Chapter 3

The days turn again into a mosaic of suffering, but of a different magnitude. Sometimes, Renzo is shifted to furnace stoking duty, where he needs to climb on his own up a set of ladders. He takes every chance he gets to try to figure out who is the most cruel, afraid, or potentially helpful, how strong the chains are, which areas the guards walk and when. One day, stuck inside his elaborate fantasies of escape, Renzo loses track of a rotating piece of equipment used to transport large cauldrons of molten metal. A long steel arm smacks him and knocks him off the railing. He drops to a lower railing, bounces off, and then falls through a mesh of metal bars, only to land knocked out on the lowest floor. The slaves around him ignore him, but the supervisor comes by to whip him. Seeing that Renzo does not react even as the lash rips through his skin, he calls over guards, who haul him away. When he comes back to, again, Renzo finds himself once more in the small cramped office with a desk and a metal table.

Serinas’s head peeks in through the opposite door. "I’ll be with you shortly," he announces, then closes the door again. Renzo, wheezing in the chair, thinks about the throne room. He remembers Kalandor sitting there with the title he stole, surrounded by people who stole his position, and of the guard that Renzo once commanded. He clenches his fists in anger, and squeezes the armrests of his chair until he hears the wood cracking.

The door opens again and Serinas pushes in a cart with items covered with a brown cloth. "I didn’t intend for this to be so soon. And I’m still not quite sure about this," he says, looking him over. "But to my eyes, you don’t have much time left, and I don’t have many more ideas left. So if we could get you…" He pauses and moves behind Renzo, trying to drag the man with the chair. Renzo grabs his arm.

"What are you planning to do to me?" he growls through his teeth.

"Let’s call it a little bit of an experiment," Serinas proposes.

Renzo lets him go, and Serinas straightens back up. He walks over to the cart and pulls the cloth away. Underneath are bits of metal, gears, but most of all a pair of skeleton-like metal legs that shine in the dim light. Dark veins run in straight lines through them.

"It is your greatest desire, isn’t it?" Serinas asks. "To be able to walk again."

Renzo swallows. He remembers clearly running across the battlefield, taking gentle steps on castle floors and palace halls, footwork during swordsmanship. He snaps out of it to see Serinas giving him a smile.

"You’re saying you can make me walk again."

"I’m saying we can try."

There is a pause. "Why me? Why now?"

"Well," Serinas says, "I’ve been following your progress, or should I say regress, and I don’t think that you have much time. And as for why you…" Serinas paces around the room. "Would you believe me if I told you that I am no less a slave than you are? Would it matter to you if I told you that I used to heal people who are not chained to their work, or worked to death? Would you perhaps be moved if I told you about my family and how I want to see them? But I don’t know if I ever will, because all that I see are the confines of my rooms, including this one."

Renzo looks at him, tilting his head slightly.

"I didn't think so. You’re not the kind of man to be sentimental, so just treat it as an exchange then," Serinas continues. "You are the highest ranking, most capable warrior I've ever dealt with. My offer to you is that I can give you legs, and enough time to regain strength. The only thing I ask of you," he pauses, "is to help me get out of here." He pauses again and fixes his glasses. "And as many other slaves as you wish. They deserve it too."

Renzo looks at the operating table and the cart again and feels a tingle in the stubs of his legs.

"These aren't just prosthetics, are they?" he asks, looking at the ruby-like gems at the ankle joints.

"Sharper than you look," the healer responds. "Those are indeed what I'd like to call... thaumaturgical devices."

Renzo's memory comes back. Those skilled in wizardry would construct machines and weapons for themselves, wield tremendous power merging magic with technology. But it was arcane, not meant for mortals.

"You were a mage?" he asks Serinas.

"No, not close enough. Didn't have the aptitude," he says, crossing his arms. "But I learned a thing or two about magical items, and scraped something together with the stuff we produce here," he looks Renzo over once more. "If you're unsure about this-"

"Let’s do it," Renzo says.

With all doors locked, the healer helps him onto the operating table and ties his body to it with belts. "For our sake," he explains, tightening the grip. "I wish I could say this is going to be painless, but it won’t be," he adds, splashing some water on his hands and laying out his tools. He cuts away Renzo’s rough work pants, exposing the now overgrown scar tissue, where the clean cuts of the axe separated him from walking. "I strongly recommend," he says, taking a bit of cloth and wrapping it over a stick, "that you take this in your mouth."

Renzo hesitantly takes the cloth-wrapped stick and clenches his teeth on it.

"Are you ready?" Serinas asks, holding a knife in hand.

Renzo looks down and on the cart he sees metal rods sticking out of the ends of the metal legs, with holes drilled to fit into the bones and additional clamps to join them to muscle and skin. He nods.

The first stab reawakens the pain he felt when they cut off his legs. Even though Serinas tries to space the movements out, every slash of the scalpel feels like torture. The sound gets wetter and fleshier as tools change, and Renzo’s eyes tear up. He screams a muffled scream, clenching his teeth so hard the piece of wood between them sends out splinters flying to the sides.

"Almost there," Serinas announces after what feels like hours. He aligns the legs, and quickly shoves them into the wounds he just cut in Renzo’s stumps. Renzo’s torso bends in an arc, breaking one of the belt buckles. The pain is so overwhelming his vision goes completely pitch black. In the nothingness, a pair of eyes appears, first blurry, then immediately clear. They burn with a red-orange glow, with slit-like pupils somewhere between a goat’s and an octopus’s. They shift and stare directly into him. Their glow increases until the whole world turns white again.

Renzo opens his eyes. He blinks, then blinks again. Serinas is standing back from the operating table, propping his head on his hand.

"You have survived," he says, deep in thought.

Renzo tries to respond, but only ends up coughing.

"Can you move the digits?" the healer asks, walking up to look closely at Renzo’s metal feet.

The memories of walking and running come surging back. Renzo looks down and, to his own disbelief, sees the glimmer on his metal toes shift as they move.

"Astounding," Serinas says. "Can you try bending them at the knee?"

Renzo focuses, and slowly the metallic joint moves. His new knee rises up from the table.

"Amazing," Serinas remarks, clearly pleased with himself. "I’ll need to get you out of here and into my private ward. I’ll write you up as an experiment," he says, pulling out a parchment.

There’s a loud banging at the door. "Enough of this healer nonsense!" a guard’s voice comes from behind.

"Get the slave back to work!" another calls out.

Serinas’s eyes go wide, and he starts hurrying around, looking for a key. He finds it and opens the side door he used to walk in, but just then the guards pry open the main door and stare at them both.