Chapter LV: Hard Labor

The hammer came down, and the familiar shock of resistance tingled across Ryu Akanei’s arm. A film of dust clung to his skin, mingling with the rivulets of sweat running down his bare torso. Streaks of grime gave testimony to his effort, coating his entire body with a filthy layer of dirt and perspiration. His brown hair was matted down like wet straw, and his face a mass of greasy stains from where he wiped blinding strands away with oil-slicked hands. Ryu took a deep breath, steadying his quivering muscles. Then, with precise aim, he struck the rock again.

He had lost track of how long he had toiled here. There was no concept of time anymore. Some days he would work until he dropped on the spot. Others, it seemed no sooner had he gotten started than he was told to go. Some days he did not work at all, and from time to time he was given different tasks in lieu of the constant, never-ending hammering of the rock wall. Meals were served without any pattern. At times he ate until he was full, but more often than not his rations were just enough to keep his body moving, no more. There was no rhyme or reason to anything, only confusion and uncertainty. The only constant was the work. There was always work.

Every time the hammer in Ryu’s hand sang against the rock face, a spray of shattered granite scattered into the oppressive cavern air. The ringing continued even as the Hume’s tool drooped towards the floor. It was an eternal cacophony in this place. On both sides of Ryu, each one of them a hammer or pick or chisel in hand, the other denizens of the place he had come to know as Hell chipped away at the wall. They all knew their labor was not fruitless. Something was gradually taking shape from their constant toil. They were not working aimlessly. They had no idea what exactly it was they were carving, however. They only knew to follow the voice.

It was always there, in everything they did. Ryu could hear it in his dreams, whispering to him from a place just beyond where he could see. It guided his every stroke of the hammer. It told him when he could collapse and when he had to keep working. The voice let him eat and drink, reminded him sometimes when to breath. They were given no protection against the pervasive clouds of dust and debris. More than one occasion had passed where Ryu had coughed up blood. Compared to the darkened splotches on his grime-coated skin where tool or rock had cut him, this blood was bright, almost luminescent. Every time it happened someone came to clean it up within moments. It was a frequent occurrence with so many people, and the necessity to keep their blood off of the wall they were carving into had created a niche to be filled.

The whisper urged him on whenever it happened. He was told to ignore it, that he would be better when he woke, and he believed the voice. Thus far it had never lied. Even when he collapsed from exhaustion, or when the thickness of the air choked him near to death, when he awoke after sleeping his health was renewed. The voice told him not to wonder about it, so he didn’t. Yet something else beyond the whisper seemed to be screaming at him. He couldn’t make it out, but he knew that it was shouting at the top of its lungs to get his attention. Ryu wondered why it should be that a whisper would be louder than a shout. Then the whisper told him to stop wondering, so he did.

So it went, every day in that timeless expanse. He would work himself to death, and then be revived to work again. This was his punishment for his failure of the living world. To toil forever in pain in darkness, with not even death as a release. Only it was getting harder and harder to remember exactly what it was he had failed. That other voice, the shouting that wouldn’t go away, grew louder whenever his mind drifted towards such thoughts, but inevitably the whisper soothed the noise away.

Ryu knew inside that something was so dreadfully wrong it should be making him scream aloud. Every time he tried, his voice only came out as a whisper. Before long he stopped trying at all.

So he continued to work. Alongside the other nameless and faceless masses crowding the place called Hell, Ryu rose and slept by the fall of the hammer on stone. Every time he looked at the rock face they were carving, the massive face emerging from it looked back at him with greater definition. Soon it would be almost as if it were a living thing. Ryu barely noticed anymore. The whisper told him not to be concerned with what he was carving; only that he was carving it.

Only one thing ever broke up the endless monotony of the days. Ryu’s hammer stopped as he prepared to swing it again, and turned as a now-familiar dirge began drifting down the labyrinthine halls. A low and somber voice rang down the endless caverns, reaching every ear, calling all eyes towards the source. It was a remarkable noise simply for the fact that it was not the sound of hammer on stone, but more than that, it was an honestly impressive voice singing the melancholy tune. This was the voice of an artist, a poet. Those words had no meaning in this place, however. It was the sound of a heralding, informing all that the overseer would soon be here.

