Opening his eyes with a groan, a hook rattled against the bars of his cage, a bowl and a water canister in its loop. He reached out with his left arm, but nothing happened, a blackened throbbing stump where it should be.
Boris stood a few meters away, holding the hooked rod with a gleeful smile. Wretch envisioned the man's throat in his grip as he plucked the food and water from the hook with his remaining arm.
He was no stranger to pain, far from. But the burning of the wound was something else, like running into a brick wall lined with razors. Now it had dulled into a deep, throbbing ache that pulsed through his whole torso.
He looked down at the worn metal bowl and the brown stew within, a wave of nausea washing over him.
At least his flame was at full, he could heal, if he was willing to pay in pain.
“Drink. Then eat,” Jonah said, breaking the rule of silence.
“Don’t speak!” Boris shouted.
Jonah ignored him, gesturing towards the meal with his dirty foot. In daylight, Wretch could see him clearly, his hair was shoulder length and standing in all directions, like the mane of a lion, Dark blonde under the grime. Sharp features and a gap in his front teeth.
Boris pulled out the prod and gave Jonah two swift pokes. Wretch saw him shudder, but he didn’t so much as make a noise.
Wretch groaned and straightened as best he could. He gave Jonah a nod before forcing down the water, then the mushy food. He struggled to hold it down and curled up into a ball, sliding in and out of consciousness while sweat ran down his back.
After what felt like an hour, the clock above chimed, pulling him from his stupor.
Eleven.
He straightened as the pain had become manageable and the nausea was subsiding enough for him to concentrate.
I have to start, and I have to do it now. he thought.
If he didn’t regrow his arm, Jonah and the other prisoners were going to suffer. Last time he’d done it over days, now, he had hours. There was a way out of here, he was sure of it. Like a puzzle. The outside world one piece, the key another, his blessings the third.
There is going to be a chance, I just have to endure.
He forced the fire from his ember, pulling at the flames and subjugating them to his will. Dragging the power towards his burned stump.
The charred flesh twitched, and the pain grew worse. He gritted his teeth, clutching the cold metal bars. New pink skin crawled over the charred black. The tight crust cracked and burnt flakes fell into the bucket below.
He stopped, only that had taken a tenth of his flame.
With an exhale, the pain receded, a slight throbbing pain from where his hand used to be. He waited, then tried again.
When nightfall came, the arm at least resembled his usual black, clawed limb. But the hand was too small, the bones still soft. It had been the same when he did it the first time all those months ago, but somehow that life felt so distant now. Like memories of memories.
Watching his ember with his mind’s eye, only a sliver of flame nestled deep within, the fainter it had become, the stronger the whispers had grown. Sputtering words and meanings he wasn’t made to comprehend. He shivered, never had he used regeneration so aggressively.
The snores of Boris pulled him back to the bleak reality.
“You really can regrow your limbs, that’s… amazing!” Cynthia whispered from somewhere in the dark.
“You did decent,” Victoria said. “Cynthia fainted and cried for two days after her first time with the saw.”
“Thank you,” Wretch said quietly. “I’ll have a new arm by morning.”
Jonah leaned closer, his sunken eyes watching him closely, “please tell me everything about becoming a Blessed. When I get out, I swear to the Saint I’ll become one."
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Wretch gave a quiet and dry laugh, meeting the younglings gaze through the bars.
“Sure, I signed some papers but, what does it matter now.”
Wretch trailed his gaze upwards, looking to the mute prisoner hoisted high above ground, staring out through the cracked glass of the clock.
“Jonah, I wanted to ask. What did the boy at the top say to you?”
Jonah dangled his one bare foot through the bars, wearing a smirk in the low light.
“He only said he missed his mom, and… something else,” Jonah said while leaning his head against the bars. “So how does the flame work, does it run out?”
“What else?” Wretch insisted, leaning closer until the bars likewise chilled his forehead.
Jonah shrugged his shoulders and furrowed his brow.
Wretch looked at the figure at the top of the clocktower.
“Jonah, I need to reach that kid, if we want to escape. Or all the Blessed knowledge will be for nothing.”
Jonah’s face contorted as he seemed to think so hard he might burst.
He exhaled.
“Don’t go near the fireplace, that’s what he said.”
The words lit a spark in Wretch’s mind.
“No way,” he whispered.
Could he be that kid?
The professor had created Milley, Tireless Gatherer. The multi handed horror he had killed on his first job with the Richters. It had kidnapped a child by climbing down a fireplace, but that was three months ago.
Wretch looked up at the upper cage. Moonlight seeped through the massive glass-clock and ticking gears, reflecting off a hunched and mutilated figure so thin you could count every rib. The boy gazed out through a hole in the cracked glass, he didn’t even blink.
Three months of suffering, three months of this hell, how did one persevere? Was the sliver of sky in the cracked face of a clock really enough?
“Kid,” Wretch whispered as gently as he could. “I know you…”
“I have met your father, the foreman, a good man. Your mother too, she cried when you went missing.”
The boy didn’t move, frozen between the bars, his mind was somewhere else. The other three prisoners looked at Wretch in surprise.
“You know him?” Jonah asked.
“Not exactly. I was tasked with finding him three months ago, if it really is him."
“By the Saint…” Victoria said, clutching her only hand on the bars. “three months here.”
“Maybe if you say his name?” Jonah said, rubbing his toes against his chin. Wretch dug through his memories, past shambling horrors, screams, whispers and laughter. He pictured the grieving parents, the tremble of the mothers lips, the smell of soap.
Ehrast? no… there was a Z.
He froze.
"Ezra, that's it. Ezra!
He sighed with relief, holding the name firm in his mind.
“Ezra, your mother is still waiting. Let’s go see her again."
The boy flinched, gasping as if pulled from underwater, slowly, he turned away from the stained glass.
Wretch gritted his teeth at the sight. Sunken cheeks, protruding chin, black eyes set far back in the skull. The face of a child reduced to a visage of death.
“I killed it, Ezra, the thing with the hands. I ripped it apart and threw it down a Spire.”
No spark lit in those black eyes and despite the low flame of his Ember, a fire crept through Wretch’s chest. Urging him to violence.
“I need your help to get us home, tell me what you see outside?” Wretch asked, forcing his voice to remain calm.
The boy blinked, visibly struggling.
“Saint’s Summit,” he whispered. His voice so low, Wretch only caught it thanks to his Blessed hearing.
“That’s good! Do you see the Scar spines behind it?” Wretch said with the softest smile he could produce.
“To the left,” Ezra murmured.
“We're on a minor Spire to the south,” Wretch thought, a plan for escape quickly taking form. Tears started rolling down the bony cheeks of the boy, leaving lines in the dirt of his face.
“It’s okay, kid," Jonah said, nodding towards Wretch’s cage. "But Ezra, that man is a Blessed, he needs your help.”
Ezra sniffed with unfocused eyes.
“On the second level of Saint’s Summit there’s a two-story house,” Wretch said softly. “Windows on the sides, a glass door to the balcony in the front, two hundred paces to the left of a big elevator. Flowers grow up the wall, all the way to the balcony, can you find it for me?”
It was quiet for a moment, only the occasional squeak from the taught chains and the clicking of the gears.
“Okay,” Ezra said at last.
Jonah tilted his head, “just curious, that thing with the hands you said you killed, what was it?”
Wretch gave a brief description of his first mission with the Richter’s.
Victoria’s voice came back downtrodden and raspy, “Is that what the psychopath’s using my arms and legs for, stitching together monsters?”
“Probably,” Wretch said, shivering as he thought what abominations his own flesh would create.
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