Mists

[Adrian Kane]

Byron / Inquisitor Jeorune

"The rules are simple, boy. Speak only when I speak to you." Inquisitor Jeorune struck swiftly, one gloved fist flying into the boy's nose. The strike was forceful but seemingly without rage or anger; it was a naturally ensuing reaction to a breaking of one of the rules. The blow was at a downwards angle, meant to break the nose without the risk of sending the bone back into the brain. It certainly wouldn't due to kill the boy their very first day together. "Ask permission to speak when I address you." Another blow just as quick as the first while the boy was still reeling, a sudden swat against the throat to rob the boy of breath.

While the boy was distracted, Inquisitor Jeorune produced a knife and closed, grabbing at the collar of the boy's shirt and slicing at the fabric before beginning to violently tear it away. Each tug and sudden push meant to keep the boy off balance and deny opportunities for cheap blows, although it would take a heavy fist to cause much discomfort through the coat of heavy chainmail and under-padding Inquisitor Jeorune habitually wore.

"You will do everything you are told." Any subsequent struggles or resistance on the boy's part were meant with further brutal but carefully planned acts. At the very first hint of struggle, Inquisitor Jeorune extracted further disorientation and injury. Practised hands latched onto the boy's arm, forcing it awkwardly in the socket. One swift punch to the upper arm and there was the discomforting sound of the limb popping out of the joint where it would naturally and preferably rest. Then he proceeded to strip the boy naked, cutting away clothes with swift but skilled swipes of the blade.

He had no illusions that physical pain alone would mean much to the boy. They were tools of cruder men. Pain alone would gain no grounds. Embarrassment, disrespect, destruction of self image and believed positions of power. These were the tools that would wear the boy down. Pain alone was a tool for the inexperienced and arrogant, as sadly were many of the Hand of the Light.

Byron, somewhere beneath the thoughts and actions of the Inquisitor Jeorune, was quite interested in the situation. He hadn't had much time to peruse the dead Inquisitor's notes, but he had learned much in the 'arts' of...negotiation...while in the employ of Master Dekan as boy. This first session had been a bit rushed, but only out of necessity. He would have a few hours after this to peruse those books, and get some rest such that he could stay on his toes for their next session. This...Dread Lord Arikan fellow would be most interesting to work with. Byron had never had reason to apply the amount of attention to anyone before that he would wager would be needed with this man. Much would be learned in the following weeks, both of himself and of the limits of one so high-and-mighty as shared the room with him.

Arikan

The Hand would find his was not so easy a hide to conquer. Not while he fed on the deepest troughs of innate infuriation to fight back. Summoned strength was fast to fade though. Teeth-gritting grunts pelted loud, first blow by blow then sheer force of arm to arm; but while the Hand was armored, it was hardly full plate and mail, and intimately familiar with the layout, Arikan exploited known soft spots during their little display. He knew the clock ticked on these efforts however, but to subdue was not his foremost ambition. Like the majority of his life's work, he craved sabotage as the dying craved water and every fiber of his thread spun the will to continue seeking it. Just one good blow to stun him would do. Enough to run. That’s all he needed.

But he was hardly at his best, and the Inquisitor broke the defense first. The sudden shock of a shoved out shoulder began the end of it. The transformation of this resistance away from a physical contest Arikan knew now was impossible to win and toward an alternate strategy altogether. Evade and escape. He grew desperate. Likely what resulted next was not the vanquished prisoner the Hand was hoping to carve from their little entanglement. Hardly dropped forever slumped on hands and knees to pant at this Light-cursed stagnant air. It took some minutes, but soon the glaze of welled-up pressure blurred his sight and a flood of warmth drained down his throat, and his thoughts fuzzed. From the ground, Arikan lifted his face just enough to graciously gift a spray of that half-coagulated bolus of blood in order to decorate the Hand's unfathomably boring tabard. After all, it was an hideously uncreative uniform. Arikan hated them from the very beginning. And it was likely the first the Inquisitor’s was so decorated. Questioners ran from the mere scent of a battle. The cowards.

Out of a thousand darkfriends who might crawl out of whatever begrimed hole of muck and vile they foolishly called life, their superior walking this earth with the mortal name of Arikan might find but one with promise. One out of a thousand to potentially climb from their groveling, miserable world filled with the sole purpose of serving those powers who actually will be at the top of that soon-unfurled scroll of future kings. Stripped to a sheen of feverish sweat, defiant to the end, one such man of coming dominion finally pushed to his feet and sized up his companion. He was no mere darkfriend, but something else entirely. Something greater. He overcame the daze of pain by sheer force of will. The river dripping off his chin wasn’t a bother, his hand came away bloody when he checked his mouth; the Inquisitor’s blows were hardly enough to bother a soft-cheeked eunuch let alone the lord of darker armies. The Hand should be proud; his fist could make a eunuch squeak.

He stretched forth an unsettling, red-lipped smile to praise such valiant efforts.
"Congratulations, Hand. You’ve managed to strike me when few have ever came close.”

The words gelled in his throat, and he coughed up blood. So once again he livened the Hand's tabard with an additional spew of color to clear the airway for further conversation. No permission requested. Droplets littered the floor between them.

"After our little dance your Lord Inquisitor will likely give you the promotion himself. After all the first knot is hardest to earn, and the cloth under your sun and hook is depressingly bare." Apparently the Aes Sedai's 'witchcraft' was limited to conjuring none but the lowest rank of Questioners. Apparently as well, Arikan was familiar with Children badges of rank. Gold stars and knots: such a revelation should spark a corroding thought or two. He’d walked among them for better part of a decade, but even then he hated Questioners.

After the spit, Arikan stumbled to the cot. Once eased onto its edge, he all too-knowingly interlaced fingers together and slipped the palms over one bare knee. There he pulled with a final draw of energy to suction the shoulder back into place. In his youth, Healing among the friends of the dark was not so common as it is now, and once slipped early on, a shoulder had a nasty habit of gliding in and out of the socket. He’d done this before. Unfortunately, going back was about as pleasurable as forcing out; that is, near to intolerable; as demonstrated by the muted grunt and twisted grimace accompanying that tell-tale sound of skeletal self-inhalation.

Heavily tired, but more comfortable at least, he flexed a few fingers gingerly. The blood flowed back where it belong, and a groan rattled his chest as the pain subsided. He went on,
“I suggest you leave out the part where you send the Aes Sedai in ahead to do all the work, though. I certainly appreciate the need to shield, poison, and starve me first, but they may not understand how taxing your job is, one on one like this." He gestured with the other arm, obviously, for the Hand's mighty accomplishments with grandiose sarcasm at his own bare stomach on down, everything barely beginning to hollow from time in captivity. He was duly naked now, though not by his own hand.
"But how quickly you obey, lad." Face bloodied, body bruised, and shoulder wounded over the defiance, but it was not his own hands that cut away those strips of cloth. The inquisitor wanted him stripped. So he did it himself. The beating was worth it.

It was a crossing of rare threads that he should encounter one with the promise to be great. The thread before him now was no such, however. It was a string of sackcloth yearning instead to have been spun of golden yarn.
"I am impressed. For an Aes Sedai puppet, that wasn't bad. Show me another trick." Perhaps, if he were further impressed, he would let the man sit at his feet like a proper dog. Where it belonged.