Chương 10: Peristonia

Content Warning: This chapter deals with suicidal ideation and themes of despair.

"There are prisons of stone and iron, and then there are prisons of the mind. The cruelest wardens in Peristonia carried no keys, for the doors they locked were inside the thoughts of the men they buried alive." - From The Chronicles of the Silver Concord, by Lady Margaret Marigold, Royal Historian, 3rd Revision, p. 137. MASON When I next awoke, my mind still felt scrambled, reality returning slowly.

The cold came back first, a damp chill like a winter evening on the Staten Island Ferry, clothes soaked through with icy sea spray. I heard the groan of wood and felt the oscillating sway of waves, soft splashes of water lapping against the underside of a boat. The smell hit last, saltwater, seaweed, body odor, and mildew from the bag that still covered my face. I was lying on my side, cheek pressed against wet wooden planks.

The rocking of our boat was too severe to be anything bigger than a skiff, the slap of oars on water suggesting I was being rowed somewhere not too far offshore. My ankles were bound with coarse rope and chafed painfully, my one good arm cinched tightly to my body in a way that made it impossible to move. My throat felt hoarse, jaw aching as I tried to form words.

"Where are you taking me?" No response but the creak of the oarlocks and the gentle slap of waves against the hull.

"If it's Thorne that's paying you, I can pay more. I'll double it, nobody has to know." A low chuckle came from somewhere near my head.

"With what, boy? The lint in your pockets?" The voice was gravelly, devoid of any warmth.

"Ain't no point, kid," said another, calmer voice.

"Nothing personal, just orders." I shut up, saving my strength in hopes an opportunity would present itself. The rocking of the boat made me feel sick and the uncomfortable position of my limbs sent sparks of pain through my broken ribs and back. They rowed in silence for what must have been an hour, though time felt distorted by the extreme discomfort. The boat lurched as it scuffed against something hard. We rocked back and forth as men exited the boat, the sound of wood scraping against stone.

Rough hands grabbed my shoulders, hauling me off the ground and dragging me across the bow onto a hard surface. My bare feet scraped against sharp protrusions in the floor, but the pain barely registered, numbed by the cold. I'd been stripped and my clothes replaced with actual rags this time, my inventory emptied save for my father's ring which remained surprisingly untouched. The map interface was scrambled, some sort of interference making it unreadable static.

The sack was pulled from my head and the ropes came loose as they were cut away from my ankles and torso. I blinked against the torch light. It was night and we were in a sea cave, moonlight illuminating a stone dock cut directly into the wall. A set of crude stone steps were carved into the rock, leading up into the black gape of a fortress. The rock itself was a deep, unnatural black, sparkling with a malevolent light like polished obsidian.

"Welcome to Peristonia," the calm guard said, sounding almost regretful. A shiver of fear ran up my spine. I felt a sudden urge to dive into the icy water, end the misery that had become my constant companion since stepping foot on this cursed planet. A voice inside me refused to give in, refused to give my captors the satisfaction. They shoved me forward up the stairs. Inside, the stone floor was the same glassy rock.

I stepped onto its surface and immediately felt the energy drain from my body, the mana counter that still hovered in my peripheral vision dropping to zero all at once. I stumbled but my guards held me upright.

"Walk." The smell of waste and rot choked the air in this place, sounds of suffering seeping up from the depths below my feet. They shoved me forward, my exhaustion making it hard to think, hard to move. The oppressive atmosphere of this place was a constant weight, sharp rocks pricking my feet as we traversed the maze of corridors, a confusing mess of identical hallways all shimmering with torchlight, not even a window to break the monotony.

We stopped finally at one of the heavy iron grates embedded into the floor every thirty feet, my captor turning a key into a padlock and pulling the heavy latch with a grunt of effort. Rusty hinges creaked loudly, the grate opening slow like a guillotine being lifted.

"Please," I said, begging now, any pretense of courage gone.

"I don't want to die down there." I tried to resist, pushing against my abductors, but the stone had sapped my strength and there was nowhere to go. I was shoved hard, falling into open air. For half a second I was suspended in free fall, praying my head didn't break open on the ground, part of me hoping it would. I landed with a horrific crack, already injured ribs taking the heaviest part of the impact, the air knocked out of my lungs in a soundless gasp.

