"The Secret of Janos Pelt"
"The Secret of Janus Pelt"
8/11-8/15/1990
I.
As he parked his dark red Fiero in the doctor's driveway, Shiro Mitsuru glared about suspiciously before getting out. A childhood spent on the run from White Web assassins and an adult life in the Midnight War had ingrained wariness in him to the bone. His senses were keen but he saw and heard no cause for apprehension. Yet, somehow, he still felt on edge and that made him really worry that he was missing something.
Standing beside his car, Shiro seemed to be a rather good-looking young Asian man with jet black hair that was getting a bit shaggy. His sedate well-tailored business suit complete with light tan shirt and brown tie did not hint at the strength and skill within his highly-trained body. The only living Tiger Fury of his generation, Shiro had literally been trained since a toddler in a wide assortment of martial arts. Moving from country to country by his fugitive parents, fighting was all he had known. His studies culminated in his mastery of Kumundu, the highest skill taught only by Chael of Tel Shai... and this had led him to become an associate member of the Kenneth Dred Foundation.
Although he had few other interests, Shiro was neither bitter nor unhappy. He traveled the world and into adjacent realms, he had become friends with his rare peers and he was obsessed with improving his skills past any previous personal limit. His mission tonight had begun with Jeremy Bane asking him if he wanted to investigate a rumoured menace and Shiro had leaped at the chance. Now he stood in front of a well-tended two-story red brick house with a gleaming new Lincoln town car parked in front of it. A bronze plate on a stand read LEWIS STEVENSON, MD. Taking a deep steady breath, the Tiger Fury walked to the front door and entered as if he owned the place.
There was a small well-appointed waiting room with subdued lighting and magazines laid out on a table. A radio on a counter was playing soothing classical music, but the bulky man who jumped up from the easy chair was anything but serene. The male nurse wore a white smock over a red flannel shirt, and the broad sullen face did not suggest any professional manner. "What the HELL?" he snarled, moving toward the intruder. "The doctor isn't seein' anyone tonight, pal..." Then he stopped in his tracks.
Shiro had not made any threatening gestures and was not scowling, but the quiet confidence in the way he waited for the man to get closer had an effect. The man suddenly felt as if some wild animal had somehow entered the room and was ready to spring. The Tiger Fury did not say anything. He simply strode past the nurse and went through the door which the man seemed to be guarding.
In a office walled with walnut panelling, furnished with comfortable leather bound chairs and shelves of thick reference books, a man glanced up from behind a desk piled high with loose papers and binders.
Dr Lewis Stevenson was a slightly built man under average height, with narrow shoulders and a meek face under mousy brown hair. His necktie was loosened and the top button of his dress shirt open, but aside from that he presented a neat professional appearance. "I have no appointments tonight," he said as he straightened up in his swivel chair.
"No, doctor," said Shiro in a voice which a life of travel had given a neutral accent. "I am not a patient. My business with you is more urgent than your practice.
"Young man, it's ten o'clock, and I have no time for..."
"Two words. Janus Pelt!"
The effect was dramatic. Stevenson jumped to his feet, shoving his chair back. "Robert! Robert, hold him for me!"
The nurse had come up in the open doorway and he seized Shiro's upper arms from behind. Without hesistation, the Tiger Fury slammed his elbow back into the center of Robert's chest and forced all the air from the man's lung with a whoosh. As Robert doubled up and gasped, Shiro shoved him back out into the waiting room and closed the door. "Now, doctor, I was saying..."
Stevenson peered at this strange intruder and, unexpectedly, he grinned. "You are a dangerous fellow to handle Robert like that. He used to be a bouncer in an Atlantic City bar."
"There are two tigers in this room and only one is visible," Shiro said. "Speak to me of Janus Pelt."
"Not so fast. First tell me who you are and what you...think you know."
"Very well. My name is Toshiro Mitsuru. I am a knight of Tel Shai and an associate member of the Kenneth Dred Foundation. I see you recognize what that means. Again, speak to me of Janus Pelt."
"Hmmm," grunted the doctor mildly. "You seem to think I should recognize that name."
