The Cursed Throne

Thane

Cold, unforgiving, and grotesque. Those were the first words that came to mind when Thane met his captor at eye level. A jagged slithering scar wavered from his temple to the opposite cheekbone, its end hiding in his unshaven cleft chin. The skin at the scars center had protruded slightly leaving a solid line across his face that held a clear message: I am to be feared.

Intimidating, was the next word Thane thought of when the man walked slowly behind him to strengthen the ropes which held his hands firmly pinned behind his back. Pain etched its way up his arms as the ropes clawed their way through his skin, eating it away the same way fire disintegrates a forest. He could feel the individual twines of rope as he imagined them burning away and falling to ashes on the floor beneath him.

"Where is that wretched accomplice of yours?" The man questioned leaning against the wall twirling the point of a pocket knife on his index finger.

Thane kept hoping it would drop from his hands and nail itself into his foot. If it had it would hopefully be enough of a distraction for him to try and break free. It was a stretch but other than watching the knife in this stranger's hand there wasn't really anything else to look at. It had taken him just a few seconds after he had awoken in this room, to memorize the ironclad door with vertical bars a few inches wide, and the rusted chair which he was currently occupying.

"You're going to have to clarify," Thane said, his voice raspy from the substance they must have slipped into his bloodstream to get him to wherever he was cause he sure as hell would never have gone willingly.

"I don't want to have to repeat myself," the man snarled inching himself closer to Thane. He now held his knife firm in his hand, the tip pressing lightly into Thane's thigh mere pressure away from tearing his trousers.

"Not the trousers man. I just got these," Thane whined. "They were limited edition. Found them off the eastern coast."

The man clearly flustered by Thane's careless attitude raised the knife to get just the right amount of velocity as it buried itself deep in Thane's thigh. Thane grunted loudy in pain, leaning over slightly to try and relieve the pain, but his attempt futile. His eyes were pinned on the knife that stuck out of his leg, the blood trickling out of the wound and down his leg pooling on the floor.

"Now I'm going to ask you again, but more clear this time." The man twisted the knife in Thane's leg earning a sharp cry and a string of words he was sure his teacher back at the orphanage would have sat him in the pits of Tamrum for. "Where." Twist. "Is." Twist. "The Malison?"

The name these people had given her never ceased to amaze me, Thane thought knowing she enjoyed the shiver of fear in people's eyes hearing her name. It wasn't so much the fear as it was they only knew a fraction of what she could do. The fact she could shatter them in seconds with one breath. They knew of her work but how she completed the work was unbeknownst to those who didn't work beside her like Thane did.

"It's really hard to focus on the answer with a knife buried knee deep into my thigh," Thane spat out through gritted teeth, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead.

"If you had enough focus to come up with that thick headed remark you should have enough focus to rack your brain and tell me where she is." The man released the knife from Thane's leg a whole ripped clean in the thigh of his pants. Though right now that was the least of his worries.

"Why do you need to know?" Thane questioned knowing this was a two way street for information.

"That's confidential," he sneered.

"Then I guess the information I may or may not have must be considered confidential too," Thane shot back.

"You're strapped to a chair, a knife wound in your leg, your face pale from dehydration and starvation, and you think you're in a position to make those kinds of statements," he said in awe, a slight chuckle escaping him.