The Deep Cell was apparently so-named because it was in the bowels of the city, where no light reached. The knights who dragged him down into the depths had to light the way with torches, revealing what looked more like natural caves than any kind of true prison.

  There was a single door in the long hallway, which was thick steel, and took more than one key to unlock. Ethan was brought in, and stripped down. His scarred body was on full display, still covered in the stains of bandit blood as the knights swapped out his manacles for shackles chained to the ceiling. He was left kneeling in the center of the dark room, unsure even of its dimensions, his arms raised above him and his head slumping forward.

  He was grateful to see a hole in the floor beneath his legs before the door was closed, trapping him in darkness. Alone in the absolute blackness, it was just him and his pain, his ravaged right hand pulsing with continuous agony.

  Ethan tried to recall how a burn that significant should be treated…but he couldn’t. Vague images and half-remembered concepts floated through his mind, but it was nothing compared to what he should know. They had taken it from him, he was a doctor no longer.

  A dark thought invaded his mind, telling him that it was fitting that he should lose his ability to heal on the same day he became a killer.

  ***

  The first night passed almost easily, considering the pain and trauma of the day. His body was so injured and weak that he’d passed out shortly after being brought to the cell. He awoke in terror and agony, however, his body feeling like an endless wellspring of pain.

  His shoulders and back were on fire from supporting his weight as he slept. His knees were a mess of bruises and bumps from being in contact with the rough stone. But none of it compared to the furious blaze of suffering that was his hand. He’d heard that a healing burn could feel worse than the pain of actually being burned, and he experienced that truth now.

  It was a long, nightmarish day as he stood there in his cell. His regeneration tattoo had been sealed as well, and he was reminded how slowly a body repaired itself unassisted. The cell itself was also a different kind of torture, being completely dark, and muffling sound as well.

  It was like being trapped in a sensory deprivation chamber, and he could immediately sense the dangers of being here for an extended time. He tried talking to himself at one point, but the stone walls were oddly porous and the lack of echo made his voice sound strange. He even tried humming and singing to distract himself, but it was an empty gesture.

  Seemingly against his will he found himself kneeling again after a few hours, his weak body desperate for proper rest. That led to the next problem, where the pitch-black soundless world became increasingly difficult to discern from the dreaming one. He would wake up shaking and screaming, nightmares of the village plaguing him, only for the images and sounds to follow him anyway.

  Sometimes he would dream that he was in the cell, and sometimes his nightmares would come for him while he was awake, and Ethan felt his mind buckling under the strain. He’d lost track of the days when someone finally opened the door. Judging from his hunger and desperate thirst, he judged it had been at least three.

  The knight who entered his cell had only the dimmest light, and he didn’t speak as he slowly ladled some kind of porridge into Ethan’s mouth. It was thick and tasteless, and his dry throat spasmed as he swallowed, but he took it greedily. The man placed a small bucket into a groove on the wall clearly made for the purpose, then left without a word.

  Ethan found that he had just enough slack in his chains to reach the bucket and tip the water inside into his mouth, and drank deeply. He was grateful to know he wouldn’t be left to die of dehydration. Irrespective of the medical knowledge he’d lost, he knew that was a horrifying way to go.

  The knight seemed to come back once every couple of days, but Ethan was so lost in endless darkness and the torment inflicted by his own mind that he couldn’t say for sure. Every time his mind wandered, he’d find himself replaying the horrors of the village, feeling the bandits dying beneath his hands. Remembering the sensation of his weapons digging into their flesh.

  He tried to think of Dean, but this was the last problem his brother could help with. Their disagreement as to what it meant to fight and kill was part of what had driven Ethan to choose medicine in the first place. Hearing his brother’s tired arguments would be no comfort.

  It was after what Ethan thought was the fifth day that he realized he was losing himself. The pain and nightmares were horrible, but in a strange way they were better than the cell’s other torture. The endless, dark monotony.

  Ethan could only move a few feet in any direction, and his arms couldn’t even reach his body. He itched everywhere, and he was still covered in the crusty remnants of bandit blood. All he could do was move around on pained feet, muttering softly as the endless hours ticked slowly–ever so slowly away.

