Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens) (19 page)

Haley felt a pang of jealousy which she quickly swallowed down. She'd already told herself that she could accept that there was something different between Xan and Kassa than there was between herself and the assassin. Kassa helped Xan to his feet, though he seemed to stand pretty well despite the obvious damage he'd taken. The metal rings in his arms were still present, and the strange crown affixed to his head was still in place, but other than that he was free.

Haley wanted desperately to tell him that she'd missed him and that she was happy to see him again, but that's not what slipped from her lips. "You look like shit." She said, wincing slightly at her own crassness.

Xandrith smiled, and it was a wicked expression that played across his lips. His good eye had that spark of mischievous and dark mirth that had always been present, and his smile was like that of a starving wolf, full of menace and a macabre hunger. "I'm not feeling great." He said quietly. "But I'm going to get better. We need to get this crown off my head, and to cut things rings out of my arms. The crown blocks my magic. I'm useless without magic. They brought the cursed thing with them when they captured me in the woods. If I'd known what it did when they went to strap it on I might have fought even harder. The rings just hurt. I'm tired of hurting."

Kassa snorted. "You're far from useless without magic. You're a master of hand to hand combat."

Xandrith grinned. "I was, but I don't have that anymore. I gave that to you, remember?"

Both Kassa and Haley looked shocked, but it was Kassa who spoke first. "Wait, you mean you didn't retain any of the skills I was given?"

Xandrith shook his head. "Not really, though I can sort of see parts of it all if I really concentrate. I can't count on those skills anymore though. I'm useless with a knife, but that's not such a big deal since I don't have enough fingers to hold one." He held up his hands and frowned at the three fingered mess of mangled flesh. "I can do other things though. When I broke myself apart to bring you back I had to fill the missing pieces of myself with something, otherwise I would have been incomplete. I used the bonesteel blade's life force. I wasn't entirely certain I could maintain my own humanity while doing so, and for a time I think I ceased to exist, but something remained and the bonesteel blade needed to find those pieces and revive them in order to survive in my body. We're stuck together now."

"Come on, we need to find the room where Shit-Stain tortured me. It has the tools I need to get rid of these excess fashion items." He said as he pushed his way out of the cell and started up the hallway. Haley and Kassa moved quickly to follow him.

As they walked, Xandrith spoke. "At first the blade thought that it would have free reign over what was left of me after we finally broke out of the Fae world, but it quickly discovered that there was a lot of extra baggage involved in living in a human body. It killed the first humans it encountered, but soon discovered itself overwrought with guilt. My humanity was more than it knew how to handle. It needed me to explain what the feelings it was experiencing meant, and it needed to know how to cope with it all. Believe me, it didn't want to give in. It had a purpose, but as it began to understand human nature, that purpose became something that it feared. Imagine that everything you've ever known or felt suddenly appeared corrupt and vile to your own eyes? That was what was happening to the bonesteel blade. Finally it let me consume it, and I became myself again. Or at least close to myself again. I think. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure what I am, trapped in this place time has lost meaning and I wasn't even sure if I was really alive. I thought perhaps I'd died and was paying for my crimes."

Haley wasn't sure how to respond to Xan's recounting of his experiences so she kept her mouth closed. They reached the guard's room quickly enough and Kassa set to work unlocking the first of the two cells.

"What are you doing?" Xandrith asked, noticing that the two women had stopped.

"He told us where to find you. Without him we'd still be searching cell by cell." Kassa explained.

Xan nodded, and then looked into the second cage. "Not this one, though. She can stay here and rot."

The female mage spat on the ground at her feet. "I wouldn't accept freedom from you anyway, murderer."

Xandrith stepped to the front of her cage and gripped the bars with his three fingered hands. "I at least gave your friends a clean death. How many hours did you spend sneaking into my torture cell between sessions and breaking the ends of my ribs off with your little hammer before they caught you?"

Her mouth was drawn shut in a tight line, but it wasn't anger or shame that shown on her face. In fact, it looked to Haley like she was proud of what she'd done. That sparked a fire of rage in Haley's chest. This woman was sick.

