Orlando Alleandruin

Origins - Part 1

Fear.

Cold.

Darkness.

His eyes opened with a start, a gasping inhale that caught hard against the stiff leather strap which held his chest bound.  In the dim, near blackness of a damp, stone-walled room, there were no sounds.  Or nearly none….

The soft padding of silk-slippered feet echoed from one side to the other.  Bright blue eyes welted shut again, warding against the unknown that didn’t want to be seen.  

Acknowledged. 

Felt.

Believed.

Slowly the sensation began to return to his upper limbs, a tingling pain that started in cramped fingers and rose to trapped shoulders.  His wrists were bound, strapped in place against the cold steel surgical table.  Paralysis held what physical restraints did not.  Had his back been broken?  Would he die in this place, alone in the dark?  A fuzzy memory of ice and blood raced through the paladin’s mind, as fractured and fragmented as his knowledge of this room.  

A cold, skeletal finger curled over his arm, tracing along the tender underside of radius and ulna, pausing at the crux of a torn elbow.  The hiss of an exasperated sigh burned in his ears as his eyelids fluttered, frozen neck struggling to turn in vain.  The face of his captor would remain a mystery, but their purpose was clear.  

Terrifying.  

Grotesque.

Final.

He would not meet death in this place…that would be too kind.  The soft padding again hummed in his ears again, almost eerily soothing, moving to the other side of his waking body.  Bloodied, bare feet began to feel the sting of frostbite, and the pain was almost welcome.  

Crimson hair mixed with the color of blood spilled over his shoulders, the only part of him not bound to torment.  As steely eyes widened to another sickly touch against the crease of his other elbow, his head would finally obey, turning to face the perpetrator as the white-hot sting of a needle pierced his skin.  Quivering lips fought to speak, to cry out against his captor’s torments, a vain plea for release.

Something.

Anything.

Nothing.