"That name is cursed all over Western Europe. Now three states in this country have suffered his presence." Shiro pointed an accusing finger. "Many people would love to look upon his dead body. Pelt is no common criminal, not even a psycopathic killer. He is something far worse." As he spoke, the Tiger Fury shifted his weight and his right leg shot out in a back kick that drove the returning Robert back out into the waiting room again. This time the nurse remained sprawled on the floor. Shiro had not turned his head or taken his eyes off Stevenson.
Strangely, the doctor gave a sharp barking laugh at seeing his assistant knocked out. "Heh, I see you are not a man of words only. Very well. I think I can satisfy your curiosity. But I guarantee you will not like the answers you seek."
II.
Shiro had remained where he stood, ready to react and move in any direction, one feet ahead of the other and his open hands down by his sides. "Go on."
"Obviously, my real name is not Lewis Stevenson. I took this alias as an homage to a writer who learned more than was good for him. You must know of course that Henry Jekyll died in 1883. His great discovery was not entirely lost. In truth, very few know that
Jekyll did not so much invent his serum as rediscover it. It was a secret Alchemical potion passed down from the Darthan Age. Vindrol, one of the forbidden secrets imparted to Humans by the Sulla Chun themselves on Ulgor before it was cast down into the sea."
Despite all his discipline, Shiro's poker face slipped to reveal horror. "Darhan sorcery!"
"Yes, my boy, with all that implies. The secret of Vindrol had guarded jealously through the ages. It had been fought over and murdered for, like some precious jewel with a death curse on it. Vindrol! How many thousands of brutal killings and atrocities haved been brought into the world because of Vindrol?"
"Then the legend is true," Shiro interrupted in his chilled excitement. "Henry Jekyll did free his own darker self."
"Oh, it is much worse than that," chuckled Stevenson in a low voice. "This is a deep secret that goes back to the dimmest time of what would become the Human soul. There is a single entity hidden within the souls of all men. A cursed creature from before the Darthan Age. He is doomed to remain trapped and silent until freed by the potion."
"I am beginning to understand," said the Tiger Fury.
"Yes, you may well shiver, young man. When the fiend from within stirs and is freed, insane horrors are released. Murders without cause, cruel tortures and senseless wars. It is the evil being reaching out from deep inside the mind."
Without realizing it, Shiro had dropped back into a ready stance, his right fist clenched and his left hand open to block. He was set to counter an attack and yet the frail old man across the desk was still seated and apparently in no position to pose a threat. The Tiger Fury felt an unreasonable anxiety. It was as if all his training and experience were being washed away. "Janus Pelt was only an alias then," he managed to say.
Again, the elderly man who called himself Stevenson laughed. "Yes! No matter who drinks the Vindrol, the monster unleashed is the same. His crimes over the ages are beyond counting. He stands on a mountain of corpses high enough to poke the eye of the Sun. It's Hyde! I am Edward Hyde, ha ha!"
In an instant, a horrifying transformation rushed over the bent old form. His body erupted outward to burst through his clothes, his arms being long apelike pillars of muscle, his fingernails extending into claws. A dark brutal face grimaced with killing rage. The change to Mr Hyde was so sudden and so extreme that even Shiro Mitsuru was frozen at the sight for a second.
And in that second, he was lost.
With a surge of demonic agility, Hyde vaulted entirely over the desk and drove a rock-hard fist squarely into the center of Shiro's face. That blow dazed the Tiger Fury, he had automatically fallen back a step and thrown a circular reverse block that was a fraction too late to deflect the punch. The monster was all over him, raining one murderous blow after enough. Each struck hard enough to crack bone. Any normal Human would have been killed at once. Shiro whipped two hooking swings that hissed through the air but did not connect. His vision was blurred and his thoughts were not clear. Then a heavy shoe plunged viciously against his groin, doubling him up in agony. Hyde grabbed Shiro by the shirt and flung him back against the wall so hard that framed diplomas fell to the floor.
There was no of the hesitation or subconscious planning any Human would have shown in Hyde's attack. He was savage beyond any animal. Kick after kick smashed down as Shiro instinctively curled into a ball to protect his vital organs and his face. Hyde drew back after another minute of the rampage, catching himself and reluctantly stepping away from the battered man on the floor.