Ryu laid his hammer against the wall and stepped out towards the entrance to the cave. Most of the other workers either stayed where they were or collapsed forward. For many, the urging of the voice and repetitive motion was all that kept them on their feet. The Hume could yet use his own legs, and found a spot where he could better see the procession coming by, as it occasionally did, to view the progress of their labor. The powerfully sad voice continued singing, and soon the sound of padded boots beating aginst the stone floors in time echoed through as well. A dozen bare-chested men bearing a litter on their shoulders rounded the corner just behind the singer, who led them forward.

Aboroth’s expression had not changed since Ryu saw him last, nor had it in any of the occasions the Galka had led the Devul’s party down to the labor pit. He was as sad as his song, and indeed it seemed despair was the only emotion the enormous Bard ever exhibited. He wore robes which were gray and drab, head bowed and eyes nearly shut as he led the men carrying the litter onward. During this time, all were expected to stop work and stare as it went past. A simple homage, perhaps, or more likely a reminder of just where they were and who they served.

Five figures sat atop the massive and elevated throne. Two were simply more of the ephemerally-garbed women which seemed to be in close quarters around Devul at all times. The other three were more noteworthy. First, of course, was the Tarutaru himself. His stained and darkened robes nearly enveloped him as he pointed forward with fat, ringed fingers, ushering his troupe onward. The lord of the dark kingdom paid little heed to his own subjects. Not since his first day had Devul spoken to Ryu, or anyone else as far as the Hume had seen. It was the other two figures present in the entourage which caught Ryu’s eye.

The girl was there again. The one with eyes which were still alive. She looked sad and angry, and almost defiant, but just a little more crushed than the last time Ryu had seen her. That facet of her appearance grew with each fresh viewing of her young face. Her brown hair was loose, cut just above the shoulder, and she continually brushed an errant strand away from her hazel eyes. Those eyes had something in them that no one else here still had. Ryu suddenly longed for a reflective surface to see if that light had left his eyes as well. He knew it was important. He couldn’t remember why, but looking at the young girl up there by Devul’s wandering throne, Ryu desperately wanted to. The screaming in the back of his head grew louder still.

The procession halted. A ripple of uncertainty passed through the entire congregation. Aboroth’s song froze as if strangled out of his throat. The litter lurched forward as the bearers were unexpectedly stopped in midstride. The brown-haired girl looked about in surprise, though her two fellows appeared barely aware of the pause. The crowned Tarutaru atop the throne sat gripping the armrests of his elevated chair as the only other person present with him stared out towards the workers huddled together around their enormous carving.

Through the distance and the darkness, and the shadow cast by the green-robed woman’s cloak, there was no way to see her eyes. But Ryu knew she was looking right at him.

Deliberately, she leaned down to Devul and did something the Hume knew was somehow significant. He clawed through the haze, trying to follow the scream at the base of his brain towards some logic. The woman leaned down, and whispered in Devul’s ear.

The Tarutaru’s head turned mechanically towards the Hume, and for the first time, Ryu and Devul met eyes.

Even from so far away, Ryu could see Devul’s eyes held the same dead sheen as the subjects of his kingdom.

A force just beyond his range of perception pushed him forward, and he outstretched his hand towards the King of Hell, but then the whisper came again. The floor rushed up towards him, and everything went black.


He dreamed of soaring weightlessly through the air. He was holding something in both hands. The weight of it seemed familiar, yet still forgotten. A memory long ago surrendered to the mist. The landscape stretched out towards an endless horizon. Delight and exhilaration swept through him as he sailed across the sky. There was something there with him, some presence he knew. The familiarity jarred him, yet he simply could not place it. He searched in vain to find its source, but wherever he looked, that other essence was just out of sight. Ryu cried out, and in the same instant, his eyes fluttered open.

There was a woman with a knife perched over him. The ruddy torchlight illuminating his chamber cast a dull gleam on its steel surface.

With a snap of motion, Ryu thrust his hand over the wrist of the attacker and heaved her to the floor. She cried out in surprise, and Ryu could feel her pushing forward, trying to stab downwards as she was forced to the ground. In a flash, Ryu flipped the woman over, where she landed with a thud, the Hume’s hand wrapped around her wrist and her eyes staring up at his. She gnashed her teeth, trying to claw at him, but with his other hand Ryu pinned her to the stone surface of the floor beneath them, and forced her knife-bearing hand down. The blade skittered out of her grasp as Ryu angrily turned his head to meet her gaze.