  His break came on suddenly, with a single tug of his arms. He felt the chains tighten as always, but for some reason he was compelled to pull again, and so he did. Over and over. The chains shook as he strained and pulled, the shackles biting into his already bloody and torn flesh.

  When he realized he was screaming, he didn’t know how long it had been going on, but blood was dripping down from his wrists, and his body was alive with fresh pain. Ethan finally forced himself to stop, dropping back to the floor.

  “Tomo,” he said in a soft, desperate whisper, and his eyes shot open. He’d felt something.

  ***

  It was likely some time into his second week when the door opened, and two knights entered, holding buckets. They said nothing before dumping the contents over Ethan, who revelled in the relief it brought, despite the fresh pain it ignited in his burned hand, which was clearly infected.

  The knights repeated the process, even bringing out long handled scrub brushes to use on him, clearly trying to banish as much of the filth and stench as quickly as possible. Finally they finished, one coming back with a dim glowstone that burned Ethan’s eyes like the sun. Princess Ellevaro stepped into the cell a moment later.

  “Give me that, and leave,” she commanded, and the knight hurried to obey. Ellevaro watched the knights leave, even waving them off further before returning to Ethan. “Things are proceeding as well as can be expected,” she announced, looking him over.

  “The Church is pushing for your execution, obviously, but my father is forestalling them. In his mind Arinae already took one son from him, and any safety you might provide to Calevaro is more valuable than he’d ever admit. It’s not easy, however, as the High Priestess has contacted the Holy City of Sanctustella, requesting assistance from the Mother Church.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  She leaned forward, looking into Ethan's eyes. “They are truly desperate to see you dead.” She stood back up. “Suspiciously so, in fact. I wonder what it is about you that concerns them so greatly.” Ethan didn’t bother speaking, he just watched her with a tired expression. Waiting.

  She looked back at him, her silver hair looking ghostly in the dim light. “What you did in the village,” she said at last, “I had been informed of your abilities, but that was…beyond expectations.” She began to pace in the small cell. “Assassin. There are parts of the world where it’s more common, I understand. Possibly due to an availability of Familiars more conducive to the role.”

  She paused, turning to look at him. “Your Familiars are hardly common in Viridus, however. True, those bandits were Unbound, and Gunther was a simpleton, but you’re only Dawn rank, and missing half your abilities.”

  She crouched, obviously not caring what the floor was doing to her expensive dress. “What will you be capable of in a few years? At Dusk rank? At Twilight? Surely you must have realized that your abilities are better suited to men than monsters.” Ethan’s expression shifted into a dark glare.

  Ellevaro smiled back. “The Church will need to be satisfied that your skill rune is destroyed. You’re far too valuable to be wasted on their vanity. A secret Chosen traveling the world with my brother, keeping him safe? That is a tempting prospect.”

  She stood and moved to the door, but spoke again before leaving. “Yes, there’s value there. But a secret Chosen Assassin? The only thing better than someone to protect us from our enemies, is someone who can kill them before they even have a chance to strike.”

  Ethan’s eyes were wild with fury, and she looked back at him with dispassion. “It appears you’re not ready to embrace such a role. Don’t worry, the Deep Cell has helped many to find who they truly are. I wonder what you’ll be ready to do to get out of here in a few weeks, a few months?” Again she smiled. “Nothing I haven’t seen you do before.”

  Ethan’s head dropped, and the princess closed the door, sealing him away in darkness.

  ***

  It took a night for Ethan to understand how much a boon the princess’s visit had been. He was lost before she came, convinced he’d reached rock bottom. He had no goals, nothing to work toward other than a vague dream of revenge. But she’d given him a gift.

  She’d shown him how much worse it could get.

  Ethan hadn’t even begun to come to grips with what he’d done in the village, and didn’t really know how to start. But as bad as it had been, he knew that being Ellevaro’s weapon was a far worse fate, and one that he could fight to avoid.

  He also knew that she was right. Enough time in this dark, empty cell with only his worst thoughts and memories for company, and he knew there would be almost no price he wouldn’t pay to get out.

  But that gave him something to work toward. Something to fight against. He was sure he’d felt Tomo, in spite of his Bonds being sealed. That was days ago, and he hadn’t duplicated the feat since, but now his mind seemed able to focus for the first time. He wasn’t simply trapped in here wondering when the Church would finally have him killed. He was resisting, fighting a battle against his own mind.

