[How long do you intend to deny the truth, Scar? Why else do you think the herds moved on? Why else do you think there is no food or water? Why else do you think your subjects are becoming restless? Your control is already slipping, Scar. It won't be long before they'll reject you. After all, things were better when he still ruled. How does it feel, Scar? To be so incompetent? To be overshadowed by your brother in every single thing?]
Scar had wanted to yell at these voices in response, demanding them to shut up, but words died in his throat as he felt hands pulling at his head and positioning it in some sort of contraption he wasn't familiar with. He realized with a sinking feeling that... there was still one more person in this room. A faceless man he had forgotten about.
And this time, the words did get through.
A new wave of fear took hold of the former lion, and he struggled wildly, desperately against the restraints holding him down. By now, his composure had already been shredded to pieces. "No, stop all this! Please! I-I'll do anything!" he pleaded pathetically. "Don't hurt me! I don't deserve all this!"
Pleading wasn't going to do a thing. Even if Scar was clearly talking to him now, the doctor had already done a decent job of blocking out the man's hoarse voice. He started to hum softly to himself as he grabbed for the first item -- a razor.
"I'm going to have to remove some of your hair," he said calmly. "Seeing how you lost most of it when you came here, I doubt it matters all that much." Smiling at the joke, the man went on one knee so that he had the stability needed for the precision of the job.
Not bothering to listen to any protests, he turned on the electric shaver and then ran it over the left side of Scar's head, clearing away a spot so that he would later be able to cut through toward the skull. Chances were that the former lion had no idea of what was this was a precursor to, but it was more fun that way, wasn't it?
The pleas fell upon deaf ears, simply ignored as if he hadn't spoken them at all. No one listened. The mutilated form of his brother still stood in the darkness, eyes filled with unforgiving anger. Was it satisfying to see him so humiliated like this? Was this his idea of revenge? But why did he simply stand there? Was he waiting? It was still freaking the former lion out.
And all the while the voices continued speaking and he could no longer tell which was which, instead blurring into a chorus that continued to mock him, to disgrace him, to humiliate him. They wouldn't shut up no matter how much he yelled and screamed, they wouldn't go way and all the former lion could do was try to block them out, to convince himself that they were lying. They were wrong.
And, perhaps, the most frightening thing of it all was that this torture was anything but finished. Questions rose into Scar's head as the doctor announced he was going to remove some of his hair, questions he didn't really want an answer for. He had no idea what anyone could have to gain by removing his hair, much less that this was only a prelude to what awaited him.
"What do you--" Scar had began to protest, before a chilling sound of an unfamiliar device came to his ears. He tried to move away his head, but it was stuck, the strange contraption keeping it firmly in place. He couldn't see what was happening, but there was no pain, only the strange noise as the device ran over the left side of his head.
Once enough of the hair was removed (and it was hardly like the patient could complain, since he could likely covered the bald areas by pulling other strands over it -- his hair was long enough), the doctor turned off the razor and then got to his feet. Someone else could deal with cleaning up the bits of shaved hair that had fallen to the floor; he wasn't a barber.
Here was where it got painful. The doctor didn't bother announcing it, though, as he thought that would be made clear by the next tool he picked up off the cart: a small, surgical saw. It was nothing barbaric, of course, and was made for this sort of procedure, but that wasn't something that most people would understand at first glance -- let alone a lion.
"The blood loss might make you dizzy," the man warned as he moved back over and then turned the saw on. "Try to hang in there." It was his small attempt at humor. He had to wonder what hallucinating while having surgery performed on you was like, but he was content to watch the effect in someone else, rather than try it out himself.
Placing one hand on the patient's shoulder to make doubly certain that he didn't move around (his head wasn't moving, but the rest of his body did have a small amount of slack), the other hand directed the saw to the side of Scar's head and started to cut open a patch of the skin.
