Uriel slowly shook his head. "No."
"Nothing is." He smiled. "What can I do…"
His mind trailed away, losing focus, before, a few moments later, he returned.
"Ah, right—what can I do for you? I was just falling asleep here, you see. A man's got to sleep after a hard day's labor, no?"
BANG!
A fist slid across his face. A sickening crunch echoed, most likely Uriel's jaw breaking.
The pain was like a streak of lightning running through his body, his eyes widening as his muscles seized. His vision cleared for a moment, and the man's features were laid bare.
He had long mint-green hair tied into a bun, complemented by crimson markings lining his face, drawn across jade-white skin.
Despite his hulking physique, his face was quite delicate, not as androgynous and ridiculously delicate as Uriel's, but close.
His eyes, though, were entirely black.
Uriel tried to look around at the dozens of others who surrounded and loomed over him, but the short man grabbed his chin, pulling his focus back toward himself.
"No, no. I'm here."
He smiled.
"I was told you had quite the penny in that little mark of yours, hm?" He said, eyeing Uriel's abode mark. "Would you be kind enough to open it for me?"
The man's eyes became pleading.
"Just so I can see, okay? A man's got to dream, right? Let me see, just so I know what to work toward."
Laughs echoed around them, and the short man's grip on Uriel's chin tightened, his broken jaw shifting and aggravating, drawing a groan from him.
"…Mm. Ah, of course." Uriel nervously chuckled. "I'm afraid I'll have to say no, though—"
BANG!
He didn't see it coming.
A foot slammed into his face, burying his head into the wall behind him, most likely fracturing part of his skull in the process.
PAH!
The short man slapped Uriel awake.
"Well, I'm glad, then." He looked up toward the far and distant skies, where Thoryl would've normally been.
"Let's go somewhere more private, then, aye?"
SHAH!
…
Uriel blinked.
And he was within a foreign dimensional space—much smaller than his own, or even the one in the trial, but a dimensional space nonetheless.
His pupils shook.
'What? How?! Did he buy a portable dimensional terminal or… how?!'
'Why is Thoryl not doing anything?!'
The short man stood to his full height.
Grabbing Uriel's long hair, he dragged him to a corner of the space, where a metallic table stood. With the help of the other young men and women present, they lifted Uriel and strapped him to the table.
His arms, legs, and neck were bound to the metal, the cold surface pressing against his sweat-slick skin. They rolled multiple straps around him for good measure.
Uriel was at a loss for words, his heartbeat growing even more chaotic than it already was. Through the bindings, he managed to speak.
"W-why?! Why are you targeting me? How did you even bring me here? I don't have anything of—"
"Shhhhhh." The short man shushed him.
CLICK!
He pressed a button linked to the table Uriel was bound to, and slowly, steadily, it lowered until it reached the short man's waist.
He loomed over Uriel, his smile a pit of boundless malice.
"You saw what they did to those who broke the law on the first day—there's no need for this! I don't know who or—"
PAH!
A fist hammered down on his face.
"Oh, shut up already." The short man, Lirik, looked over toward one of his men. "Bind him. All core senses."
He turned away, picking up a set of leather gloves and sliding them on.
Instantly, from the group filling the dimensional space, a few surged forward, grabbing tools from the ground and approaching Uriel.
"Wait, wait—hold on! I can—MMM!"
His mouth was bound, and then his eyes, covered by a tight cloth that pressed heavily against his eyeballs.
Darkness.
Unable to move, he was left with only his ears and nose.
Just like in the prison.
"MMMM! MMMM! MMM!"
He fought and struggled, trying to break free, to scream for help—to beg them to stop—but every time he did, a fist drove into his stomach, knocking the air from his lungs.
Lirik returned, dragging a chair with him. He placed it beside Uriel's face and sat, smiling.
"So, evidently, I don't care about your little rewards. I doubt you have more than a few hundred crystals."
He shrugged. "But who knows? Maybe a few crystals will make me kinder?"
"MMMM! MMMMMMMMM!"
Lirik nodded. "No, yeah. Totally. I understand. Most of my patients often come to the same conclusion." He laughed.
He turned to one of the henchmen on standby, a tall, lanky man in his late thirties, with short light-red hair and pitch-black eyes.
"What did the client want again?"
The man hurried over, pulling a notebook from his back pocket and flipping through it until he found the right page. "Got it."
"They want all the information he has on someone called… Enoss? They have multiple possible names—Enoss, Enoch, Enor, or Anor. Something along those lines."
Lirik nodded, rubbing his chin. "Alright. And what else?"
"They, uh…" The man flipped another page. "No, I think that's it. They just want information on Enoss."
"But they did specify to be quick, for some reason. The window they gave us to find him was correct, and if we trust their intel, someone, most likely Enoss, will come looking for him in…"
He squinted. "…an hour. Right. So we have an hour."
Lirik nodded. "Their intel was ridiculously accurate, though. I'm not even sure how they predicted he'd appear there, or even that the guide would be gone."
"But, ah, job's the job."
The man nodded. "Really is."
They were almost too casual, too indifferent given the situation, and the dozen men and women around them seemed not to care either.
They sat around the space, paying only a sliver of attention to what was happening, mostly conversing among themselves.
It was eerie, horrifyingly so.
Each passing second filled Uriel's heart with more unease, more unrest, his battered and exhausted body begging him to fall asleep.
But he couldn't.
Lirik clapped his hands, and from his dimensional mark, evidently independent of the one they had somehow dragged Uriel through, a toolkit appeared.
Filled with tools of torture.
"Let's have a chat."