I couldn't remember most of what was happening to me.
That was the strange part.
Death happened over and over again, but my mind learned how to get away before the worst of it. The sharp parts got fuzzy. The screaming turned into pressure, then distance, and finally nothing. Pain was still there, but only for a short time, like a warning bell before silence took it all away.
Being unconscious became a form of mercy.
Lucidity only came back in pieces, always at the same time—after.
After I forced my breath back into my lungs, I felt a strange sense of relief. Just after that heavy, planned thud, my heart started to beat once again.
After my body had finished reassembling itself,
Those moments—those few heartbeats when I felt whole again—were the only times I could think straight.
Every time, the chains were still there.
They cut deep into my wrists and ankles, which had symbols on them that burned cold against my skin. I tried them out more than once. Bend. Pulled. Twisted. My muscles obeyed right away, and strength coiled and released with a level of control I had never had before.
If these chains had been normal, they would have broken.
They were not normal chains, though. Magic seeped into them like oil into cloth—thick, old, and full of meaning. Every time I pushed against them, the runes lit up, and my strength flowed into the stone below me.
The altar drank a lot.
Something else did too.
I felt it long before I knew what it meant.
Every ritual I could feel was creating a pathway of sorts between me and the thing that the goblins worshiped. When they cut me and my blood flowed into the grooves, something happened. I could feel something stirring, although I had no idea what it was or why it was happening. I didn't care what the thing was exactly; instead of my suffering, I just wished for its slow demise. To drench it in the same endless agony I was currently enduring. Eventually something gave.
At first, the goblins didn't notice the change. They were too busy having fun. I'm too busy recording how long I lasted now.
They quickly learned that it took longer to kill me.
Bleeding didn't take my strength away as quickly anymore. Wounds took longer to heal. Pain still came, but it didn't control me anymore. It got quieter, faded away, and turned into background noise instead of a command.
Occasionally I was awake long enough to see their faces change from happy to confused and then back to happy again.
They had stopped experimenting by the time the number of deaths reached double digits.
Every time, they did the same thing. I was pelted with the annoying same chants, the same symbols painted onto and sometimes into my skin, the same cuts carved at my flesh. Still, I was blissfully unaware of the majority of the horrific actions they took.
They seemed to be under the impression that consistency could fix what was going wrong. It didn't, nor could it.
Things changed with the eleventh death.
I see with more clarity than before.
Shaking off the cocobwebs, my mind felt strangely in tune with the space around it. My breath came back without the usual violent gasp. My heart started beating again with calm ccertainty,and all of the previous fog that had been protecting me prior seemed to vanish when I opened my eyes this time around.
Everything was so clear.
The cave didn't feel right.
The symbols below me didn't glow steadily; they flickered instead. The air shook, not because it was hungry, but because it was under stress. I could feel the link now—the path they had made between me and their god.
And for the first time, I felt like I would rather not do it.
The blue screen came up on its own, but I barely looked at it. I didn't need to see numbers to know what had changed.
Something inside me pushed back.
The pressure grew as the goblins started chanting again, but instead of flowing out, it folded in on itself. The channel twisted, fell apart, and then broke like a tendon that had been pulled.
The answer came right away.
The signs screamed.
Not in a metaphorical way. The stone screamed as cracks spread out from the altar. The bowl broke cleanly in half, and the blood turned into steam instead of going where it was supposed to.
The goblins fell to their knees.
All of them.
They screamed and held their heads, chests, and throats as something they couldn't see ripped through them from the inside. Whatever had answered their prayers had turned its attention inward.
Or been cut off.
At that moment, I experienced a distinct It felt like an intense feeling of emptiness, as if a hand was pulling away from my back.
It felt like a hand was pulling away from my back.
The chains flared up once, violently, then went out.
The magic that held me here wavered for the first time since they bound me here.
I laughed.
It hurt my throat and made it feel raw and broken, but it was real.
I whispered hoarsely, looking at the goblins writhing below me. "So, that's what happens when you lean too hard on a god." He didn't know much about this world but he did understand a few things or at least he was beining to. He smirked as they writhe in pain.
Somewhere deep inside the mountain, something pulled back.
And for the first time since I'd been chained to this damnable altar, I knew for sure—
I wasn't just surviving through the rituals anymore. I was breaking it, and this thought brought me the greatest joy.