(no subject)

[queensland]

They attacked in the night like thieves.

A more direct strike against a prestigious mage family would have spelled nothing but disaster even for the Zhentarim, whose numbers could have overwhelmed the guards on a more level playing field. Trickery was needed: it had to be an inside job with all of the wards and security systems taken down. It needed to happen quickly before any of their secondary defenses could spring up, before the old man Archibald could activate any secondary wards or, worse, might weave powerful enough spellcraft to kill them all.

The guards didn't manage to sound an alarm. The electrical systems died seconds after they did. A strong dozen of the most powerful the Zhentarim could offer - individuals proficient in magic and in tactical warfare - stormed the residence. In less than thirty minutes, the place was decimated, and they took their prizes. They struck with gloves laced with electric runes and powerful magnetics to be used to circumvent the magical circuits the family was known for, easily incapacitating them. Waver was struck down before he could barely get out of bed, held down while he heard the screams of his family as they, too, were indisposed. He was dumped near the bodies of his guards - his mentors, acquaintances, even his friends - before the world went dark.

He was beckoned back to wakefulness in a cage laced with electricity and runes, the strongest precautions against a mage like him. Even then, his wrists were bound - separated, though - with tight metal bands that disrupted his magical circuits. The room he was in was dark, lit only by faint neon lights that smarted when he looked too long at them. The most prominent sound was their buzzing and little else for a very long time.

Faintly, he could hear intermittent sounds coming from beyond the glass window in the corner of the room. It took him a while to perhaps realize they were the sounds of screaming and begging.

Comments

[tryhard]

He listened for a long time. Rendered frozen with shock and horror, lightheaded and aching, Waver couldn't even scream, couldn't even sit up, couldn't move. Sometimes, he thought he could recognize the voices. Sometimes, he thought he was imagining them or dreaming.

But the pain in his wrists was very real, constant, like needles under his skin. The counter-spelled runes burned, their power an uncomfortable, distracting buzz that crawled through his palms and fingers and up his arms, shattering his concentration even more alongside the shock. He couldn't cast a spell if he tried. It took him a while to try.

When he did, the pain was blinding. Even though, physically, nothing could happen, the magic couldn't flow through the disruption, he learned immediately and convincingly that even the attempt was a mistake. The energy, with nowhere to go, burned itself out inside him; if he kept trying, he would destroy his own magic circuits like this.

No magic. No movement. No answers.

For a long time, Waver lay on the floor of his cage, gasping shallowly, twisting and scratching at the metal bands he could barely reach on either hand with the substance inside the clear rod between them glowing faintly red, keeping his hands apart and fueling the current that ran through the cuffs. He was too scared to even cry. Nothing felt real. He didn't understand.

[rechaining]

In increments, over the course of a few hours, the screams died down to nothing. Waver was left alone during that time - or so it seemed - for him to get used to his conditions. But his turn came eventually, with the door opening and three individuals in black coming to release him from the cage. One of them, far taller than Waver, snatched him up by the wrists before he could begin to crawl out. Wordless, they moved him to another room, where they were able to latch the center rod to the table they seated him at. He could move, albeit little, and the red glow was menacing indeed.

The tall man, once setting Waver in his seat, flanked the door. The third occupant never said a word, settling into a place in the corner to watch, long dark hair tied out of their face.

The man who came to stand before him was lanky, shorter than the first. His voice was roughened from smoking. "We'd like to make this quick and easy, boy," he murmured lowly, his eyes on Waver's face. "Where are your father's Mystic Codes? Where is the key to his vault?"

[tryhard]

The only protest Waver could manage was an instinctive, strangled cry when he was yanked up by the wrists. He didn't struggle to get free so much as he struggled to stay upright and keep up while he was dragged and herded out, down a narrow, neon-lit hall, and pushed down into a metal chair at the heavy table that occupied what seemed to be some sort of interrogation room. He did not yank on the cuffs when he was latched into place.

He sat frozen and wide-eyed, like a rabbit in the headlights, his gaze swiveling without much movement of his head to take in the menacing strangers, the guarded door. It seemed to take a moment for the question to penetrate his state of numb shock and actually make sense.

So that was why. They were after his family's magic. It was a simple, vague explanation, easy to latch onto right now. Someone wanted the secrets of the power the Archibald family bragged of, and so they'd come in the night to steal them. His family. Him.

