Skaarin pulled the door open slowly, allowing the rusty hinges to squeal reluctantly. Surely the sound would unnerve the waiting Lucrys. He popped a tablet into his mouth and bit into it. His eyes adjusted to the darkness immediately. He could see the familiar metal hunk that he’d strapped Lucrys to. Lucrys stood, shaking and fidgeting. No doubt he was out of his mind at the moment. The room was cold and reeked of death from the corpses piled beneath a stone slab toward the back. Bloodstains spattered the walls and the rusted adornments throughout the room.

     “Sorry I didn’t clean it before letting you in, Lucrys,” Skaarin said, patting Lucrys’ shoulder. “I just got a little too excited and thought I’d drag you in before you’d be able to argue or scream.” He looked at Lucrys’ face. At his distant eyes that darted around. “It doesn’t seem like you mind, anyway.”

     Skaarin walked to a metal table and started shuffling through crude tools. He played with them for a moment and picked up a brown, rusted knife. He ran his finger across it and sent it into his forearm. He ran it along his arm, shuddering at the reverberation and sting as his blood spread along the knife and dripped onto the table.

     “Well,” he slammed the knife onto the table. “Let’s stop wasting so much time.” Skaarin grabbed a large pair of pliers and went back to Lucrys. “Let’s start at the hands.” He pushed the blades over one of Lucrys’ fingers slowly. “Ready?” He asked.

     Lucrys didn’t move. He was definitely out of it. But he’d come back soon enough. With enough feeling, he’d notice the world beyond his own mind. Skaarin forced the ends shut, squeezing tighter when they slowed and stopped at the bone. He clutched harder until the felt the crack of Lucrys’ bone beneath the rusted blades.

     Lucrys’ flesh ripped apart raggedly as Skaarin pulled off two more fingers, scraping flesh away from bone before returning to cut the bone apart. Blood fell from the wounds slowly, as though Lucrys’ body hadn’t even noticed the missing digits. Skaarin turned Lucrys’ hand over and noticed his arm.

     “Well no shit I’m bored,” he mumbled. He ran his hand along Lucrys’ skin and the jagged scars and teeth marks that lined his arm. “You’re used to pain. And, judging by your state, you don’t even inflict it all yourself. You believe your illusions are physical, don’t you?” He patted Lucrys’ cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ve just the thing!”

     Skaarin enthusiastically skipped back to the table and grabbed four long metal rods. He produced a large white flame beneath the table and placed the rods inside. “You know,” he said. “Some ancient gods were murdered, because men thought killing a god made them strong. There was a small desert tribe called Kura’a that killed a virgin goddess that was reborn into their tribe every six hundred years. They always did it the same exact way.”

     Lucrys began screaming. Skaarin waited patiently for the mindless fit to end, then sighed. “You can just ask me to stop teaching you, you know. Anyway, don’t interrupt.” The flames danced around the metal rods, turning a pale grey before darkening like storm clouds. “They would pin the goddess down by her limbs and fuck her as they ate her throat.” He pulled the rods from the fire. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on fucking you, Lucrys. Just thought I’d share a story. You know who told me that story?” Skaarin plowed a rod trough Lucrys’ shackled hand brutally before continuing. “It was Alucin. Latrus’s shit father.” He sent two more rods through Lucrys, pinning his feet to the ground. “I hated his father.” He sent the final rod through Lucrys’ arm over and over again, cursing as if Lucrys would carry the punishment to Alucin himself.

     Skaarin walked back to the table, humming a song. “Sorry,” He said. “I can usually hold back a little more and progress slowly. I think you’re quite different to me, Lucrys.” He pulled a knife from the table. “That’s probably bad for you,” he chuckled.

     Skaarin walked back to Lucrys and forced the blade through his stomach. He ran it in large circles slowly. “Well.” Skaarin twisted his lips. “You sure take more shit than I’d expect. Don’t worry, I could tell you starved yourself, so I guess you don’t really need these.” He squeezed his hand into Lucrys’ abdomen.

     “God, that feels weird,” he yelled. “Seriously, you feel this shit? I mean, it probably feels different for you. It’s almost like sex. Only with a hand. And your bleeding more than a woman would. And you’ll probably be dead afterward, too. The fuck’s up with your insides?” Skaarin could feel the warmth of Lucrys’ blood rushing down his arm. He grabbed a kidney and rent it from Lucrys’ side before delving back in. “There it is,” he exclaimed, grabbing Lucrys’ rib. “Watch this.” He pulled on the rib until it snapped, bones splintering into his own hand. Skaarin yelled and cursed. He grabbed his wrist and held his hand in front of Lucrys’ face. “Fuck you, Lucrys. This shit fucking hurts. I can’t even tell if I’m bleeding.” He looked up and smiled. “Kidding.”

     Lucrys didn’t move. He almost looked as if he were sleeping.

     “You’re no fun,” Skaarin pouted. “Blood and shit add inner beauty to things,” Skaarin said, ripping Lucrys open. “Maybe it’s just the color scarlet. Whatever.” He continued to eviscerate Lucrys until he came to his spine. “I’ve never done that before.” Skaarin turned and stepped away, crushing guts beneath his boots as he walked.

     He placed the knife back onto the table, not bothering to clean it. “Oh, right, I meant to grab something from you.” He reached up into Lucrys’ chest, searching for his lungs. Lucrys began heaving as Skaarin pulled a hunk of his right lung out of his chest, shushing him. “Look see, I already got what I needed, Lucrys. It wasn’t that bad was it?”