"How long have they lock you up in here for? What has it been, a few days? The black-robe was furious that you almost killed me. I do believe he wanted to be the one to finish me off." Xan said with a shrug. "He's a real bastard. I'm a fair judge of men, and that one likes to torture. It's not just a job for him."

"You deserved every hour of misery you got, you disgusting monster." She ended the declaration with a short list of offensive language that Haley had never heard before. She was only certain it was foul language because of the vehemence with which it was spoken. The assassin's apprentice looked between the ruined assassin and the woman in the cell, wondering if Xan was going to kill her. She could see the restrained anger in his shoulders and in the way his hands almost shook on the bars as he held them. Quite suddenly he let go of the bars and gave a sharp sigh.

"I probably did, but I have unfinished business that must be attended to. Enjoy your time with the trolls." Xan turned his back on her and headed for another door in the room. "Come along. I'll show you the play room." He said with an almost manic chuckle.

Kassa undid the last of the man's shackles and handed him the keys, looking at the woman in the next cell. Haley watched this exchange silently, wondering whether she should tell Xandrith or not. Kassa was obviously implying that the man could free her if he wanted, which was exactly what Xan had said not to do. Kassa wasn't going to free the female mage on her own, but she was allowing it to happen. Xan had swung the next door open and he called back over his shoulder. "Are we coming?"

Perhaps he'd known Kassa would do exactly what she'd done. Xandrith couldn't bring himself to let the woman go after all she'd done to him, but perhaps he'd let Kassa do it in her own way.

Haley turned her back on the two mages and followed after Xan, trying to decide whether she was reading too much into the situation or not. Xandrith was, as ever, so hard to understand. He laughed when he was sad, and smiled when he was filled with rage. He often said one thing, and meant another entirely. He was a dangerous assassin, accustomed to violence and death, and yet he could be unbelievably kind and forgiving. Kassa fell in beside her and they went through the door behind Xan together.

Chapter 6

Vengeance, Thy Name is Xandrith

Xandrith walked the narrow corridors like a wraith. He'd lost a lot of his muscle mass and he looked even more tall and gaunt than ever before. His hand traced the doors that they were walking past. He would stop occasionally and look in one, laugh darkly and mutter beneath his breath, and then he would move on again. "This one was particularly awful." He commented once as he passed a room with a wooden door that was painted black with tar. He didn't seem to be talking to anyone in particular, and that was perhaps the most disturbing part of their journey through that section of the prison. It was alarming for Haley to see just how unhinged the assassin's mind had become during his time away. It made her heart ache to see him wince as he walked past doors that hid unspeakable devices of torture. He'd spent at least a week trapped in this hell hole, and in that time they'd subjected him to every method of persuasion they'd had at their disposal. Xan stopped abruptly in front of remarkably normal looking wooden door.

"Here." He said quietly. "This is where we'll find the tools to remove the crown and rings." He reached out and touched the door, but after a moment it became clear that he wasn't going to turn the handle. His eyes were haunted. "I can't ... Would one of you please open the door?"

Kassa and Haley both jumped forward to grab the handle, but it was Haley who got there first. "I'll go." She said, though she wasn't entirely certain she wanted to. Kassa and Haley locked eyes for a moment, but finally Kassa nodded once, sharply, and backed off.

"It's a wooden handled tool. The metal end will fit the screws on the crown." Xandrith said, bending over so that Haley could look at the fastenings before entering the room. As he bent over, Haley got her first really good look at the damage to Xandrith's head where his hair had been cut off from his scalp. The bone shone through, surrounded by patches of red and irritated flesh. The crown itself was fastened so tightly to his scalp that the sharp metal edges looked like they were biting into his flesh. Haley tried not to stare at the damage. She focused on the tops of the screws. They were box shaped with an offset box in the center of their top. "The device to snap the rings is a metallic vice with a pincer in the middle." He added as he lifted his head. It seemed the rings were mostly an afterthought.