"Oh, that felt good!" roared the creature, clawing the air with his gnarled fingers. "I could do that all day." Then he saw Shiro stir and attempt to straighten out. "What? Still alive?" snarled Hyde. "I feel slighted by that, my child. Perhaps there is some truth to the rumors about you Tel Shai knights. Even better. If you only knew how you will suffer before you beg for death to release you!"
Shiro was beyond speaking or even being able to follow the monster's words clearly. His face was a red mask of torn bruised skin and, as he coughed, he could taste blood in his mouth. Still, there was a spirit in him that would not surrender. Dimly through a fog of pain, he knew he would die fighting rather than yield to this creature.
He was lying on his side. The Tiger Fury rolled over onto his stomach, braced his hands beneath him and managed to push his upper body off the carpet before he collapsed again. He had passed his limits. Any medical doctor would have said that Shiro should have been dead at that point.
"You shall be my guest in my little playroom," Hyde continued. "I think your famous healing ability will stretch out our games much longer than usual... for weeks, perhaps months of diversion. How you will plead and whimper and call on every god you know. Heh, rest for now, dear one. The worst has not yet begun!"
III.
Slowly the haze began to lift. Shiro vaguely became aware of forming coherent thoughts as the pain finally faded. He had no idea how much time had passed since.. since what? Since he had been captured by the monster. It was all a red blur and a fog of incredible agony. Even his Kumundu training to go out of body, to retreat mentally into a visual safe refuge deep in his mind, had not worked. Hyde was too cruel, too persistent, too inventive.
Flashes of horrible memory began to surface against his will. His fingernails and toenails, pulled out slowly. The peeling of the skin, the long hair-thin needles that went inside his bones themselves to scrape the marrow. He had a flash of being tied face down for prolonged sodomy, of having one eye delicately removed and held so he could see it, still attached by the optic nerve, by his other eye. As much as he wanted to shove these images away, they kept rising to the surface of his mind.
He remembered the IVs in his right hand, feeding a saline solution and nutrients to keep him barely alive. He remembered Hyde's voice gently explaining what was going to be done and giving him time to have anxiety build up, only to then start a torture that was actually worse.
For what seemed like a very long time, Shiro drifted in and out of awareness. then something stirred deep in his spirit. He was the Tiger Fury, Toshiro Mitsuru, raised from birth to fear nothing that lived. Slowly, he raised his head and squeezed open his swollen remaining eye. He was standing upright for some reason, his weight held by his wrists chained above his head. Against his back was a rough wooden post, and a thinner chain around his waist tied him tightly to the post. He tried moving his feet and found that they too were chained but with some slack between them... enough that he could be made to walk, he supposed.
In the dim light from a small window high in one wall, he saw he was in a cellar of some sort. Bizarre tools and implements hung on a rack nearby. Shiro glanced down at his body and his heart sank. He had lost so much weight! The burn marks and open wounds all over his torso and limbs were so numerous that they nearly overlapped.
It was only the tagra tea diet from Tel Shai that had kept him alive. Years of tagra had boosted his healing abilities far beyond what medical science could understand. A Tel Shai knight was notoriously hard to kill.
All of this came to Shiro only dimly through the trauma. He was not thinking clearly yet, just beginning to become cognizant of the situation. Even now, everything hurt so much it kept him from coming clearly into focus. Then a door slammed behind him and his heart missed a beat.
An overhead light bulb hanging from a cord blinked on. Not fully realizing what he was doing or why, Shiro had gone completely limp and slowed his breathing to trance levels. He kept his one eye open, keeping it from blinking or focusing by a Kumundu technique. As if from miles away, the voice of Edward Hyde echoed through the air.
"Oh, no, tell it's not so, my darling. Our games have not ended so soon." The monster dropped a bundle he had been carrying to the cold stone floor and came around to examine his victim. In that instant when the brute was in just the right spot, Shiro brought both legs up and over Hyde's head to loop the chains between them around his torturer's neck. With every bit of strength he still had, the Tiger Fury crossed his feet and forced them as far apart as he could. Hyde strangled as the chair tightened around his throat. He clawed at it, made a gurgling sound, and then his head flopped to one side as his neck broke. The sudden dead weight of the falling body yanked it out of the chain's loop and Shiro's legs fell down limply.