  He only needed to survive long enough that some shred of the man he was still existed. He got to work immediately, telling himself the cell was what it felt like–a sensory deprivation chamber. What better environment was there to meditate, to look inward? When would there ever be another place so free of distraction.

  Ethan made himself relax, as difficult as that was. The images of death and destruction that had been his constant companions in the cell didn’t go away, but for once Ethan didn’t fight them. He remembered Tomo’s training, the tiny insights he’d offered every day to help Ethan understand how to commune with his Familiars.

  The key was to remember it wasn’t about him. He was searching for the three beings that existed somewhere inside him. Ethan Bishop may be a tormented wreck trapped in his own mind as much as he was trapped in a cell, but his ever-present companions were not. They were locked away too, but they were safe, and insulated, and waiting for his call.

  From that point onward, Ethan constantly tried to imagine a glowing circle. No matter what horrors flashed before his eyes, no matter what dark thoughts whispered, he would picture the circle. It was meant to be his soul, a vessel for his Familiars. Although truthfully the concept itself was something he’d resisted since arriving on this world.

  Ethan had been raised around religion, but never a part of it. Fighting and dying for a cause was his family’s true belief system. Some believed they’d end up in a better place after, others didn’t, but talk of souls and God had always been distant compared to responsibility and sacrifice.

  As such, Ethan had taken the concept of a soul as being a vessel for his Familiars as more of a metaphor. Being honest, he really thought of his Bonded monsters as living in the tattoos on his chest. But the time for that kind of rationalization was over.

  Ethan had felt his soul burn. He’d watched his own Spirit attack people, and force his pain upon them. Part of him had always dismissed that as ‘just more magic’, a concept he’d already been forced to accept, but that thinking had taken him as far as it possibly could. Now was a time to tread new ground, or lose. Ethan hated losing.

  Days passed this way, with Ethan constantly trying to imagine the shape. He would fail, over and over again, his addled, starving mind drifting. But as soon as he realized, he would turn back to it. He tried to focus on every memory he had that was connected to the soul, to the Spirit.

  After one of the knight’s regular visits with food also came with a Runemaster, things got a bit easier. Evidently the princess wasn’t willing to risk him dying to infection or small injuries, and had ordered his regeneration rune to be unsealed. The warmth that poured through him when the man finished his work was like getting into a hot spring.

  The terrible, infected burn stopped throbbing in a day, and the perpetual agony in his bound arms and bent knees was lowered to a continuous dull ache. Pain was still his constant companion, but it was no longer a screaming alarm in his head, instead it was just a relentless breeze, and Ethan let it carry him deeper into himself.

  He thought about the moments he’d looked into the Astral, especially the times he’d been able to see the manifestation of his own Spirit. He considered the scars he’d seen on that form, their burning never ending. Most importantly he thought about that poorly remembered journey with Valanor back to Corvale.

  He’d been in and out of consciousness, but he’d been aware. Through it all, he’d felt the other worldly pain of something tearing inside him. No, not inside me. It was me. I was tearing. I was on fire. He focused on that remembered pain, and the echoes of it he felt every time he used too much mana.

  And there it was.

  For the briefest moment the shape he’d been picturing had become something else. It had been real, tangible, and…raging, like the ocean in a storm. Ethan immediately understood what he’d been feeling, and felt like a fool, tears coming unbidden to his eyes.

  All this time he’d been thinking of himself as alone, trying desperately to reach his companions. But Ethan wasn’t alone. He couldn’t be alone. This entire time, as Ethan was struggling to find his Familiars, they had been fighting to reach him right back.

  He felt them now, wild and righteous in their fury, scratching desperately against the cage they’d been put in. They knew he needed them and they were giving everything they had to get to him. He could feel the barrier the Runemasters had put around his Bond Runes, but for the first time he understood how marvelously insufficient they really were.

  You couldn’t cut someone off from their own soul. Ethan was his soul, and as he reached out for the comforting presence of his companions–his friends–he understood that they were as much a part of it as he was.

  “Hey guys,” he whispered into the cell, and into himself. “We’re going to make it out of this.”