Dungeons the world over share with one another a despair and hopelessness, the killers of ideas and no small amount of dignity. They share a stench not unlike a cutter's tent on a field of battle and a sullying of the soul. There is also a disparity of purpose one cannot appreciate until you become a connoisseur of such hapless abodes. To the uninitiated, one looks the same as the next, to the worldly, a slow death may dwell in one yet unrelenting pain in another. The favorite of hapless souls the world over would be the one giving a swift death. The most vile of dungeons are designed for the rending of the human spirit through pain and torture.
It is such a place I wake to find myself. A temple of pain. Theology and devotion towards exploring the edge, the threshold, the very limits of the human body for no other purpose than discovery and torment. It is an art with no small amount of skill to find the fine line between physical pain, unconsciousness and death. Purpose aside, the stone walls all look the same with minor variations. This one adorned with iron rings to hold, chain and rope instead of bars and benches.
Dreams and hope come to all men. Death as well. To break a man is to take from him his hopes and dreams. To bring him an agony that beckons death as relief, then deny it, holding the long darkness just beyond reach. Hold him inside the threshold of the living with unrelenting pain until his very spirit longs to be pushed through, then close the door before he can escape. And start again.
It is however, another matter entirely to break something already broken. There is no threshold to find, no tipping point to reach. There is only pain or death, one or the other.