It was a while before he could catch his breath, and his stomach muscles ached from the effort he had put them through, but eventually Shiro realized Hyde was dead. Relief washed over him, and heavy tears dripped from his one eye although he didn't know it. At some point, he lifted his head and saw that the window had gone dark, meaning night had fallen outside. He passed in and out of consciousness.
Just before dawn, a gaunt man in black clothing leaped down the stairs to the basement and pounced on the body of Edward Hyde, one fist drawn back to strike. Satisfied after a second that the man was indeed thoroughly dead, Jeremy Bane straightened up and got his first good look at his friend.
"Oh, Shiro..." he whispered almost inaudibly. He took the Tiger Fury's pulse and listened to his breathing. The scars and wounds and obviously broken bones struck him with a cold fear. "Shiro, can you hear me? It's me, Jeremy. I tracked you down at last."
There was no answer. The Tiger Fury's head lolled first to one side and then the other, and he seemed to mumble. Taking lockpick tools from an inner pocket, Bane unfastened the old-fashioned padlocks and got the chains off his teammate. As gently as he could, the Dire Wolf lowered Shiro to the floor and took his vital signs again. Heartbeat was strong and steady enough, he thought, but there must be so much internal damage. Even with the tagra healing factor, he wasn't sure Shiro would recover from all this.
Kneeling by his friend, Bane shook his head. "And I was going to yell at you for not keeping us informed of what you were doing. I'm so sorry. I'm taking you to Tel Shai right now, buddy, to Teacher Kerlaw himself. If anyone can heal you, he can. Hang in there." The Dire wolf rose, looked around the torture chamber and found a clean blanket folded on a couch. Taking it to wrap around the Tiger Fury, Bane paused for just an instant to glare at the corpse of Edward Hyde. "It's lucky for you that you're already dead," he muttered.
4/28/2019
8/11-8/15/1990
I.
As he parked his dark red Fiero in the doctor's driveway, Shiro Mitsuru glared about suspiciously before getting out. A childhood spent on the run from White Web assassins and an adult life in the Midnight War had ingrained wariness in him to the bone. His senses were keen but he saw and heard no cause for apprehension. Yet, somehow, he still felt on edge and that made him really worry that he was missing something.
Standing beside his car, Shiro seemed to be a rather good-looking young Asian man with jet black hair that was getting a bit shaggy. His sedate well-tailored business suit complete with light tan shirt and brown tie did not hint at the strength and skill within his highly-trained body. The only living Tiger Fury of his generation, Shiro had literally been trained since a toddler in a wide assortment of martial arts. Moving from country to country by his fugitive parents, fighting was all he had known. His studies culminated in his mastery of Kumundu, the highest skill taught only by Chael of Tel Shai... and this had led him to become an associate member of the Kenneth Dred Foundation.
Although he had few other interests, Shiro was neither bitter nor unhappy. He traveled the world and into adjacent realms, he had become friends with his rare peers and he was obsessed with improving his skills past any previous personal limit. His mission tonight had begun with Jeremy Bane asking him if he wanted to investigate a rumoured menace and Shiro had leaped at the chance. Now he stood in front of a well-tended two-story red brick house with a gleaming new Lincoln town car parked in front of it. A bronze plate on a stand read LEWIS STEVENSON, MD. Taking a deep steady breath, the Tiger Fury walked to the front door and entered as if he owned the place.
There was a small well-appointed waiting room with subdued lighting and magazines laid out on a table. A radio on a counter was playing soothing classical music, but the bulky man who jumped up from the easy chair was anything but serene. The male nurse wore a white smock over a red flannel shirt, and the broad sullen face did not suggest any professional manner. "What the HELL?" he snarled, moving toward the intruder. "The doctor isn't seein' anyone tonight, pal..." Then he stopped in his tracks.
