Altair was plagued by more dreams. Sometimes it was just Cygnus and him. Other times the man made him watch as he flayed the skin from a slaves back down to the bone, long past the point of screams. His mind imagined all the crimes this man had committed in his lifetime; all the suffering that those hands had caused. All that he would continue to do and Altair powerless to do any such thing about it.<br/><br/>He imagined the man whose eye he damaged beyond repair. Altair was tied, held down, and he'd come like a wraith in the night to eat his frightened eyes right from the sockets, picked out with inhuman talons. Altair had screamed and thrashed. His nerves were set aflame and it didn't occur to him any longer that is was only dreams. His mind tormented him and the pain was imagined.<br/><br/>Then there were times he was back on the deck, the men taking turns with him again, Cygnus looking down on him scornfully; smug. He fought endlessly, the cycle simply repeating. Words whispered to him were lies, simply spoken to pacify him for a time. To make it easier. He begged for the return of his Goddess, some form of comfort, but she'd left him afloat in an endless sea the same as Cygnus had. His body healed, wound scabbing, pulling tight, turning itchy as they started to close over. His mind took longer to return to him, madness hard to come back from. It kept dragging Altair back down and the most horrifying was when he tried to recount happy memories of Dusan, nothing came forward. He'd forgotten, that part of himself erased just as easily as Cygnus might have cleared paged out of his morbid book.<br/><br/>When some lucidity returned to Altair he was not comforted. Restrained. In an unfamiliar place, the sounds of someone in the room with him that he couldn't see. Altair lurched violently when the footsteps drew closer. Rope bit into his skin. Pain. He'd rubbed the skin open raw and bloody. He'd done the same to his back when he wasn't tied and it hadn't occurred to him he might have been restrained for his own good. He found his voice, harsh from screaming, yelling threats and obscenities in his panic that were all bluff. Panicked like a restrained animal. The words came out in a mix of languages, broken up, sometimes not even coherent. Some of his strength had returned. He didn't feel weak as he had when Diens had to pick him off the floor on the ship.<br/><br/>Altair listened. Nothing sounded familiar. No booted feet running across the deck overhead. There were no waves crashing against the ship. Men were not shouting orders to one another. The world was still, even, no back and forth sway. This man as he came into view was not familiar to him. Not in dress, body language, or expression. He stared at him, chest expanding rapidly with each breath.<br/><br/>“Untie me,” Altair demanded, trying to sound confident. He said it again and then he was screaming it, going into another fit as he remembered what pure undiluted rage felt like.