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Ataraxia
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Discord

Postby Ataraxia » Fri Feb 12, 2016 10:00 am

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“I continue to live inside a dichotomy: what was and what shall be. The pain in my skull is me trying to mesh the two."

  • The times that followed were unreal. I still felt the pulse of Duval's arteries nagging the palms of my hands while I slept. I could see his eyes in the gazes of others, accusatory, though they were mere reflections of my own judgement. Many ailments are born from loneliness and exhaustion, and everywhere I looked I saw the life I had taken. When beliefs conflict in your mind, it is difficult to resist changing one of them to avoid the mental stress of this dissonance. Thoughts crawled in my mind, attempting to reconcile this guilt with my reason. I wanted to de-responsibilize myself, and believe that killing was the only way to survive. But I already knew that I had murdered on my own accord, that, while the road was paved for me to reach that point, no one forced me to wrap my hands around Duval's neck and strangle him.

    I let myself suffer in that contradiction because it was the only lifeline I had to remind myself of what this place was trying to turn me into.
Last edited by Ataraxia on Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:16 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Ataraxia
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Postby Ataraxia » Sun Feb 21, 2016 6:55 am

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Ataraxia
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Sadnecessary

Postby Ataraxia » Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:15 am

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"Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us."

  • I thought I could cling to some part of myself that still felt empathy but in the weeks that followed in solitary I was forced to ruminate the events over and over again. There was no escape from my own mind, and I had no choice but to let go. Laurent came to visit me, flanked by two guards. We sat on opposite sides of the grate and he immediately understood the lack of light in my eyes. He spoke of the system, of how men and women who could provide entertainment for the officer audience lasted longer than those who didn’t, for the alternative was either death in the camp or living long enough to have their mind shaped into accepting defeat and eventually, slavery. He’d been here for years before my arrival, had managed to keep himself relevant and useful to the guards that looked down on us from their watchtowers. He could relate to my despair, but reminded me that the future existed, and that regardless of how I suffered here – there was hope that I could heal when leaving this life behind.

    “For now, focus on survival. You’ll have the rest of your life to face your conscience and heal.” He murmured sadly through the iron bars that divided us.

    That day I was escorted to a hall where a Cormyrian artist used rudimentary tools to create a magnificent painting of Sune on my right bicep. Her fiery hair was glistening with blood red, her fingers black as the night and her face – twisted into a monstrosity that had an eye in the center and half a dozen others hanging from tentacles. Its grin was material for nightmares. Beauty was indeed in the eye of the beholder, and perhaps it was a lesson in acceptance, though I’m afraid it might have been lost on me.

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Ataraxia
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Knock on Heaven's Door

Postby Ataraxia » Tue Mar 01, 2016 7:25 pm

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“The truth is not in the touch of a stone, but in what the stone tells you.”

  • In the Hall of Hunger, word came that I was soon going to return to the Pit as I was swallowing down mouthfuls of bland porridge that had until then failed to stimulate my taste buds in any way. The news soured the meal, and I lost what little appetite I still had. The blind man beside me rested his hand over my wrist, grasping it firmly in some empowering gesture. I felt a warmth through his skin, and it slowly climbed my arm and reached my heart to calm me. We didn’t speak of it but I welcomed the moral support.

    That was not all that he gave me. When we wandered in the courtyard in rattling shackles on opposite sides of the fence, we met by a towering wall of frozen stone. He produced a piece of chalk, blindly drawing the intricate silhouette of an imaginary opponent with a practiced hand before sliding gracefully into a detached stance and swiftly launching fists and knees against the stone. He struck shoulders, throat, groin and other stone joints. Flesh and bone clashed against stone, and as the minutes passed, blood began staining the wall from his raw knuckles in the relentless battery. Gripping the bars to support myself, I watched him practice until guards recalled us into the prison. Every day, we repeated the lesson in observation until I could begin discerning the patterns in his flurry of blows.

    A few days before my rumored return to the Pit and the blind man passed the chalk through the bars while the guards were turned away from us. The only witnesses were the judgmental dead stares of the impaled severed heads that were mounted on the walls and faced the courtyard to remind us of our place. Concealing the chalk in my breeches, I returned to my room restlessly and drew the faceless silhouette of a man to begin practicing. I had muscle memory to train, and only a few days to muster a modicum of combat training.

    At night when the torches were snuffed out and the guards left their posts, I rose from my cot to prowl toward the man of chalk and rock. There was no one to visualize for I did not know the face of my opponent but I later came to understand that the more you dehumanized your enemy, the easier it was to destroy it.