Shiro had not made any threatening gestures and was not scowling, but the quiet confidence in the way he waited for the man to get closer had an effect. The man suddenly felt as if some wild animal had somehow entered the room and was ready to spring. The Tiger Fury did not say anything. He simply strode past the nurse and went through the door which the man seemed to be guarding.
In a office walled with walnut panelling, furnished with comfortable leather bound chairs and shelves of thick reference books, a man glanced up from behind a desk piled high with loose papers and binders.
Dr Lewis Stevenson was a slightly built man under average height, with narrow shoulders and a meek face under mousy brown hair. His necktie was loosened and the top button of his dress shirt open, but aside from that he presented a neat professional appearance. "I have no appointments tonight," he said as he straightened up in his swivel chair.
"No, doctor," said Shiro in a voice which a life of travel had given a neutral accent. "I am not a patient. My business with you is more urgent than your practice.
"Young man, it's ten o'clock, and I have no time for..."
"Two words. Janus Pelt!"
The effect was dramatic. Stevenson jumped to his feet, shoving his chair back. "Robert! Robert, hold him for me!"
The nurse had come up in the open doorway and he seized Shiro's upper arms from behind. Without hesistation, the Tiger Fury slammed his elbow back into the center of Robert's chest and forced all the air from the man's lung with a whoosh. As Robert doubled up and gasped, Shiro shoved him back out into the waiting room and closed the door. "Now, doctor, I was saying..."
Stevenson peered at this strange intruder and, unexpectedly, he grinned. "You are a dangerous fellow to handle Robert like that. He used to be a bouncer in an Atlantic City bar."
"There are two tigers in this room and only one is visible," Shiro said. "Speak to me of Janus Pelt."
"Not so fast. First tell me who you are and what you...think you know."
"Very well. My name is Toshiro Mitsuru. I am a knight of Tel Shai and an associate member of the Kenneth Dred Foundation. I see you recognize what that means. Again, speak to me of Janus Pelt."
"Hmmm," grunted the doctor mildly. "You seem to think I should recognize that name."
"That name is cursed all over Western Europe. Now three states in this country have suffered his presence." Shiro pointed an accusing finger. "Many people would love to look upon his dead body. Pelt is no common criminal, not even a psycopathic killer. He is something far worse." As he spoke, the Tiger Fury shifted his weight and his right leg shot out in a back kick that drove the returning Robert back out into the waiting room again. This time the nurse remained sprawled on the floor. Shiro had not turned his head or taken his eyes off Stevenson.
Strangely, the doctor gave a sharp barking laugh at seeing his assistant knocked out. "Heh, I see you are not a man of words only. Very well. I think I can satisfy your curiosity. But I guarantee you will not like the answers you seek."
II.
Shiro had remained where he stood, ready to react and move in any direction, one feet ahead of the other and his open hands down by his sides. "Go on."
"Obviously, my real name is not Lewis Stevenson. I took this alias as an homage to a writer who learned more than was good for him. You must know of course that Henry Jekyll died in 1883. His great discovery was not entirely lost. In truth, very few know that
Jekyll did not so much invent his serum as rediscover it. It was a secret Alchemical potion passed down from the Darthan Age. Vindrol, one of the forbidden secrets imparted to Humans by the Sulla Chun themselves on Ulgor before it was cast down into the sea."
Despite all his discipline, Shiro's poker face slipped to reveal horror. "Darhan sorcery!"
"Yes, my boy, with all that implies. The secret of Vindrol had guarded jealously through the ages. It had been fought over and murdered for, like some precious jewel with a death curse on it. Vindrol! How many thousands of brutal killings and atrocities haved been brought into the world because of Vindrol?"
"Then the legend is true," Shiro interrupted in his chilled excitement. "Henry Jekyll did free his own darker self."
"Oh, it is much worse than that," chuckled Stevenson in a low voice. "This is a deep secret that goes back to the dimmest time of what would become the Human soul. There is a single entity hidden within the souls of all men. A cursed creature from before the Darthan Age. He is doomed to remain trapped and silent until freed by the potion."
"I am beginning to understand," said the Tiger Fury.
