Chapter Text
They grabbed Chilchuck because he was alone. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It didn’t matter that he’d been a part of the hero’s party that saved the world, or that he led the half-foots guild, or that he was good friends with the king. None of that mattered, because all they saw was a half-foot alone, ripe for taking.
Chilchuck was walking home from the castle. It wasn’t the shortest walk, but Chilchuck found it pleasant to stretch his legs after a day at a desk or behind a counter. Laios had offered a carriage back to his home but he declined, citing the walk was good for his health. He was in a good mood, lightly buzzed from a drink he shared with Namari. He didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings. He hadn’t had to in a while. Laios’ rule had brought about a much safer kingdom than it was.
But even in peace there would always be people.
One moment he’s admiring the view, the next a hand is clamped on his face covering both his mouth and nose. Chilchuck screams. Or tries to. This was his mistake. When he breathed in he inhaled some sort of bitter powder that went straight to his head and made him woozy. He barely registers the feeling of ropes going around his wrists and ankles and then he is gone.
The only trace left behind is the disturbance of grass and dirt.
-
Chilchuck wakes up chained to a stone wall. Historically, not a good thing. He tugs lightly at the manacles around his ankles. Not that he had any of his lockpicking tools on him. He hadn’t thought he’d need to bring them with him anymore. Chilchuck cursed his naivety. Cursed his stupid hopefulness that he could live a peaceful life like everyone else. Half-foots never did.
“He’s awake,” someone says. Chilchuck sits up ramrod straight. The door opens, light spilling in.
An elderly tall-man enters, accompanied by a burly dwarf. Outside the door, Chilchuck can hear another person. Maybe another dwarf?
“Who are you? What do you want?” Chilchuck asks.
“Move the subject onto the table please,” the tall-man says. The subject? Chilchuck thinks, in rising horror.
The dwarf steps forward. There’s an axe on his belt. Maybe if Chilchuck could reach it—
Before he can even finish the thought the dwarf whacks him on the head, hard enough to send him sprawling to the ground. His head rings. The tall-man says nothing as the dwarf lifts Chilchuck (the manacles, did they take them off?) and slams him down on a table.
“What are you—” Chilchuck sputters as the dwarf shoves some sort of leather bit between his teeth mid-sentence and ties it around his head. Chilchuck forces himself to steady his breath. In. the dwarf ties leather straps around his chest and legs, pinning him to the table. Out. The dwarf steps away and the tall-man steps forward.
“Lovely,” he says. He pushes up the glasses on his face. “Half-foots have strong senses. Hold his head.”
A hand clamps down on his cheek, forcing his head to lie flat against the table. Breathe, Chilchuck thinks. Out of the corner of his eyes, Chilchuck spots a knife metal approaching his face.
He thrashes as much as he can. Which is to say, not very much. Helplessness and cold fear worms down his back. No. No. Chilchuck muffles garbled pleas. His protesting goes ignored. The knife digs into the flesh by his ear.
Chilchuck screams.
The tall-man continues to cut. At some point blood squirts onto his face and begins to drip into his eye. He writhes as much as he can. It hurts so bad. Chilchuck thought he knew pain. But this? This is different.
There’s a squelch and Chilchuck can feel as the remains of his outer ear is tugged away. The entire left side of his face burns. He sobs as a rough cloth is pressed against the bloody mess that remains of his left ear, scraping and tugging at the broken mess of flesh.
The sound of metal on stone. Something probing inside his ear canal, first cautiously, then deeper and deeper and—
The world goes white.
-
Chilchuck wakes up still on the table. He can feel where the blood dried on his face. His ear is gone, he thinks hollowly. They cut off his fucking ear. And then stuck something inside. He would try to examine the damage but he’s still strapped down.
Chilchuck can’t hear them. It might mean they’re nearby. Or that he’s partially deaf now. Chilchuck isn’t sure which one is better.
“The subject is awake,” a gruff voice says. The male dwarf. Chilchuck groans as the two enter, this time followed by the third person he heard earlier, a female dwarf.
“Bring him along.” the tall-man snaps his fingers. The two dwarfs unstrap him from the table. Chilchuck is so dazed that before he realizes he’s freed he’s already hoisted into their grips, one dwarf per arm. He struggles. Of course he does. But there’s not much to say about Chilchuck’s non-existent muscle mass.
They drag him out of the cell and down a hallway. Chilchuck realizes that this must be a dungeon. How far down are they? He tries to take note of their surroundings, not noticing when the tall-man brings them to an abrupt stop. Chilchuck is only saved from crashing onto his face by the dwarves’ grip on his arms yanking him back.
“Tie him here,” the tall-man says. Chilchuck strains his singular remaining ear to try and get a better map of the surrounding area. His arms are pulled back so hard he thinks one almost gets dislocated. The dwarves are none too gentle as they tie his wrists and ankles, then loop those ropes through a protruding root on the wall. Chilchuck is left strung up against the wall like a piece of meat.
