brewing, filling the air with a sickening chemical scent. Skylar felt a chill spreading through her body.

There were more enclosures next to her tiny cage, all vacant except one. She crossed eyes with Gawyn, and he smiled.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice strangely quiet compared to the ever-present sounds of bubbling liquids.

"Getting there," she replied, stretching her neck and massaging her numb arm. "How about you?"

"Got both legs numbed when I woke up, but they are fine now." He shrugged and looked at the room. "So, Alarat was right. Can't believe they brought us here."

"Well, that's lucky for us. Now, all we need to do is wait for the start of this performance."

Before she finished the sentence, the heavy iron door squealed and opened, and a hunched robed man walked in. His head was bald and covered in black tattoos, and his yellow eyes seemed to gleam in the dim chamber. He hummed some cheerful melody under his nose.

He walked to their cages, limping slightly on his right side, and he smiled at them, showing creaked and rotten teeth.

"New subjects. How wonderful!" the sorcerer exclaimed. His voice was rough like a stone's surface. "Fresh as daisies! We don't get that here often anymore. That we don't!"

"So... you're the one that came up with the poison that is tormenting Lamyria, aren't you?" Skylar asked.

"Oh, you heard about me then?" the sorcerer asked, perking up. "Yes, that is my most priceless invention. It took a lot of hard work and sacrifices to perfect that formula. Yes, that it did!"

"Yet, here you are in this dumpster," Gawyn said. "I would have thought that the emperor would award his most successful servant with some better standards."

"You've got no idea what you're talking about, you rodent!" the man huffed indignantly. "This place is directly connected to the throne room, to the Emperor himself. You can't get any higher honour than that! Only me, Kadir the Illuminated, have a privilege to supervise the whole process of feeding the magic to the Emperor!"

"Isn't it tiring?" Skylar asked innocently. "Doing all that hard work just by yourself? Letting others help with your duties would surely give you some time to rest, no? You look awfully tired."

"Don't be ridiculous." He scoffed. "Siphoning the magic from human souls is very precise and dangerous work. I can't let those other fools here and risk doing something wrong! That would never, ever work!"