NOVEL NEXT 6-32 - Storming Donjon
Any given reader of this text has no doubt heard of Donjon, and likely believes they know what it's like. Indeed, it operates to this very day, much the same as it always has aside from the irregular needs of reconstruction and expansion. In my experience, however, almost all are misinformed about the proper nature of the island prison. It has a presence made more of myth and urban legend, colored by the dark memories of those fortunate enough to be released from it and exaggerated in grimness by the guards that keep it sealed and the prisoners fed.
Mostly, it is just the same as any other purpose built prison, which itself makes the structure more grim than a common person would ever experience. When a criminal is apprehended in a small town or village, keeping them confined can be described as a creative endeavor at best. Guard towers might have a few rooms dedicated to the business, or an abandoned house has its windows and doors reinforced. I've even seen pits dug such that the condemned must be lowered in by rope and left to wallow in their own feces. These solutions have too much normalcy to evoke the feeling of being put in a stone room, girded by iron, within a stone fortress with no other purpose but containing those hated by the state.
It's not so much the structure that oppresses the mind, but the presence of the other condemned. Donjon is unique by two measures. Firstly, by and large the prisoners are not confined to their cells. The doors were removed centuries ago and to this day, nobody has spent the coin to put them back. Thus, the prisoners are stripped permanently of their privacy, for a heavy door at least provides that. Only shadows and gloom allow them space to pull in on themselves. Otherwise, they at all times are squeezed by the churning pressure of other prisoners, most of whom are violent and resentful. The guards do nothing to break up fights. Violence is the most common cause of death in Donjon, far outstripping deprivation and starvation. Although, the former is typically instigated by the latter.
Secondly, at all times there is a way out for those brave enough to attempt it. The old keep of Donjon is a hollow spire, ringed by the many cells of prisoners. Iron girds the sky above, permitting scant weather and the cruel droppings of gulls. At the base, in constant view of all, is an algae-slick pool. Sea water sloshes in from the sea and centuries of growth have made a coral reef of the cavern below. Schools of chromatic fish swim to and fro. They feed on the bugs and on the waste of the prison, and in turn the sharks feed upon them. Those deadly shadows of the ocean are the true gatekeepers of Donjon. Any doomed soul is free to cast his dice and dive into the waters to grapple with the toothy assassins, and should he reach the outside a pardon awaits him.
Of course, of all the people to ever escape Donjon previously, but one single man achieved this pardon and that was through merit of his stigmata. Thereafter, any prisoner with a sufficient stigmata, such as the ability to control the minds of sea creatures, has been put to death rather than imprisoned. All other alleged escapes were performed in the traditional manner a rogue might use to escape confinement, techniques I think not prudent to distribute.
The Blade of Steel, Lyam, was such a man that the wardens had to consider whether he was eligible for containment at Donjon. Two facts conspired in his favor. First, though he had been arrested it was still known that he had once held the king's favor, so death carried a certain risk for the wardens. Second, they took a simple man's understanding to his stigmata. He could turn his flesh to steel, but steel did not float in water nor did it remove his need to breathe. While they believed the sharks would not be able to tear him apart, they would obligate him to turn his body to steel to save himself, which would trap him beneath the surface and drown him.
And so it was that the murderous knight was put in one of the mossy cells at the bottom of Donjon. Not a day went by where another prisoner did not attempt to murder him, with everything from falling rocks to hand-crafted shivs. No allies presented themselves to him, depriving him of any rest. Every scuffle and approach of slapping feet roused him from sleep with an exhausting dose of adrenaline. Given that Donjon does nothing to prevent violence between prisoners, I have chosen to not speculate on how many of his fellow inmates Lyam killed before the most pivotal day of the Vassish Revolution.
The daring rebels who sailed upon Donjon took church ships, still flying the flags of Sapphira. They were, in large part, the very fishermen who had been given freedom of the seas to sail by Lucius' actions earlier that year. The men who were supposed to be whaling instead turned their spears upon Donjon in pursuit of the many rioters who had been locked away to purge the capital of violence. Naturally, there were a few specific names known at the time, ringleaders with loyal followers who rallied a broader cause, but to put down their names here would merely waste the reader's time. There is no merit in giving everlasting fame to such villains. Their existence is the only thing that mattered, spurring a ragtag fleet to assault Donjon.
Though it might appear as a fortress, its defenses are inverted. Some measures have been taken in more recent decades, but during the Vassish Rebellion, the primary defense was the sea itself and the monsters within it. It should come as no surprise that the Vassish themselves knew how to navigate the invisible sea lanes. While Aillesterran pirates would have been ravaged in the same attempt, the sailors beneath blue flags had little trouble sailing through the waves until they could throw mooring hooks upon the rocks and docks.
