Chapter Fifteen

 

Trystan

One Year Ago

There was no light in Trystan’s cell.

They’d taken the single lightbulb out of the flickering ceiling fixture after his first week in prison, because he’d shattered the glass and blinded two guards with it.  There were no windows, either.  They knew better than to give him any access to the outside world.  There wasn’t even a soft glow seeping under the bottom of his cell door, because there was no cell door.  His cage was a square of stone and metal, sealed tight on all four walls.  No one else entered it.  They were all too afraid of the creature they had trapped down in the pit.

What did you do with a monster, after you’d captured it?

His food was dropped through a metal shaft, which was electrified, into his iron cage, which was also electrified.  It had been three years since he’d spoken to another person.  So long that he’d mostly forgotten what voices even sounded like.  He was locked in the deepest part of the prison, safely chained away from everyone else in the world.

Trystan knew too many secrets to ever be free and too many secrets to ever kill.

The only thing they could do with him now was lock him up in the deepest hole they could find and wait for him to break.  And so, for thirty-seven months and eleven days, he’d stayed in the darkness.

…Until the Tuesday share circle staged their prison break.  Scarlett Riding was no dummy.  Before she and her friends escaped, she cut the power to the whole building.  By accident or design, that ensured that every villain trapped within the thick walls of the Wicked, Ugly and Bad Mental Health Treatment Center and Maximum Security Prison suddenly had a chance at freedom.

They just had to grab for it.

In his darkened cell, Trystan wasn’t sure what was happening upstairs.  Hell, he’d never even met the Tuesday share circle or any other captives of the WUB Club.  He was isolated from everyone.  Legally, he wasn’t even supposed to be there, but laws meant nothing to those who wrote them.  They created them to oppress others, not to follow them themselves.  Trystan would not give them what they wanted and so they punished him with something far worse than death.

He was forgotten.

But he was alive.  Not crazy.  Not gone.  He endured and he waited.  When he felt the electricity die, he knew his patience had finally paid off.

The high-pitched hum of energy that sang through the bars day and night, night and day ceased so suddenly that he nearly missed it at first.  He’d become so used to the never-ending sound that it barely even registered anymore.  Just a continuing, droning noise that vibrated his mind and added another element of torture to his confinement.  When it was gone, it took him a minute to realize that, for the first time in forever, he was hearing… nothing.

Just silence.

Trystan’s eyes slowly opened.  He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of his cell, as he spent most of his time.  Thinking was the main way he passed the endless days in solitary confinement.  His gaze drifted upward towards the ceiling.  Towards the metal chute that they used to drop him his rancid sandwich and single bottle of water each day.

When he spent his days thinking, he dwelled on three main topics:

1)      Ideas on how he should have killed his enemies in the past.

2)     Ideas on how he could kill his enemies in the present.

3)      Ideas on how he would kill his enemies in the future.

He could do nothing about the past, but the other two options were suddenly possible, because that metal chute was suddenly undefended.  The high-voltage wires protecting it were suddenly dead and suddenly his wait was over.

If you could call thirty-seven months and eleven days “sudden.”

Trystan got to his feet in one smooth movement.  Exercise was difficult here, but he still did it every day so his body would be ready for just this moment.  There was an enspelled chain cinching his wrists together and then attaching him to the floor in Y-configuration.  It was unbreakable.  Or so they’d told him when they’d snapped the locks in place and nothing since had proven them wrong.  His captors wanted him to stay on the ground and, for three years, he had.

But, he’d spent all three of those years thinking.

The bolt holding the bottom of the chain was sunk into an ordinary stone.  A huge ordinary stone, granted, but still just a stone.  It had been cemented into place and surrounded with many other huge, ordinary stones to make up the floor of his cell.  Luckily, when you had over a thousand days to kill, sitting on a stone floor and contemplating three things in an endless loop, it was surprisingly easy to dig the mortar out from around a big rock.

His eyes fixed on the metal chute, Trystan wrapped the chain around his hands to improve his grip and began pulling the stone upward.  He couldn’t break the links holding him to the floor, so he’d break the floor itself.  There was always a way, if you waited long enough and pushed far enough and thought deep enough.

