Mitch awoke slowly, his mind confused. This was becoming entirely too familiar a sensation. He knew he was confused because he thought he was floating several feet above the floor. Naturally, this was not possible, so he must be hallucinating. Why had he lost consciousness this time? His fuzzy brain had trouble recalling.

“Finally, you wake.”

Suddenly Mitch’s perspective shifted until the floor was up and the ceiling was down. What the hell? That’s not how the world is supposed to work. Up is supposed to be up, not down. And why did he hear Kanshou’s voice? He could clearly see that he was in his apartment and there was no reason for the warden to be here. Slowly, through no agency of his own, he started turning until he could see Kanshou sitting in a chair on his ceiling; wait that was his floor. Down was still up for now.

Mitch managed a very eloquent “Grrm?”.

“I thought I was very clear. The relay was a condition of our support. Without the relay, you have only death awaiting you. Defiance negates whatever value you may possess.”

“Why are you sitting on my ceiling?”

Kanshou sighed and stood. He walked along the fleorling until he stood directly before Mitch. Their eyes were level, but Kanshou was still upside down. With no warning whatsoever the warden gave Mitch a weighty open-handed slap to the face. The blow had seemed lazy but struck Mitch like a freight train.

“ Wh’the fuck?” Mitch was not happy about the bitch-slap, but it did clear his mind somewhat. In his newfound state of clarity, he realized that he was the upside down one, not Kanshou, and he actually was floating above the floor.

“What the fuck!” Mitch shouted much more clearly and began to struggle: jerking wildly. This was not what Kanshou wanted apparently because Mitch after barely a moment Mitch’s arms were pulled straight out and his head forced forward. Now in the position of an inverse crucifixion, he had no choice but to look at Kanshou.

“Explain,” the warden said coldly.

“What are you talking about!”

“You destroyed the relay! Do not play games with me, boy. I will win”

“The relay? You mean that stylus thing? Look I’m sorry I broke the thing, but c’mon! You gave me no guidance, no hints, nothing to use to control it, dammit! How am I supposed to not break shit like that? You might as well give a monkey computer!”

“Stylus? I couldn’t care less about that bauble. You destroyed the relay! The stone cube to monitor your progress. That was a condition of your continued existence, yet when I attempted to access it, there was no response whatsoever. That could only happen if it were destroyed. Explain yourself, or I will kill you now.”

“That thing? I didn’t destroy it. It’s sitting right there on the… table.” As the words left his mouth, he realized that he hadn’t seen the cube on the table after his struggle with the destructo-stick.

“Shit,” immediately he began to babble his story to Kanshou from nearly getting blown up by the stone to the havoc the beam from the stylus had wrought on his apartment. He was not going to die here now, not after all of this. He would keep his promise. Mitch was too intent on explaining what had happened to even notice the stray thought.

“You attempted to directly access the energy of a spirit stone at your level, and then used one to power an engraver.”

“Yes! I think.”

“You are an idiot. One of those spirit stones has enough energy to power this city for a month at least. You are lucky the script inside the engraver was destroyed before the energy became critical! The only thing you could have done that you could have done that would be closer to suicide is to have jumped off of a roof.”

“Well, fuck! You didn’t exactly tell me that did you? No, you just handed me a bomb and said have fun! Teach me something! Then maybe I won’t always be almost dying!”

“I will not. Your value lies in your experimentation. If I teach you, you will become useless, and then I will kill you. But, you have convinced me that destroying the relay was accidental so you will be given one more chance. This time you will be bonded to the relay. There will be no more accidents.”

“Fine!” Mitch muttered, pissed about this whole affair but not willing to court death too assiduously.

“This will not be pleasant.” Kanshou pulled out a new piece of jade. This one was more of an elongated diamond than a cube and held it near Mitch’s stomach, just below his solar plexus. Before he could protest, there was a flash, and an incision opened in Mitch’s gut. The blood from the wound floated out and was absorbed by the stone.

“Fuck!” Mitch yelled again. It didn’t hurt as much as when he had touched the spirit stone, but it still stung like a bitch.

However, this was just the beginning. As the jade absorbed the blood, it began to rotate faster and faster until it was spinning quicker than a top. Suddenly it leaped from Kanshou’s hand directly toward the cut and commenced boring into Mitch’s flesh. Mitch’s screams became incoherent.

The relay bored deep into his abdomen before turning up and drilling underneath his ribs seemingly on a collision course with his heart. Rather than taking a direct path, however, it bore in an excruciatingly roundabout fashion toward his most vital organs.

Mitch’s moans and howls were deafening, but no matter how hard he fought against whatever was holding him in the air he was completely immobile and could only suffer as Kanshou engaged in his torturous activities. Finally, the stone stopped behind Mitch’s heart and settled in, becoming still. Mitch’s screams did not end however as he could still feel every millimeter of the path the relay had dug in his body. It took several moments before he was able to quiet; slobber, snot and tears making their respective repulsive tracts to his hairline.

“This will be less pleasant,” Kanshou said before reaching out and covering the entry wound with his palm. The hole in Mitch’s body seemed to catch fire at the touch, and his wails began anew. The burning raged for an eternal instant, driving him to the brink of insanity. Mitch begged to pass out but for some reason could not.

Slowly the fire in the injury began to reduce, not in intensity but in scale, until it winked out entirely. Mitch breathed raggedly and hoarsely, the sudden lack of pain feeling almost blissful. He was too happy with the end of the agony to even think to curse at Kanshou.

Before he could recover, a wave of fire even more painful than the one before raced out from the relay passing through his entire body before retracting back into the stone; followed by another only slightly less intense than the former. This continued for several minutes, each wave minutely less agonizing than the last until they too stopped. Mitch was finally able to pass out.

Mitch woke once more, some unknown amount of time later. For having just gone through that wringer, he felt remarkably well. Bolting up he grabbed his stomach feeling around desperately. Instead of the gory rent in his flesh that had been there previously, he found only smooth skin. More significantly there was no pain, neither where the relay had drilled through him nor where his throat had been ripped raw by his screams.

Had it all been a horrific dream?

“You are now blood-bonded to the relay,” he heard Kanshou’s voice in his head again.

So much for the dream theory.

“When you become strong enough, you may be able to remove it, but that day is a long way off.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“My parentage is irrelevant,” Kanshou said evenly. “What you need to know is that I will always know where you are and what you are doing even from the other side of the planet. If you damage the relay, it will absorb energy from you to repair itself, even if that means draining you until death. You will serve your purpose, or you will die. Your existence is only as valuable as your discoveries. Work diligently.”

With that Kanshou began heading to the open doorway.

“Haven’t you fuckers ever heard of rights?” Mitch asked heatedly.

Kanshou paused and looked back at Mitch dismissively. There was no remorse, no hesitation; nothing to say he had just tortured the man he was currently speaking with nearly to death.

“That notion you people have created here is an illusion. Your rights are what you can take for yourself. Your property is what you can protect from others. Law is the words of those stronger than you. Freedom is the luxury of the mighty. Become powerful; powerful enough to enforce your will onto the world. Until then you are a pawn to be used at the whim of your betters. That is how the real world works.”

Mitch just stared at the man. That despotic worldview was so foreign to him that it was nearly inconceivable.

After delivering his speech, Kanshou turned and continued walking out of the apartment. He paused once more on the other side of the doorway.

“You will need a new door.”

“Fuck you!”