//------------------------------// // Scars of the Body // Story: Scarred // by TheGentlecoltAlex //------------------------------// Chapter 2 Scars of the Body 7 August, 1504 Pain. Unending pain. The burning of the hot red blade against his flesh, the acrid smell that came from it. The feel of fangs penetrating his skin, shredding chunks from his body. The laughter of a sadist, the screams of the victim. Smoke from the fire choking, suffocating him almost to the point of passing out. A moment's reprieve to ensure he did not die from the torture. The sound of pleading, begging for mercy, fell upon his captor's ears and the sick thing just kept laughing. The sound was horrible. It was the kind of laugh that everypony was taught to fear, to despair, to flee unto the lighter most places when they heard it. It signaled the insane were carrying out their innermost thoughts; their darkest wishes. Pain. Unending pain. The agony of enduring was too much to bear, and yet, he endured. Memories flooded through his brain like water from a broken dam: the yell of thousands of soldiers charging, the screams of the wounded and the silence of the dead. Slaughtering scores upon scores of the enemy, receiving medals of valor for doing so. Promotion; the writing of condolences to families of the fallen. Fluttershy in her wedding dress. The slash of the blade, the spraying of hot blood, his vision beginning to tunnel. The killing of hundreds of more soldiers. Seeing the betrayal of both his army and of his enemy. The anger that came from the releasing of traitors: pony, griffin, zebra, and dragon. The rage, the blood-lust that coursed through his veins. Vowing that he would see justice carried out against them. Pain. Unending pain. A short mantra being chanted, haunting him to the core, even as his body numbed from the abuse. "This is the Mantra of Suffering," a voice whispered inside his head, "you will recite this before every kill you make. I will know if you obey. I am within you, even as you are within me." The sight of his best friend, his family, his second-in-command, being stabbed in the back and betrayed during a battle by one of his own men. Ripping the traitor a part with his hoofs; Braeburn breathing his last in his arms. Pain. Unending pain. The crack of bone, his vision splashed with red as his throat finally gave out. He began to cough up blood as he wheezed for air, his vision blessedly beginning to darken. As his eyes began to finally close, he heard his captor chuckle as he whispered menacingly in the stallion's ear. "Welcome home, Macintosh." *** A high pitched whining greeted Big Mac as his eyes opened to sunlight streaming through small cracks from within the hollow tree, wincing slightly from the ringing in his ears. The light assaulted his vision, causing him to squint and move his head slowly out of the beams, groaning as he did so. Getting out of the sunlight, his pupils widened as they tried to adjust to the dimly lit room, taking a few moments before they were able to see the wood above him clearly. His eyes moved about tiredly, almost lazily, absentmindedly searching for something coherent to latch onto as his mind slowly began to process all that had happened. Suddenly, his head and upper body snapped into a sitting position, his muscles and skin crying out to him as he involuntarily moaned in pain, slowly laying back down to the floor as he coughed. Memories raced across his mind's eye as the torture was relayed back to him in horrifyingly terrible agony. The branding, the slashing, the bleeding, the screaming, the chanting of the Mantra and above all: the laughter. Mac squeezed his eyes shut and put his hooves over his ears, curling into the fetal position as his war memories mixed with those of his torture, his brain going into overdrive as he tried to stave the swarm of grim and gruesome recollections. He moaned once more in pain has his intestines did somersaults as a reaction to both lack of food and his memories. The ringing in his ears intensified. Big Mac remained where he was for only a moment more before he rolled onto his stomach and, managing to lift his upper body slightly from the floor, coughed before spewing liquid and bile all out in front of him. A few more seconds and it was nothing but dry heaving; there was nothing left for him to vomit. After half a minute or so of this, the stallion finally was able to stop. His front legs giving way beneath him, Mac managed to direct his fall to land on his left side. He hacked violently for a few moments while wincing in pain, wheezing in air as best he could as is body fought against him. Mac was unaware of how long he stayed this way, but when the coughing finally ceased, the stallion simply lay on his side, sucking in oxygen as he attempted to order his thoughts. His eyes wandered while he did so, coming to an