Scar gave the device a wide-eyed stare with the understanding that it, indeed, meant pain. His expression betrayed fear and panic and helplessness, and he couldn't suppress the shudder running through his body as the doctor turned on the device and placed a hand on his shoulder. What was that doctor going to do to him?! Was he going to cut into his head?!
"N-no! Help me! S-someone help me!" Begging for help to whoever could hear him, including the owners of those voices, including his brother...perhaps he had sank to a whole new level, but right now the former lion didn't care. All he wanted was to be out of this room, for this terrible night to be over and he'd do anything to make this nightmare stop.
[But where were you when he called for help, Scar?]
The device drew closer. He tried to brace himself, but a gasp escaped his throat when metal cut through skin. He instinctively attempted to pull his head away from the pain, but the restraints didn't allow him the barest illusion of escape.
The fact that Scar was holding in his screams thus far was pretty astonishing, but the doctor didn't let that stop him. Besides, he had more to focus on right now than the patient's response, as this procedure did take a good amount of concentration. As he directed the tool in an arc around the side of Scar's head, he used his other hand to soak up the blood with gauze. Eventually, he'd cut far enough that he was able to peel the skin back and expose the skull.
There was blood all over his gloves now, but that was to be expected. Letting out a sigh, the doctor turned off the saw and then grabbed for the next tool for the process: a drill.
On top of the excruciating pain, the sheer sound of the drill was probably going to be enough to unsettle the patient on its own. Turning the drill on caused a grating noise to fill the small room, and the doctor imagined that would be particularly hard for someone with enhanced hearing to bear. (Though that was going to change, wasn't it?)
"No one can hear you here," he pointed out as he started to drill a series of holes into the patient's skull.
Scar could smell the scent of blood in the air now, his own blood, as the pain on the left side of his head persisted. What was that man doing to him?! Why would he want to cut his head open?!
Eventually, the doctor had reached for a different device that, once turned on, produced a grating noise that was both unsettling and murder to his enhanced hearing, instantly shattering any hopes of the man being finished with whatever he was doing. The noise...it sounded painful, horrifying...making the previous device seem nearly harmless in comparison.
But Scar wasn't allowed the opportunity to respond, to even think, since at that very moment the device made contact with his skull. The sound was deafening, rattling through his skull and vibrating through every inch of his body. Forgetting everything else, his head seemed to erupt in indescribable pain that he possible couldn't have imagined. Eyes squeezed shut as he fruitlessly fought against the restraints even more wildly than he had before.
There it was. Whether it was cutting through skin or drilling through bone, people (or lions, in this case) always cracked. Unless they'd been put under extreme training against torture (and this wasn't even for the purpose of extracting information; no, their goal was much broader than that), people couldn't bite their tongue for too long. If anything, they bit it off. The doctor was honestly surprised he hadn't seen more of that during his work here.
Ignoring the screams, the man kept up with his work, drilling about five holes before he finally turned off the tool. The silence afterward was deafening -- or it would have been, if the patient wasn't still being so loud.
Thinking nothing further of it, the doctor set the drill aside. With the holes bored out, now he just needed to cut between them to weaken that part of the skull enough that he could pull it away. For this, a saw was once again needed, even if it was a different sort. Turning it on without further ado, the doctor used it to cut lines connecting the holes. Seeing how not much could be heard over the buzz of the various instruments, he didn't bother to speak. It wasn't likely he'd be heard either way.
To Scar, the experience had seemed to last an eternity. And it hurt, it hurt so much. He felt a pain that wasn't like anything he had ever felt before, and he couldn't think of anything but that very pain. The noise that kept rattling through his skull and hurting his sensitive ears...it was unbearable. Despite his attempts to shut it out, to escape it, he couldn't turn deaf to something that seemed to vibrate through every inch of his body, from the top of his head to his feet.
And after the device had finally gone silent, the noise still kept ringing through his head.
