Role

Chapter 2

Foraxien screamed.

Foraxien screamed.

Well, perhaps that's not really accurate. He didn't really stop screaming,
after all. It was more like one scream that had started a very, very long
time ago, and just never really stopped.

After all, when you don't need to draw breath, you don't really need to
suffer interruptions. You can suffer all the other things, and really dig
down and focus upon them. Turn them over, and slice your mind and spirit
bloody on every hook and barb.

Forever.

The ice wasn't that thick above him. Once, he could have measured it from
half way wrist to elbow with some left over. He'd have punched through it
like so much wood, and thought nothing of it.

Now? Now he strained, and it was as trying to topple a mountain with
nothing but breath. Impossible. Pointless. Yet he still strained as he had
ever since that first horrified moment, when the ice had closed over his
face and left him in the freezing dark.

When he'd realised the true price of his folly. Betrayal of his oath.
Betrayal of his code. Betrayal of his faith.

So Foraxien screamed, and the damned choir of Cocytus screamed with him,
the ice of his eternal tomb for his fall from grace a biting anguish which
had not diminished with the passing of the centuries.