darkness I sealed the door with a block of wood stolen from the master's kitchen. Then, I waited for the wolf to knock at my door.
BANG!BANG!BANG!
His fists or hoofs were like sledgehammers.
'Open this door! Open it! Open it! Open it!'
BANG!BANG!BANG!
I crouched to a shaking ball as Bludgeon beat harder and harder, sending a cloud of rock over my bleeding face.
***
Hardened muscle replaced the fat on my bones, but the journey to that muscle had taken its toll, ageing my face perhaps a decade and carving up my soul a piece at a time. I felt like a walking corpse, and the sight of my reflection in puddles would cause me to wince.
I trailed Bludgeon's hoofs, a new route this morning, but I didn't care for the possible wonder that awaited; there was only routine now, exerted routines practised and perfected.
The centaur took a twisted enjoyment from waking me with his buckets of freezing water. At times, I wished the light would not come to my eyes. 'On your feet speck! No slouching! No yawning! Upright! Ready to scrap at a moments notice!'
Like the good pupil I rose every time, but it was difficult to imagine defending a life I no longer cared for.
There was clamminess about this new corridor that made me light-headed. I took a start by a burst of steam ahead, and then ducked for cover as explosion after explosion filled this confined space, like fifty grenades going off at once.
'Get up!' ordered Bludgeon, wrapping my head with his knuckles. A wall of malevolent cloud blocked our route.
'What's through there?' I asked, sensing a smiling devil inside the flashing gas. 'Is this a test?'
The centaur watched me without comment; was I supposed to do be doing something?
'Follow me!' he yelled over the sound of sparks, before abruptly galloping unperturbed into the cloud. Electric vapour hugged the king's body, and he was gone.
'Hello?' I cried, squinting. 'Master?!'
No reply, and through this sauna I saw several strikes of lightning. 'Bludgeon?!'
The cloud seemed to growl back. 'Come along!' came the master's irritated voice behind it. 'And don't you dare address me as Bludgeon again! The damn effrontery! Don't think I can't hear you boy!'
What was this new form of training? This was certainly more than smoke before me, that I knew. Bludgeon's voice, safe and sound on the other side did nothing to relieve my mind, only turning back would do that.
The king's impatience was harsher than the steam, so I stepped into the mysterious vale, which was quick to smother me. I decided to keep both arms outstretched — to feel my way out of this ghost. Unfortunately I didn't count for the pain, pain the like I have never experienced. Cold at first, it grew to freezing teeth eating away at my feet, before feasting slowly up my legs. Heat followed, white heat, and I was all of a sudden drowning in a pool of agony, an acid bath with no way out. I kept my limbs moving — shuffling — never stop — do not let it in!
Frantic, I battered my face into solid rock, and on the ground, the whole left side of my body caught fire. Wearing flames like a coat, I writhed as the flesh frizzled from my frame, boiling my blood and removing all but muscle and bone. Like a rabid dog, I stammered, catching my skin off the jagged walls like an old sweater on new barb. Screaming and screaming, I fought through this volcano, feeling my rotten left arm snap off at the elbow. My right leg was next, breaking off, barbecued from the kneecap. I discarded them both and crawled on my belly until I was free at last. I lay stupefied and smoking as the master bent over me. 'What took you so bloody long?'
I covered my face with my remaining right hand. I didn't want to see what was left of me.
'Poor show speck!' he added. 'Poor, poor show!'
Feeling nothing now, no fire or smoke, I opened my eyes and gasped. Not one cut, bruise or burn marked me; I was intact.
'This will be your new route to breakfast!' he said. 'Mind and body are separate entities. You will learn that pain is nothing but a warning to your simple machine… warnings can be ignored by the mind, switched off when need be. Control speck, control is what is required! It is time to educate you in ignorance — you should excel in your lesson!'
He then left me there to sob, scream and punch at the dissolving steam, 'I'm not a machine you hear me! I am not a machine!'
***
Over the course of a year, my schedule never once let up. I cooked two meals per day, was never thanked for the trouble and never praised when I showed improvement in a particular skill. I ran through Bludgeon's smoke trap, over his wire and around his track — I became competent with the sword and efficient in self-defence using a style of underhanded kick-boxing, which Bludgeon preferred. I can't imagine another soul promoting the kick to the groin as much as Bludgeon did. 'Kick 'em in the bollocks!' he would cry. 'Then in for the kill as the nuts shrink in their shorts!'
I detested the centaur with a passion, a loathing I wrestled daily to contain. Frequently now, my thoughts turned to murder. I would observe the master passed out at the dinner table, dead to the world with the millipedes having a party in his hair. My imagination would then indulge in the many scenarios, how I would stab a butter knife in his throat or beat his skull in with a boulder; how I would pound and crush his face until there was nothing but a glue of blood and bone between my fingers.
In the struggle to control discipline, patience and sanity, I was no longer alone. I had a companion in the fight.
One night in my frozen cave cell and with a head hiding under my arms, I heard a tiny voice. It couldn't be Bludgeon, for he stopped banging on the door thirty minutes ago. My own insanity perhaps, but instinct told me otherwise. No, this was something else, a voice I had to concentrate to hear, and the more my mind focused on it, the clearer she became.
'You've been strong Daniel,' said Missy. 'You've always been strong.'
With patience and practise, I could keep this channel open as long as I wanted. My life support, my brilliant angel and soul mate was with me, and here in his deplorable cell is where I would get to know and love her. My Godsend, I discovered all about Missy's past, of her childhood toiling in the cotton fields of Virginia, where she died of influenza at the age of nine. I heard of her first moment's confusion upon waking in the Plain, then of her disbelief at meeting her own life support — an older woman who did not love Missy nearly as much as she loved me. I heard of her early years in Heaven, about the rules and structure of the place, a realm of creativity and thinking, where wisdom is the highest of all virtues, and wings but badges of honor on a long course of learning, ‘til one is no longer human or alien, but the very fabric of the everlasting universe.
Our longest conversation came after I took my hardest beating. I lay in a bloodied ball with my sobbing life support over me. 'I told Newton not to do this! He does not even see me Daniel! Seems he's too busy recruiting these days.'
'Why?' I asked, shivering, sick.
'I wasn't going to say anything, but not all is well here Daniel, and it has something to do with your mission to the 9th Fortress. These are changing times-troubling times. You have attention on you, important people are awaiting the outcome of your quest and I don't know why!'
Missy was as lost, as frustrated, and as helpless as I was. 'I'm glad you're with me,' I said. 'Don't know what I'd do without you.'
'I can't stand this much longer Daniel, and neither can you by the look of things! What a state you're in! What a mess!'
'What can I do? How do I get out of here? Tell me how and I'll do it?!'
'You do what Bludgeon wants!' she stressed. 'You bite your bitter tongue and please that brute! If a test then you pass it, my love. Pass with every ounce of character you have! In the meantime, I will try, try, and try to see Sir Isaac Newton. I will beg for an end to this!'
'Do you think… he'll see you?'
'I hope so,' she said. 'Please stay strong. You must…'