abrupt halt when he noticed his front legs. Macintosh blinked a few times with a blank stare, not fully processing what he saw. The first thing he noticed was that his fur was no longer the maroon color he had come to be known for. Instead, he saw dark grey strands of hair and, as he lifted his eyes slowly upwards, he could see a few ends of a long, shaggy black mane. Mac furrowed his brows. A shaggy mane? While it was true the stallion had not kept his mane short since the beginning of the war fifteen years prior, he hadn't let it grow out to such a length as this. As he pondered this, a nagging question burrowed into his mind, how long had he been there? More importantly, however, he began asking himself the question of why he had even been brought here. Mac swallowed thickly, his parched throat becoming painfully obvious at this point, and began moving his dry, swollen tongue inside his mouth, trying in vain to get some saliva to accumulate so he could spit the disgusting taste of bile from his mouth. As he continued to try and remember how he had gotten here, his tongue ran over the back of his teeth that were, miraculously, still all in place. As he did so, he froze once more. He felt a few more times, making sure it wasn't a trick of the imagination. Opening his jaws slowly and carefully, Mac ran his tongue along the top of his teeth. To his horror, he felt points. Dozens of brutally sharp points had been carved into his once harmless, vegetarian teeth. Wincing, the stallion retracted his tongue after cutting himself. Waiting a moment, he hesitantly began feeling the teeth once more, careful not to rip his tongue this time. Puzzlement came to his muddled brain as he felt a layer of substance encasing his teeth. Lightly running his taste buds over the front, the stallion got the distinct taste of something vile. It was the unmistakable flavor of metal. His heart rate began picking up as his breath became slightly labored and irregular. The poor stallion attempted to calm himself, but to little avail. He had faced and lived through many hellish times during The War of Sorrow. He had watched entire companies brutally massacred in a matter of minutes, their gore and intestines spewn on the earth for all to see. Comrades and enemies butchered by steel, lead, claws, and anything else that could be used as a means to kill. Heads torn off, spines ripped from their very bodies, eye balls dangling from nothing but a thread of flesh as the victim pleaded for help. Through all of this he had been able to endure for one reason. Mac, like so many others, had always harbored an inner belief that, no matter what happened to those around him, those things would never happen to him. He thought he could suffer through watching his brothers-in-arms being blown apart due to the simple thought that that fate would never come to pass upon him. He had been very wrong. No matter how much he held onto that belief, it never was true. Time after time, he was forced to watch and relive the horrendous sights he had witnessed on so many different battlefields and the one reason he was able to endure was that he simply forced himself to forget. He forced himself to forget those who had died and where they had fought, as if they hadn't existed. He forced himself to make up new scenarios and memories, new battles and victories that had never existed to begin with. He had been able to live with the hoax he had created within the confines of his mind, the brighter reality compared to what actually was. Until now, it had all been enough. Now, it was happening to him. HE was the one being tortured. HE was the one who was suffering. HE was the one that the horrors he had saw were beginning to happen to. His psychological state was twistedly fragile to begin with and his current predicament was slowly grating away at what glass defense he had deceived himself into constructing. The situation was breaking him and he was painfully aware of the fact. He tried breathing exercises that were ended in fruitless results. He attempted to retreat into his own little world but it was already shattered. There was no where else for him to run and his mind couldn't take the strain. His body was beginning to ache. Sweat appeared on his brow as he began the early stage of hyperventilation. It was too much, the weight of it all was to much, he was going to- Big Mac snapped back from his thoughts when he heard a nearby door open behind him and something large step into the room. The soldier stiffened, his previous thoughts hitting him full force as terror began eating away at his soul. A ringing started in his ears, making the stallion's ears flatten. Over the noise, however, he heard the lighting of a match and, a moment later, light bathed the room. The footsteps were once again heard, coming closer to where Mac lay. His eyes widened