"Alright, I'll be back." She said, and stepped into the room that Xan didn't wish to enter. There was a heavy wooden chair in the center of the room fastened to the floor with steel fasteners. The chair had bindings built into it that could be used to restrain the arms, the hands and fingers, the legs, the feet, and the head. Next to the chair was a table with a vast selection of different implements atop it. Haley didn't even wish to guess at what most of those tools were for. Their shape and design implied an evil purpose, but she simply couldn't bring herself to think about it any further. These were tools of cruelty. They were the sort of objects that the man who had assaulted her would have loved to have had access to. That thought sent a terrifying chill down her spine. She forced it from her head and went to work looking for the tools they needed to help Xan.

She located the device to break the rings first, but it took her much longer to locate the small device that they needed to free Xandrith of his awful crown. The tool had been tossed to the floor as though they'd never planned on removing the crown from the tormented assassin. Haley realized then that it would only be here because they had used it as a torture device against Xan. The memory of the way the crown pressed and tore into Xan's flesh came back to her. They must have tightened it here, tightened it as much as their strength against the handle would allow
.

She retreated back into the hall with the wretched tools, shutting the door behind her as she exited the domain of torture. With the door closed at her back she felt like she might almost be able to put everything she'd seen behind her. Almost. Unfortunately every time she looked at poor, ravaged Xandrith she couldn't help but recall that he knew only too well what most of those instruments did. "I've got it." She said quietly, holding the two devices up for him to see. He looked at them and nodded, his face turning somewhat paler than it had been before.

"Alright. I need one of you to remove the screws for me. I would do it myself but I can't see them, and I can't grip the tool well enough to turn it." He didn't look happy to have to admit the weakness. "We'll worry about the rings after this damn thing is off."

Haley was already shaking her head and stepping away from Xan. "I can't." She said quickly, feeling like a coward, but not willing to do what she knew had to be done. She didn't have the stomach for causing Xan pain.

Kassa stepped forward and took the tool from Haley's shaking hand. Haley hadn't even realized her hand was shaking. The wood handle pulled from her fingers with ease as though she'd been on the verge of dropping the wretched thing anyway. Again that feeling of shame washed over Haley. If Kassa could do it she should be able to. She looked down at her feet in dejected silence. She felt as though she'd betrayed Xan. Kassa placed a hand on her shoulder. "It's alright." The older woman said, and yet Haley didn't feel any better.

"There are eight screws." Xan said quietly. "Four in each half of the crown. Once they're all loosened, the two halves pull apart."

Haley refused to look up, but she guessed that Kassa must have only nodded her reply because she didn't hear anything more from here. A moment later there was a sharp intake of breath, and the eerie sound of metal being unscrewed from bone. Haley tucked her head further into her chest and covered the ears of her mask since it seemed to channel the terrible sounds directly into her head. She desperately wanted to send herself somewhere else, somewhere where she couldn't hear Xandrith's agony.
I am not strong enough for this.
She thought sickly to herself.

You are impossibly strong
. The voice that spoke like hers but wasn't whispered through her head.
You're only afraid. I could take that fear away for you. Better, I could help you push that fear onto others. I have that power, and that's just part of what I could do for you if you'd accept me.

With the outside noise blocked, it seemed her axe was ready to have a go at twisting into her thoughts. She grimaced and refused to answer.

I have only ever helped you. Remember that.
The voice said after a short silence, and then it was silent in her mind once more. A hand touched her shoulder and startled her from her separation from the world.

"It's alright, Not-Daisy. It's over." It was Xan's voice. Haley felt a flood of warmth at finally hearing the familiar nickname in his voice again. She turned to see him standing free from the crown, but the warmth fled her as she saw blood trickling down from the line cut into his head by its jagged metal edge. Haley winced at the damage, but Xan just gave her one of his half-grins. "Trust me, this little bit of blood is better than the damned crown. That thing was a constant pain, and made this terrible droning inside my head that made it impossible to really concentrate. I feel much better already." He assured her, though Haley wasn't exactly certain how he could feel much better when he still looked so terrible.