His eyes went wide.

It was the girl from Devul’s litter.

Ryu snatched the knife from where it lay in a fell swoop, standing with it outstretched towards the Hume girl. As soon as she was released, she backed away, staring at Ryu with those big brown eyes of hers. The girl was thin, waiflike, and appeared to be sixteen if she was a day.

“Who are you?” Ryu said, and a fire raced down his throat. With a gasp he realized he could not remember the last time he used his own voice. He managed to hold the knife steady, eyes locked on the girl in the cave. He recognized this place. He had woken up here several times before whenever he had been allowed to sleep, but it was always some dead-eye guard rousing him to bring him back to work. This girl was not one of them. She was not like anybody else in this cursed place.

“I am Shaohuan,” she answered defiantly, thrusting up her chin. If the name was supposed to mean something, Ryu was unaware of it. Her resolve suddenly wavered, and she looked as if she’d just been poleaxed. “Did you just . . .“ her voice was barely more than a squeak from her lips, “did you just ask me a question?”

Ryu examined the girl. Her diaphanous gown clung to pale skin, revealing the youth of her lithe form. Though she was young, Ryu could see from the way she held herself that she knew at least the rudiments of self-defense. Against a man twice her size bearing a knife, he did not know what she hoped to do, but she stood there still, challenging him to test the thoughts he had.

“I found you perched over me in my sleep with a knife,” Ryu countered, taking a moment to swallow deeply against his throat throbbing at being used again, “I think that entitles me to some answers.”

Just like that, she dropped her guard. To Ryu’s astonishment, tears began streaming down her cheeks as the girl fell to her knees like a deactivated marionette. She looked up at Ryu with a mixture of sorrow and relief, a gamult of emotions that sent a shiver up his spine.

“You can think,” she said tearfully, “I thought I was the only one, but you can think, too. They haven’t gotten you.”

“What are you talking about?” Ryu said cautiously, completely lost by this turn of events.

“You have to leave!” Shaohuan erupted suddenly, standing and hurling herself towards the shocked Ryu. She gathered up the folds of his filthy tunic in her clenched hands, a wild look in her eyes as she glared at him, completely disregarding the knife in his grasp. “They’ll get you eventually. Leave, now!” She pounded on his chest with slender fists. “Why are you still standing here? Go!”

“Wait!” Ryu shouted, surprising even himself with his force. Shaohuan backed away from him cautiously, and he gazed at her as she did so. He tried to think about what was happening, but some sort of buzzing noise seemed to be in the air all around him. It was like a conversation between two people that weren’t him was happening inside his skull, but he couldn’t hear what was being said. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

“They make me,” she sobbed. “Whenever someone can’t hear the voices well enough, they make me come do this. Sometimes it’s too late, they’re already dead inside when I come in. Other times,” she closed her eyes, fighting off memories assailing her. “I don’t want to do what I do,” Shaohuan whispered, “but I can’t fight it when she speaks to me. She didn’t steal my mind like she did with the others, but she made me her puppet nonetheless.”

“Who’s they?” Ryu demanded. He didn’t know where these questions were coming from. Shouldn’t he be at work? Yes, he realized, but for the first time he could remember, his mind was telling him he was doing the wrong work. There was something else, something far more important to attend to. If he could only remember what life was like before he had come to this place . . .

“Please,” Shaohuan pleaded with him, “leave while you still can.”

“No,” Ryu stated plainly, anger and confusion starting to well within him. “How did I get here? Who are you? What’s going on in this place? Answer me!”

‘It’s too late,” Shaohuan whispered sadly, and Ryu became very aware that hers was no longer the only whisper in the room, “you should’ve left while you had the chance. It’s too late.”

Her voice was lost. A winner had emerged in the argument stewing in Ryu’s mind.

The whisper wanted him to come to the throne room. Shoahuan shouted vainly, crying bitter and angry tears as he grabbed her wrist to drag her along with him.


Shaohaun’s struggling was only a buzzing in his ear. He followed the whisper as it led him onwards, putting to rest all of his questions and concerns. Down past the halls of workers he dragged the young girl, ignoring her as she fought and kicked, at times even trying to bite him. His legs jerked forward towards his destination. He had been summoned.