I rolled onto my back in a twist of agony as the stitches on my amputated arm tore open, warm blood soaking through my clothes. SYSTEM MESSAGE: NEW SKILL ACQUIRED - [Pain Tolerance] (Iron Rank - Level 1) GOVERNING ATTRIBUTE: Constitution [Scholar's Acumen] has been applied to [Pain Tolerance] SKILL-BASED XP (SXP) GAIN: 484% The pain dulled, receding to a throbbing ache that allowed me to sit up. My cell, if it was fair to call it that, was a circular pit twenty feet across and carved directly into the rock.

Fifteen feet above me, a hole two feet wide opened to the corridor, the only source of light the flickering of distant torches. A straw mattress against a wall, its log frame collapsing, was the only bit of comfort. The sound of the lock turning echoed with an agonizing finality. A bucket was lowered into the pit by a rope, containing a single daily ration of food and water, its other purpose requiring no imagination to discern. Lying there on the cold, power-draining rock, the silence pressed in around me.

They had thrown me into a hole to die. This couldn't be allowed to stand. Thorne wiping his blade clean, the smug look on Victor's obnoxious fucking face, Cornelius beaten and bleeding out on the floor. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. I squeezed my one good hand into a fist until my fingernails dug into my palm. I wasn't going to die down here. I would survive this pit just to make them regret it.

SYSTEM MESSAGE: [Psychological Resilience] (Iron Rank) has reached Level 10 and will gain no further SXP. Skill is ready to evolve. +++ My wound managed to heal without infection, but it proved a short-lived mercy, the early days of my captivity made no more endurable by being of sound mind. My broken ribs made it hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to breathe. The rapid healing that had been a minor miracle above was missing here, the pain budging by inches as if even my body wanted to give up.

For the first week, I clung to the belief that this was a misunderstanding. A bureaucratic error, a temporary detention that would soon be set right. I shouted up to the hole in the ceiling, pleading with the guards to explain the charges, to allow me to contact someone, anyone. My voice echoed back, unanswered. I reasoned with them, offered bribes, even begged. Silence.

I took to declaring my identity as the son of Duke Petracca, made promises of wealth and leniency, offered anything and everything within my power or outside it. I became sick of my own voice, but it was preferable to the silence. The hole was a world of absolute sensory deprivation; the obsidian walls swallowed even the light. I tried to sleep as much as I could, preserving my strength and helping the endless days pass in blissful unawareness.

I found bits of chipped rock and took to keeping track of days by etching lines in the stone I could barely see, time marked by the rise and fall of the bucket that was my only link to the outside world. I spoke to God one night in desperation, promising to dedicate my life to charity, to become a monk, to renounce all worldly possessions if only He would intervene on my behalf. Perhaps my lack of belief betrayed me, or the God of this world had a name I didn't know. Perhaps there truly was nobody there to listen.

The days dragged on and no help ever came, divine or otherwise. I tried to occupy my thoughts with math or chemistry, mentally tracing equations for kinetic energy and chemical bonds on the featureless walls. After days of this grueling mental exercise, a chime resonated in my mind, quiet but clear.

SYSTEM MESSAGE: NEW SKILL ACQUIRED - [Applied Physics] (Iron Rank - Level 1) GOVERNING ATTRIBUTE: Intelligence [Scholar's Acumen] has been applied to [Applied Physics] SKILL-BASED XP (SXP) GAIN: 405% Hope, fragile hope, flickered back to life. The effort to gain skills down here was monumental, but it was a weapon against the madness. I began a systematic excavation of my own mind.

I spent weeks mentally rebuilding every circuit board and servosystem I'd ever worked on in the Trinity Academy robotics lab, the familiar logic a comfort in the solitude. SYSTEM MESSAGE: Skill Acquired - [Robotics Proficiency] (Iron Rank - Level 1) GOVERNING ATTRIBUTE: Intelligence [Scholar's Acumen] has been applied to [Robotics Proficiency] SKILL-BASED XP (SXP) GAIN: 368% The acquisition of new skills became a game, the only one I had to occupy my thoughts.

I'd devise creative ways to probe the possibilities: hiding in the darkness to acquire stealth, spending entire days meditating to improve the mental fortitude that kept me sane, cutting myself to will a skill that would promote self-healing. I tried not eating or drinking for an entire week, learning to alter my metabolism and reduce my body's energy needs.

I lacked the resources and insights required to evolve them, one after another quickly capping at Level 10 where progression stopped, but it gave me a goal to strive for all the same. When the skills were not enough to distract me, I began to replay memories of my life on Earth, clinging to the fragments of a past that felt increasingly distant. I relived moments of tragedy to feel something. Caden growing cold under my hands, his heart refusing to beat as I pounded on it with tiny fists.