However, he had barely been given the opportunity to recover from all this horror as the doctor grabbed for another device. It wasn't over, not just yet. And when the device began cutting through bone, more screams escaped from his throat.
It was not a simple job, but it was clear that the doctor had practice with this sort of thing, as he pulled it off both quickly and cleanly. That was lucky for the patient, too, though the pain obviously wasn't going to go away that easily. Pulling away, the doctor turned off the saw and then carefully pried the piece of bone he'd cut out away to finally reveal the brain matter underneath.
Most patients would have passed out at this point, but there was something about this place that made certain they stayed awake through it all. Neither blood loss nor the sheer pain was going to let them fall into unconsciousness, because it would be downright boring that way.
"Now," he spoke up in the silence of the room, "I just need to tinker around in there for a bit, and then I can patch you up." He thought it was obvious that death was not on the menu tonight, but sometimes there were things worse than that. It remained to be see if this was one of those things.
Grabbing a small metal instrument, the doctor bent down and inserted it straight into the brain matter, poking around without actually damaging anything... for the moment.
The task may have been accomplished quickly in reality, but to Scar it felt as if it had taken much longer. And after the device had finally gone silent, the pain still remained. He drew in a couple of shaky breaths, attempting to ignore the pain and the voices that continued to humiliate him despite what he was going through. Wasn't it enough? Couldn't they have mercy?
In an attempt to block them out, he focus upon the words of the doctor. "W-what are you going to do?!" he managed, his voice sounding even more hoarse than previously.
"The whole point is for you to figure it out. Don't worry, you'll piece it together." Even if Scar was just an animal, he had a decent mind -- for now, anyway. Still, even after the alterations, he was certain that the patient would be able to work out what had happened to him once he'd been given enough examples.
Prodding around inside the patient's head, the doctor found the spot he was looking for. Doing it by touch like this wasn't the safest method, but it wasn't as if he had to worry too much about that. Pressing a small switch on the device caused it to send out a small shock straight into the brain tissue.
Scar didn't doubt that he would eventually learn, not at all. When it came to intelligence, he had always been the superior one. Yet, the man's words held little reassurance for the former lion. The King couldn't see what was going on, couldn't feel anything other than that terrible pain that still remained on the left side of his head (oddly enough...whatever the man was doing, shouldn't it hurt?), and he certainly wasn't going to hear it from the doctor. It was unsettling, if not somehow intrusive, to have someone poke around in your head and not being able to do anything about it or even figure out what they were doing. He couldn't quite suppress a shudder.
How long did he have to endure all this?! He wanted to leave this room, away from this torture, the voices...him, but he was not yet allowed such luxury.
It took a few more minutes of finding the right spots and then applying pressure or a shock. The results would certainly be interesting, with synapses not always shooting off when they were supposed to -- the lion was definitely going to be muddled up after this. Yet another way to point out the unfamiliarity of his body. They could keep taking things and altering things, making it harder and harder and then watching the progression.
Still, as fun as this was, he would risk causing serious damage if he remained poking around in different lobes for too long. Letting out a sigh, the doctor removed the instrument and set it down.
Grabbing the piece of skull that he'd taken from the patient, he reapplied it like a puzzle piece, and then, using the wire that was necessary for this kind of patch job, started to put the man back together. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" He was being cruel, but that was part of the job description. And hadn't Scar been equally cruel in the past?
However long it took for the doctor to finish poking around in his head, Scar had no idea. An eternity seemed to have passed before he heard the man release a sigh. Dinner altogether seemed to even be a distant memory by now. And when the former lion had began to think he couldn't possibly experience any more pain, he felt more of it. He winced and hissed and gasped.
"It's over?" he pleaded weakly, desperately, pathetically. So unlike the King he claimed to be. His composure had cracked, had been mercilessly shattered to pieces. He didn't have the energy or mindset to say anything else.
