As Icarus awoke, he found himself hanging upside down in a cell, suspended over a pit littered with the bones of countless others, strung by his feet to the ceiling. Some still had scraps of flesh hanging upon them, though it sufficed to say it had been quite some time since the breath of life had touched this sorry lot. He remained perplexed, wondering how he had come to this place and what sort of ill tidings await him should he tarry too long.
Casting his gaze down toward his feet, Icarus saw he had no feet, nor legs, torso, or even arms. He was simply floating, bodiless, and wondering if he had already cast aside his mortal coil to embrace eternity. He wondered if perhaps he was one of the fresher corpses, wondered if this was what death was truly like, and decided it would be rather droll if he were to be trapped here, floating in an empty void with corpses below and likely the cause of the pit lingering in the halls beyond the door to the cell.
He shook his head and blinked. Suddenly, he felt a kink in his neck, the pressure of his blood rushing to his head due to his suspension over the bone pit. Somehow, as he looked toward his body once more, he could see his corporeal form, undisturbed, though bound by the ankles over a hook that held him aloft. Reason returning to him, the man once known as the Black Swordsman curled tightly, using his abdominal muscles to bring his torso up to try and free himself. He swung back and forth twice, using the momentum to bring his outstretched hand toward the hook before at last clutching it like a fiend with an addiction to the powdered intoxicants that sold so well and so addictively on the black market.
Exhaling from the sudden effort and soreness of his body, Icarus reached out with his other hand now, working the ropes that bound him to the hook. He heard no sound outside the confines of this macabre, nihilistic expression of the varying stages of decomposition. Finishing his handy work on the binding, he maintained his grasp, albeit barely, as his body weight swung swiftly toward the floor, disorienting him from the sudden drop in the quantity of blood that was in his head. How long was I hanging there? Hours? Days? Longer? he thought to himself with a sudden pang of guilt.
He had left others, potential new recruits for the Order, in the dark with no clue of his whereabouts. He had not spoken to Keira in quite some time and even his more recent associate Rixxan would likely be a bit perturbed at his vanishing with nary a trace. Releasing himself, Icarus dropped the five feet or so onto the floor, parched and unable to sweat due to dehydration, he fell down, weak from his ailments.
Icarus slowly rose to one knee, using it for leverage to stand up as he came to rest on the door leading out. As unlikely as it could possibly be for any prison, the door was unlocked and opened with seemingly only his will as he barely touched the handle before it swung open and sent him falling into the hall. Falling again, the feeling seemed to continue for hours when only a scant second had passed until he felt his face touch the ground, a dull thud and a massive surge of pain striking him squarely in the forehead as he met solid stone. Get it together, you can't get caught like this he mentally reinforced, pushing past the pain and glancing around as he scrambled to his feet.
The hall he thought he had landed in was something far different. It was as though he fell out the door to his cell and reappeared in another world altogether. Indeed, as he looked over his shoulder in the direction from whence he came, he no longer saw the door to the cell he had departed, only two solid oak doors. Magic? What sort of devilry is this? he queried.
Indeed, as he focused for a moment on the two oak doors, he recalled something that seemed familiar about them, he… just couldn't place it. In fact, the more he thought of it past his initial feeling of deja vu, the more it became confused, as though something were deliberately clouding his thoughts and even the familiar regality of the interior of this foyer of sorts was becoming harder to place. He dismissed all thoughts concerning his surroundings, now simply intent on leaving.
Walking to the wooden double doors, he glanced behind him as he heard a youthful giggle somewhere off in the distance, opening one of the doors at the same time and stepping through. When his eyes returned to the path before him, he found he was in the foyer once more, no changes present before him. Releasing the door handle, however, it slammed shut behind him and the giggling emanated throughout the room once more, solid stone replacing what had been the door to the previous identical foyer. A man of significant experience, Icarus realized he was in an illusion of sorts, bound by his own mind at the moment.
It did nothing to allay his worries. Something had brought him here beyond his own power and there was no telling just how long it would be until he could find his way through it all. His only clue was the nearly childish laughter that seemed to come from across the foyer and disappear behind a door to the right. Another voice joined it.
"No, Rygar, don't take my sword," it called in protest, the mere voice of a child upset. What perked his ears almost immediately upon hearing it was his brother's name. Rygar… he thought, transfixed by the one word that held more power than any save the name "Freya".
"Yarrr ye swab, that be Captain Rygar to you!" his brother called back. The memory of the two of them playing with wooden swords as children repeating itself in his mind. He could see it clearly, even before the hallucination appeared before him in the blink of an eye. The phantasmal image of his former life ran toward the door the voices had originally come from, slamming it open and running through as the shade that had been him ran through, crying all the while. Rygar chased after him, attempting to placate him before he could run to his mother.
Shuddering from the sight of it all and the mix of emotions he felt, Icarus proceeded forward, intent on finding his way through this place he now found himself wandering through against his will.