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A confused response of guards mustered outside the fortress to see what the commotion was, ultimately crippling the defense of Donjon. When the rebels struck first, blood soon coated the stone steps. Many more of the rebels died upon the steps than the armed and trained guards, but the advantage of numbers proved sufficient. Arrows volley back and forth as hammers were brought upon the gates. Hinges of iron were rusted by the salt air, warping and cracking as craftsmen from the city pummeled them with mauls and masonry chisels, eventually breaking through the gates.
Panic surged into Donjon like a storm of choking, sulfuric ash.
Cries of "Freedom!" and "Retribution!" shook every man from sleep, Lyam included. The recently incarcerated Zealots exalted in the noise of echoing violence, kindling hope anew in even the most despondent of prisoners. Overwhelmingly, the captives of Donjon were true enemies of the state, and thus brothers with one another. By this measure, the Blade of Steel was as much an enemy as the jailors who spat upon rations of food let down from above.
Imagine the fear that would burn inside the heart of a royalist during such a fervor. Perhaps in the whole prison there were a few dozen people that had the blood to attack him, but how could he see so cool-headedly? He knew none of these people save those faces that had already antagonized him. Every face was a mystery, each with a different reason to be imprisoned and left to die. It is the natural human state to view the unknown as the most dangerous, thus a thousand demons turned fangs upon him. More than a thousand. He had no count of how many people had been locked within Donjon. Even the wardens didn't truly know how many lived within that pit of despair. There were not proper room assignments. They didn't take out the bodies. It fell to the prisoners to toss the dead into the pit of sharks, chumming with their fallen like the lowliest of fishermen.
That itself was perhaps the cruelest tool of Donjon. If it weren't for the constant influx of corpses, the sharks would have no reason to haunt the tunnels. It's true that the sharks would opportunistically eat the fish, but the fish only thrived there because of the waste of the corpses and of the sharks giving live to the reefs below. If the prisoners had the fortitude to live among corpses for even a few weeks it's likely that the predators would abandon those aquatic haunts.
Of course, living among the rotting dead for so long would be a death sentence of its own to the prisoners, and thus the machine of death is ever-turning at Donjon. And amid that carnage was one man who should have proudly served the king, a man who suddenly knew no pardon could save him in time. There would be no recall to hunt down Lucius von Solhart, even if the king willed it.
Panic convinced him rightly that he had but one chance to seize his own life. While the other prisoners rallied up the stairs, flooding to those fortified gateways that separated them from the guards, he shoved his way against the flow. Lyam forced his way to the bottom of the pit. He thrust one foot after the next until his lungs burned and his heart hammered above the hesitations of thought and he leapt into the water.
A new fear assaulted him, the fear of darkness. Beneath the stones of Donjon there is but the most disjointed of lights. They are phantasms of hope, scattered between the drifting limbs of coral–a most flexible species of life before it perishes and calcifies. Every shadow seemed as likely to be fanged death as it was no more than the weeds of the sea. A shred of rational thought sent him swimming back to the surface, armed with naught but a glimpse of tunnels. One path he seized upon as perhaps brighter than the others.
Then he girded himself with steel and sank to the bottom with a chest full of air. Fish scattered from his every move, their scintillating scales dazzling him as he tried to peer through the murk. His movements were as much lurching and jumping as they were swimming, letting himself sink down and find footing against the rough coral before darting onward. It was the happenstance of his locomotion that caused the first shark to bite down on naught but steel when it should have sunk into the boney flesh of an ankle.
Had he ignored the confused animal he would have been better off, but instincts are not so easily ignored. The knight thrashed, and in so doing attracted more of the sleek beasts. A thousand teeth circled him and yet he burned and fought. As if he was a living echo of the great wars, he refused to die. With no weapon but hands, he thrust and stabbed. He tore through gills and ripped out eyes. He struggled even as the sharks ripped him from his footing and broke their teeth upon his steel. Until his lungs burned with dead air and the sea was but a cloud of blood.
And then he clawed his way to light. He broke the surface beyond Donjon choking and dying and yet beset by sharks incensed by the confused cloud of blood. To his great fortune, he spied a slip of sail and a sliver of wood, enough for his mind to recognize it as a ship. He slashed at the water, cutting and kicking through the waves, inhaling the burning water as he fought to reach the vessel.
To the credit of the Vassish men they stayed their flight from the prison and acted with the honor of sailors. Hooks and ropes were flung into the waves, lashing to his grimy clothes enough to pull him close and hands hauled him from the bloody sea. They had to pound water from his chest and tie off one of his legs for at least one shark had made a meal of him and absconded with his calf, but the Steel Blade refused to die.
As all the political prisoners of Fredrich von Arandall the Bloody were loosed once more upon the kingdom, Lyam was whisked back to the capital a free man: the last of the Warden Blades able to stand opposed to Lucius.