"Yes, you may well shiver, young man. When the fiend from within stirs and is freed, insane horrors are released. Murders without cause, cruel tortures and senseless wars. It is the evil being reaching out from deep inside the mind."
Without realizing it, Shiro had dropped back into a ready stance, his right fist clenched and his left hand open to block. He was set to counter an attack and yet the frail old man across the desk was still seated and apparently in no position to pose a threat. The Tiger Fury felt an unreasonable anxiety. It was as if all his training and experience were being washed away. "Janus Pelt was only an alias then," he managed to say.
Again, the elderly man who called himself Stevenson laughed. "Yes! No matter who drinks the Vindrol, the monster unleashed is the same. His crimes over the ages are beyond counting. He stands on a mountain of corpses high enough to poke the eye of the Sun. It's Hyde! I am Edward Hyde, ha ha!"
In an instant, a horrifying transformation rushed over the bent old form. His body erupted outward to burst through his clothes, his arms being long apelike pillars of muscle, his fingernails extending into claws. A dark brutal face grimaced with killing rage. The change to Mr Hyde was so sudden and so extreme that even Shiro Mitsuru was frozen at the sight for a second.
And in that second, he was lost.
With a surge of demonic agility, Hyde vaulted entirely over the desk and drove a rock-hard fist squarely into the center of Shiro's face. That blow dazed the Tiger Fury, he had automatically fallen back a step and thrown a circular reverse block that was a fraction too late to deflect the punch. The monster was all over him, raining one murderous blow after enough. Each struck hard enough to crack bone. Any normal Human would have been killed at once. Shiro whipped two hooking swings that hissed through the air but did not connect. His vision was blurred and his thoughts were not clear. Then a heavy shoe plunged viciously against his groin, doubling him up in agony. Hyde grabbed Shiro by the shirt and flung him back against the wall so hard that framed diplomas fell to the floor.
There was no of the hesitation or subconscious planning any Human would have shown in Hyde's attack. He was savage beyond any animal. Kick after kick smashed down as Shiro instinctively curled into a ball to protect his vital organs and his face. Hyde drew back after another minute of the rampage, catching himself and reluctantly stepping away from the battered man on the floor.
"Oh, that felt good!" roared the creature, clawing the air with his gnarled fingers. "I could do that all day." Then he saw Shiro stir and attempt to straighten out. "What? Still alive?" snarled Hyde. "I feel slighted by that, my child. Perhaps there is some truth to the rumors about you Tel Shai knights. Even better. If you only knew how you will suffer before you beg for death to release you!"
Shiro was beyond speaking or even being able to follow the monster's words clearly. His face was a red mask of torn bruised skin and, as he coughed, he could taste blood in his mouth. Still, there was a spirit in him that would not surrender. Dimly through a fog of pain, he knew he would die fighting rather than yield to this creature.
He was lying on his side. The Tiger Fury rolled over onto his stomach, braced his hands beneath him and managed to push his upper body off the carpet before he collapsed again. He had passed his limits. Any medical doctor would have said that Shiro should have been dead at that point.
"You shall be my guest in my little playroom," Hyde continued. "I think your famous healing ability will stretch out our games much longer than usual... for weeks, perhaps months of diversion. How you will plead and whimper and call on every god you know. Heh, rest for now, dear one. The worst has not yet begun!"
III.
Slowly the haze began to lift. Shiro vaguely became aware of forming coherent thoughts as the pain finally faded. He had no idea how much time had passed since.. since what? Since he had been captured by the monster. It was all a red blur and a fog of incredible agony. Even his Kumundu training to go out of body, to retreat mentally into a visual safe refuge deep in his mind, had not worked. Hyde was too cruel, too persistent, too inventive.
Flashes of horrible memory began to surface against his will. His fingernails and toenails, pulled out slowly. The peeling of the skin, the long hair-thin needles that went inside his bones themselves to scrape the marrow. He had a flash of being tied face down for prolonged sodomy, of having one eye delicately removed and held so he could see it, still attached by the optic nerve, by his other eye. As much as he wanted to shove these images away, they kept rising to the surface of his mind.
