NOVEL NEXT Chapter 53 : Prisoner!
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Harry woke up groggily, a dull, throbbing ache radiating from the back of his skull. He blinked a few times, his vision swimming, before his eyes were finally able to focus on the room around him.
He seemed to be in some sort of… lab. A dungeon laboratory, to be more precise. He had seen a few labs that the sorcerers of this world used before, during his long years of "research," but not this particular one.
It looked like it was located deep underground, or possibly in some ancient, forgotten catacombs.
The walls were made of rough-hewn stone in some places, but he could also see large areas where it was just packed, damp dirt.
Judging by the musty, underground smell, a scent he knew all too well, he was somewhere very, very deep.
Across the dimly lit laboratory, he could see a small, narrow staircase that led up to a heavy, iron-banded wooden door, which seemed to be the only visible exit.
He looked down at his own body and saw that he was covered in thick, heavy chains.
They looked to be made of silver, but with a slight, dull bronze tint to them. They were wrapped tightly around all his limbs, his ankles, his wrists, and his torso, with his arms being held up and chained securely to the cold stone wall behind him.
Harry growled softly, a low, dangerous sound in his throat, upon seeing the Dimeritium chains shackling his body.
Vilgefortz, that arrogant bastard, seemed to have gone completely over the top to make sure he didn't escape.
And, Harry had to admit, he had done a damn good job of it. Harry knew, from his own extensive, and often painful, experimentation over the years, that Dimeritium, in large enough quantities, could suppress his magic enough to stop him from turning into a dragon.
He had always dismissed the possibility of it being used against him, though, as he had doubted any sorcerer would ever think to use so much of the rare, expensive metal.
Vilgefortz must have been thoroughly convinced by the sheer, overwhelming power Harry had shown him in their brief, but intense, battle.
Harry cursed himself for letting his own arrogance, his own overconfidence, blind him enough to let his guard down, to allow someone to sneak up on him like that.
It's not like he ever truly thought Vilgefortz could actually kill him, but Harry knew better than anyone that there were things out there, things that could be done to a person, that were far, far worse than a simple, clean death.
He heard a metallic clank, and he looked towards the wooden door to see the man of the hour, Vilgefortz himself, enter the lab.
Harry stopped himself from smirking when he could see that Vilgefortz was, indeed, still missing an arm from their battle, the stump of his shoulder crudely bandaged.
"How are you liking your new accommodations?" Vilgefortz asked, a smug, self-satisfied smile on his face, a smile that Harry would have almost mistaken as pleasant if he were a lesser, more naive man.
Harry said nothing, refusing to rise to the man's obvious bait. He simply stayed silent, his green eyes cold and watchful as he looked over the man.
"You would never believe that it's already been seven whole months since we last fought, would you?" Vilgefortz said, his voice conversational.
That did catch Harry's attention. Seven months? How in the bloody hells had it already been seven months?
"I can see the shock in your eyes, even if your face doesn't show it," Vilgefortz continued, clearly enjoying himself. "It was quite a strange, and frustrating, experience, I must admit. I tried very, very hard to kill you, you see. Yet nothing I did seemed to work."
"At first, I tried to suck your life force out, to drain your magic and use it to empower myself, but after weeks and weeks of struggling, I simply could not force it to leave your body. It was as if it were… anchored to you, on a fundamental level."
"Then, in a fit of pure anger and frustration, I tried to cut off your head, only for it to simply… reattach itself, before my blade had even fully gone through your neck. Over and over and over again, I tried, yet nothing seemed to work."
"It was then, after much experimentation, that I finally concluded that you had, indeed, somehow learned the secrets of true immortality. And I think," he said, his eyes gleaming with a mad, obsessive light, "that you can probably see where I am going with this, can't you?"
Vilgefortz asked the question, but Harry heard him only distantly. He could only think, with a cold, chilling resolve, about how he was now going to have to make absolutely, positively sure that he killed this man, slowly and painfully, when he finally got free.
"I suppose," Harry said, his voice a low, dangerous drawl, "that this is the part where you ask me how to gain such a remarkable ability for yourself?" He looked at the man with a cool, detached amusement.