Teeth grinding with effort, Trystan managed to heft the rock free.  It weighed hundreds of pounds, which meant nothing to him.  Besides thinking and digging at mortar until his fingers bled, his only other pastime was keeping his body strong.  When you had a list of people to kill as long as Trystan’s list, you needed to stay prepared for the slaughter.  He lifted the stone into his arms, muscles straining.

That was the easy part.

His massive wings unfurled, stiff from lack of use.  Flying had been impossible when he was chained to the floor, so it had been three years since he even attempted it.  Being in the air was still an intrinsic part of who he was, though, and his body knew exactly what to do.  His wings adjusted quickly to the unfamiliar movement.  It took him a moment to gain altitude with the extra weight of the stone, but determination drove him on.

Drove him up.

Three giant flaps and he was at the opening of the chute.  It was small.  So small.  Too small for someone of Trystan’s size.  And then there were the spikes.  As one final, low-tech, sadistic plot to keep him contained, they had added nails to the inside of the shaft.  Jagged barbs, guaranteed to rend and puncture.  If he tried to squeeze through, he would be sliced to ribbons.

But he had no choice.  This was the only escape route and he would escape.

Or die trying.

The edges of the chute tore at his body, as he forced his way into the tiny opening, the rock still weighing him down.  For once, he was glad for the darkness.  He didn’t want to see the damage he was inflicting on himself.  Bad enough he could feel it.  The spikes had been coated with some kind of poison that burned through him with every scratch.  With his wrists shackled, it took twice as long as it should have to climb the long shaft and each inch was agony. Blood and sweat and feathers rained down like tears.

His wings took the brunt of the damage, the sharp metal shredding the delicate appendages to the bone.  They would never be the same.  He knew that.  The wounds were going too deep, scraping off his flesh in jagged sheets with their poisoned edges.  He would be lucky to ever fly again.

But still he climbed.  Like an animal chewing off its own foot to escape a trap, freedom was his only focus.  Until, finally, he clawed his way to the top of the shaft.

Pulling himself out of the chute, he stood for a second, trying to function through the sensory overload.  Even with the electricity off, the increased light aboveground hurt his eyes, making it hard for him to see.  There was a fire raging somewhere nearby, affecting his sense of smell.  Screaming and crashing and the maniacal laughter of rioting prisoners left his ears ringing and head swimming.  His body was one huge open wound.  Pain was crashing through him like an avalanche, threatening to drive him to his knees.

Trystan’s hand came up to steady himself on the slimy wall, leaving a long smear of blood from his lacerated palm.  The rock slipped from his grasp, slamming into the ground, and Trystan mentally swore.

P’don

He took a deep breath and looked around.  Where the hell was he?  His straining eyes cut around the deserted room and piles of trash.  A garbage area?  That explained the rats that were always making their way into this cell.  Trystan took a step forward, forgetting that the rock anchored him to the filthy floor.  He tripped when it brought him up short and staggered against the wall, his legs barely supporting his weight.

He gave his head a clearing shake.

After three years in a dark cell, he was weakened and overwhelmed.  The poison and the tremendous amount of blood he’d lost in the chute drained what was left of his reserves.  This wasn’t good.  Trystan struggled to stay conscious and focus.

He wasn’t strong enough to fight.  And there would be a fight.  There was always a fight.  But, for the first time in his entire life, Trystan knew he would lose.

So be it.

He’d fight anyway and keep fighting, until he could fight no more.

Centering himself for the task ahead, he looked around for a weapon.  A bloody cleaver was jutting from a butcher-block cutting board, a small and scraggly animal partially eviscerated on the wooden surface.  One of the rats perhaps?  He’d never been exactly sure what the undercooked meat was in the sandwiches they dropped down to him, but he knew it was some kind of rodent.  Whatever the creature had been, it appeared someone had been half-heartedly preparing its maggot-filled carcass for his meal tomorrow, when they’d been interrupted by the riot.

While he squinted down at it, the door behind him slammed open and Trystan reacted.  He grabbed the cleaver, turning to face the intruders.  A dozen prison guards came dashing into the room.  Perhaps more.  Perhaps less.  He still wasn’t seeing properly. They had high-powered flashlights that burned his eyes, so he shut them.

He would kill the men using his other senses.

Trystan sank back into the shadows of trash, waiting.