    A few deep breaths were taken and I abandoned myself to the task. Mimicking my blind teacher’s strikes from wavering memory, I murmured the sequence in the back of my mind in between grunts of pain while martyring my own flesh against the stone wall.

    Groin, Elbows, Shoulders, Throat, Eyes. Groin, Elbows, Shoulders, Throat, Eyes.

    It’s scary how much power the body can unleash from within when in a situation of life and death. I didn’t remember losing consciousness, but when Azazello’s wet tongue licked tears that I did not remember shedding to open my eyes, I could not feel neither my hands nor the cold. I was filled with a fire that burned away the frost and left me comfortably lying before the bloody mess of a painting that covered the wall and smeared the edges of the silhouette of chalk.

    Blood against rock; that was what survival was.

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Ataraxia
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Sun Starved

Postby Ataraxia » Wed Mar 02, 2016 12:34 am

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“We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.”

  • There was a woman who remained on the other side of the fence among the silently tormented inmates that wandered around the courtyard. Every morning she faced the eastern wall and watched the sky, eyes wide with hope that the sun would pierce through the grey shroud that had never failed to rob us of light. I observed her now and then, perhaps because even in the bleakness of it all she always carried a sun in her hand.

    One day she had ran out of hope, and her eyes rained in disappointment at the clouds that loomed over our heads and deprived us of something as fundamental and necessary as a warm light on our faces. When all I could squeeze through the fence was a pair of callous fingers, she gripped them firmly and reminded me that our winter was eventually going to pass, and that the sun would one day shine again for us. I knew she was saying this to herself but I couldn’t help but want, need, to believe.

    I gave her three cigarettes to smoke her tears away.

    She had nothing to give me in return, but watching the thunder break in her heart touched mine, and that was good enough to remind me that I was not yet a dead man.

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Ataraxia
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Petals of Chaos

Postby Ataraxia » Wed Mar 02, 2016 12:35 am

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“My friend, the fates are cruel. There are no dreams. No honor remains.”

  • I woke up to the rusty grate of my cell scraping the floor and boots clattering into my proximity. I barely had time to open my eyes before guards swooped me off the ground and forced me on my feet. It was the middle of the night, and I was relieved that I had managed to get some fleeting hours of rest. I knew where they were taking me and as I expected, we emerged into the Pit that still felt as hostile as ever. My nervousness increased when the guards pushed me through the ranks of prisoners and I could not see Laurent anywhere. His presence would have been welcome, and I felt my composure crack.

    I stepped onto the ring and was unshackled. Massaging my wrists, I endured the usual insults and shrieks of the crowd that demanded nothing more than blood while focusing my mind to avoid imagining scenarios that could compromise me. Fighting was about letting go of expectations, to never over or underestimate yourself or your opponent. It was laying down your life before them, and letting your training and the odds play in your favor. It was more difficult than it sounded, and every time I remembered that my life was on the line, my blood pressure spiked.

    My mind silenced itself instantly when a familiar pair of feet entered my field of view, and my heart truly sank when I raised my eyes to come face to face with the blind man. The sneer of a bald officer that stood mightily in his balcony came like a slap in the face, and I realized this had been arranged on purpose. My teacher was there before me, as still as water in contrast to me. He gave me a small nod, the backs of his hands knocking together in a silent signal. “Trust me”, he mouthed clearly when the guard approached to knock on his hand-held gong.

    Time seemed to slow down but I knew it was just the adrenaline jolting through my being. The blind man snatched the gong with a hand and unsheathed the guard’s sword with the other, smacking him in the face with the former all the while brandishing his blade toward the squad of guards that armed themselves and charged toward us. The restless crowd awoke like a sleeping dragon just as another guard found his chest pierced by a flying sword. Spinning on his heels in my direction and grabbing my arm, my only friend turned his back on me and invited me to do the same. Our backs collided with unity, and a wave of turmoil washed over us. We braced ourselves for the impact in the rage of renewed spirits. A riot was born.

    Men turned on each other, braziers were sent flying along with punches and blood. Guards were swarmed by starved bodies and shredded apart with nails and teeth. It was total chaos, but the blind man and I stood our ground against those that came from us. Limbs and the swing arcs of their attacks were perceived vividly but faces remained blurred. We fought without second thought, kicking, punching and screaming at the other fighters. Groin, elbows, shoulders, throat, eyes. I rebuked men with numbed knuckles and improvisation.

    My mentor flowed like the wind, blind but so intensely aware that I could feel his eyes on my back even when he could not see and was facing away from me. Everything that came his way was met with complete peace, and countered with detached brutality. I heard joints breaking, bones cracking and the swift destruction of our opponents that were so desperately aimless that they knew no better than to try claiming our lives as if it was going to change their existence. I didn’t know why we had started this, but I was planning on overcoming it.

