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Order of the Black Foot Chapter 9: Joan Unleashed For TeryxC By Draconicon

Three days in captivity, and the cycle had settled down into something that Teryx understood all too well.

Mornings were taken up by him being used by whatever paladins were off-duty for the moment, including those that had been working him over the day before or those that had been just brought in. They seemed to be coming into the camp by trickles rather than a steady flow, but it was like the first thing they were assigned to do was either fuck him up the ass or use his mouth until they were satisfied. Strangely, they never seemed to take themselves to completion, but only him.

Afternoons involved some cleaning - usually by some servant or other - before he was brought before the Inquisitor and some of the priests. They tied him down to a chair, and then proceeded to lecture at him for an hour or two, talking about the Shining One and everything that was wrong with magic, giving him information by the bucket load about how he should live his life, and how he was currently doing it wrong.

If he parroted what they wanted to hear back, the rain dragon got some food and water. If he didn't, he was left to sit in the chair under the eyes of the Inquisitor.

And after that...

The evenings were a blur to the rain dragon, and he was worried about that. He knew that they were doing something to him then, using some sort of technique to start brainwashing him to their side, but they were doing it in a way that he couldn't remember. There was no way to prepare, and there was no way to analyze it later to try and break it down and keep himself from falling. All he could do was trust to his own willpower, and after three days, he was starting to worry.

Particularly as he was slowly losing his mind to something else.

The voice had a name, he'd learned. Joan was the one that it gave him, though he didn't know if that was the real name or just something that it called itself. Whatever it was, she had become something of a steady companion when he stopped being able to keep her out on the second day, and she continued to grow in presence after that.

Rage fed her, he found. Rage, the need to kill, to get revenge. She could be calmed for short times, particularly when he was left alone and was able to think clearly and calmly. Meditation almost shut her out completely, save for the trickle of heated anger at the back of his mind that was always there.

Anytime that he was being fucked or lectured, however, she was there in full force, whispering to him of the way that she could take his revenge for him, of how she could destroy everything here and leave nothing behind. Because the Church deserved it.

"...deserves it..."

He caught himself muttering again, and shut it down as the Inquisitor looked at him from across the way. Teryx shook his head as he met the bull's gaze.

"Nothing."

"Talking to yourself again, hmm"

"Again?"

"All the men keep talking about it. You think that pulling yourself away from reality will save you? All it does is open your mind up that much more to our techniques."

Burn and kill. Must destroy. The Church must die a hundred deaths for all the ones that they've taken. Kill them all, burn them to the ground. Destruction must be their only fate. Let me out. Let me out, let me out, let me -

He could feel his mouth twitching with the need to speak for her, and it took more effort than usual to shut her out. She was getting all the more insistent.

Teryx shook his head a few times, trying to hold himself in the moment. He couldn't dwell on Joan now. She could talk to him later, she could be as crazy and angry as she liked when they were alone in the cell. For now, he needed to pay attention to what the Inquisitor was saying. This was the last chance before the next session with their 'techniques,' and he needed some sort of clue.

Inquisitor Atam stood up from the table they shared, walking around it until he was standing right behind the dragon. Teryx looked over his shoulder at him, and the bull chuckled.

"If it wasn't for the fact that you were a mage and an enemy, I might almost admire the tenacity that you're showing. However..."

The chair suddenly tilted forward, dumping the rain dragon on the table. His captor ground him against it, keeping him pressed into the empty plates from dinner, his cheek grinding against a plate of bronze.

"However, you are slowing down the efforts of the Church. We need the information in your head as soon as possible, and whatever you think you're protecting, you are putting the lives of hundreds, thousands of people at risk. All those without magic, all those that are at risk from your devil worship, are waiting for us to put you down. Why do you think that you are so much better than them? Why do you think that you can continue to put yourselves on pedestals with your evil magic, while the others are made to suffer?"

"..."