“He came this way.”  One of the men shouted to the others.  “I saw him head down one of the garbage chutes.  We’ll cut him off, before he gets outside.”

“Make sure he’s dead this time.”  Someone else ordered.  “King Arthur is only paying us, if we can show him a body.  This riot is a fucking gift for us.  No one will question why the Kingpin is dead.  Just don’t get too close to his hands.”

They were almost on him, now.  Trystan took a deep breath and mentally recited the gryphons’ death prayer.  Generally, it was only said once in a warrior’s life, as he entered his final battle.  It asked for the strength to kill many of his enemies, before he stood among his ancestors.

And then it was time.

The misty veil of battle fell over his face, transforming his features into an eagle’s and heightening all his senses.  Wrapping his hand around the chain for leverage, Trystan swung the rock like a mace.  That took out the first two as they came around a pile of trash.  The slab of stone connected with their skulls, crushing bone like eggshells.  He heard their brains splatter to the ground along with their blood.

The other man screamed in panic, having not anticipated the attack.

For a final battle, this one was pathetic.  Even partially blinded and chained to a rock, he could tell these enemies were beneath him.  Trystan’s training took over where his faltering eyesight left off.  He slashed out with the cleaver and another man lost his arm at the elbow.  The guard scrambled backwards, bellowing in panic, while others pressed forward.  Guns and clubs and fists.

“Who the fuck is this guy?”  Someone shrieked.

Trystan acted without conscious thought, his instincts driving him onward.  More men came at him and he killed them, too.  He lost count of how many rushed into the room, drawn by the sound of the fight.  He lost track of the time that past.  Nothing mattered besides slaughtering his enemies.  When he entered the halls of the afterlife, he needed to prove himself worthy to join his ancestors.

A metal clang vaguely registered in his brain, but he was too caught up in the choreography of death to figure out what it meant.

At the zoo, the gryphons had been called “the savages of the civilized world” and Trystan did his best to prove the epithet correct. It took ten of the poorly-trained men to finally drag him to the ground.  Trystan felt the stone floor beneath him and he knew it was the end.

One of the prison guards wrapped his hands around Trystan’s throat, trying to strangle him, while others held down his arms.  “You stupid fucking animal!”  The man was out of breath.  “We’re not even here for you!”

Trystan lifted his head and used his teeth to rip out the guard’s throat.  Blood spurted out, warm and wet, coating him.  The man screamed as best he could, considering several inches of his windpipe were missing.  He toppled sideways, hopelessly clutching his gushing neck.

Trystan spat the hunk of flesh from his mouth, grimly satisfied with his final kill.  He would die free and covered in his enemies’ blood.  No gryphon could ask for more.

And then, oddly, the men holding his arms were gone.

No.  Not gone.  They were still there, but there grips went cold.  Hard.

The flesh that had been touching his own, biting into his arms and legs, became… metallic?  P’don.  That didn’t seem right.  He was used to death and killing, but this was strange.  Whatever was happening, it concerned Trystan more than the dozens of men who had tried to murder him.  He struggled free of his captors’ frozen grips.  His straining eyes focused long enough to note that they had been turned into golden statues.

What the hell was this about?

Another strangled cry sounded from the left of Trystan.  Then another and another and another.  He staggered to his feet, swiveling his head around, trying to make sense of it.  A shadow moved and the last guard in the room became still.  Even his malfunctioning vision could pick up the expressions of horror left frozen on the men’s golden faces.

“Hey,” a new voice said, “are you alright?”

Trystan responded by grabbing the cleaver and doing his damnedest to decapitate the man.

“Jesus Christ!”  The guy jumped back in the nick of time, barely keeping his head attached.  “Are you fucking trying to kill me?!”

Of course he was.  Trystan growled low in his throat and swung at him again.

The guy somehow avoided another blow.  “I just saved your life, you deranged lunatic!”

Trystan hesitated, his brain telling him that was true.  Why had this man helped him, though?  No one would help a gryphon without a deeper purpose.  It must be a trap.  He backed into the shadows, waiting for another opening.

“Look, I got no fight with you, so don’t start one.”  The guy held up his palms.  He was large for his kind, with dark hair.  His eyes glowed gold in the dim light, trying to get a good look at Trystan.  “Enough people want to kill me.  I don’t need to add you to the list, whoever the hell you are.”