    There was a fire in the air, the fire of change. It was a palpable energy that I felt I could grab onto, and despite the joints I dislocated, the throats I crushed or the strikes that pummeled my flesh, my feet did not lift from the ground.

    Cadavers nearly floated in the sea of blood that glimmered under the far-reaching torch lights that illuminated our anarchistic dance and as we saw the herd of fighters thinning, so did we feel our energy fading. We sweated and bled like pigs in the slaughterhouse, butchering those who were condemned to the same fate as ours without remorse. Conscience could wait. For now, it was kill or be killed. My friend always reached out to steady me when I staggered, and side by side we left the comfort of our line of defense to meet the last men standing. Stepping over bodies and losing balance in pools of blood, we struggled with all that we had to dispatch the remaining fighters.

    Sunlight pierced through the clouds above us as I wrapped a hand around a man’s knife before it could pierce my eye, and savagely hammered the man’s head against the ground until it was nothing short of stew. The blind guardian angel gripped my shoulder, and I saw the reflection of the beast I was in his lifeless eyes. Dropping the weapon and scurrying away from the body, I looked up to the brightening sky that shined down on us, and to the balcony where the unamused officer stared daggers at our defiance.

    I was beginning to appreciate the taste of the sun again when some itch in the back of my mind compelled me to look down toward the body I had brutalized and notice the familiar tattoos that covered his arms. They were Laurent’s.

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Ataraxia
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Strong Soul

Postby Ataraxia » Thu Apr 07, 2016 5:43 am

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“I've heard the soul unfolds in the chambers of its longing
And the bitter liquor sweetens in the amber cup
But all the ladders of the night have fallen
Only darkness now, to lift the longing up”


  • Tarsakh 1363, Impiltur.

    It surprised him that so many were mourning the fallen king that had been on his death bed since even before he had come to Sarshel. Anton felt the dampening souls sink at the bottom of the black sea the city had become and the rancid scent of grief was reminiscent of rot and decomposing corpses. Collective suffering was a dehydrating taste on his tongue he knew all too well, and in the dark waters of mourning, no lighthouse could be seen.

    It was not for him. The only lighthouse he needed was his own soul but how long would the inhabitants of the city stagnate in the strengthening frozen grip of winter? He wondered what would come of the future, his eyes set on the western horizon to watch out for the dark clouds that would come to prey on the vulnerable hearts of the people. He knew something was coming, he felt it in his weathered bones albeit unsure whether he was torturing himself or if his intuition was right. He left the question hang in his mind, preferring to not know yet rather than come to a hasty conclusion.

    His attention lowered toward the black wood he was carving with hardened fingernails, and the perseverance of a perfectionist. The material’s skin had been scratched off, and for a few days he had single-mindedly sat on the ramparts of the dockyard walls to subject himself to a tedious but necessary ritual of fashioning small beads out of ebony. Every marble was entitled to the entirety of his will, and he manifested it intensely while rolling the bead between index and thumb for hours to create friction and generate enough energy to smooth its surface. Using his hands to create rather than destroy was a welcome catharsis he had not often felt, and the warm blood that lazily dripped from his fingernails after all the scratching stained the wood with a personal signature.

    He needed fifty of them. Night and day, hunger and thirst, fatigue and winter were things he forced himself to support on his shoulders while working, forbidding himself any sort of relief from his innermost and basic needs. Discipline was the gateway to strength, and Anton needed to prepare himself for the uncertain future that was to come. He had to remember how the aching screaming of the nerves in his body begging him to go sleep felt, to reacquaint himself with the starvation that made stomachs gasp for anything but air, and of course – the cold. The cold that froze hearts and destines, that robbed a body of the thing it needed most: warmth. Perhaps, that was the least difficult of all for him to let go of.

    Anton had become comfortable with the texture of ebony, the nerves in his fingertips still perceiving the beads on them even when he was not holding them. Out of all his senses during his creative process, touch was the most intensely aware. The rest had grown dull, quiet, weakened by the discomfort he imposed on himself. The only reason he kept his eyes open was to not fall asleep, even though the red that had invaded their whites echoed the criminal deprivation of the past. Five thoughts for fifty beads. For each group of ten beads he was carving with his flesh and blood, he constantly repeated a mantra, a belief that had aided him in both war and peace. The martyring of his body was the catalyst that opened the pearly gates to his soul and bound the molten mantras to the black pearls he held between large hands painted in drying blood and cicatrices.