The throne room opened up in front of him just as it had been before. A bevy of beautiful, soulless women sat at the feet of their master. Aboroth, his eyes heavy, turned his gaze down as he saw Ryu enter dragging Shaohuan behind him. Guards bearing an insignia Ryu thought he may have recognized once lined the walls. At the head of the room sat Devul, undisputed King of the damned. If there was anyone else in the room, Ryu decided not to pay attention to them. Something told him to focus only on Devul.

He cast Shaohuan down at the ground in front of him. She landed deftly, perched on the soles of her feet, but immediately turned towards Ryu. The waif froze at the sight of the knife extended in front of her, urging her to remain on the ground. Ryu held it out to her, but his eyes were on the throne.

“So you have failed us, Shaohuan,” Devul said disinterestedly, scratching his stomach with tiny fingers. “The greatest Thief of the La Theine Plateau cannot plunge a knife into an unconscious man? You’ve clearly exaggerated your skills to me.” As he spoke, it seemed to Ryu that there was someone else next to him. Was that right? He couldn’t tell. He only knew Devul was the one speaking.

“Wake up, you idiot!” Shaohuan shouted, ignoring Devul. “Wake up!” she pleaded up at Ryu, who almost could make sense of her words. Then the whisper told him it was best to ignore them.

“An arrogant young lady,” Devul said in a dull monotone, his head drooping down slightly. “A tiny gnat who thinks herself the mighty ram. Well, gnat, one failure of the Devul is one too many.”

“Remember something!” she demanded of Ryu, fury burning in her voice. “Where you’re from, how you got here, remember what your name is! Don’t let them do this!”

Ryu couldn’t remember anything. He didn’t know there was anything to remember.

“Hume,” Devul droned, “this woman tried to kill you. I command you to kill her, then report back to work, where you will carve until you die of exhaustion.”

Ryu stared at the knife in his hand. The whisper in his head was quiet, almost too quiet to hear, but somehow more insidious for it. It felt like it was creeping into the darkest corners of his mind, making its way into a place where it would not even have to actively speak to him any longer. It would always be there. No more thought, no more will, no more dreams, only obedience. It started here. All he need do is thrust down.

Shaohuan stared up at him with enormous brown eyes. The dilemma of whether death should be taken as a punishment or a mercy played across her face. The drama unfolded in her eyes, and Ryu found himself peering into them deeply. So deeply he could see his own reflection within their surface.

His own eyes stared back. Eyes which showed the faintest spark of what Shaohuan had in hers still burning.

In the back of Ryu’s mind, something was screaming.

A shriek came from the lips of the woman in the green cloak as the knife in Ryu’s hand sailed towards her. Her head spun with the impact, which tore the hood off of her cloaked visage. The blade snapped as it collided with the wall, clattering harmlessly to the ground. The Mithra turned, her loose hair now tumbling down her right shoulder as she returned her gaze to her assailant. Her right eye blazed with fury.

Ryu’s mouth dropped at what was underneath the hood. Starting at her left eye, which was completely milky white, nearly a quarter of the woman’s face was covered in scars. While most of her visage was unblemished and pristine, everything from the left side of her scalp down to the bridge of her nose looked like it had been mangled horrifically. Her fanged teeth were bared as she raised a hand to her previously unscarred right cheek. The Mithra pulled back two fingers to reveal spots of her own blood oozing from the fresh wound Ryu had just brought her.

For a moment, Ryu thought he saw Devul struggle in his chair, but whatever that portended lost meaning a moment later.

“Kill him!” the woman shouted furiously. Her hand stretched out imperiously towards Ryu, and in the same motion Devul echoed both her words and gesture. At the sound of his voice, two dozen dead-eyed guards took weapon in hand simultaneously. Ryu’s head snapped back towards the way from which he had come. It suddenly seemed an impossible distance away.

He felt his feet moving underneath him, and before he realized it he was breaking for the exit. Shoahuan gave a surprised yelp as Ryu’s hand clasped over her wrist, tearing her to her feet in sudden flight. The Elvaan soldiers lining the hall rushed forward as one. The rush of steel cutting through the air filled the cavern as they conveged towards the fleeing pair of Humes. Their movements, however, were disjointed and awkward, as mechanical as Ryu had been as he picked at the stone wall. Something he couldn’t quite place was coming back to him, and he knew he could get out of here.

