The Second Torment

Madness is the scourge of the mind and thus the corruption is purged.

The vortex spun and crackled around Khalen-Het as it pulled him downwards and soon the rusted metal of the First Torment was lost to sight. His sight began to blur and everything turned white. He could feel nothing, no warmth, no cold, not even the movement of air. Just...whiteness.

Flash.

The whiteness immediately turned black.

Flashflashflash.

Colours. Red, green, blue – all appearing and disappearing in a fraction of a second. Another colour slowly filled Khalen-Het's vision. It was a bright shade of pink and it seemed to flow and move in a way that made him feel nauseous. Other colours seeped in, mixing in droplets and globs, bright oranges, dark greens. The net effect was aesthetically offensive.

A deafening crack of thunder and the colours vanished. Khalen-Het found himself falling once again and he saw the approaching ring of the Second Torment. A living band of electricity that spun and turned above the swirling mist ring of the Third Torment. All this passed by in a handful of minutes before he was consumed in searing energy.

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The beings of the White City were ancient and primordial, their motives and mannerisms too deep for mortal comprehension. Yet on this day, the Spirit of Music found even its infinite patience being tested by its latest pupil.

“Again, from the beginning of the piece please Khalen.”

The great hall was filled with all manner of instruments. Harps, drums, musical horns, and even some instruments that there were no words for, but played lovely sounds all the same. Its gilded walls and roof echoed with the sounds of the orchestra.

Held with precise care, from hours of practicing, Khalen gripped the conductor's wand, and rapped it thrice upon the podium in front of himself. The instruments came to life and as the baton swayed, a bow sang across a taut string and as his other hand rose and fell, a drum kept the beat with expert timing. Yet still the Spirit sighed despondently.

“You do not understand Khalen.”

Khalen also found his patience being tested. “What have I failed to do? I have performed the piece exactly as it is written before me with every note and beat accounted for.”

A small figure in an oversized nightshirt wandered in unnoticed as the Spirit replied. “And therein lies the problem. Music should be a thing of spontaneity, it should have life, a soul. These things cannot be transcribed onto a page. Each song should be unique, with an echo of that person's personality appearing between the notes. Yet when you play, you merely see it as a collection of numbers and symbols that leave no room for creativity or improvisation. Your music is dull and boring.”

As Jongo tittered, Khalen turned and glared at his disorganised and chaotic sibling, before turning his ire back to the Spirit of Music. “Very well. You wish for spontaneity? Then I shall grant it to you. Jongo, perhaps you would like to perform for us?”

Khalen chuckled to himself as Jongo leapt up on to the conductor's platform. He knew the mind of IT, random and chaotic; the hideous cacophony that would soon ensue would show this foolish Spirit the error of its ways.

A baton poked out of a long, floppy sleeve, paused in the air and suddenly the music blossomed in the room, each note as sweet as summertime. Khalen found his mind filled with images and feelings conjured by the piece and he was dumbstruck. Where were the chaotic notes, the irregular tempos? The music continued yet softly flowed into a different form, the song becoming lively and chirpy when it should have been slow and steady. A fast beat bounced along with the music and Khalen involuntarily found his foot tapping with the rhythm.

Finally, the song finished and Jongo wandered away. As Khalen looked at the Spirit of Music, he saw tears in its eyes and a rapt and a joyous expression on its face.

“I do not understand.”

The Spirit sighed happily. “No, Khalen. You do not.”

****

The Second Torment spun Khalen-Het as though he were a leaf in the midst of a hurricane. A sensation of blinding speed the only constant in an ever changing assault on the senses. Colours, a thousand thousand colours, blurring and flashing before his eyes. The colours turned to images, places, peoples, memories plucked from his own mind, each appearing and disappearing in a fraction of a second. He screamed and tried to shut his eyes.

For a few brief moments, there was nothing but the dark world behind his eyelids. Then he heard a noise. A faint ringing, like the chiming of some distant bell or a musical note. The noise became louder and louder until it was almost a physical presences boring into his skull. Khalen-Het clapped his hands over his ears.

Again, a very brief moment of respite. Darkness and silence for a mere handful of seconds. He sniffed. A strange smell, musty and damp carried to his nose and intensified until he found himself gagging on it. As he cough and wretched, he involuntarily opened his eyes and the colours and images seared into them again. The ringing sound became a buzzing sound; which became a pulsing beat, shifting in tempo and volume. Soft as falling snow one moment, the roar of Baz'Auran himself the next. Khalen-Het screamed as the madness continued...

On and on it went, relentless as the grinding wheels of the First Torment. Time was meaningless in that terrible place and Khalen-Het lost his mind completely. The sensual atrocities devoured his mind and he would spend time crying, giggling, screaming and pleading with people that were not there, phantasms and illusions. The Torment would then recede just enough for him to rebuild his shattered mind before beginning all over again. This was chaos in its truest form and during one of his more lucid moments, Khalen-Het's thoughts turned to his sister/brother...

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Khalen glared at the head on the table before him and it glared back with a comical expression on its face. Its tongue was poking out, a gesture that made it look utterly ridiculous. The fact that it was his face did little to help matters.

He knocked the papier-mâché bust on the floor and looked ruefully at the now empty covers of the textbooks. They could be replaced, fortunately, but it was still a waste of time and resources for no good purpose. Khalen knew the person behind the joke and sighed as the Spirit of Knowledge walked up behind him.

