The Downward Spiral

Something's died in here, Imoen thought hazily as she woke, gagging at the combined odor of putrid decay, grease, rusted metal and brackish water. Cold metal pressed against her cheek, and in the distance she heard a faint thrum of working machinery. Don't remember that before. S'funny noise for Cloakwood. She didn't pursue the notion as her mind slowly threw off the effects of a drug she did not remember taking.

Wait, she thought. Wasn't drunk. Wasn't even drinking. Wait. She squeezed her eyes shut tight to follow the thought. The dart. Poisoned? That thought snapped her to her senses, so quickly her brain hurt. Then she realized her body hurt. And she was thirsty. No, not thirsty -- parched.

From her prone position at the bottom of the cage, she saw only a lamp burning with a dim, bluish light that did little to wick away the shadows. When she moved, every muscle in her body rebelled, but she forced herself to stand. So I'm in a cage. S'not the first time I been in a cage. So ... now what? The cage's door was locked, and a half-hearted pull at the bars told her she'd never break out. Yeah, like I could. Beyond the small halo cast by the flickering lamplight, she saw nothing but pitch darkness.

"Hello?" she called softly, then winced at the loudness of her own voice. But she tried again. "Renai? Jahiera? Minsc?" No answer except for faint echoes of her voice. Did that mean she was in a small room? A large one? "Boo?" she said in an even smaller voice and still received no reply, though she didn't really expect one. Not really.

Everything was gone, all her tools, jewelry, weapons. Even the small dagger she kept tucked inside her boot was missing. S'all right. I've been unarmed before. At least I'm dressed. So what if I'm alone. I'm all right. But her breaths came in quick shaky pulses as she tried to figure out what was going on.

Had she been hurt? Beaten? No bruises or cuts marred her skin, but her tunic was ragged and the leggings were so tattered they'd fallen to pieces. She couldn't remember. Why couldn't she remember? Not knowing, not remembering made her stomach hurt. It was worse than the darkness and the cage.

She was trapped, somewhere she didn't know, by someone she didn't see, and she was all alone.

"If you only knew," a man's voice from the darkness rasped. Imoen crouched into a defensive pose, twisting about to try to find the voice's source, but she could not. "You brim with potential that you do not even see, and what will you do when you see it? Do not be afraid, Imoen, of the fate you will meet here." He knows me! How's he know me?! "Your life's thread was poorly woven into this tapestry; a sidekick, a tagalong, when you could have been queen." Despite herself, so scared she was unaware of anything but the voice, she whimpered as she searched the darkness with wild eyes.

"We shall change all that. It is time you knew what you are. What you can become. You will learn."

The voice faded into the darkness. And for a long while, Imoen heard nothing but the pounding of her heart and the terror gibbering in her mind.

---

Pain woke Imoen from her uneasy sleep, shattering her mind so that she could not even think to pull her arm back from the knife blade. Blood pattered to the floor as the blade parted the flesh of her forearm. Her screams did not dull the pain, did not stop him as he held her wrist easily through the bars of the cage with one cold hand as he cut with his other.

White bone was visible beneath the blood when he finished. Imoen screamed, shrieked until she was hoarse, tried to pull away but could not. Dark spots flashed before in her vision, but she saw clearly the cold blue eyes of her torturer, the dead, pale skin of his face. His whisper, the voice of the darkness, stung her ears even over the pain of her arm, "Can you look beyond this insignificant flesh to what you truly are? Know that this pain can lead you to your destiny, Imoen. Once you conquer the pain, you will then know."

Shock slowly melted Imoen's limbs and wiped her thoughts away. When she collapsed on the cold metal floor, she knew nothing but anguish, and then deep darkness.

---

Terror lived in the shadows of her sleep, making rest a distant thing that never came. Always behind her eyes, Imoen felt something chewing, eating away at her sanity, but she held on. She had to hang on, because she could not die.

Much later, when Imoen will try to remember what happened to her during the time the darkness fed on her, she will not remember clearly. Such selective amnesia is a blessing to some, but it will be Imoen's curse. Will her imaginings be far worse than what actually happened? Or were the acts so atrocious that she is not capable of imagining them?

---

Each act of violence against her bled one into the next, leaving her weak and battered and shrieking, or silent because the pain was so great it took her voice. When he finally left her, if she was still conscious, she would fall to the floor and beg the gods to kill her.

They did not listen.

When she woke up her injuries were poorly healed, as if the healer had meant for her to wear scars. Soon she forgot what life without pain was like. Freedom was a memory more distant than even her dead mother's face.

She felt shame when she wept, until the day she heard Renai's muffled cries echo through the dungeon. On that day her terror became a live thing with sharp teeth that consumed her from the inside as the madman killed her from the outside. For if Renai cried out, what hope could Imoen have to bear it?

Renai was the brave one, the strong one. She had been Imoen's best friend since the day Imoen had arrived in Candlekeep, a small, underfed child still in shock from the grief of her mother's sudden death. Renai fought off the boys who had picked on Imoen for being Winthrop's orphan slave, just as Imoen had played tricks on the girls who had teased Renai for being too rough.

Even when Imoen hated Renai, she still loved her. Her cries cut Imoen to her core, even more than anything he had done.

---

One day it occurred to Imoen as she struggled and failed to keep from crying out, that she should just do what he wanted. Then maybe he would stop.

Except, in all the awful words he used that carved her heart away, he never told her what he wanted. She was fading away by inches, losing herself in his madness, and she didn't know why. She had not even the strength to weep anymore.

On that day, he removed her from her cell and chained her to a table, her left hand shackled before her. Numb, she sat with her eyes downcast, not daring or caring to look at him.