There was a nagging, sickening flash of something like memory or nightmare, snatches of half-seen faces in the crumpled pile of bodies he'd been dropped next to before he'd been in the cage. Dead bodies. Had his father been among them? Had those voices he'd heard screaming been familiar? Had they come from this room?

The guard would have to be patient. Waver, ashen-faced and quivering, just stared at him for nearly a full minute, mouth working soundlessly. When words finally came, it wasn't an answer, but a question of his own.

"Wh-where is... my father?"

[rechaining]

It was a fair enough assumption; the Archibald family had enough wealth and magecraft to earn the ire of more than a few organizations and people.

It wasn't the answer any of them wanted, though. The man's expression seemed to darken, and though neither of the other two guards in the room moved or spoke, there was tension in the air as the first settled his gaze upon Waver, cold and unrelenting.

The silence stretched uncomfortably until he murmured, simply, inelegantly, "Your father is dead, boy."

[tryhard]

The words dropped like lead, swallowed up by the tense stillness, and then there was silence again. It stretched for several beats. Waver did not move.

Finally, all he said -- very, very softly -- was:

"...oh."

[rechaining]

"Your father was stubborn...and a man who did not cooperate when asked politely, even when he was at a great disadvantage," he continued, even through Waver's quiet intonation. "Make no mistake: we have been incredibly patient with your family. If you speak now, we will work to rectify this tragedy in your favor."

His eyes were bright on Waver. "Where is the key to your father's vault? Where does he keep his Mystic Codes?"

[tryhard]

Waver simply stared at him while he spoke, the neon lights casting an unpleasant tint on his sheet-white face. His hands pressed against the tabletop nervously, and his chest rose and fell too fast, his shallow breathing sounding too loud in his own ears.

"In my favor?" His voice was thin and high with incredulity, edging on hysterics.

"You killed my family! My father, my- where's my sister? What did you do?!"

[rechaining]

A hand snapped out, backhanding Waver with enough force to hurt, all in the knuckles of his hand. He hissed at him, the other hand shooting forward to snatch him up by the collar. "Mind your tongue before you lose it. Had your father been less arrogant, he wouldn't be dead now. You have the chance to keep your life - and I suggest you do not squander it."

He pushed Waver back into his chair. The bindings tightened; heat burned into his circuits for a brief moment, a reminder of what was fastened to his wrists.

"You will answer our questions or you will die. It is your choice."

[tryhard]

Waver's head snapped sideways with the force of the blow. He bit his lip and tasted blood, ears ringing and disoriented as the man yanked him up by his shirt hard enough to pull against the metal bindings keeping his hands pinned.

The man spoke with the air of hard, cold fact, truth over threat. There was no room for interpretation. Staring up at him, wide-eyed and terrified, blood on his teeth, Waver held as still as he could despite the trembling in his limbs until he was shoved back down into his chair.

"I--" He opened his mouth to speak, but the metal squeezed around his wrists, pain lancing through his fingers in a spasm that made him jerk and yelp. Tears stung his vision. When it subsided, he had to find his voice again.

"I can't. I don't- I don't know."

[rechaining]

"You're his heir," he nearly snarled, towering over Waver as he slowly stood. "In the absence of your father, you must have the information." A key, a word, a gesture, some kind of hidden code. It was the only thing that made sense.

But there was a faint pause and he looked past Waver to the other individual in the room, who stood in the corner. Whatever he saw on their face caused his brow to crease further, and he looked back at Waver.

"Why can't you?" he asked, fervent now, frustrated. "You must know. You simply don't want to say."

[tryhard]

The young mage shrank back in his chair as much as the bindings would allow. He was shaking his head, struggling to form sentences coherently and slowly enough to make sense through his rapid breathing.

"I- I'm not, though. He didn't want-- He never told me. I don't think his vault is even on the property. I don't know where it is. You- you have to believe me..."

[rechaining]

"Your father has traps in the basement levels beneath your manor," he intoned, frown deep. "You mean to tell me you don't even believe it's there?" It didn't sound right. None of it sounded right. His fist clenched; the light on Waver's bracers glowed with suggestion.

"Where are the Codes? You know where they are. Tell me!"

[tryhard]

The foreign energy began to prickle and buzz under his skin again, tingling up his arms. Waver squirmed, fists clenching, then uncurling to press his fingers against the table again, restless under the itch of the anti-magic current. The tip of his tongue probed the spot on his lower lip that he'd bitten, which was starting to swell. He blinked fresh tears away.