Trystan’s head tilted, trying to make sense of the words.  He’d learned to speak the common tongue as a child, but he always thought in the gryphons’ language.  Since he hadn’t spoken aloud for years, his skills were rusty.  Plus, this man had an accent which added to Trystan’s difficulty in understanding.

“They were after me.”  The stranger said, nodding to the bodies on the ground.

Trystan watched him narrowly, translating that as best he could.

“I’m only down here to avoid the gas.”  The stranger jerked a thumb towards another metal tube, this one leading from upstairs.  “I came through the garbage chute and found you slaughtering all the men sent to murder me.  So… thanks.”

Gas?

That word registered easily.  Trystan glanced upward.  Men he could simply disembowel, but how did one fight a gas?

“It’s the sleeping kind.”  The guy informed him.  Apparently guessing that Trystan was struggling with a language barrier, he pantomimed sleep by resting his cheek on his clasped palms.  “You know…?  It knocks you out.”

Trystan grunted, piecing his meaning together.

Since no attack seemed forthcoming, he edged back into the dim light to try and find a key for his manacles.  The stranger was dressed in a red sweat suit, which was the WUB Club’s standard uniform for its worst offenders.  Trystan had no idea why the other inmates consented to wear them.  He refused to don clothes provided by his enemies.  It was a matter of honor.

“My God.”  The guy’s eyes widened.  It was hard to say if he was more surprised by Trystan’s nakedness, injuries, or wings.  “You’re a gryphon.”

Trystan disregarded that inanity, stripping the dead guards of anything useful in his fruitless search for a key.

“I have not seen one of your kind for many years.  I thought you were all gone.”

Trystan’s head snapped up to gape at the man.  It wasn’t the words that mattered.  It was the fact he’d used the gryphons’ language to communicate them.  The informal dialect, which no outsiders spoke.  This man had been claimed by someone.  Part of a clan.

For the first time, he regarded the stranger with real interest.

“I knew a gryphon, long ago.”  The man continued.  “She lived in Celliwig, when I was a boy.  She must have been a refugee from the Looking Glass Campaigns, but she never spoke of it.”  Unlike many, he didn’t smirk when he used the sanitized name his kind used to describe the wholesale slaughter of Trystan’s people.  “I was alone and she shielded me from danger. Kept me alive.  I still think of her, every day, with love and respect.”

Trystan believed nothing told to him by these people, but he believed that story.  Gryphons were typically born without emotion, but they always cared for children.  It was their way.

“Her name was Corrah Skycast.”

Corrah.

Trystan’s head tilted.  Yes…  She would have protected an orphaned child from an enemy race. The Skycast Clan’s honor had been unsurpassed.  They had ruled the Principal Mountains with ruthless justice and unquestioned authority.  Corrah had been their last queen, before they fell forever.  Trystan had beheld her once, with black wings that seemed to blot out the sun and eyes that beheld far too much.  Such a woman would have done her duty to the very end.

“You knew her, too.”  The stranger guessed, seeing Trystan’s face.  “She was old, when she was with me, but she taught me to survive.  She was a great and selfless woman.  The best.”

Trystan grunted.  Corrah had been a warrior.  And she’d apparently died on the ground, among her enemies, which was a degradation she’d done nothing to deserve.

“Look,” the stranger pressed on, “we need to get out of here.  If we get hit with that gas upstairs, only a kiss from our True Loves can wake us up.”  He did his damnedest to look everywhere but at Trystan’s nudity.  They were such a puritanical people.  “I don’t know about you, but I don’t currently have a True Love, so that’s not going to work for me. I have someone I need to kill, back in Camelot.”

Trystan watched him carefully, the cleaver still in his hand.  “Who…?”  His voice was hoarse and rusty from lack of use.  Just saying one word led to a coughing fit.

“Who do I plan to kill?”  The guy guessed with a snort.  “King Arthur.  He’s the dipshit who put me here and who sent all these fuckers to kill me.”  He nudged a golden body with his toe.

Trystan shook his head, waving that aside.  …Although Arthur, son of Uther, was a worthy choice of victim.  “Who… are… you?”  Even speaking in his own language hurt his atrophied vocal chords.

