Jason operated purely on instinct now. Wounded, angry, he stalked from shadow to shadow, keeping out of sight of the students still milling about the campus of the Royal Academy of Magicks. He'd never been a student here, but he'd been a prisoner, locked away in an underground room of an abandoned building that had once been the playground of a very, very deranged sorcerer.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been locked away. Months at least, but maybe years. He'd been an overeager squire, sixteen years old and full of hope, ready to protect the kingdom and make his adoptive father proud. That, of course, had never happened. Instead, Jason had walked right into a never-ending nightmare.

Experiments, the sorcerer had called it. The days had blurred into weeks, months, of excruciating, agonizing pain as the sorcerer had poked and prodded and carved into him, all the while asking him the most mundane questions about his health. "Any aches or pains today?" "Do you feel cold?" "Are you hungry?" Jason, his cheek burning a bright red from the branding iron, his clothes soaked from the waterboarding, his figure emaciated from the starvation, could only beg for mercy that never came.

And then the man had suddenly stopped coming. His assistants were nowhere to be found. Jason had been certain he would die there, restrained and alone, when something dark, intimidating, enticing, had reached out to him.

"You can save yourself," the voice had whispered. "Make them pay. You'll be strong again. Take it."

Jason, in a daze, had taken the ornate black knife from the table, freed himself from his bonds, and walked, half-conscious, out of the room that had been his prison for so long. He'd found himself on campus, and quickly hid in the shadows.

Finally, as he waited in a dark corner, a lone figure walked past. Jason lunged, the knife in hand, and tackled the figure to the ground. "Take me to Duke Wayne," he hissed, each word sending droplets of saliva mixed with blood splattering across the stranger's face. "I won't ask again."