(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

fought with a cornered desperation as we continued deeper into the prison.
The screams died down in the bowels of this rotting cage, as cells became
occupied with dried husks of men: some still lived in catatonic fugues.
Others were more fortunate, and they lay in bloated repose, a fine nesting
place for flies and maggots when they weren't whittled away to bone by
time's blade.
The worst of the traitors were housed here, and a couple of fresh new faces
gave cold greetings through the bars.
"Dog!" Siabha spat at my feet, "You dare poison my life with your presence
again when your false words imprisoned me here! Traitor! I hope the Styx
swallows you and spits your bleached bones on the shore, that they might
be whittled into flutes for an army of dung-eaters!"
An'izius glared bitterly at me and said nothing. He merely spat on the
ground at my passing and turned away.
We finally reached the heart of this monstrosity, and the grandiosity of it
was somewhat spoiled by the assorted crates piled up against the walls and
old ore carts left to rust. Once this might've been the inner sanctum of a
neat, organized prison. Now it was just a storeroom that housed a big pile of
crap, though there was one exception.
A curved silver blade hung in the air at the center of a platform, its edges
lined with runes that hummed with power. It cast motes of light as it spun,
suspended in the air with the sad beauty of a caged bird. If there was
anything else in the planes that carried the same perverse wrongness of
seeing this celestial blade bound and locked away like a trophy, I've yet to
see it. A moment's admiration and disgust, and I began to reach out for it.
It was then that a grossly corpulent man, with folds of fat oozing every
which way, sidled up to us. His eye slowly turned, and when it landed on me
I stopped, suddenly hit with a feeling of unspeakable danger. "I hold the true
essence of the sword. What you see there is a shallow shell. The blade is in
me. You must defeat me to reach it."
"Who are you?"
His deep voice rolled out from the layers of fat. "My name is Cassius. I was
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