He would say nothing. There was no defense he could make, so why talk about it? It would only lead to further rage, further anger from the bull, and he would prefer to leave it at a smaller beating rather than a larger one.

Joan could think what she wanted about destruction. He might even agree with her. But he wasn't going to start it.

The pressure on the back of his head continued until his skull felt like it was going to pop off of his neck, but it eventually slackened off when he kept quiet. The bull sighed.

"Perhaps tonight, you will break. We will see."

He was taken to a private room in the prison, with the seat made of the same 'blessed' metal as the rest of the cells. His magic was locked away, and the collar around his neck taken off so that he could be properly restrained. Several mice walked around the room, setting up a few other things, and Teryx strained to see what it was that would happen.

There was some sort of metal globe around him, arranged with rods running horizontally and vertically. There were dozens of them, and wherever they met, there was some sort of light at the intersection, soft and gentle, not at all hard to look at.

Fire is used to destroy, not to change! Joan shouted in his head. Their Shining One is nothing but a fake. He is there, but burns! He destroys what challenges him, seeks to imprison that which doesn't serve him. There is nothing good about him. Nothing good about his followers! They should all die! Now! Now!

Her madness echoed through his skull as the mice started up the contraption, and - he realized - everyone else had put on a blindfold. He, on the other hand, was made to lay back, staring at the metal as it started to turn, and simply...stare.

The rotating metal slowly began to criss-cross the lights above him, the different flickering bits of illumination creating various lines and shapes above him. As the only points in the darkness, it was impossible to look away from them, always drawing his eyes to them whenever he tried to find some other point of reference. The afterimages that they left behind made him dizzy, but at the same time, he couldn't ignore that, either. Patterns forming on his eyes and the slow streaks of light moving through the darkness filled his mind.

Burn it all away!

Joan's shout in the back of his mind kept him from drifting away, but even that was only secondary. He shuddered, fighting the whole 'relaxation' that they were trying to build in his mind, but it kept coming, flowing back over him like a warm, bright blanket.

Lines became loops, and loops became circles, drawing his attention and holding his gaze there. He groaned, trying to shake his head, but even that was becoming next to impossible. The shapes in the lights held his body as much as his mind, dragging him down towards some strange, empty space that he could barely understand. He wanted to get out, wanted to...wanted to...

Stop thinking! Burn them! Hate them! There is nothing good, nothing relaxing. They killed so many. They killed me!

Killers...

Hate...

Hate was dark...

Teryx could feel his mind shifting, drawing back from the light a bit, but he couldn't tell what was happening and why. It was...different? Yes, different from how he he'd been treated before. Every other time, he'd slowly dropped into the light as they kept pulling at him, dragging him into the shapes and distortions of the wobbling waves of illumination in the air. Then the words would come, cajoling him to join with the light, to give up his darkness.

This time, he felt himself pulling away. Joan's hate, her fire, pulled at him, and consumed the light that they were trying to put him in. She dragged his mind towards her, and in desperation, he gave it to her.

He felt it. He felt the heat and the rage, the homicidal power that the strange voice had. He could almost see her in his mind's eye, a little old mouse, just getting into late middle age and getting her wrinkles. She looked so...soft...

He saw her, burning in the collapsing building, saw her pinned and tortured, cut and bashed, her skin burned from pale pink to dark brown, crusted and horrible.

He saw her beaten face, her determined glare, her utter rage glimmering in her eyes as she clung tight to life with one purpose.

Destruction.

Joan...

He was thinking, not speaking. Something...something shifted, as he fell further into the dark, almost like he had passed a point where he couldn't return. Teryx tried to shake his head, but this time it wasn't the light that stopped him. It was the darkness.

The same face that he'd seen in his mind's eye approached him from the darkness in his mind, pulling forward into the light. It was all in his head, but he couldn't stop himself from being afraid. The psychotic gleam in the mouse's eyes was all he needed to know that this was something as dark and horrible as whatever the Church was putting together.