     Lucrys retched and reeled. Skaarin stepped back from his face and grimaced. “Don’t get any on me, at least.” As he headed to the door, he could hear Lucrys letting out rasps and weak yells. “Really now, Lucrys,” he said turning around. “Don’t go off trying to scream now. There’s hardly any ‘umph’ in it without your diaphragm. There’s nothing there. So what would be the point? Just keep quiet and you’ll live longer, or something like that; it has to do with wasting energy, or time, or parents teaching bullshit or something.” Skaarin trailed off and left the room beyond Lucrys’ cell. He could see Lucrys’ makeshift bed and remembered the faces that had been in the cell before him. “And only Nii’rah stayed sane,” he sighed. “I wonder how she is.”

                                                                 ◊ ◊ ◊

     Skaarin exited the double doors of the cell and walked down the small hallway to Nii’rah and Grenivous. “What do you think a shard of a lung will do?” he asked.

     “Probably nothing,” Nii’rah snapped. “Just like anything else your dumbass tries.”

     “Lungs are like small trees, right,” Grenivous asked. “Try seeing what you can do with the tip of a branch first.”

     “That might be interesting,” Skaarin replied.

     “Why are you helping his ass out,” Nii’rah yelled through the wall.

     “We might as well see if his bullshit can pull through. There’s nothing else to do in a cell, anyway. What, would you keep me locked up, Nii’rah? Or would you give me a death penalty, unlike Skaarin’s great king?”

     “That king’s keeping you alive, pal,” Skaarin said. “But he’s really average. He’s just like any other man. Only his skin’s softer and he bleeds more easily when he’s hurt.”

     Nii’rah appeared at her cell door. “How’s your new subject holding up? Have you already killed him off after just two weeks?”

     “I think he just died off right now, actually. It’d be a little hard to live with yourself spilt on the floor and your lungs a bit less intact then they should be. But we’ll see how he’s holding up soon.”

     “Lovely.” Nii’rah rolled her eyes and disappeared into her cell. “And Latrus still doesn’t know the man he’s fucking is exactly what he hates.”

     “And he won’t find out, will he, Nii’rah?” Skaarin walked to the cell window. “Don’t you remember my face, love? You wouldn’t want to spend too much time with family on a steel bed with some good old friends, would you?” He watched as she slunk onto her bed and pulled her shirt from the floor. “Your scars are still showing,” he teased. “Quit forgetting that you’re alive, girl. And know your place as a criminal who was caught. I have rough days, too. It’s not only the things you love that die. Even my new friend copped out early.”

                                                                 ◊ ◊ ◊

     Skaarin entered his small cell on the opposite end of the prison. He sat at the wooden desk and pulled a tip of Lucrys’ lungs apart. “This is where breath originates.” Skaarin blew on the shard in his palm and it began to glow a faint blue. “Trees and growth, eh, Gren? You seem off on a limb, but who knows.” He dropped the shard into a bowl and mixed the concoction inside. “I wasted your fucking life for this. For your sake, I hope it works out.” He added the new mixture to a previous experiment, and poured the resulting liquid into a vial. “Might as well dispose of the corpse,” he chimed.

                                                                 ◊ ◊ ◊

     “Holy shit,” Skaarin laughed. “You’re still alive after an hour?” He walked to Lucrys and studied him more carefully. His arms were lanky and thin, covered with crimson scratches and scars that almost seemed fluorescent from his pale, starved skin. He had long, black hair that hid violent, yet vibrant silver eyes, set within darkened sockets. His white prison clothes were turning black from the soot in his cell. They were tattered and torn, both by his unkempt, shredded black nails and the jagged talons of demons that constantly crept out of his skull. He was beautiful! Remarkable! The way the old scars mixed with the new- it was luscious! Stitches would suit him well, he needed them for sure. Or perhaps not…

     “Hold yourself off for fifteen more minutes, Lucrys. I’ll see if I can save you from the horrible fate such an evil man put you through. No, rather the fate you think your own head put you through. Give me a moment.”

     “I’ve been working on this for a while now,” Skaarin said reentering the room. “Here, let’s see what happens with you, shall we?” He lifted a mug to Lucrys’ lips and drizzled the experiment into his mouth. Through gasps and heaves Lucrys drank, Skaarin pouring more and more of the freezing concoction down his throat.

     Skaarin watched as the silver liquid rushed from where Lucrys’ stomach had been. “Shit,” he said, growing agitated. “After months it’s gonna fail, is that it?” The liquid began to pool around in the hollow he had dug into Lucrys. He could see organs beginning to reform inside of him. He laughed hysterically. “I think we’re going to get along better than ever, Lucrys.”

     Lucrys’ skin melted into the same greyish color as it reformed, like lava slowly dripping and hardening into what-belonged-where. “Lucrys,” Skaarin whispered, hugging him, he chuckled nervously. “I’ve given you a gift, my beautiful friend. This is the power of regeneration. The gift of immortality!”

     Lucrys’ body finished regenerating and Skaarin stepped back. Lucrys began to scream, having another out-of-body fit. “It’s almost ironic,” Skaarin said. “You fear what happens in your head when it can’t kill you, as if pain is frightening when you can’t die. I wonder what pain is worse; the pain in your imagination, or the pain you’ll feel when you come back to the training I’m going to put your body through.” Skaarin walked back to his table. “What’s next?” he mumbled. “This works, because your brain knows that something is missing. When your blood rushes to a wound, the concoction I created is carried with it. It’s a lot like the scabbing process. Only the missing parts are almost instantly regenerated from the mixture of your subconscious, natural memories, and my god-like creation. But just how good is your memory?” Skaarin grabbed a spoon from the table. “Let’s start with the eyes.”