Trusting his instincts, the Hume pushed forward with all his might, letting the strength of his legs carry him past the wall of opposition rushing to meet him. Blades crashed down on all sides of him, but Ryu was undeterred. A long-handled spear struck the ground in front of him, and without pause he planted his foot on the shaft and sprung forward. The slow-reacting guard was left behind as Ryu’s foot came down atop his head, and the Hume landed on the ground behind the Elvaan guard he had just used as a springboard. Not letting Shaohuan go, he sped onwards, the shouts of the scarred Mithra cutting the air behind him.

“Which way do I go?” Ryu demanded of the woman who had been sent to murder him less than a half-hour before.

“I don’t know!” Shaohuan shouted back. “Away from them!”

Ryu had no better direction to offer, so he took the first turn he saw. A dead-eyed Hume with a hammer in his hands spotted them, and scooped his hammer up to swing in their general direction. Ryu’s eyes darted to each side. From every cavern in the tunnel, figures were beginning to emerge. All of them were headed in the same direction. Towards Ryu and Shaohuan.

“Away from them, too!” Shaohuan shouted, and then yelped as Ryu pulled her forward.

Ryu could still hear it in his head. The whisper was there, and it was not happy. It wanted him to stop, to turn around, to kill Shaohuan and present her heart as a trophy. Ryu could hear it, but that scream at the back of his mind finally sounded like a scream. He could hear it, sense its familiarity, and he knew it was the thing from his dream.

He could ignore the whisper.

A stone burst in front of him, and a pick which had been thrown towards him crashed to the ground. He turned to see the cavern filling with shambling, dead-eyed servants of the Mithra in the cloak. Some were the Elvaan soldiers which brandished weapons, but the majority was the same people Ryu had worked beside day after day, holding up the carving tools they used to chip away at the rock face. Whatever their job in the nightmarish place, they were one and all being told to chase after the man escaping.

Shaohuan in hand, he darted forward. Questions burned in his mind, but he had no time to search for answers. Escape was paramount. He could hear more shambling feet gathering in the rush behind him, but he tried to put it out of his head. All Ryu could let himself focus on was the need to escape, and get himself and Shaohuan to safety.

But was there safety to be found in Hell?

Shaohuan shouted in surprise as a hammer struck the wall beside them. Ryu spun to find a heavy-set Hume rearing back, preparing to strike at them again. His hammer came up, but when it came down it found nothing but stone. Ryu’s powerful legs thrust both he and Shaohuan away, leaving the man to hurl himself off balance and tumble forward. Just behind him came the gathering throng, those in the front now getting close enough to use their lighter tools as projectiles. They marched over the man on the ground like he wasn’t there. Ryu sped on, searching desperately for some hint of a place to hide.

Up and around the winding tunnels they went, dodging through narrow passageways and treacherous footfalls. No matter how far they went or how fast they moved, it seemed the pack was always hot on their heels. Ryu had not realized how vast an operation this had been. In nearly all parts of the cave, there had been people working. Now, as he came near, they stopped what they were doing and concentrated on him instead.

The strain beginning to catch up with him, the Hume cried out for breath as he rounded the next corner, ready to push forward even faster. He could feel the muscles in his legs straining, but he focused only on putting their power towards one more burst of speed. The next cavern came into view, and he put his all into one last sprint.

He skidded to a halt, barely catching himself. Shaohuan did likewise, windmilling her arms to maintain her balance. Both of them stared around the room, and then down at where they had stopped.

There were no more tunnels. They had hit a dead end. And they stood on the precipice of a hole so deep the bottom was lost to darkness.

As one, they turned at the sound of feet clamoring up the tunnel behind them. The wave of men and women held in thrall by the Mithra began appearing around the bend, but halted as they came to the entrance of the room. Only after the only exit was completely blocked off did Ryu understand the reason why. The multitude shifted, and the cloaked Mithra herself emerged before him.

“I do enjoy cat and mouse,” she told him, “but the cat always wins.”

“Leave Shaohuan alone,” Ryu heard himself say, not understanding why that was the first thing that popped into his head.