"Th-the basement is- was his... current projects. Experiments, or- or work? I don't know. I wasn't allowed. I don't know." The man loomed over him, and Waver pressed on hurriedly, knowing they didn't like these answers, blurting out more words in the half-baked hope that if he just kept talking, eventually they would believe him.

"B-besides, it's not like I could tell you where a key is even if I knew! It's not something physical. It's not like any mage would keep their artifacts behind a normal door with a latch. It was probably a spell only he knew, or a sigil on--"

Waver cut off, shoulders quivering, with the sudden realization he'd said too much.

[rechaining]

The silence that settled was piercing and terrible, like the man's gaze on Waver. His eyes raked over the young magus with a slow, even hungry sort of look, until at last he looked upon his face, his shaking shoulders, and the blood on his lip. At last, he gestured to Waver, his eyes locking on the individual behind the young magus.

"Undress him. Check him for sigils. When you're finished, put him back where he belongs." He turned on his heel and left the room, the door closing behind him. Waver was left with the other two, the large man who'd hefted him up single-handedly, and the other who'd remained silent.

A hand settled at the top of his back, almost gentle. Metal claws clamped down there.

"If you have any runes or sigils upon your skin, young master, I suggest you tell us where they are now." In an effort to at least spare him the indignity that was to come.

[tryhard]

He flinched at the touch, the softness of it somehow more threatening than the frankness of force.

Again, the boy shook his head, his swollen lip drawn beneath the other, the rest of him held very still. His voice cracked slightly.

"I- I don't. I don't have anything. He wouldn't leave anything to me."

[rechaining]

"A selfish man to the end, wasn't he?" they whispered, voice soft. "Or did he not anticipate anything happening to him?" The clawed hand seemed to pull away for a moment. Then, a single tip snagged in the top of his shirt, the fabric thin. It parted beneath the sharp tip, right down the middle until it showed much of his back and shoulders.

A clawed finger tapped once, twice. Waver's magical circuits lit up like beacons and though the gesture was not painful, it was certainly invasive. It was not unlike blood magic, or the sort of implant-based circuit diving that some were using these days to jump into bodies, systems, and the like. It was practically one step beneath blind puppeteering.

Eyes swept over him. When there was nothing to be found - no hidden sigil, no code, no indication of further magic - the hand fell away and Waver's circuits were freed of their scrutiny. The one at the door was frowning heavily, disappointed in their findings, his gaze fixed on Waver. The one behind him merely sighed.

"Take him back. They won't be pleased." But there was nothing to be done about that.

[tryhard]

Waver did not answer. True, his father probably had thought of himself as far too powerful a mage and likely even considered himself near-invincible, knowing his ego. But he'd also been a shrewd and careful man, for all his other faults, sometimes even edging on paranoid. It was unlikely he'd left no backup plan. Even if he was selfish, he must have left some sort of key or guide or will, just in case-- but it wouldn't have been for Waver.

They'd never answered his question about his sister. Now, Waver was too afraid to ask again.

He went stiff beneath the stranger's fingers when he felt the feather-light graze of something sharp along the back of his neck. It snagged on the collar of his rumpled button-up, tore through the cloth like paper. The cold air hit his skin, and Waver shivered, his hands clenching into fists again in the cuffs. He expected more pain. It was worse than that.

Waver's mouth dropped open in a voiceless gasp, his fingers clenching tighter until his knuckles went white. He sat completely frozen as the moments stretched on, feeling far too long, the breath stuck in his lungs unable to squeeze past the way his throat felt far too tight. Goosebumps rose along his skin, every muscle gone tense. But there was nothing to be found. He hadn't been lying.

By the time his captor withdrew the touch, there were tears sliding down Waver's cheeks as he slumped back in his chair again, the ruined shirt sliding down one of his shoulders lopsidedly. He gasped for air, but did not speak. It finally, suddenly occurred to him: he was no use to them. There was no reason to keep him alive.

[rechaining]

The man at the door came to collect him. He was not careful but he was also not rough in his treatment. He led Waver back to the room with the cage alone, where he ushered him in. The electric bars allowed him more room this time but little else. They did not bring him another shirt and he was left there for an undetermined time without food, without water, though it couldn't have been for so very long. He did not starve; they would not allow that.

In some amount of mercy, the neon lights had dimmed for him to allow him to sleep. And he was left there in that limbo, unknowing if it was day or night, for many, many hours.