"Just about," the doctor responded while hardly acknowledging the patient. Getting the bone back in place took a good deal of concentration, and Scar's blood was making it hard to find purchase and keep his hands steady. However, he hadn't been hired here for nothing, and so he was able to fix the patient up smoothly once it was all said and done.
Now, to get his skin back in place. Folding that up and over the bone, the doctor then started to suture that as well. The healing was going to be a painful process, to be sure, but Scar was at least lucky in that things healed up unbelievably fast in this place.
It was the one mercy that Landel gave his patients, though maybe it had more to do with just giving them the opportunity to toss themselves out to get hurt all over again.
Scar had wanted to yell at these voices in response, demanding them to shut up, but words died in his throat as he felt hands pulling at his head and positioning it in some sort of contraption he wasn't familiar with. He realized with a sinking feeling that... there was still one more person in this room. A faceless man he had forgotten about.
And this time, the words did get through.
A new wave of fear took hold of the former lion, and he struggled wildly, desperately against the restraints holding him down. By now, his composure had already been shredded to pieces. "No, stop all this! Please! I-I'll do anything!" he pleaded pathetically. "Don't hurt me! I don't deserve all this!"
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"I'm going to have to remove some of your hair," he said calmly. "Seeing how you lost most of it when you came here, I doubt it matters all that much." Smiling at the joke, the man went on one knee so that he had the stability needed for the precision of the job.
Not bothering to listen to any protests, he turned on the electric shaver and then ran it over the left side of Scar's head, clearing away a spot so that he would later be able to cut through toward the skull. Chances were that the former lion had no idea of what was this was a precursor to, but it was more fun that way, wasn't it?
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And all the while the voices continued speaking and he could no longer tell which was which, instead blurring into a chorus that continued to mock him, to disgrace him, to humiliate him. They wouldn't shut up no matter how much he yelled and screamed, they wouldn't go way and all the former lion could do was try to block them out, to convince himself that they were lying. They were wrong.
And, perhaps, the most frightening thing of it all was that this torture was anything but finished. Questions rose into Scar's head as the doctor announced he was going to remove some of his hair, questions he didn't really want an answer for. He had no idea what anyone could have to gain by removing his hair, much less that this was only a prelude to what awaited him.
"What do you--" Scar had began to protest, before a chilling sound of an unfamiliar device came to his ears. He tried to move away his head, but it was stuck, the strange contraption keeping it firmly in place. He couldn't see what was happening, but there was no pain, only the strange noise as the device ran over the left side of his head.
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Here was where it got painful. The doctor didn't bother announcing it, though, as he thought that would be made clear by the next tool he picked up off the cart: a small, surgical saw. It was nothing barbaric, of course, and was made for this sort of procedure, but that wasn't something that most people would understand at first glance -- let alone a lion.
"The blood loss might make you dizzy," the man warned as he moved back over and then turned the saw on. "Try to hang in there." It was his small attempt at humor. He had to wonder what hallucinating while having surgery performed on you was like, but he was content to watch the effect in someone else, rather than try it out himself.
Placing one hand on the patient's shoulder to make doubly certain that he didn't move around (his head wasn't moving, but the rest of his body did have a small amount of slack), the other hand directed the saw to the side of Scar's head and started to cut open a patch of the skin.
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"N-no! Help me! S-someone help me!" Begging for help to whoever could hear him, including the owners of those voices, including his brother...perhaps he had sank to a whole new level, but right now the former lion didn't care. All he wanted was to be out of this room, for this terrible night to be over and he'd do anything to make this nightmare stop.
[But where were you when he called for help, Scar?]
The device drew closer. He tried to brace himself, but a gasp escaped his throat when metal cut through skin. He instinctively attempted to pull his head away from the pain, but the restraints didn't allow him the barest illusion of escape.
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There was blood all over his gloves now, but that was to be expected. Letting out a sigh, the doctor turned off the saw and then grabbed for the next tool for the process: a drill.