and his breathing halted as he heard the jingling of keys, the rattle of a lock, and the squealing of hinges. Hinges. A cell. I've been in a cell this entire time. A sharp clawed hand grabbed the back of Big Mac's neck, causing him to cry out in pain. Then he heard a voice that sent shivers of horror down his back. It was commanded with a sophistication and intelligence only spoken by those of distinction; one who was accustomed to the taste of power. It was a voice that echoed in the back of his mind. "Big Macintosh, how nice of you to join the land of the living." Fear had sealed words from Mac's mouth but it still let him cry out in agony as his bruised and battered body was thrown into a metal chair. Screwing his eyes shut in pain, the stallion felt cuffs latch around his hooves and legs, pinning him to the chair. He heard the voice again. "Open your eyes." Mac, still very much in pain, kept his eyes screwed shut. Something smashed into the right side of face, cracking his neck painfully as his head whipped to the side. He coughed for a moment, spitting out blood. His teeth had cut his tongue again. "I'll say it one more time. Open. Your. Eyes." The right side of his face already beginning to swell from the blow, Big Mac slowly began to open his left eye a fraction at a time, as his right eye was left to squint in an attempt to see. When he finally laid eyes upon his captor, the stallion was, instead of pure fear, filled with a sense of confusion and terror. Before him stood a being he could not quite describe in his pain filled and befuddled state of mind. What looked to be a large, dragon shaped being was towering over him in an almost predatory stance of dominance. It stood at six and a half feet, with bright, orange eyes containing slitted pupils that seemed to bore through Big Mac in an intense look of loathing and disgust. The body looked to be. . . smokey in a sense, covered in a gray haze, as if he. . . or she had not decided whether they were to exist in the current reality. Through the haze, Macintosh could make out one other feature besides the pair of eyes on the entity: the mouth. White, pristine teeth meant for the rending of flesh, shown like a beacon in the dead of night in contrast to the rest of the body, were revealed by a malicious grin that seem to best suit a cannibal in Mac's mind. A shiver racked the chained stallion's body as he beheld the creature before him, his good eye widening. The dragon chuckled- a dry, raspy sound. "Yes, that is better. If you are quite done with your pig squealing, we may move forward with this project and I will have the pleasure of throwing you back into the depths from which you came." In his wariness, Mac was able to stutter out the simple question of, "W-who are you?" The dragon's smile turned to a smirk before he laughed. It was a horrible, high pitched screeching that sounded like the amplified scraping of rusty metal. "I am Malsvir, Skryspeaker of the Dead and Shaman of the Hawi, a once great clan that was ordered into the pathetic squabbling your kind claims to be warfare. A clan betrayed by our own chieftain who whored himself away to those he believed would cleanse us of our 'corrupted ways'." Mac, at this point, was hopelessly lost and aching in pain, beginning to care less and less about the being in front of him and simply wishing for this to turn into another nightmare brought on by the war. The dragon seemed to notice his captive's glazed expression, and surged forward, clamping a hazy, clawed hand around the stallion's throat. Mac began to cough, choking from the sudden pressure to his windpipe and attempted to wheeze in air, even as he felt sharp claws dig into the back of his neck. "Listen and listen well, you blubbering fustilarian. You are here only because you seem hearty enough and have not yet died because of your wounds. I have been searching for a very long time to find a sentient creature such as yourself to carry out my plans, and though the pile of bodies that precedes you was quite delicious to collect, I will not allow you to go to waste. You are destined to serve me until our glorious retribution is completed or until such a time that you perish." Malsvir slammed Mac's neck and head against the back of the chair, the force of the impact causing him to clamp his teeth down and through his tongue. The stallion's muffled cry of anguish filled the hut as hot blood filled his mouth before leaking out from the corners. Malsvir began cackling again as he held his left palm out in front of him, a flame sparking to life in the center and engulfing his hand. A glint shown in the dragon's eye as his laughter subsided long enough for him to mutter an incantation of silence. "You have been taught the lesson of pain," Malsvir stated as he stared down at his captive and smiled. "Now comes the lesson of endurance."