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Ataraxia
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Deafening Silence

Postby Ataraxia » Sat Apr 09, 2016 12:42 pm

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“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

  • The rehabilitation room was illuminated by four braziers projecting their light in the four corners. I was strapped to a standing table with cuffs and bracers along my joints to pull and test their limit, if I moved even half an inch I was sure to dislocate something. The discomfort severed any attempts of escapism, shackling me to the agony that was the present moment, neither awake nor asleep, condemned to drift in the limbo of silence and stillness. Fatigue did not let me concentrate and without the energy to control my thoughts, my mind raced to display flashes of the riot over and over and over again.

    The boots and clubs of the guards who retrieved us after the fight were beginning to wear off, enough to allow my inner eye to turn away from the past and risk a glimpse on the future. There was panic – this was the end. There was no coming back from what we had done, and I could only imagine the price we would have to pay for our defiance. There was no pride, no honor, no dignity to be robbed from – they had taken everything from me but my existence. But what did that mean if I was doomed to be crushed under the foot of an oppressor whose only interests were cruelty and domination? I wanted to believe that my life meant nothing, that I could simply let go, but there was the promise of a future constricting my heart in a nagging unbearable grip, the thread of hope that I was standing on that perhaps, maybe, hopefully, I would one day walk the earth free of chains.

    No. The only way out was through a pauper’s grave.

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Ataraxia
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Kossuth's Kiss

Postby Ataraxia » Mon May 09, 2016 4:07 am

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“And wrath has left its scar - that fire of hell has left its frightful scar upon my soul.”

  • The officer that penetrated the rehabilitation room was not terrified of the horrifying history of this chamber but of the daunting figure that appeared behind his bald head as though a master in his domain. Making himself as small as possible as he pushed himself on the open door, the bald officer averted his eyes from the monster he let in that wore a noble’s vermilion military coat over endless layers of bandages that could be seen in the gaps of the vestment. Over his mummified face was a mask of skin, the boneless visage of a woman I wish I couldn’t recognize that was crowned by an insulting wig. And from the stretched sockets, grey stormy eyes approached with a domineering posture.

    “Good morning, it is a shame your friend could not witness the first sun we’ve had in months.” He declared with apathy as he touched the face of the lathanderite that he had made his. I gagged, my empty stomach constricting to vomit air. “Does this face not please you? I wore it just for you. I thought, perhaps, you would be more comfortable facing a familiar sight.”

    The torturer turned toward the officer, who then shut the door hurriedly and loosened the restraints that pained my numb limbs after he was ordered to. A table was then pushed closer to me along with a chair, and the man in red sat daintily in silence to open a leather-bound book and an ink pot to dip a quill into. Flipping through the tome as the tension grew, he stopped on a page that barely had anything written on it. “You do not know me, but I am Darius Kalsier, inquisitor at the service of our perfect nation. You are prisoner Two-four-seven-six-five-nine, correct?” He asked to shatter the silence.

    I did not recall ever being assigned a number, as much as I could not recall my own name. This entire nightmare had blocked many memories, robbed me of my identity. “Does it matter?” I retorted, perhaps more aggressively than intended. He bounced on his feet and glared at the officer. “Bring in Kossuth’s Kiss!” The bald man jumped to the task, leaving the room to shortly return with a wheeled large device that had cogs and wires that meant nothing to me. He positioned it behind my standing table where a hole in the wood revealed my bare back. Then I heard the rumbling of the cogs when the officer turned a lever.

    The inquisitor spoke again, louder to cover the sound of my impending doom. “You animated lump of flesh will know your place after you have been introduced to my favorite device, it fires wires at such an intense speed that your back will shed its skin like a tree loses its leaves in autumn.” A few words were spat at the device along with a gesture of a hand, and I heard flames burst from thin air to coat the wires that were destined to make my day.

    “I’m sorry! I’ll talk, listen, whatever it is you want!” Screaming in fear and fighting the restraints satisfied Kalsier who ordered the officer to stay his hand but remain by the device in case I had second thoughts about my cooperation. “Very well. Do not disappoint me.” He sat, resuming as though nothing had happened.

