Chapter Text
The world was black and burned. Ash was everywhere.
The river the river the river, the man thought. He charged through the burned world as a stag did his wood, ash-choked and blinded as his charred feet struck the scorched earth kicking up embers dim and dying in his trail. Above him the world was beautiful and bright with purple-washed stars upon a blanket of black sky poking through those coils of dark smoke that slithered and slithered heavenward. The river was ahead, somewhere, so close, Rushing and rushing with the Mother’s song. He could almost taste the salt of her veins and the hymn of her prayer.
The others had long escaped. Their camp had been middling, culled down to the last hundred who had not died or fled or worse yet, were broken by the wheels of the masters swift on the man’s trail. Instead he had chosen the harsh wind. Set the fire and blown the horn to set the hunt and run as the stag did from his death.
The voices of the hunters cracked louder than the fire. Cutting through the smoke as blades did flesh. “Find him, find him, find him,” they cried. With such desperation it brought him to a teary laugh. Their screams of murder. Their commands of death. Echoed and echoed when the cost of his evasion was their own life. He almost wanted to scream back. Scream as a whip did and cry out and claim his victory. For the man they searched for was long and gone. Far from the river but deep into the water. His shackles were dust. His name was his own.
The forest broke apart at a stretch of barren hills untouched by the flame but tall with ridges sprawled like the spine of a great long-fallen beast. They would find him now. They would they would they would. His breath was all but gone, toes toasted and feet bleeding broken as he stammered atop the farside ledge. Better on his own terms. He hoped only that the distance was enough and the others had vanished elsewhere. That their cause was not yet dead. Standing upon that ledge he could feel devilgrass between his toes, grown in patches with his breath strangely gentle and pained body swaying in the cool wind. For a moment he thought to leap far down to where he would be dead again. Broken again. He was no stranger to that. The scars were proof enough. But stranger yet was his chose to embrace the sleep that forced itself upon him.
When he woke the hunters were there. The strangest of all was a dream without the shackle. When was the last time he could truly dream free?
“There you are, foul little beast,” the little-hunter spat in his ugly tongue. Marred with sweat and too fat for his black-leather wears. Even looking at such a creature was another obscenity forced upon the man. He had a sooty smile but teeth like piss-stained diamonds, shining just as bright. Cruel, the man noted. Their smiles are always cruel. But I will stomach it once more.
“Rather fitting,” said the other little-hunter. Flat-nosed with sweat upon his grotesque, bloated face. “We found you on your hands and knees, did you know? As we do the dogs in the kennels. What did you dream of, dog? Rutting with another?”
A thousand words and insults for one but none crueler than the first. The man only laughed. I am your slave no longer.
His humour was lost on them as their short-lived enjoyment died just as the fires did behind them did. “Take him,” ordered the toothy one as the other dragged through hard rock and splintered wood and debris and death and further from the river he had tasted only a half-mile away. But what did it matter? The man had won. Even as they threw him before their leader. Even as their sharp kicks slammed him to the dirt and their blades marked his skin with a poor painter’s skill. It only made the man chuckle. You cannot break me. I will never beg.
They tied him to an ash-ridden tree, white against the copper of his skin. The little hunter would wait for him to break while the other yearned to rummage through his shattered shell. The leader would only ask, “Are you the Breaker of Chains?”
The man was silent. And so the whip was not.
It seared into his back. Hotter than the scorched forest. Kinder than the life of before. Pain and pain that became so little and less.
It came down again harder this time. Again they asked him, “Are you the Breaker of Chains?” The man seemed far away. As if their words were as unintelligible as the wind. His mind rushed like the Rhoyne flushed with the vision of a woman gold-eyed and as beautiful as the Mother in stories told. He could feel her right here, even as the whip fell. Her skin warm against his touch. Her lips soft upon his own. She was right there lain on her side with smile he adored. His lover. His goddess.
His skin screamed as it came down again but his lips never shared that weakness. Commonplace was the master’s desperation to see his dignity skinned bare. He took pleasure in knowing it was would always be his.
But each time they asked, “Are you the Breaker of Chains?” Each time he heard them less. His vision was only his sons. Of Marselen, of Mossador, of Moloro. Be strong, my sons, he wished to cry. The Breaker will find you as is promised.
The whip came down once more. But his mind was far and far gone left only on her smile. Of her golden eyes, so much like her mother. I would have crossed the seas for you, my Missandei.
Their bite now was one of frustration. Little hunters striped in their armour but playing at tigers. When the whip came again he only laughed.
“The man’s lost his wits,” one of them said.
The leader scoffed and pulled him down. Eyes of malice blacker than black. “Its wits are with it,” he murmured with a kick to the man’s jaw. Blood against the black dirt. With a whip against the man’s back. Blood against the black trees. With a stomp to the man’s groin. Blood against his black armour. He found glee on this violence. And even frustration and then defeat. For the man never said a word. Again, the whip comes down. What other tricks do they have?
“Call for your god!” Again and again. “Let him come. None shall save you from justice!”
“Justice.” The man’s laugh was bitter and biting. “How quick you are to call upon Him. The shrouded one. The smiling one. The old man’s shadow. Can you feel His scratch? Worry not, esteemed master. You will meet Him soon enough. We have served, and we shall die. But so will you.”
“So it speaks?” Down came the whip, again and again and again. And a dozen times more until naught but haunting sinewy flesh remained of his back. The leader held his whip tenderly when he finished. Caressing it as a father did his infant child, smearing the blood onto a dirty rag but careful never to let the soiled blood touch his skin. “I will ask you once more, slave,” he continued. “Are you the Breaker of Chains?”
You will not find him. Fallen to his knees, the man could see the old burns faded upon his wrists. The touch of the phantom shackle was finally but a half-remembered memory. He is all around us. The man’s blood trickled down the ruin of his flesh, painless somehow. He is in every drop of blood you spill. The man looked up to the leader smile bloodied and wide and filled with an amusement none of them would ever understand. “I am,” he uttered like a tangle in the wind. And then the man laughed. Even when the whip cracked a hundred times more. Somewhere they knew. Freedom. The man had tasted it. Never could they steal it from him. Never again.
But they kept him alive. They tended to him. With the finest medicines and herbs, with the darkest magics, with their red robes ablaze. But the man paid them no mind. Why bother? His chains were gone.
The free man remained unbroken.
“I am.” He whispered to himself, alone in the cage they had built for him. “I am.”