At the same time, on the Mainland.
In the dungeons of the headquarters of the Church of Rect.i.tude which were present below the feet of the giant statue of the Saint, Jonah stood with his arms folded while screams echoed all about the room that he was in.
He was floating in the air above a vast s.p.a.ce whose walls were filled with chains that had turned red by being bled upon by generations and generations of prisoners.
Little rivers of blood ran on the floor, s.h.i.+ning and s.h.i.+mmering in the dim light being emanated from unseen sources. There were actually grooves that facilitated this, and often, he wondered where they lead.
Thoughts like these kept coming to him, as anything was better than facing the people who were below him.
"Please! I"ll do anything! Not my children!"
"That"s my wife! Stop! What do you want from us?"
"Why do you torture us day and night? We did nothing!"
"We just want… To be free. Free of you! Even if that means death, we would welcome it! Please kill us!"
"You were supposed to be the savior of Angaria! Why are you doing this to us?"
"Liar! Liar!"
He was a.s.saulted by these questions repeatedly, and he had no answer.
Indeed, the people of Axelor could see him, but to them, he looked like the king whom they had been told was the reason behind all the pain that they had been submerged in ever since they had gotten here.
He had come here before, when he had still thought that his ident.i.ty was secure, and even then, he had been unable to hear all of these cries which would never be answered.
Day and night, these people screamed and were broken, again and again. Some of the things that they saw were real and some were fake, but all of them were meant to break down their minds for purposes that Jonah did not know.
Before, he had even checked the records of the Church, but he had found nothing. Asking about their fate would have seemed too suspicious, so he had stopped himself, and now, if he asked, it was likely that he would be thrown in the room, too, for a few hours.
It had not come to that yet, though. After the bishop had revealed that she knew everything, he had only had a moment to break the connection so that she wouldn"t be able to send false information using it. He knew that that very act would make it seem as if he was dead, but that was pretty much true, as right after that meeting, he had been shackled and hung on the wall of that room for days during which the bishop and engraved all sorts of formations on his skin and bones.
By the third day, he had gotten used to the feeling of having his bones taken out, engraved, and then put back in, and by the fifth, he had begun laughing despite the pain. He had even begun scheming against her - one day, he abruptly spit on her, and as it was sudden, he had succeeded in hitting his target.
Even though it had resulted in a few days of having his body stripped of every single organ, it had been worth it.
The Church believed a lot in the holiness of one"s body, so when it came to torture, they focused on making one feel as "unholy" as possible. This meant that most of the torture centered around taking away things that one would need to live, and making the target of the torture survive, in pain, just until the moment of death at which they would be saved and then made whole so that the entire thing could repeat over and over again.
Only those that were truly hated by the church would receive the treatment that those below him were being subjected to, though. After all, they had to put up a righteous front in front of the Mainland, so things like using one"s family to cause mental torment would be frowned upon normally, unless they were enemies that the Church prioritized in the matter of inflicting as much agony as possible.
Why? Why were they doing this? Was it just the anger of the bishop which had flared fiercely after her failure? Or was it just for her amus.e.m.e.nt?
The last one was the least possible, though, as she never came down here, and she never gloated and reveled after seeing what was going on here. In fact, he had even heard that she usually granted a swift death for all other prisoners that she took in this manner, but in this case, something was definitely different.
Either way, Jonah tried to keep his heart from breaking as his tears mixed with the blood that was flowing down the floor of the dungeon. These were not all the people that had helplessly come here after his disciple had taken that step to cut away Axelor from Angaria - quite a few had reached the point where one"s consciousness would break down to such an extent that they would turn into a blubbering mess, and they had been taken away, as after that stage, it was impossible even for a premier force on the mainland to heal them, unless they were willing to expend major amounts of resources, which wouldn"t make sense.
How many more hours would he have to stand here?
The last time, his vigil had been eight hours long, and because he had been prevented from casting any spells that stopped himself from hearing all of the pleas of pity, he had come close to tearing them off, so that he wouldn"t have to endure all the blame that was being heaped upon him.
It had only been an hour now, but it felt as if a year had pa.s.sed.
Just as he began to settle in for another long period after which he decided he would not give the bishop the pleasure that she derived from looking at him when he was a wreck, Jonah surprisingly felt the familiar tug, which meant that he was being teleported using the authority of the bishop.
Strangely, the place he arrived in was one that he had never seen before.