On top of the excruciating pain, the sheer sound of the drill was probably going to be enough to unsettle the patient on its own. Turning the drill on caused a grating noise to fill the small room, and the doctor imagined that would be particularly hard for someone with enhanced hearing to bear. (Though that was going to change, wasn't it?)
"No one can hear you here," he pointed out as he started to drill a series of holes into the patient's skull.
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Eventually, the doctor had reached for a different device that, once turned on, produced a grating noise that was both unsettling and murder to his enhanced hearing, instantly shattering any hopes of the man being finished with whatever he was doing. The noise...it sounded painful, horrifying...making the previous device seem nearly harmless in comparison.
But Scar wasn't allowed the opportunity to respond, to even think, since at that very moment the device made contact with his skull. The sound was deafening, rattling through his skull and vibrating through every inch of his body. Forgetting everything else, his head seemed to erupt in indescribable pain that he possible couldn't have imagined. Eyes squeezed shut as he fruitlessly fought against the restraints even more wildly than he had before.
But all he could do was scream.
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Ignoring the screams, the man kept up with his work, drilling about five holes before he finally turned off the tool. The silence afterward was deafening -- or it would have been, if the patient wasn't still being so loud.
Thinking nothing further of it, the doctor set the drill aside. With the holes bored out, now he just needed to cut between them to weaken that part of the skull enough that he could pull it away. For this, a saw was once again needed, even if it was a different sort. Turning it on without further ado, the doctor used it to cut lines connecting the holes. Seeing how not much could be heard over the buzz of the various instruments, he didn't bother to speak. It wasn't likely he'd be heard either way.
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And after the device had finally gone silent, the noise still kept ringing through his head.
However, he had barely been given the opportunity to recover from all this horror as the doctor grabbed for another device. It wasn't over, not just yet. And when the device began cutting through bone, more screams escaped from his throat.
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Most patients would have passed out at this point, but there was something about this place that made certain they stayed awake through it all. Neither blood loss nor the sheer pain was going to let them fall into unconsciousness, because it would be downright boring that way.
"Now," he spoke up in the silence of the room, "I just need to tinker around in there for a bit, and then I can patch you up." He thought it was obvious that death was not on the menu tonight, but sometimes there were things worse than that. It remained to be see if this was one of those things.
Grabbing a small metal instrument, the doctor bent down and inserted it straight into the brain matter, poking around without actually damaging anything... for the moment.
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In an attempt to block them out, he focus upon the words of the doctor. "W-what are you going to do?!" he managed, his voice sounding even more hoarse than previously.
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Prodding around inside the patient's head, the doctor found the spot he was looking for. Doing it by touch like this wasn't the safest method, but it wasn't as if he had to worry too much about that. Pressing a small switch on the device caused it to send out a small shock straight into the brain tissue.
He wondered what that felt like.
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How long did he have to endure all this?! He wanted to leave this room, away from this torture, the voices...him, but he was not yet allowed such luxury.
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Still, as fun as this was, he would risk causing serious damage if he remained poking around in different lobes for too long. Letting out a sigh, the doctor removed the instrument and set it down.
Grabbing the piece of skull that he'd taken from the patient, he reapplied it like a puzzle piece, and then, using the wire that was necessary for this kind of patch job, started to put the man back together. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" He was being cruel, but that was part of the job description. And hadn't Scar been equally cruel in the past?
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"It's over?" he pleaded weakly, desperately, pathetically. So unlike the King he claimed to be. His composure had cracked, had been mercilessly shattered to pieces. He didn't have the energy or mindset to say anything else.
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Now, to get his skin back in place. Folding that up and over the bone, the doctor then started to suture that as well. The healing was going to be a painful process, to be sure, but Scar was at least lucky in that things healed up unbelievably fast in this place.
It was the one mercy that Landel gave his patients, though maybe it had more to do with just giving them the opportunity to toss themselves out to get hurt all over again.
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