"The time has come, Imoen," he said. With a gentle hand, he turned her hand so her knuckles rested on the table's scarred top. The unfamiliarity of such a touch surprised her even as it turned her stomach. But then he placed an iron spike on her hand, its tip lovingly biting into her palm. "And you have responded well. Now is time for a test."

"Why are you doing this?" How many times in how many ways had she asked this question? No emotion laced the query this time. As if by rote, she continued, "I don't know you. Why do you want to hurt me?"

"My dear, it is not what I will receive, but what gifts will come to you. You are almost ready."

When Imoen made no response, he pushed the spike further into her hand. But when he swung the hammer before her eyes, she felt a spasm of fear and dread.

He must have seen it in her eyes, for he laughed, the hideous dry chuckle that would haunt her forever. "Yes, you are not dead yet, are you? Life is pain, or the avoidance of pain. A dance that consumes the existence of most living creatures. Only those who understand that pain is a fetter that binds us to the mundane will journey to greatness." As the spike ground into her palm, Imoen mind whimpered Don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't.

"Fear and pain are nothing more than reactions of the body. If you go beyond them you can shape your destiny and seize your own power If you do not allow pain to control you, you will have no limits.

His eyes bored into her soul. "You do not understand what I am doing for you, but when you know, you will love me for it."

His single hammerstrike drove the spike through her hand deep into the table, its small flat head almost touching her palm.

"You have been afraid always, of life, of the anger in your soul," he said, watching as she writhed and cried out small, mewling noises of anguish. "Always you have pushed away greatness because you feared the pain of falling. No more, child. There is power here that you will learn. Do not allow the pain to rob your power."

She did not feel the caress of the hammer's edge against her cheek, but she did hear his words, always, through her agony. "You have power here, Imoen. You have a choice," he whispered almost seductively. "You may stay there as you are until I decide to free you. Today, or perhaps in a week. I know not when, nor will you.

"Or you can take the hammer and pound the stake into the table. Do that, and I shall free you immediately and take away your pain. This is your choice, sweet Imoen. Shall you be free at my whim or your own? Choose, Imoen. Choose your destiny."

With a paulsied hand she took the hammer from him and struck at the spike, hitting her hand once before she finally managed to drive it a fraction of an inch into the table. Agony blinded her, set each nerve in her body afire, tore her mind raw...

... and it was gone.

When she opened her eyes she was again lying in the cage. He stood before her outside the cage, as he always did. On his lips was a tender smile that did not belong on such a cruel face.

"There, you see?" He caressed her matted hair through the bars. Too weak to move, Imoen permitted his touch. Reveled in the first gentleness she'd felt in so long. Reviled her reaction as she stared at the livid white scar on her hand. "We are that much closer, you and I," he whispered. "It will only be better now."

---

On a rough wooden table lay a pale and bloodless body, long dead. Khalid's body, Imoen realized, but she did not cry out. She was dead inside, dying. Hollow. The golem's grip forcing her head up so that she watched her captor's work was hardly necessary. She didn't, couldn't think. It didn't occur to her not to watch.

"This," he said, indicating the body, "is nothing, less than nothing. This is meat. You would feed upon this if you didn't know its source." With a long, thin-edged knife, he cut into the body. "Do you see what this is, do you see? This is what a body is, only meat. Sinew. Bone. Blood. Saliva. Mucus. The motley collection of base material that makes all living creatures. What makes this man different from a hare or a mouse? Very little.

"Now he is little more than waste upon the floor." Puzzle pieces of the man who had been her friend, her friend Jahiera's beloved, lay at her feet, and on the table was a gruesome shape that only now looked vaguely like the man he had been.

"How would you choose to exist, Imoen, as meat on a table or as something more? Beyond pain and death is a glory few are privy to. Do you see?"

The hands held her head firm, and Imoen held her eyes open as her heart surrendered slowly into darkness, into the deep place that she had seen in her least-remembered dreams. Khalid's mutilated body brought it into crystal-clear focus, the meaning behind the pain and the power, and Imoen, for a moment, lost herself.

"I see," she whispered.

"Excellent." A note of something kin to happiness but blacker affected his tone. He motioned to the golem, and said briskly, "Return her to her cell, so that she may consider what she has learned. I will attend to the other." As he cleaned off the knife, he said as if to himself, "She perhaps will not be so difficult today."

Imoen did not feel the golem's hand on her arm as it led her through the complex to her cell. Without struggle or comment, she walked through its door and did not even hear it click shut behind her. Her ears only heard the hissing, loving voice deep within herself that she had never heard before as it sang, power to rend to tear and kill and slay to taste the blood to feel as the bones crack beneath the hands power to hear the breath leave the body to see the life subside power to rend to tear and kill and slay...

The first distant explosion did not attract her attention. The second, however, was nearby, and not only jarred her to reality but swung the cage door open.

For a long time, Imoen stared at the open space between the bars, not understanding or caring that the cage was open.

Then above the murderous chant in her mind, she heard another part of her mind at war with itself, her first true thoughts in so long: This is your chance! You're free! No I can't go. He'll find me! What will I do if I'm free, away from him! I can't go."

No. I can. The memory of Renai's screams woke her further. Renai. Jahiera and the others. I have to help them. I've got to go. Heart pounding, Imoen screwed up what little courage she could find and forced herself to step through the door, flinching as she passed the threshhold. But no trap was released, no attack came. She was alone.


Relief flooded her mind and body, and she took a moment to get her bearings. Before she could give into the dagger-like voices in her mind, Imoen took to the shadows and went in search for her friends.