Elliot's body curled on pure animal instinct, arms wrapping around his head in futile protection, knees drawing up tight to shield his belly from the assault. But the kicks kept coming with metronomic brutality—ribs, back, kidneys, each target struck with the expertise of someone who'd inflicted this specific suffering many times before. Each impact sent fresh detonations of agony through his nervous system, lighting up pain receptors he hadn't known existed. He tasted blood, thick and hot and copper-sweet, coating his teeth and tongue. It filled his mouth faster than he could spit or swallow.
His blood spattered across the rose-red floor in dark droplets that spread like obscene flowers against the pale stone, and for one absurd, detached moment he thought they matched—his blood the exact same color as the deeper burgundy bands running through the ancient rock. As though he'd been designed to bleed on this floor. As though this violence had always been inevitable, written into the stone's geological memory.
Rough hands seized the collar of his tunic without warning, hauling him upright with such violence that stitches popped along the shoulders with sharp, crackling sounds. His body swung like a rag doll, feet leaving the ground entirely. His soaked tunic squelched obscenely, heavy with absorbed water, the liquid streaming down his chest in rivulets, pattering against the stone floor like the rain that never fell on this sun-cursed land. The sound echoed in the chamber—drip, drip, drip—unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.
The militiaman who held him froze mid-motion, his scarred face transforming from fury to something beyond rage—something that approached religious horror. His complexion went from weathered tan to mottled purple in the span of a heartbeat. His eyes—the yellowed, bloodshot eyes of a man who'd spent too many years drinking bad wine and breathing stone dust—bulged in their sockets until white showed all around the iris. Spittle flew from his lips as his mouth worked soundlessly, flecking Elliot's cheek with warm, foul-smelling droplets.
"Watchman Petran!" Another voice called sharply from somewhere near the entrance passage. Footsteps approached at a run. "What's the delay? Has he—by the Weeping Stone!"
The second man's voice cut off abruptly, strangled by whatever he'd seen.
The man holding Elliot—Petran, apparently—didn't turn his head. His gaze remained locked on Elliot's soaked clothing, on the water that continued to drip steadily from the fabric, on the spreading puddle forming at the boy's dangling feet. The puddle caught the chamber's dim light, reflecting it back like a mirror, like an accusation.
Petran's face underwent another transformation. The purple rage drained away, replaced by something colder. More dangerous. The particular fury of the devout confronted with sacrilege.
"We don't touch the water near the shrine!" Petran's voice cracked with the intensity of his conviction, each word emerging as a separate explosion of sound. His fingers tightened on Elliot's collar, twisting the soaked fabric until it compressed his windpipe, until breathing became a conscious effort requiring his full attention. "It's the First Law—written before the settlement, before the water-pits, before anything! The water that seeps from Her stone is sacred! It belongs to Her! To touch it, to drink it, to let it soak into your defiling flesh—that's death! That's blasphemy of the highest order!"
Petran's breath washed over Elliot's face in hot, nauseating waves—rank with onions and sour wine and old meat gone bad in the relentless heat. His face loomed close enough that Elliot could count the burst blood vessels mapping his nose like red lightning, could see the hatred burning in those yellowed eyes with the intensity of banked coals, could see the broken teeth behind his cracked lips—brown with rot, sharp at the edges where they'd chipped.
Elliot tried to speak, to explain, to beg. Nothing emerged but a strangled wheeze.
"Do you know what happens when the water-stones stop weeping?" Petran hissed, his voice dropping to something more terrible than his previous shouts—the quiet, venomous tone of someone explaining fundamental truths to the profoundly ignorant. "Do you know what happens when the pits run dry? People die. Not quickly. Not cleanly. Their tongues swell and turn black. Their skin splits like dried leather. Children die in their mothers' arms, crying for water that doesn't exist. Entire settlements turn to dust and bleached bone, picked clean by carrion birds. We live only because of Her gift, because She took pity on our ancestors dying in the wasteland, because She made the stone weep water for us when nothing else would. And you—"
His grip tightened further. Elliot's vision began to gray at the edges.
"You slave-filth—you dare to bathe in Her tears? You dare to soil the sacred gift with your unwashed skin?"
He released the collar only to seize Elliot's hair, wrapping the matted strands around his fist like a lead rope used to control livestock. He lifted with brutal efficiency, hauling Elliot onto his toes, then higher, until only the very tips of the boy's feet maintained contact with the polished floor. Elliot's hands flew to Petran's wrist on instinct, scrabbling for purchase, trying to relieve the agonizing pressure on his scalp. But Petran's forearm was thick as a fence post, corded with muscle built from years of violence and hard labor. Elliot's fingers might as well have been trying to bend iron.
Fresh pain erupted across his scalp as hair tore free at the roots. He felt warm blood begin to trickle down his temple.
Petran drew back his free hand with theatrical deliberation, fingers curling into a scarred fist—knuckles enlarged and misshapen from being broken and improperly healed multiple times. He cocked that fist beside his head, preparing to drive it down like a blacksmith's hammer, to smash Elliot's face against the shrine floor with enough force to shatter the delicate bones of his skull like pottery dropped from height, to grind his teeth into fragments, to mix his blood and brain matter with the sacred water pooling on the rose-red stone.
Elliot saw his own death reflected in those yellowed eyes. Certain. Imminent. Deserved, in Petran's mind.
The fist began its descent.
"Enough, Petran."
The words cut through the chamber with the precision of a blade drawn from its sheath—quiet, but carrying absolute authority. Not shouted. Barely raised above conversational volume. But Petran's fist stopped mid-swing as though striking an invisible wall.
His arm trembled with the effort of halting momentum, muscles locked in conflict between obedience and bloodlust.
Watchman Kael emerged from the shadows near the entrance, his white armor pristine despite the canyon dust, his green visor reflecting the chamber's dim light like insect eyes. He moved with the measured pace of someone who'd never needed to hurry because resistance was unthinkable. Two more soldiers flanked him—younger men, their armor less decorated, their hands resting on pulse rifle stocks.
Kael's visor tilted downward, regarding the scene with what felt like cold amusement. "You'll kill him, Petran. And dead slaves answer no questions."
Petran's jaw worked silently. His fist remained cocked, trembling. "He touched the sacred water, Watchman. He bathed in it. The law demands—"
"The law is mine to interpret." Kael's voice hardened by a single degree—enough to remind everyone present exactly who held power here. "And I say he lives. For now. Until we extract what information his worthless brain contains about this shrine and the energy signatures our equipment detected." He paused, letting silence press down. "After that, you may have what's left of him. Assuming there's anything left worth having."
The promise hung in the air like poison.
Petran's hand slowly, reluctantly lowered. His fingers released Elliot's hair with obvious regret.
Elliot collapsed to the wet floor, his body refusing all commands. He lay in the spreading puddle of sacred water and his own blood, chest heaving, vision swimming, and waited for whatever came next.
Because there was always something next. The pain never simply ended.
It only paused between inflictions.