Johann's InterrogationIndex | Time Under Chaos | Game Logs | Johann's Interrogation
Johann groaned, and slowly brought his hands to his face. A thin ray of gray sunlight fell through the slit in his cell into his eyes. For a moment, he was confused as to where he was, as was often the case. He had had the dream again, of how it had all gone wrong. His unpadded stone bench smelled of urine and sweat, and his bruised and scarred body ached as always as he unsteadily rose to his feet and rubbed his calloused hands over a form which hadn't been washed in months. The iron collar chafed. Like a morning prayer, he repeated his curse on Mandor and Chaos, now abreviated into simply 'I curse you.' Perhaps it was as they said-- curses return on those who utter them. It didn't matter. He was an animal, a robot, a thing. Numbers seared into his arm with a branding iron, obedience flensed into his back with a whip. He was thin like a willow, like a skeleton, but tough like a piece of jerkey or hide. Before long, there were the now-familiar sounds of the other slaves being awoken by the taskmasters. He no longer remembered how long he had been like this. He had tried to count the days, but one too many stays in The Hole had forced him to admit he had no notion of how much time had passed. Perhaps twenty years... more likely a hundred. Like yesturday, and the day before that, and a blur of who knew how many other days, they led him into the salt mine and attached the collar at his neck to the rock face. Flecks of rock and salt cut into his flesh, and the dust burned his eyes and nose. By the time they fed him, he had lost all sense of where the rock ended and his body began, whether he was the aching man carving into the salt vein or the wall which was being eaten away at. As he ate the thin meal, he forced himself to try to remember Amber, to picture Kolvir. All he could summon forth was Mandor's face, and the echo of angry fires long burnt out. He had been talking for perhaps twenty minutes now. A new wretch, a ghost in the making, trying to strike up a conversation. Most didn't last more than a few months, and none had suffered here as long as he. "What." The man who had once been Johann said to the youth with the curly black hair, high cheekbones, and the expressive eyes. It was as much a threat as a question, and the only warning the man would get. If he so much as looked at the food which was he-who-had-been-Johann's, he'd be dead before he felt it. Kinder in any event, not that that was the point. "I was just wondering what you were in for... whats your story?" the young man asked with a sincere-seeming smile. "I'm Wil Budd," he added a moment later as he offered the other man half his loaf. Stupid-- he'd starve half a day sooner for the kindness, and this was no place or time to show weakness. It wasn't long before the rest of the work gang's laughter at the generousity turned cruel. Two of the larger thugs walked up and demanded he share their bread with him, and as he had only half left to share, found his offering insufficient. Johann didn't know why, but in the end he boxed their ears and sent them running with blood dripping down their faces. When both men returned to work, Johann found that Wil had been working alongside him all afternoon. The guards did not tolerate talking, but were at a different section of the cave. "I failed." was Johann's only reply. Talking was stupid, it would only encourage the fool, and Wil seemed to realize he wasn't willing to say anything more. Over the next week, Johann wasn't above beating Wil himself when he did something stupid, if only to insure no one else cripled him by mistake. With nigh monosylabic instructions, he taught him the ropes and protected Wil in return for half of his bread. The other man clearly dreaded some kind of homosexual advances, but none were forthcoming. Eventually, Wil broached the subject once again. "Me, I was aboard the Bellipotent. Impressed, which was fine after a while. Then there was some mixup about striking an officer during wartime... though I don't suppose I'll be getting an appeal," Wil joked with half a grin before sucking on a split knuckle. He waited for Johann to tell his own tale, but when the other man didn't he gently prompted "What did you fail at, that you were sent here. Did you fail at business? At cards? At robbing a bank... 