13.
Lord Dono Dyaz woke up early the day after the funeral. Unlike his uncle, he did not need the bed to rest given that Klyros find hanging upside down a much more comfortable position to sleep. The portrait of the late Lord Dyaz and his wife hanged above the chimney. He had long white hair that fell over his shoulder but was completely bald on the top of his head. His hazel eyes were gentle and his spectacles fairly hinted his wisdom and vast knowledge.
He wasn’t a large man but he was not in great shape. Age and a loose diet had earned him a few more pounds above what his frame was meant to carry and genetics had made an unfair distribution of the mass throughout his body. His pale skinny legs contrasted against a much larger belly that stood out in his narrow torso. A scrawny neck, neatly shaved, preceded a round face with plump cheeks.
His wife, on the other hand, was rather plain looking and not very pretty. One could tell he had married beneath him even though she was wearing flawless jewelry and an exquisite dress. Her stance was submissive and she looked uncomfortable as if the artist had unintentionally captured the boredom of having to pose for the picture for hours.
As he walked down the halls of his new mansion, Lord Dono Dyaz relived his memories there. His dear uncle explaining the different interpretations of the law, telling him about the most fascinating cases he’d been called in for. He recalled the many times they talked about magic and religion, all that he learned from him in the grand halls of the sumptuous residence.
He walked out to the balcony and looked over the gardens his uncle loved so much and he remembered how they would walk outside for hours, discussing the different kinds of plants and their medicinal properties as well as the dangers of some herbal poisons.
He made his way to the ground floor, past the grand ballroom and remembered how Gauran used to talk to him about proper social manners, teaching him how to carry himself with the poise and elegance of a lord.
The library made him think of the day, not long ago, when Gauran said he would welcome him to the Dyaz family and name him his heir. The old man told him he had given him peace as through him, he could fulfill the most important promise of his life.
Breakfast was dull and he was not hungry. He resumed his tour of memories through the many rooms of the mansion until his steps, as if with a will of their own, brought him to a door he had not crossed in quite a while. It was larger than average, like a storage door for cattle and large amounts of supplies. It opened to a wide passage that descended like a ramp several feet below the surface.
Once at the bottom and past a wooden door, a quick spell lit all the torches in the room, revealing a large space. Thick columns and arches along the walls held the weight of the ceiling and the ground above it. Iron bars separated a large square area in the center of the room with a sliding door on one of the sides. Behind the bars, there was a platinum box of about six by six feet. Holes of about two inches wide had been irregularly placed along the sides of the box, as if to allow light or air inside through very specific angles. The stone floor around it was carved in strange circular patterns and many torches stood straight in holes at different distances from the box. Each torch hole had a circular platinum frame and was connected to the others by a line carved on the stone with smaller lines and encrusted platinum inscriptions intersecting them. One of the sides of the box laid flat on the ground as if it had been cut open by a flaming blade. There was nothing inside the box.
An armchair and a small table sat right outside the cage. Many books and scrolls laid on the floor due to the lack of furniture in the room.
Memories of long conversations came to his mind, Gauran sitting on the chair, asking him about his victims, his childhood or walking around the cage, running his bony fingers from bar to bar while slowly uttering flawed theories and void hypothesis. And, of course, there were the glyphs. Gauran brought them with him every now and then along with many crystals. He would place the glyphs around the cage, into slots carved on the floor, and stick the crystals on the orifices of the platinum box. Then everything would burn.
He begged Gauran not to use the crystals but to no avail. “It’s your treatment”, he would say and then the tongues of fire would raise from the torches, casting a yellow light that would bleed through the green, white, red and blue crystals on the box and then the seizures would begin. Focusing on one of the crystals was the only way to mitigate the pain but he would always black out nonetheless. It was like being swallowed by the Azure Sun and the very light cut him open from every angle. Other times it was like being crushed against solid rock. He could hear his bones break and he would bleed through his eyes and ears. But then the light that tortured him would also heal his wounds. His bones were no longer broken. His organs had been restored. His blood had not been spilled. He died a thousand times and was restored to die again.
In all that time, he received no food or water. “The fast will restore your mind”, Gauran explained and for two years he was fed to the light.