Erin and her too-big eyes full of disappointment as she saw my naked body, lanky and awkward after too much growth in too short a time. I tried to focus on the good times too, few as they were. Lawrence's dry chuckle the first time I'd beaten him at chess. The beaming pride on my math teacher's face when she handed me the Trinity scholarship. Small things, but mine. I attempted to recall everything I'd learned at Trinity, reciting computations and historical dates until my brain ached.

I called up every bit of Earth knowledge I could think to conjure, achieving skills in realms as diverse as robotics, mercantilism, electronics, writing, programming, engineering, physics, botany, and on and on. Each new skill notification was a small victory, a proof that I remained alive, that even here progress was possible. They imparted marginal effects I couldn't even perceive, but there was a comfort in seeing the list grow.

Through trial and error, I came to better understand how the System worked, still holding on to the sliver of hope that one day I'd escape or be set free. Eventually I hit a wall, my knowledge tragically finite, a humbling reminder of how much I had relied on the instant gratification of a search engine. The skills stopped coming and the silence returned, louder than ever before. Dread replaced hope, my spirits returning to the depths that this place insisted they stay. This wasn't a mistake, this was my tomb.

I took to wearing my father's ring as a fleeting connection to the outside world, a bulwark against the encroaching fear that maybe I was already in hell. I rubbed the silver to a reflective polish, staring at my distorted reflection in its curved surface to convince myself I was still alive. Driven by an existential need for relief, I began to dissect every inch of my cell, searching for any hint of a flaw or seam that might provide hope of escape.

The walls were smooth and unforgiving, not a handhold anywhere that would allow me to climb, though my bleak subsistence on minimal food and water had long ago eaten away any muscle I'd once had. I slammed my fist against the unyielding wall in a fit of rage at my powerlessness, pain shooting through my hand where the ring's diamond had dug into the surface of the rock. A small chip came loose, clattering to the ground with a barely audible scrape.

The hard diamond had scored deep into the softer surface, a visible mark left behind. The discovery didn't spark dreams of escape, the task was too monumental, my spirit too broken, the prison itself too vast. I began the slow work of scratching a chessboard into the floor and shaping the pieces. The progress was painstaking but measurable, each day a step forward that I could see. I spent weeks carving, chipping away flakes of obsidian, my fingers raw and bleeding.

As I worked, analyzing the stone, finding its weaknesses, another notification broke the monotony. SYSTEM MESSAGE: NEW SKILL ACQUIRED - [Material Analysis] (Iron Rank - Level 1) GOVERNING ATTRIBUTE: Wisdom [Scholar's Acumen] has been applied to [Material Analysis] SKILL-BASED XP (SXP) GAIN: 124% The bits of shapeless obsidian slowly transformed into kings and pawns, bishops and knights. The meticulous process was a meditation, a focus that kept the worst of the despair at bay.

SYSTEM MESSAGE: NEW SKILL ACQUIRED - [Stone Carving] (Iron Rank - Level 1) GOVERNING ATTRIBUTE: Dexterity [Scholar's Acumen] has been applied to [Stone Carving] SKILL-BASED XP (SXP) GAIN: 102% Eventually, the board was finished, my project complete. I played games against myself, but the victories were hollow, the moves quickly becoming mindless and repetitive. I turned instead to making knives and arrowheads from the rock, spending hours and days just tossing them against the wall.

My combat skills ticked up slowly, but the extra energy required soon became a burden. Gradually, as it had so many times before, the silence and the solitude wore me down, smothering the last sputtering flame of optimism I had left. More weeks bled into more months. Time became a meaningless abstraction, a relentless cycle of darkness and dismay. One night, driven to the brink, I sat staring at the sharpest piece of obsidian I had left, a crudely fashioned but effective knife.

The thought wasn't born of panic but of a cold, weary logic: this could end it. No more hunger, no more pain, no more silence and solitude, just oblivion. I remained with the thought for what could have been days, the knife's tip pressed against the pale skin just above my femoral artery. I imagined the sweet release, the finality. [Psychological Resilience] glinted somewhere in the darkness of my thoughts. Fading but insistent. It wasn't enough.

I closed my eyes, the shard in my hand feeling heavier than the world. The fight teetered on the edge, the dark my only witness. For the first time since I had arrived in this cursed pit, I felt myself begin to lose.