He tried to push her away, but his mind felt as heavy as his body did, feeling her reach forward through her darkness and into his mind. Her hand touched his, and he felt himself darken, fade, pulled down towards the depths of his own mind. The further he sank into the darkness, the further she rose into the light.

They passed each other, her reaching into the waking mind, while he slipped into the sleeping one. As she reached above him, to his body, she 'turned' and looked at him again.

Don't worry...they'll burn for all they've done...to you and to me.

As the darkness claimed him, he knew that things were about to go very, very wrong.

_Flicker. The dome broke, and his body was out of the chair.

Flicker. A mouse priest fell, his throat torn out and hanging from Teryx's claws.

Flicker. He was on the other side of the room, crushing a neck underfoot.

Flicker. On the ceiling, clinging to it with abnormally long claws.

Flicker. On the floor, hissing like a beast.

Flicker, flicker, flicker._

Teryx didn't know what was going on. He could barely see in the darkness, but he knew his body was moving in all the wrong ways. He wasn't himself, wasn't anything like the dragon he'd always been. He just...moved...and death followed.

_Flicker. The door shattered, and he stepped through.

Flicker. A paladin burned through a gap in his armor, turning it into an oven._

Flicker. A mercenary was made into an impromptu weapon, flung to knock four armored figures to their death from a height.

He saw in blurry shapes that he was moving through the prison, though not under his own control. Not in his own body. Joan had taken it and changed it, broken through the 'blessed' barrier with some trick of hers. He was filled with magic from outside, stolen magic through the mark on his chest.

Draconicon had to know it, had to feel it. He'd be coming to see the drain before long.

Joan carried him forward, his body feeling almost spider-like, like it had been transformed by her.

_Flicker. Blade-like limbs stabbed through two mercenaries, flicked them towards others.

Flicker. Fangs that he'd never had stabbed through the neck of a wolf, pumping venom.

Flicker. Fiery arms sliced through armor never meant to take that heat._

The paladins massed at the edge of his vision, starting to gather and regroup. Inquisitor Atam stood with them, carrying a sword and shield, and looking concerned. Arrows flew from those with bows, and Joan fled.

Through the rows of cells, he felt power flicker in and out of him, as even Joan only had so much. She pulled him along, always keeping metal or people between them and the arrows. She never stopped, couldn't stop. He felt her rage burning even from the blurred darkness she'd submerged him in.

Through eyes that were no longer his, Teryx watched as bodies hit the floor, one by one twisted by the crazed need to murder that Joan was filled with. And the more it happened, the less he cared.

Burning rage. Burning kills.

_Flicker. Behind the archer group, setting their bows on fire.

Flicker. Shift in size, throwing a cage at them, crashing through a squad, killing them.

Flicker. The floor turning to acid, consuming those that stood on it._

She had endless ways of killing, endless means of destroying those that stood in her way. He felt her rage rising, getting stronger rather than getting assuaged, and shuddered as he knew how much death it would take to actually sate her lusts for it.

More and more paladins and followers and mercenaries fell as she ran about, taking injuries that she didn't care for. Arms and leg were sliced, her shoulders were cut open, her belly gutted, but she kept drawing on the magic, healing it as it happened. There was no strategy, no care taken, no anything.

It was raw power being unleashed, and all that mattered was death.

One by one, they fell, until only the Inquisitor and his guard was left. Teryx wondered how they'd got there, but barely had that much awareness left. She was consuming him, running through his mind as well as his body, using him up.

The bull took a step forward, on guard, and she raised her arms - his arms? - covered in acidic water. It burned him as much as her, but she didn't care. Regenerate. Strike. Regenerate -

Flicker, flicker, flicker.

And suddenly...it was over.

Teryx let out a mental gasp as he was suddenly tugged forward again, able to see properly through his eyes even as Joan maintained control over the body. He looked around, and was amazed.