“She is mine to do with as I please,” the scarred Mithra whispered back. That same whisper had even more force aloud than it had in his head. Ryu shook his head. The sound of that angered, far-off scream was getting closer by the second. “Your life is not worth this,” she went on, “come back and finish your work. You will never remember any of this ever happened.”

“You’ll never get me back.”

“You have no choice, Hume,” the Mithra spat at him.

In front of him there was a horde he could not possibly hope to escape. Behind him, darkness and death.

“Let me stop all this,” the scarred Mithra whispered, extending a hand towards the Dragoon. “Just listen to my voice.”

“But I’ve got another voice in here,” Ryu said, tapping the side of his temple, “and it says the only reason I should take your hand is if I’m going to rip your arm off at the shoulder.”

Her discolored eyes narrowed as her fangs came to light.

“So be it,” she said gratingly, raising her hand towards where Ryu stood and pointing.

The horde surged forward. Ryu let himself drop back.

“No!” Shoahuan cried out, but a rough-handed Elvaan snatched her arm as she tried to grab at the falling Hume.

The Mithra looked down the dark and endless tunnel wordlessly. Below her was only inescapable darkness. She sniffed derisively, pulling her heavy hood back over her marred features.

“Bring her,” she snapped, gesturing towards Shaohuan. “It is time we finished our work.”

Shaohuan said nothing as she was pulled to her feet and led away. At least whatever else happened now, it would soon all be over for her. And at least the brave young man she had just witnessed wouldn’t be alive to see it happen.


Something cold and wet splashed across Ryu Akanei’s forehead, and his eyes shot open. In the darkness, he could just perceive the tunnel he had fallen down, its mouth high above him. He was partially submerged in a puddle twice again as large as his own body. His face rose up above the water line, but from a row of stalactites above, drops of condensation slowly ran down his exposed skin. The Dragoon let the cooling driplets wash over him as he sat in the chill pool.

He suddenly recalled the moment he had first woken up inside these caverns, just after the demons had swarmed him over.

The shallow pool became a cloud of steam as Ryu sat straight up. A flash of light illuminated the darkened cave, and the wave of heat which radiated from Ryu’s body converted the freezing water to vapor in a sundering hiss. The rocks around him began glowing red-hot as the Dragoon pushed free from the mist. Energy rose from his back in the form of seething flame. His eyes were focused, his mind was clear, and his power had returned.

In that instant, Ryu realized exactly what was actually going on.

The very same moment the truth struck him, like the white-hot power now pulsing through his veins, the screaming came back. Not a scream at all, he knew. Rather it was an aching, angry, fervent cry for release. And now Ryu knew exactly where it was coming from.

“Come forth!” Ryu bellowed, and the power in his voice shook the rock down to the sediment. All at once, the aura rippling through him coalesced and took shape. Hissing and crackling, a ball of flame rose from Ryu’s own flesh. The air in front of him exploded with a blinding flash of light, and then a high-pitched cry the Hume had missed far more than he realized. This was, in fact, the first time in weeks he was aware he had been missing anything at all.

But truth had brought with it clarity. With perfect clarity he heard the leathery wings of his wyvern beating the air as his closest companion came to life from light and fire. With a beastial cry, the wyvern Bo materialized before Ryu Akanei.

The temperature in the room plummeted as the super-heated energy of Bo’s essence returned to solid form. Fissures appeared in rock formations which had only moments ago been glowing red as the cavern returned to darkness. With a dragon’s eyes, Ryu could see in the dark. With his bond renewed, the powers gifted to him by Bahamut came rushing back to him. Sensory input flooded his mind, but with the strength of Bo supporting him, he merely gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. The blue-scaled wyvern whipped through the air, circling once around Ryu, stopping to face him eye-to-eye.

“I would never forget about you,” Ryu replied to the words felt through their bond. “You’ve been with me this entire time. I don’t know what they did, but they couldn’t break us apart. Besides,” a smirk curled the side of the Dragoon’s lip, “if I lost you, Guivre would never forgive me.”

Bo gave a vicious snap at the mention of his father’s name, perhaps in emulation. Ryu looked up through the tunnel he had fallen through. Then he looked back at Bo.

“This isn’t hell,” Ryu remarked. In one explosion of might, the Dragoon took to the air, spiraling back up the tunnel from which he had just come.

“But it’s about to be.”