Spirit Bound (Furry Story)

Chapter 3: Stories from the Shower

  The Marks pups had just been attacked by some Imps and a Succubus who seemed determined to steal their precious grimoire. After the attack Geoff and Faelen appeared in the house and attempted to comfort the pups and find out what had happened. Nathanial had refused to divulge any information even though it was obvious that Demons and magic were involve

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 Nicholas woke suddenly and screamed in pain; his eyes opened and saw blinding red light before he clenched them shut as tightly as he could. Just like the rest of his body, his eyes burned, but whether it was from the light or the acrid sulphuric fumes he smelled he couldn't tell. He forced himself to stop screaming from the burning, though he couldn't do anything about his sobbing cries.

He didn't know where he was, or how he got here. Where was Nats? Mike? Even...Faelen? Nats's new Wolf friend. He prayed for one of them -- foranyone -- to come and help him, but no one came.

His head felt full of cotton or like he'd been drugged, but he tried to concentrate, to focus on something other than the agony bleeding out of every pore of his body, taking stock of himself and everything he could sense.

First was the superheated sulphuric air making his nose and lungs burn as much as his skin; the stench was so strong it nearly covered up the reek of burning fur and flesh. 'Gods, that's horrible!' His stomach rebelled and tried its best to vomit, but instead he gagged; his belly cramped and nothing came up, as though he'd puked everything up already. His throat hurt, and his tongue hung out of his mouth, burned, dry, and cracked in the burning miasma. He must have been panting in the heat for a long time, trying futilely to keep cool.

Second came the searing pain in his wrists and ankles, and the fact that he was stretched as tightly as his body could stand; from the clanking of steel or iron as he writhed in agony, the way his feet dangled unsupported below him, and the way the red-hot metal dug into his flesh, he had to be shackled to the ceiling or something.

Third was the ache in his back from the jagged stone jutting into him. His muscles ached from the position he was in, like the rock had been jammed into him for days instead of...however long he'd been there.

Again, he opened his eyes, though the best he could manage was a squint. The blinding red light was just as strong as before, and he couldn't make out more than the thick crimson haze floating around him. Wherever he was, it obviously wasn't home. It wasn't even on Earth.

He tried harder to see what was around him, and...there! Between the gaps in the roiling red smoke, he saw...something. It looked like a jagged black hole, and...a chair? He put everything he had into focusing on what he saw, and his eyes began to adjust to the glaring light and noxious smoke. He was suspended in and over a chasm, the rough and craggy black walls running high above him and far below. Somewhere down there was the source of the overwhelming heat: lava, or some sort of liquid fire.

And he could barely see the chair -- no, the throne. He could sense that the frame of the macabre piece of furniture was constructed of bones, and it was upholstered with pelts and draped with claws and teeth and garlands of dried viscera. He could feel the pain within it, as though the unlucky Furs used to make it still felt the torment of their vivisected bodies even though they should be long dead. He would have shuddered in revulsion at it if he weren't already writhing in torture.

He could feel an awesome power in the throne, perhaps enough power to free him. Even if it was just enough to stop this pain, reduce the pain, it'd be worth any risk. Death would be preferable to this existence.

Part of his mind, the small, frail part that was still lucid, warned him about using unknown arcane devices, especially when he planned to draw on one so obviously evil in this horrible hellscape. That small part was drowned out by the screams of his nerves, and he desperately reached for the throne's power with his own pitiful magic.