"And I suppose," Vilgefortz countered, his smile widening, "that your amused, and rather condescending, response means that you won't be telling me willingly. Which, I'm sure you already know, means that I will simply have to find out the… fun way." Vilgefortz stepped back from Harry and then walked over to a nearby, cluttered workbench.
He picked up a long, rolled-up leather cloth and brought it over to him. He unrolled it with a flourish, revealing a multitude of sharp, gleaming, and rather nasty-looking surgical and torturer's instruments.
As a Master Healer, Harry knew the intended use of almost every single one of them. He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.
"You really think you're actually going to find something, don't you?" Harry told him, his voice laced with a mixture of pity and contempt.
"You're a complete and utter fool if you didn't think I had made absolutely certain, long, long ago, that no one would ever be able to find out my secrets through such… crude methods."
Before Vilgefortz could even begin, Harry zoned out. He knew, from long, painful experience, how to deal with torture.
With his complete and utter mastery of Occlumency, he was able to retreat deep, deep into the fortified labyrinth of his own mind, and pretty much ignore any physical damage his body sustained.
He could still feel it, on some distant, detached level, but he could definitely, and much more easily, ignore it.
It wasn't long before he felt the cold, heavy Dimeritium chains on his body moving. Vilgefortz seemed to be smart enough to know not to take any of the magical-suppressing chains off completely.
He did, however, shift the ones on his torso, exposing his chest. A moment later, Harry felt something sharp, cold, and precise go through his skin.
Vilgefortz had just stabbed into him with a scalpel and was now trying to cut open his chest cavity, to get at the organs within.
His body, as it always did, naturally began to heal itself. But anything that wasn't immediately life-threatening, like getting stabbed directly in the heart or getting his head completely chopped off, would take longer to regenerate.
It was, Harry noted with a detached, clinical annoyance, quite convenient for Vilgefortz's little… experiment.
"Not even a peep," Vilgefortz said, a note of genuine, impressed surprise in his voice. "Your mental fortitude is even more impressive than I thought it would be." Harry said nothing in response, just remained silent, deep within his own mind.
He knew that any reaction, any sound, would just encourage the man. He wasn't sure, but through the hazy, detached fog of his Occlumency, he thought he saw a gleam of what seemed like pure, unadulterated insanity in Vilgefortz's eyes as he cut into him again.
Vilgefortz waited for him to heal, then repeated the act, over and over and over again.
There was probably enough of Harry's blood on the cold, stone floor now to create and fill a small swimming pool.
And through it all, Harry had continued to say absolutely nothing. He could feel his pain receptors, on some distant, biological level, screaming at his brain, telling him that he was in immense, agonizing pain, but he simply, coolly, ignored it, and pressed on, his mind a fortress of calm.
"Hmmm," Vilgefortz said out loud, his voice filled with a mad, scientific curiosity. "It would seem that the cuts always heal, but the deadlier, the more life-threatening the wound is, the more quickly it heals. How absolutely fascinating. How does the body know what to prioritize? Further research is most definitely needed."
Vilgefortz said this out loud, as if dictating notes, as he started writing in a small, leather-bound journal of some kind. He continued his little "experiment" for what felt like hours, or perhaps even days, before finally, with a sigh of what sounded like contentment, stopping.
"Well," Vilgefortz said, wiping his bloody hands on a rag, "I think that's enough… progress… for today. We shall continue on the morrow. See you then, my little immortal prisoner." Vilgefortz said with a wide, triumphant grin, before sweeping dramatically out of the room.
As soon as the heavy wooden door closed behind him with a loud, echoing thud, all the torches and candles in the room were instantly snuffed out, plunging Harry into complete and utter darkness.
Harry frowned as his eyes, even with their enhanced abilities, struggled to get used to the complete, suffocating lack of light.
'Well, Harry,' he thought to himself, a grim, determined sense of resolve beginning to form in the quiet, dark fortress of his mind. 'How in the bloody hells are you going to get yourself out of this one?'
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