“Why does it do these things? What does it hope to achieve?” he grumbled.

“By “it”, I assume you are referring to your sibling, Jongo,” said the Spirit. “As it will take me a little time to replace the books, I think perhaps your lesson today should teach you of value of logic and reasoning. Find the answer to your questions and bring them to me as the sun sets this evening.”

And so Khalen set off into the White City in search of answers. His immediate thought was that if any being in the City knew what Jongo was, it would logically be the one that created him. He entered the Great Hall and bowed before the imposing figure of Baz’Auran.

“Father, I have been tasked by one of the Spirits of Knowledge to seek the answer to a question. What is Jongo?”

“A spark of the newborn universe, bound and sculpted into my child. As are you all,”

Khalen frowned. The answer was a description of Jongo but did not answer his questions. Baz’Auran gazed at his solemn son and spoke again.

“The answer you seek lies with another in the city.”

Khalen bowed again and left.

Sometime later, he came up on Fayruz and Sonata sitting by the fountain in the city gardens. Both seemed to enjoy the company of his chaotic sibling; perhaps they might know the answer?

“Good morning dearest sisters,” he said politely “I have been tasked by one of the Spirits of Knowledge to seek the answer to a question. What is Jongo?”

They both giggled at the stiffness of Khalen’s words but then Fayruz smiled at him and spoke. “Jongo is family,” she said.

Sonata also chimed in. "He is a song, like all of us. But he is cacophony. Such an exasperation, but joyful too. I wish he learned how to sing better."
Khalen nodded. These were closer to the answer he sought but still incomplete. Thanking his sisters, he strode away.

The sounds of metal on metal carried through the air as Khalen made his way to the sparring grounds. His brother Contragh was engaged in a duel with one of the lesser Spirits of War. Contragh’s greatsword flashed down towards the Spirit and was met with a parry by the Spirit’s own weapon. With snake like speed, Contragh’s boot lashed out with a vicious kick that sent the Spirit sprawling on the floor. He nodded as the Spirit stood back up again and lowered its weapon.

“Well fought, brother. I have been tasked by one of the Spirits of Knowledge to seek the answer to a question. What is Jongo?”

Contragh grimaced at the mention of Jongo’s name. “A parasite. An amusing one who has his uses, but in the end he is nothing more then a leech that sucks on the society and order I build only to warp and corrupt it."

Khalen certainly agreed with Contragh’s assessment but still felt the answer lacked something. The clash of swords filled the air as the bout resumed.

The sun was setting as Khalen entered the library, frowning with irritation. All day the answers from his siblings had been the same. They had described what Jongo was but Khalen felt he was no closer to understanding it.

“Hello Khalen-Fishy!”

He stared at the figure in the white oversized nightshirt. What on earth was Jongo doing here? Had it come to vandalise his books again?

“Why are you here?!” demanded Khalen.

“You’ve been talking to everyone else today, Fishy. I was feeling left out.”

“What are you?” said Khalen.

Jongo looked puzzled. "That's a silly question, Fishy. Jongo is me. And I am Jongo. If you were Jongo, you would not be Khalen-Fish. If I were not Jongo, I would be... something else. I can change what I look like, how I act, what I say to others, but deep inside, under it all, no matter the exterior, I will always be."

And Khalen understood at last.

****

The Engine must have caught the thoughts in Khalen-Het's mind. The swirling colours stopped, the noise faded and smells and taste faded away. A glowing whiteness surrounded him. Had he reached a conclusion to this horrific nightmare? A mocking, yet familiar laugh told him otherwise.

As the glow faded, Khalen-Het stared in abject horror at his surroundings. All around him was Jongo. An infinite number of mismatched eyes stared from an infinite number of childish faces. Some melted and merged into others, some were deformed, some old, some little more than newborn babes. Yet the eyes were always the same.

“Silly Khalen-Fishy!” said one of the faces. A ripple of laughter carried across the Jongos. Others repeated it and it soon turned into a chant, repeated over and over like children in a playground.

“Silly Khalen-Fishy! Silly Khalen-Fishy! Silly Khalen-Fishy!”

“SILENCE!” screamed Khalen-Het and a roar of laughter like a howling storm was his reply.

All of the Jongos were laughing at him now. From girlish titter to huge roaring gales, the sound was unimaginable. He screamed, he commanded, he wept, he pleaded and still the laughter continued. Minutes segued into hours, hours blurred into days and days became years. Sometimes the Jongos would laugh, sometimes they would cry along with Khalen-Het, other times a million different conversations would assail his ears. And all the while, the glare of those two mismatched eyes.

The wall of Jongos distended and became one huge, yet considerably different, face. The twin blue glowing eyes of the Nightmare Prince stared at the gibbering wreck that floated in mid-air before it.

THE SECOND TORMENT IS COMPLETE. THE THIRD AND GREATEST TORMENT IS BELOW. THE LORD OF THIS REALM AWAITS IN THE FOURTH TORMENT.

A gaping maw the size of continents opened before Khalen-Het and a tongue slowly wrapped itself around him, its touch both abhorrent and sensual at the same time. It pulled him down into darkness and the great mouth of the Nightmare Prince closed behind him.