Draconicon had come, and had brought Havok and Hanna with him, as well as a number of Order soldiers. Inquisitor Atam was held down, bound through some surprisingly clever-looking magic, while the other soldiers were dead.

The black dragon looked at him, and hesitated.

"What happened to your mark, Teryx?"

He, or rather, Joan, looked down. The black mark on his chest had shifted, becoming a pale gray instead, almost white when the light hit it just right. The possessed dragon lifted his head, and slowly shrugged.

"They were doing something to me while I was here. I don't know what they were planning, but -"

"Bodies everywhere."

Yes, lots of bodies, Teryx thought with a mental shudder, but Joan showed no reaction to Havok's statement. Not immediately, anyway. It felt like she was rustling through his memories, pulling for something, anything to get a little more detail.

Slowly, he felt his body shrug, the spirit cocking her head to the side.

"You do what you have to."

The Order soldiers were already spreading out, making an effort to collect what they could from the facility. Teryx, on the other hand, was starting to freak out. Now that he had his head on straight again, and was no longer buried in the darkness at the back of his mind, he knew that he was not only naked - embarrassing enough - but completely possessed. Joan had taken over his body and left it completely in her charge, leaving him unable to so much as wiggle a finger to get attention.

Draconicon and Hanna had turned towards the Inquisitor, doubtlessly making sure that he wouldn't get away, while Havok walked over. The one person that wouldn't question all the dead bodies and appreciate them was the one person he didn't want to have near him right now.

The white dragon looked him over, and turned his head from one side to the other.

"You fight good."

"I did what I had to."

"Looks like more than that."

"What are you talking about?"

"Bodies melted. Bodies burned. Acid, fire, ice, lightning. Blades, crushing. Not fast kills. Hard kills."

Oh, do go on, Teryx thought, groaning. The 'compliment' that he was getting actually turned his stomach, feeling like he was getting praised for this level of destruction. Even against someone that had kidnapped and raped him this many times over, it felt like overkill, and he wanted to take so much of it back.

Joan, on the other hand, slightly smiled.

"There are a lot of ways for magic to hurt."

"Hurt you first."

She nodded, and the dragon stepped a bit closer, leaning in. Havok pulled a bit of flesh off of him, and it took more willpower than Teryx expected to not utterly shutter and pull away from that.

"Explosive."

"Well, when you have to -"

Fast as ever, Havok surprised him with a sudden punch to his gut. Even Joan didn't recover from that, and the white dragon flipped his body over, slamming it down against the ground hard enough to snap what was left in his lungs out.

Everyone turned on him at that, all the Order soldiers as well as Hanna. A blade flicked out, and Teryx thought the lynx was going to kill the white dragon before -

"Stop."

Draconicon's word froze everyone. The black dragon walked over, looking down at him, before looking at Havok.

"Explain."

"Not Teryx. Something else. Deadly hate."

"...It's Joan."

Teryx saw a flicker on Hanna's face, but he was a little too busy being relieved to actually have that much of a care about what the feline was feeling right at that moment. She'd been figured out, and now he could actually get some help.

However, as Draconicon lifted his foot, about to replace the mark (at least, so he guessed), Joan hissed in his mind.

"NO! You won't take away my chance!"

Flicker!

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself laying on a rock in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain. He still couldn't move, his body healing itself through magic that Joan kept flooding him with, but he was alone. And this time...

This time the mark didn't react for a different reason.

"Mine...this body is mine..."

Joan, let me go! You can't do this! You -

"Quiet. So long...so long in the dark...must kill, destroy, burn. They've lived too long. Draconicon had a chance. Only waited. Must destroy..."

He felt her shoving him back, pushing his thoughts, himself, back into the darkness again. The rage surged up around him like chains, dragging him in and pushing him down, keeping him from speaking. Keeping him from moving.

Keeping him from thinking. All he had was rage, anger, infernos of it all around him. And so, the rain dragon drowned himself in it, screaming into the dark in purest fury.

The End