The tall-man and the dwarves stand several paces back. Chilchuck squirms. Those dwarves are probably paid mercenaries. But they’re all still sick fucks. Chilchuck wonders what that tall-man gets out of this.
A low growl emits from the left. Closer than Chilchuck would like. He redoubles his efforts. Not that even if he got free, he would be able to fight his way through two dwarves and a tall-man. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to lie down and accept his fate to be eaten by a monster. The ropes burn his wrists as he thrashes. Blood is still stuck to the side of his face.
The monster bursts forth. Chilchuck barely gets a good look at it before it’s upon him (some sort of wolf, Laios would definitely know the exact name).
Its teeth sink into his torso. Chilchuck howls. It tears and bites and gouges out large chunks of flesh with every mouthful. Blood starts to sputter up his throat and he’s choking, dying, and the tall-man and dwarves are just standing there watching. Chilchuck thinks he hears the faintest scritch of a pen against paper and then he, mercifully, dies.
-
Chilchuck wakes up. At least his ear is back. So this is a dungeon. The fact that he’s still alive proves it, as they were able to resurrect him. He pats himself down. His shirt is gone, no doubt ripped to shreds by the monster, but he still has his pants.
His stomach growls. Gods he’s hungry. At least he can hear properly again. At least he’s alive. He needs to get out of here. His daughters must be worried.
Laios, he thinks painfully. Marcille. Senshi. Izutsumi. They’ll be looking for him. He clutches onto that hope as the dwarves force him back onto that table. Even as the knife descends into his eye socket and pushes.
He screeches and flails as if the puny resistance he can offer means anything to them.
-
He thinks he dies. Again. Chilchuck’s not exactly sure though. After they gouged out his first eye they went for the other. Then everything sort of got blurry. Down one sense, Chilchuck’s world was basically reduced to the feeling of the table beneath him and excruciating pain.
By the time he wakes back up, he has his sight back and is chained to the wall again. The manacles dig into his ankles uncomfortably. Chilchuck scratches at the area idly.
The male dwarf barges in not a moment later.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks. The dwarf acts as if he didn’t even speak. Instead, he grabs Chilchuck by the hair and shoves a flask between his lips when he yelps.
A foul-tasting liquid pours down his throat. Chilchuck gags. It’s bitter. His stomach roils, but the dwarf doesn’t relent. He forces Chilchuck to drink until the flask is empty. Finally, he releases Chilchuck. Chilchuck coughs, sputtering out spit and a few bits of the concoction, falling to his knees.
-
The male dwarf forces that foul liquid down his throat every now and then. It makes him gag and recoil, but he thinks that’s where he’s getting his nutrients from. At least enough to keep him alive so that they can kill and resurrect him again.
They never speak to him. Always about him. But never to him. He is laid flat, strapped down by the strength of leather and forced in place by the dwarves. He is dragged down hallways into the mouths and bellies of various monsters. He recognizes some. Hell, he’s eaten some of them. He can now unfortunately say he knows explicitly what a basilisk’s bite feels like. His limbs are cleaved from his torso by blades. His hands are slathered in a foul-smelling salve and held underwater until they are bitten off by some sort of water creature. He is torn apart over and over again until the pain blurs together and he is not sure where the border between the time he is dead and alive is anymore.
-
They cook his flesh once. It smells so, so good. Only because Chilchuck is starving, absolutely ravenous, from revivals and healings and being generally fed nothing, that the scent of his own seared flesh makes his mouth water on instinct. The man notices. “It smells good, doesn’t it?” he says. “Say ‘ah’.”
Chilchuck vomits it up later. Heaves and gags on the taste of his own meat. They don’t clean it up. It sits, shamefully, rotting in the corner of his cell until the dungeon cleaners come and remove it for them.
The male dwarf comes into his cell one night. Or day. Chilchuck doesn’t know anymore. “He said we could use you as we saw fit,” he says. Chilchuck doesn’t realize he is actually talking to him until the dwarf unbuckles his pants.
Chilchuck cries, afterwards. He may have screamed himself hoarse. Thrashed and cried out from pain until his eyes watered. But he didn’t cry. Be strong, he had told himself. Surely someone would find him. Laios and the others. His daughters. They’ll be looking for him. Or at some point they’d get tired of stripping his flesh down to the bone.
Chilchuck isn’t so sure of the answer anymore. He’s not sure he’s getting out of here.
-
They tie him and leave him in the path of a dragon. Chilchuck lets himself cry this time. He begs them to let him go. Please, do it to someone else. he thinks selfishly. Please. No more.
They record how long it takes for the dragon’s weight to crush him.