“Midas.  Who are you?”

“Trystan Airbourne, last of my Clan.”  He raised the cleaver higher as Midas took a step forward.

“Relax.”  Midas picked something up off the floor, which looked to be a glove.  “All I’m focused on is escaping this shithole.”  He put the glove on and he headed for the door that the guards had rushed through.  “I have nobody, either, so you’re welcome to tag along, if you like.”

Trystan’s eyes sharpened as the man went past him, still waiting for some kind of trap to spring.  “As if I would ever accompany one of your kind, anywhere.”  He rasped.

“You might want to take stock of your injuries before you start refusing help, regardless of who offers it.  I’ve never met you before, but I’m betting that you’ve looked better.”  Midas glanced at the battered appendages hanging limply from Trystan’s back.  “Especially your wings.”

Trystan refused to consider the damage, even as blood seeped from a hundred different places on his skin.  Warriors did not tend their wounds in the midst of battle and he was still fighting.  This man could be nothing but a clever foe.  “How did you turn the guards to…?”  Another hacking fit made it impossible for him to finish the question.

P’don.

With the adrenalin fading, his body was beginning to fail.  The poison and the blood loss and the pain from dozens of injuries was too much.  He tried to push past it all and concentrate.  Tried to keep going.  To do anything else would be admitting defeat and Trystan would never be defeated.  He was a gryphon.  Stronger than a thousand of his enemies.  He could block out the pain and…

The floor was suddenly rising up to meet him.  By that point, he was too far gone to even put out his hands to brace himself.  He just hit the ground with a reverberating crash and lay there barely conscious.

“Well shit.”  Midas said very distinctly in his own tongue.  His feet came into Trystan’s line of sight and then he was crouching down to meet Trystan’s eyes.  “Alright,” he sighed, switching back to Trystan’s language, “it looks like you’re going to have to accompany me, whether you like it or not.”  He grabbed Trystan by the shoulder, hefting him up.

With his last bit of strength, Trystan swung the cleaver at him again.

“Really?”  Midas knocked it away, with an exasperated oath.  “You almost cut off my nose!  God, you’re a fucking maniac, you know that?  Why the hell am I wasting my time rescuing you?”

“I don’t know.”  Trystan got out, but he stopped struggling and let himself be half-carried to the door.  “Perhaps you have plans of your own.  Perhaps you are designing to lock me in another cage.”

Midas scoffed at that suggestion.  “Perhaps, I’m just repaying a debt.  Corrah helped me.  I will help you.  My only ‘design’ is to get the shackles off you, dump you someplace to heal, and then go back to Camelot.  The last thing I would want to do is keep you around, believe me.”

This man had no intention of killing him.

Trystan shook his head in disgust, as he accepted the truth.  Midas was not a clever foe.  Midas was an idiot.  He tried to break that news to the idiot gently.  “You are an idiot.”

“And you’re an asshole, so we’re even.”

“Only an idiot would offer assistance to a man such as me, in a place such as this.  Especially, when others seek your death.”  Trystan clarified in a slower voice, but it was like explaining the mechanics of flight to a kangaroo.  Midas did not understand.

Like Corrah, he was a being of honor.  Like her, it would no doubt be his end.

“I guess I’d just hate for the best fighter I’ve ever seen to die in a trash heap.  I’ve always respected the best.”  Midas shrugged.  “The way you were cutting through those guards…?  It was art.”

Gryphons detested art, so that was hardly a compliment.

Still, no one else in the universe would have helped Trystan.  That said much for the man’s integrity, no matter his race.  It would be a shame to just let Midas perish from his own stupidity.  This soft, trusting fool was saving his life.  His own honor dictated that Trystan do all he could to return the favor.

“I will come with you to Camelot.”  He decided with an aggravated sigh.

“Who the fuck invited you?”

“I will ensure that you are safe from your enemies.”  Trystan continued, ignoring the protest.  The man clearly was not intelligent enough to form any worthwhile opinions, so it would be a waste of time to even consider his words.  “Then I will continue on my quest to kill all who have opposed my people.”

“Yeah,” Midas muttered in a humoring tone, “that all sounds very epic, but you might want to focus on getting unchained from that giant rock first.”