    “You are prisoner Two-four-seven-six-five-nine, correct?” The question came again.
    “Yes.” I mustered between frightened breaths.
    “There is not much in your file, and you are so young… When have you been apprehended?”
    I thought, my mind racing to grasp an answer before the red wizard’s thoughts drifted to Kossuth’s Kiss. “I don’t know, what year is it?”
    “Thirteen-fifty-seven.” He replied nonchalantly, but it was not a truth I was ready for. Had it really been six years? How many more would there be?
    “Thirteen-fifty-one… That was the year.”
    “You’ve been here longer than I have! You know there’s close to no one left from your cohort, how does that make you feel?”
    I shrugged, and he moved onto the next matter: “You most likely would have died sooner or later, the evidence of your existence lost between some vacant page and another, if you had not been so… explosive in the pit. Genius unity you and your friend had, but what was the point of that slaughter? You butchered two, three dozen men like you, and for what? To make a statement?”
    The question was a valid one, and the discolored shriveled skin Kalsier paraded on his face nearly smiled when he read the truth in my eyes. “You thought perhaps that defiance was brave, go out with a blaze of glory or even – with a little luck – escape, and now you realize how foolish that was. Don’t you?”
    He was right. I nodded.
    “Captain Morrow,” the inquisitor exclaimed as if I had just sprung a trap, “It is time for our brave fighters to reunite.”

    The captain jogged away from the device and made his way out to bark orders at guards posted in the hallway, and within minutes I could hear the slow lumbering rattling of chains that announced the arrival of the blind man that whimpered and wept. I could not recognize the man anymore, his long grey hair hirsute like straw and his bony, deathly appearance was reminiscent of a scarecrow rotting in a barren field where no crows visited. The smell of blood caught my nose and I noticed the gruesome trail of blood he left with every step, every step of his stumps. They had taken his feet, and the guards forced him to walk nonetheless on the martyred and recently stitched flaps of skin folded around the bones to close the monstrous wounds. The green and purple hue of the flesh oozed with pus and blood.
    “Good luck escaping now.” The inquisitor said, hammering another nail in my mind.

    Powerless, screaming my rage and sorrow, I watched as they drove a sword in my spirit. The man who had inspired me so much was even more broken than I was, and it was my fault. My fault for not doing something. Why did the gods turn their backs on us? Why did such cruelty exist in the realms of man? Why us? So much rage that I couldn’t control, suffering I couldn’t take. Six years of torture, starvation and tears and witnessing the downfall of so many condemned souls around me. It did not matter whether they were criminals or innocents like me, in face of such cruelty, it was never about right and wrong or good and evil. This was enough. I had enough.

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Ataraxia
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Lullaby

Postby Ataraxia » Fri Jul 01, 2016 8:28 am

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“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”


  • With sentience comes the desire to assert power over another. Sadism is an abhorrent creation of either Gods, Men or other cruel species. It is a distorted form of displaying power born in a mind that has reinforced a bond between two ideas – the suffering of others, and pleasure. In pain and pleasure lies the dichotomy that binds all beings, chaining them to flee at a scent of the former all the while chasing and treasuring the latter, and it is these opposing forces that are exploited by a sadist. As with all crucibles, there are only three possible outcomes for the one crushed under the power of another who takes pleasure in their suffering. The first outcome is to rise despite the odds, to look back and never feel regret for the hardships that made us stronger. The second is to never succeed, to die in the challenges that fall on our path. And the third, it is to overcome, but ever broken by the inability to accept and even love our obstacles for the growth they gave us.

    Torture comes in two forms; physical and emotional. There is no consensus to my knowledge regarding which is more preferable, or least damaging, and there is no truth that tells whether it is better to resist or succumb willingly. To accept what you cannot control, weather the storm of fate upon your back, can both be interpreted as a sign of weakness and a sign of strength. The same can be said of defiance, and a childish willingness to fight against all odds. I’ve thought long and hard on this; to find some sense in gratuitous violence, some sort of secret – revelation – to withstand every sword and heartache, to free myself from the destiny that had been forced on me, to flee from pain.

    The only truth that one can truly take to heart is their own. What works for one spirit may not necessarily work for another. Many have become adepts of sorrow, wallowing in their misery as it is the only thing that keeps them alive, ever tormented by a future and peace revoked by those who had power over them. Others detach themselves from their body, deadening the senses and allowing their spirit to die, grow dull and unaffected by the crime-less punishment that they never deserved. As my only friend said, life has immense power over death, just as death has immense power over life. What matters is not to pick a side, but to know which to favor at opportune times.

    My revelation, my truth, came as seventy three whiplashes of red-hot wires flaying my back and filling the room with the unforgettable scent of my own burning feet in the grave. The pain was greater than my memories allow me to recall, but I was torn apart not by the torturous device but by my own mind, unsure as to where to stand. In that final dissonance, I focused on my greatest demon, a memory that split open my oldest scar so fiercely that it completely eclipsed the present torment. In that fleeting thin thread of a moment, something emerged. There was invincibility, power and a presence that filled me with adamantium.

    A firm hand on my shoulder. The tranquil realization that I could not be hurt anymore.
    If fate wanted to plunge a blade into my heart, she would have to hand me the knife.


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