Eventually his pants disappear. Chilchuck forgets when. Things blur together. One moment he is being sawed in half the next he’s back in his cell, albeit missing a limb. He doesn’t notice the thin layer of grime, dirt, and blood accumulating on his skin. Nor the way his ribs start to protrude much more than they used to.
He hasn’t stood without the aid of another in a long time. He thinks even if they undid his chains now and let him go, he would be too weak to find the exit to the dungeon. He curls his legs up against his chest as close as he could. As if he made himself small enough he could vanish into the dungeon walls and be forgotten.
He thinks he’d rather experience a true, lasting death than this hell again.
-
He misses things he does not even remember anymore. Smells he cannot name. The color yellow. The sound of pots banging. Where did he know these things from?
He forgets. Vowels and sounds float around in his head. Perhaps the start of thoughts he should be finishing, or names he needed to remember.
Names. Right. He had one. Didn’t he? It’s been so long since anyone referred to him as something other than “the subject” or “the half-foot”. At some point he must’ve had a name. Or was he just always this; a ball of pain and agony so tightly wound he doesn’t think it’s possible to he was anything else.
The door creaks open. He tenses. The figure approaches. He howls and yells and screams because it is all he knows how to do. At some point, he has even forgotten why he is resisting in the first place. Why cry and yell when the pain comes anyway? Why do any of it when the pain never leaves?
Pain is his only companion as he sleeps. Something did not heal right, in between when they carved his stomach open and removed his organs one by one. He thinks he is dying. Truly this time. He does not much have the strength or will anymore to fight when they come for him again. And again. When will it end?
A hand on his face. “Hey,” someone says. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t react. There’s no point in it, after all. The pain is a welcome friend when it begins. This, at least, is familiar. This, he knows so intimately he knows it better than himself.
-
There is blood underneath him.
He slowly moves his hands around, checking each limb. One, two, three, four. No, they’re all there. Then fingers then? He spreads out his hands. Toes?
Befuddled, he begins searching his body for cuts or scrapes. His nose was there. So were his ears. His eyes, obviously, because he could see, although not much because of how dark it was in the room.
In the end, he doesn’t figure out where it’s stemming from and contents himself with sitting in the slick pool of his own lifeblood. At least he’s not on the table.
-
Time passes. He’s never been alone for so long. At least, not for a long time. Did they forget about him? That might be for the best. Then he could just curl up in the corner here, and slowly disappear. Then the pain would stop.
He folds his knees to his chest. He misses… Faces come into his mind, but they’re blurry. He thinks of braids. And of being able to move his fingers so finely and deftly. Was he really able to do all that?
He stares at his hands now. Knobby and thin from malnutrition. Flexing them makes his joints ache, so he stops. They feel more like deadweights than hands.
-
Noises outside his room wake him. Ah. They must have returned then. He closes his eyes slowly and waits for them.
The door opens. Somehow the silhouette of the tall-man seems different than it used to be. He must be forgetting again. It has been a while since he had seen him.
The man approaches him slowly. His footsteps are heavy. Dully, he wonders why he’s taking so long. Waiting is the worst part.
He must have zoned out though because he opens his eyes and the man is right there, before him, placing an arm on his shoulder. He flinches and waits for a pain that does not come. He stares, uncomprehending. What else, what more do they want from him? He does not know. He does not remember. He does not think he has anything else to offer, besides this broken body of his.
Though if he thinks, thinks enough that his skull feels like it is splitting in two (and he knows, he knows what that feels like) he can remember the warmth of a fire. A taste so distant he can only recall the vague feeling. Something other than the cool stone beneath him and the iron biting into his ankles.
They are lifting him now. Moving. Somewhere. Not the table? He glances, but doesn’t try to bother to lift his head to look. He sees… Stone. And something shiny beside his head. Metal? The world is blurry. The door opens. Outside? He hasn’t left in ages. They stopped taking him out. At least the table was predictable. Maybe they found new monsters.
It’s bright. Too bright. He closes his eyes. There are more people than he remembers. He counts their presence. One, two, three. That he knows. But four and five? Has he forgotten again? There are so many voices. So many footsteps. They are all talking. One of them gets louder, and then they all fall quiet. He sighs in relief.
They walk. Metal man carries him. Maybe the tall-man hired some new people. The dwarf was still here. But what happened to the other one? He hears an elf, and another tall-man, and another presence he can’t quite place. Eventually the light stops burning his eyes and he dares to take a peek.
Blurry figures come into view. He counts the colors. Blue and yellow. Pale yellow. Black. Black and white. And metal man, the one holding him. The metal is cool underneath his cheek, but somehow not as cold as the stone of his room is.
They continue to walk. The new monsters must be far. He’s still so, so tired. It should be alright if he sleeps now. They’ve never said anything about sleeping en route.
He can’t stop his eyes from drooping closed, lulled to sleep by the steady gait of the metal man carrying him.