He remembered the IVs in his right hand, feeding a saline solution and nutrients to keep him barely alive. He remembered Hyde's voice gently explaining what was going to be done and giving him time to have anxiety build up, only to then start a torture that was actually worse.
For what seemed like a very long time, Shiro drifted in and out of awareness. then something stirred deep in his spirit. He was the Tiger Fury, Toshiro Mitsuru, raised from birth to fear nothing that lived. Slowly, he raised his head and squeezed open his swollen remaining eye. He was standing upright for some reason, his weight held by his wrists chained above his head. Against his back was a rough wooden post, and a thinner chain around his waist tied him tightly to the post. He tried moving his feet and found that they too were chained but with some slack between them... enough that he could be made to walk, he supposed.
In the dim light from a small window high in one wall, he saw he was in a cellar of some sort. Bizarre tools and implements hung on a rack nearby. Shiro glanced down at his body and his heart sank. He had lost so much weight! The burn marks and open wounds all over his torso and limbs were so numerous that they nearly overlapped.
It was only the tagra tea diet from Tel Shai that had kept him alive. Years of tagra had boosted his healing abilities far beyond what medical science could understand. A Tel Shai knight was notoriously hard to kill.
All of this came to Shiro only dimly through the trauma. He was not thinking clearly yet, just beginning to become cognizant of the situation. Even now, everything hurt so much it kept him from coming clearly into focus. Then a door slammed behind him and his heart missed a beat.
An overhead light bulb hanging from a cord blinked on. Not fully realizing what he was doing or why, Shiro had gone completely limp and slowed his breathing to trance levels. He kept his one eye open, keeping it from blinking or focusing by a Kumundu technique. As if from miles away, the voice of Edward Hyde echoed through the air.
"Oh, no, tell it's not so, my darling. Our games have not ended so soon." The monster dropped a bundle he had been carrying to the cold stone floor and came around to examine his victim. In that instant when the brute was in just the right spot, Shiro brought both legs up and over Hyde's head to loop the chains between them around his torturer's neck. With every bit of strength he still had, the Tiger Fury crossed his feet and forced them as far apart as he could. Hyde strangled as the chair tightened around his throat. He clawed at it, made a gurgling sound, and then his head flopped to one side as his neck broke. The sudden dead weight of the falling body yanked it out of the chain's loop and Shiro's legs fell down limply.
It was a while before he could catch his breath, and his stomach muscles ached from the effort he had put them through, but eventually Shiro realized Hyde was dead. Relief washed over him, and heavy tears dripped from his one eye although he didn't know it. At some point, he lifted his head and saw that the window had gone dark, meaning night had fallen outside. He passed in and out of consciousness.
Just before dawn, a gaunt man in black clothing leaped down the stairs to the basement and pounced on the body of Edward Hyde, one fist drawn back to strike. Satisfied after a second that the man was indeed thoroughly dead, Jeremy Bane straightened up and got his first good look at his friend.
"Oh, Shiro..." he whispered almost inaudibly. He took the Tiger Fury's pulse and listened to his breathing. The scars and wounds and obviously broken bones struck him with a cold fear. "Shiro, can you hear me? It's me, Jeremy. I tracked you down at last."
There was no answer. The Tiger Fury's head lolled first to one side and then the other, and he seemed to mumble. Taking lockpick tools from an inner pocket, Bane unfastened the old-fashioned padlocks and got the chains off his teammate. As gently as he could, the Dire Wolf lowered Shiro to the floor and took his vital signs again. Heartbeat was strong and steady enough, he thought, but there must be so much internal damage. Even with the tagra healing factor, he wasn't sure Shiro would recover from all this.
Kneeling by his friend, Bane shook his head. "And I was going to yell at you for not keeping us informed of what you were doing. I'm so sorry. I'm taking you to Tel Shai right now, buddy, to Teacher Kerlaw himself. If anyone can heal you, he can. Hang in there." The Dire wolf rose, looked around the torture chamber and found a clean blanket folded on a couch. Taking it to wrap around the Tiger Fury, Bane paused for just an instant to glare at the corpse of Edward Hyde. "It's lucky for you that you're already dead," he muttered.
4/28/2019