'I failed' isn't much of an answer..." "At saving Mandor's children from my father," he spat. The other man simply waited, his eyes wide with sympathy. "I tried to kill him, in part, so Caine wouldn't kill his daughters. And thousands more. It seems fate is not to be rushed, and that much blood must pay for much blood," Johann said grimly as his fingers traced the words in the dust. "But... how did it go wrong?" Wil prompted. "I gambled on my lover's patriotism against his envy and lost... He returned my backstab with his own, and I wound up here... He didn't have men prepped to poison the garrison or cut the counterweights on the gates. I'm sure Caine and Julian had to purge and purge... or perhaps they failed as well," Johann said slowly, ending with a heavy sigh. As time went on, over the next month, Wil would prompt him with more sweet questions, and he would grudgingly answer. He told him about how the bullets had failed him, about the incident with the brass placks and the kitchen knife. Johann mentioned how Damien had 'helped' him come up with a plan which didn't endanger Petra, which would take place on the docks and risk fewer lives, where escape would be more certain if anything went wrong. Damien had quietly 'helped' him organize his revolution, had moved his own personel to 'support' Johann's burgeoning network of spys and saboteurs. Slowly, as the weeks passed, Johann started to feel his head clear. He was uncovering something, underneath the salt and dirt. At first, he kept it secret, and was frequently moved to work away from it, but he would still make his way back to it time after time. It glowed faintly. A curve here, a splotch there... and still the kind questions from someone who looked like Damien... a bit too much like Damien. Finally, Johann saw what was underneath the salt. Without warning, he burried the imaginary pick into the neck of his now perhaps beloved interlocutor, and smashed at the rock face with both of his bloody fists. Although they jerked short, he felt the strength of 'years ago' return to his body, and the blazing sign of The Pattern was evident. He clung to it, used it to shield his mind, and clawed away at the flimsy illusions of the mind to see what really lay before his eyes. There were only two true things in the universe... The Pattern, and his rage. He was chained to the wall, the rough damp cold hardness of it pressing against his back. At a little distance was a table and a chair and - by the little of the brazier in the corner, he could see who was sitting in that chair, quietly enjoying a glass of wine, it seemed, as relaxed and urbane as though he was sitting in a gentleman's club. Mandor. He was smiling faintly. "I won't invite you to join me," he said. "In the circumstances." Johann just stared at him with a look of dawning horror. He grasped, trying to recall what Mandor had gotten from him, but he was still reeling from very real memories of spending decades as little more than an animal. It didn't take long for him to button up emotionally, but Mandor got to see the pain he had wrought across Johann's face for one satisfying moment. "Pphhbtt." Johann replied, aiming his bloody spittle not for Mandor's face, but for the wineglass. The spittle seemed to hang in the air ... travelling in slow motion ... and then it exploded in a radiance of light - and the face it revealed was not Mandor - but Damien. He began to laugh, rising to his feet. "And how do you know, you poor, weak fool, that this isn't the dream? That you can fight free of it and find reality ... where? What is real, Johann? And what is in your mind?" And it was Mandor standing there once more, smiling. "Blood, curses, and the Pattern," he sneered. "Die today, die in a century... I might have spared you the -waiting-. Nothing you can do to me will spare you the suffering you will endure in the fullness of time," Johann returned. "And I very much doubt that anything will spare you the suffering that you will recieve today," said Mandor. "My only regret must be that your time will be so very short. Still we shall have to see what we can do to fill the unforgiving minute, shan't we? I wonder ... will we have chance to discover you secret fear?" "Who'll kill you, in the end... us, or Chaos' own hardliners? A bullet to your brain would have been much... kinder," Johann said with a sneer. "Indeed," said Mandor calmly. "Which is why, I confess, I am a little surprised that it was your preferred option. Had you know wish to make my death as long and agonising as I will endeavour to make yours?" "Dead is dead... you'll see what comes of greed," Johann replied. "Greed?" Mandor seemed genuinely surprised by the accusation. "Oh, I wouldn't say that had ever been my failing. Why do you charge me with it?" "Amber is too fine for you to rule," Johann answered absently as he wrapped his hands around the chains and strained once again. And the chains broke and he fell forward down and down and down .... until he was brought up with a jolt and realized he was lying on the floor of the cold mines, with the whipcracks of the guards drawing ever nearer ... And in his ears a voice whispered ... "Why this *is* Amber ... nor are you out of it ... " And he knew that was true. And he once again started his day with the catechism which was his curse.
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