***Back to the present***
"Hmmm..."
An ancient voice spoke in a space that was entirely dark and devoid of light. Said space was eerily familiar and so was the voice that spoke.
"The child has finally fallen into death's embrace," the voice proclaimed. "Good....It's time for me to reap my rewards."
Back in the room where Marcus was captured, there wasn't a soul in sight. Only rats and other rodents ran around the halls outside of the room where Marcus lied.
One rat happened to stop outside the room to stare at Marcus. The curious rat then scurried into the room and stopped near Marcus's body.
His body hadn't been there for even a day. At most, it had lied there for about an hour. It seemed James and Geralt, Marcus's slavers, had left the vicinity and left Marcus's body for the rats and rodents that called this place home.
The smell in the room was foul. It smelled like someone had collected sewer water and spoiled eggs and doused the room in the scent. The room already had a putrid smell to it before Marcus was brought here, but now it reached all new levels with all the puke and dried blood on the floor.
The smell had drawn in the numerous critters and one curious rat happened to be the first to find the source of the smell.
The rodent once again drew closer to Marcus so that it could rip out a chunk of flesh for itself. However, things were not so easy for the rodent as a dark cloud started to form a barrier around Marcus.
When the rat made contact with the cloud of smoke, its skin started to rapidly decay.
"SKKKRRREEE-"
The rat screamed in pain from the insufferable burning sensation that now enveloped its body.
Although, it didn't even finish its screech as it immediately was turned into a skeleton. Soon after that, not even its bones remained as even they crumbled to dust.
Inside the cloud of smoke a reaction was occurring both within and outside Marcus's body.
His skin seemed to be breaking down just like the rat's. Only in this scenario, his skin was deteriorating slowly instead of instantaneously like the previous.
Marcus's skin was being corroded by the smoke that seemed to act like some sort of Miasma. The smoke slowly coalesced around his feet and legs as it began to creep up his torso.
Once it made its way to his chest, it then went on to his neck. It continued onwards to cover his eyes and ears and finally stopped once it had completely enveloped his body.
Marcus's body was engulfed in the black smoke and black orbs of mana formed mainly around where his heart and brain were.
At these particular locations a bright emerald glow could be seen coming from the points where the mana was densest.
Then it began...
"AHHHHHHHHHH!"
Marcus let out a guttural scream as his eyes shot wide open. He clenched and unclenched his arms multiple times and his legs spasmed out of control.
He felt pain all over and it felt like he was being burned alive.
If you'd ever touched a stove top when it was on high heat then you can say that you've experienced being burned at least one time in your life. Now imagine that instead of just your palm being on the stove, that your entire body was being pressed down into the heat. You'd immediately try to scramble to lift yourself up from the burning sensation that was melting the flesh off your body. However, in Marcus's case he was too tired and exhausted to even move and he wasn't even given such a choice in the first place. His body was being burned by whatever this cloud of smoke was and it was not letting him escape.
All he could do was sit there an endure the sensation of having his bones and flesh melted perpetually and eventually, after about five minutes passed, he could no longer scream.
So instead of screaming, he'd resort to grunting and groaning.
When he could no longer do that, his voice reached a whimpering and soon after, he could only lie there and occasionally whimper short-incomprehensible words and phrases.
Marcus remained like this for three hours.
At some point, the pain seemed to lessen, if only slightly. Either that or Marcus was starting to grow accustomed to it because he'd started to form coherent thoughts even while his body felt like it was melting.
He started to think about how he had even gotten to this point.
It seemed that ever since he'd been separated from his family he'd had to deal with constant never ending pain and/or despair.
Firstly he was separated from his family 3 years ago and had no memory of anything that happened after the explosion that rendered him unconscious. He didn't know who those people were, why they attacked him or how he'd even survived the attack in the first place.
Then when he did wake up, he found himself caged and chained up along with a few others who'd been snatched just like Marcus. What happened for the next couple years was a blur. He'd made several 'friends' among the slaves but most had either died on the journey they'd been taken on or were sold along the way. The only distinguished 'friend' Marcus had met was an individual known as Gavin. He and Gavin had stuck close for those three years and as such looked out for one another whether it came down to sharing rations or avoiding the ire of their slaver. This lasted for a short while...until it didn't.
Gavin desperately wanted to escape, along with everyone else. However, his desire to escape was stronger than that of the other slaves. Some were too tired and weary to even think of escaping and others were just to afraid to risk it. However, Gavin was among neither of these groups.
He'd studied the shifts the slavers took and how weak certain parts of the security detail were that watched him. Eventually, after a month or so, he'd developed a plan to escape. Of course, the first person to hear of such a plan was Marcus and he readily agreed. Marcus couldn't stand the thought of being enslaved and never knowing whether or not his family was alive.
So he and Gavin, along with a few other slaves that were brave enough, escaped.
They'd slipped away under the cover of night while the guard patrol was relatively weak, and just when they'd made it a mile or so away, they ran into an obstacle.
Said obstacle took on the form of two individuals that Marcus was now all too familiar with, James and Geralt. James had seen Gavin and Marcus's group escaping but he allowed them to get just far enough to get their hopes up and be able to catch them when the need arose. He brought Geralt along to help him just in case any mishaps occurred.
Some members of the group were caught and killed by James to prove an example but Marcus, Gavin, and one other slave managed to luckily escape due to James's incompetence.
Geralt noticed this and immediately gave chase to the group. He caught the other slave by encasing them in a rock tomb and decided to come back for them later. Once he made it to Marcus and Gavin, he setup a stone wall that effectively separated the two.
Marcus was the one caught on the end with Geralt and Gavin lied on the opposite end. With the choice of freedom to his back and his 'friend's' precarious circumstance to his front, Gavin was left with a choice. He could risk it and try to save his friend or use him as bait and escape to guaranteed freedom.
Gavin turned and made his choice.
Marcus watched his friends back as he left him with only three words.
"I'll be back."
Those were the final words Gavin left Marcus with before he was ruthlessly knocked over and captured by Geralt.
Unluckily in the process of him being knocked over, his ring had fallen off. When this happened Marcus's true appearance, which had been kept a secret from everyone including Gavin, was revealed to Geralt.
To say Geralt reacted violently was an understatement.
When Marcus was returned back to the camp they were being held in, he was immediately separated from the rest of the slaves and James and Geralt became his permanent guards.
This lead to Marcus's isolated-imprisonment and likewise current predicament. He was deprived of basic human necessities like food and water and was left to starve and be beaten. This lasted for an unknown amount of time due to Marcus being tortured endlessly with hardly any rest in between beatings. And when he finally thought it was all over and breathed his last, he was forced to wake back up to an even more tortuous and insufferable pain once again.