Born a Monster

417 317 – Among the Cracked

It is said that being admitted to an asylum is a process that in and of itself can cause madness. Having no eyes at the time, I can say that it might or might not be true. The scents are as bad as any hospital, a mix of feces, blood, and cleaning chemicals that probably aren’t healthy to be near.

“Welcome to the Breaker’s.” the doorman said. “Like what you see so far?”

I turned my empty eye sockets toward him and opened the lids.

He swallowed.

“Don’t mind him.” Madwoman Madame Doctor Thuria said, “He took out those eyes himself. Thinks they’ll be growing back.”

The doorman forced a thin chuckle, but we kept walking. Oh, we as in four of us. The doctor had found another victim, a young woman named Kossa who had attacked guards when they tried to stop her from stealing food for her family.

For the most part, Kossa hadn’t talked, other than to ask where she was being taken and when she would be released.

“You’ll be released when I think you’re healed.” Thuria answered her.

“And what if I don’t? Heal?” Kossa asked.

.....

“Then you won’t see the outside of the asylum ever again.”

“You can’t do that. Not without a trial! I know that much of the law, at least!” Kossa shook Durmon, whose crime was to be so drunk that he was still quite befuddled. His eventual response was a belch in her face, so fragrant that I could still smell it after we’d moved on a good ten paces.

“I assure you,” the madame doctor said, “the law won’t protect you from anything that is intended to make you better.”

The eight guards didn’t come past the entry room. Instead, each of our manacle chains were handed to an orderly, possibly some cross between a duhr and a rock troll.

“Come along, blood-face.” mine, a burly lad named Nogaron said. “We need to get you washed up.”

I was led into a room whose floor was slick with oily water that stuck to the soles of my feet. There, he shoved my head under the water, and had at me with a brush whose bristles felt like copper wire.

“Fight back!” he challenged me. “Fight back, and this will be worse!”

I can breathe water, but when you add enough solvents that it does [Lingering Exposure Acid Damage], it isn’t the sort of thing you want in your lungs. I held my breath, scrunched my face to keep the scales down, and just endured the damage.

I did make certain to get as much ‘water’ as possible into the manacles. It probably wouldn’t harm them, but ... actually, I probably did the asylum a favor, in retrospect.

Nogaron took a firm grip on the back of my head, and made a point of pointing it around. He giggled. “Take a good look at that,”

“Temporarily blind.” I reminded him. “Can you describe what I’m supposed to see?” I had a few guesses, from the smell of black blood from that direction.

“It’s the reason why this place is called the Breaker’s, and the patients the Cracked. Think of a giant nutcracker at the top of a chair. It’s supposed to let out pressure on the brain.” he chuckled, and shoved me back along the hallway. “Of course, it takes a great degree of trial and error to get right. Even the Queen of Pain doesn’t get it right every time.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out who that was.

“Here.” he said. “Stay in this line while I take a squeeze.”

I kept ‘looking’ in the direction he left. When I could hear the movement of feet, I walked forward, stopping when the footsteps stopped.

The dwarf from behind slammed into me like a garden statue. “Hey, watch it, frog-face! I killed four people to get in here.”

“Don’t mind Gurston.” a weathered voice came, “He killed two people, and the number grows by one every time after the first he repeats it in a day.”

There was a clack of stone on stone. “Mind your own business, you sad old hermit.” Gurston said. “At least I still have hands.”

“Ah,” weathered voice replied. “You just might live long enough to meet a woman worth giving up a hand for. And have children worthy of giving up the other. I doubt it of course...”

They were still striking each other when Gurston returned. He was not amused. “Hey!” there was a distinct clacking noise at his belt. Something being unbuckled?

The sound of a metalic-braid whip uncoiling is not the sort of thing I’m ever likely to forget. It didn’t fall on me at that time, but if I hadn’t had the scales, I would have taken damage from the bits it knocked from Gurston.

“Do it!” Nogaron shouted. “Riot! Riot again! See what happens.”

Most of my fellow inmates huddled against the wall, or spread themselves across it. Gurston roared a wordless defiance, before crashing to a knee where he stood. “I. Acknowledge. Your power.” he gasped, waiting a breath before adding, “Sir.”

The whip stopped striking. “And don’t ANY of you forget it.” Nogaron said.

I have said many times before that dwarved didn’t use normal bedware, such as pillows and sheets. So when I was given a cylinder of rolled up leather, I was at first confused. I waved a hand to get Nogaron’s attention.

It was Gurston who grabbed my wrist. “Don’t you DARE bother him. I’ll kill you, and start each morning telling people I’ve killed three.”

“What is this?” I asked.

“That’s your sleeping mattress, and if you don’t make it here, it’ll also be your shroud.”

I squeezed it, trying to get a sense of how much leather it actually was. It hadn’t been boiled, but wasn’t as flexible as it should have been. It was long enough and broad enough to lie upon, but nowhere near thick enough to serve as a mattress. When I positioned myself on the very side, there wasn’t enough to wrap around unless I held it in place, which made its other use also highly dubious.

Obviously this was after Nogaron had suitably impressed his authority onto all the inmates present and guided me to my cell. “Remain here or in the common areas.” he said. “You’ve seen what happens when any of us get angry.”

Not every truth needs to be spoken. “Is there anywhere I should lay my bedding down?”

He snorted. “Anywhere your room-mates haven’t laid theirs.”

A bit of searching with my feet confirmed three other mats, in parallel across the middle of the room. There wasn’t enough room to fit a fourth leather surface anywhere, so I began unrolling mine against the back wall, and shuffling the others toward the door to make room.

Remember how I said there were no doors in most dwarven structures?

Without warning, a dwarf from the common room came barreling at me. I might have been able to take the hit, but I’d never tried using Trip Attack when I couldn’t see my target. He struck the wall behind me with a satisfying noise, like a mallet striking stone.

His backhand was less satisfying, possibly because it was a YELLOW critical, and possibly because it revealed his strength was equal to mine. The grappling after that showed his lack of experience in using it, and gave me valuable Pankratios experience.

Pain holds weren’t as effective against dwarves, but things like locks and holds worked well enough.

“Don’t touch my place!” she screamed at me. “That’s MINE, you animal! Touch it again, and I swear you’ll never touch anything else!”

“You’re rolling me over your bunk right now!” I screamed back.

“Because you won’t let go of me!” she replied.

“Every time I do, you try to hit me!”

“Because you won’t stop touching my things! This is all YOUR fault!”

The orderly must have agreed, for his first blow landed on my back, squarely along my spine. I’d been focused on my assailant, and he got in a decent ORANGE critical, stripping away over half my health in a single hit.

I screamed and released her, taking a place curled against the wall to the left of my assailant. When she came for me again, his next blow fell on her. She also screamed, and retreated to the wall furthest from him.

I didn’t feel like reminding her she was touching my bed. It just didn’t seem like the time.

“Are we going to have a problem?” he asked.

I whipped my head around. “That is a human voice.” I said.

His next blow with the whip left me unconscious for a day.

Which yes, makes it soft, since the bristles were, in fact, steel. Again, I blame the dwarven folk for being made out of stone, that can take a brisk scrubbing by such a brush.

Restroom break. He may have meant water or a quick release of solids, but either way he wasn’t gone long.

Having male and female dwarves in the same abode like this is actually safe; dwarven procreation isn’t the thing that just happens because someone rolls over and sets their anatomy against another. There are entire books on that subject, and it isn’t my intention to get into those details in this work.