Voices outside the room alerted Waver to someone's presence there. Too low to be discerned, there was some sort of exchange before the door slid open. A young woman hardly older than Waver entered, thin and wiry, dark hair pulled back from her face. Her skin was dark and...strangely luminous under the neon lights as she turned to look at Waver. While she wore black like the others Waver had seen, there was a long swatch of blue around her waist like a sash, the only color in the room that drew the eye. In her hands was a tray. A long, deep blue tunic was draped over a shoulder.

She knelt down in front of Waver's cage, peering in. "Are you awake?" she asked softly, her eyes a piercing, almost unnatural red color.

[tryhard]

Waver did not fight. He didn't crawl into the cage on his own either, but he didn't struggle when he was nudged in with vaguely surprising patience from the guard, who waited until Waver was locked in again before adjusting some settings to expand the electric bars enough to give him room to sit up fully or lie down stretched out if he wanted to this time. There was nothing else in the cage.

And for a long, long time, there was no one else in the room either. The lights went down enough it was difficult to see anything beyond the dimly glowing bars of the cage, and even his own limbs looked like little more than silhouetted shapes in the darkness. His ruined shirt kept slipping uncomfortably down his arms, but he couldn't fix it even if it hadn't been ripped, not with the bar between his hands.

Waver settled on his knees in the middle of the cage, in the oppressive silence, feeling numb and violated. His skin was still crawling from the intrusion. He'd never felt anything like it before, that sensation of someone reaching into his magic, under his skin, digging around inside the core of him. It made him want to wash it out somehow, try to drown out the feeling of the foreign presence with his own magic-- but he couldn't. He couldn't do anything. He could only listen to the silence and the hum of electricity, and his own thoughts and fears and regrets twisting like vipers in his head. And he could sit here, kneel until his legs went numb and his knees began to hurt, and then he slowly, uncomfortably lay down.

First, he lay on his side for a while. Then on his back. On the other side. Turning this way and that on the hard ground of the cage, afraid of getting too close to the electric bars, it took Waver a long, long time to fall asleep. When he woke up, it was the same; he had no way of telling if he'd been asleep for an hour or ten. It was like that every time he managed to doze off, and he lost count. When he was awake, when he couldn't physically sleep any longer, he stared out past the bars until he could make out every corner of the room even in the dimness, every discoloration in the walls, the crack of space between the doorframe and the door. He couldn't feel his fingers. He tried to lay on them or breathe on them to keep warm. Once, he even tried getting close to the electric bars, but he was too afraid to risk it. All the while, Waver tried not to think about what had happened. He tried not to think about his father (dead), or his little sister (missing), or his father's new fiancee (probably also dead), the household staff or groundskeepers (certainly also dead). He tried not to think about what they would do to him, whether anyone would ever come again, or how much his arms ached and his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth and his stomach hurt. He bit at the cut on his lip until it bled again, and again, just for something else to think about.

When the woman knelt by Waver's cage at long last, she would find him facing her and the door as he lay half-curled on his side, one arm tucked awkwardly to pillow his head as well as he could manage. The shirt had torn -- or been torn -- further, and slid all the way down his arms to hang in a rumpled mess of dingy cloth around the obstruction of the cuffs and his hands. His eyes were open, but he made no other move to show that he'd noticed her or heard, except a blink and a slow refocusing of his gaze. Awake, then, and not much else.

[rechaining]

Dawn came. As good as her word, Devyn stayed with Waver throughout the night, sitting and dozing in the opposite bed. When morning arrived, the door opened. She was hardly on her feet before the two guards there were demanding Waver go with them. Mouth set tightly, she roused Waver, and he was no sooner awakened and barely standing that the guards took him from her, their hands on his arms. A third guard kept Devyn from following. "You are needed elsewhere." The tone brooked no argument.

The door closed, leaving the guard and Devyn behind. The other two dragged Waver off.

He was led back down the corridor, back through the winding halls he knew - by color, at least - to go back to the cells. A night's reprieve and no more; he was taken back to one of the interrogation rooms and forced to sit in a chair. Cuffs were placed on his wrists again, the mana immediately stilling in his circuits. A thin cord with living electricity was attached between them. Another band was slipped around his neck, one of the guards - a brusque woman - warning him not to fight them. The cord was threaded through a loop at the front of his new collar, down to the cuffs, closing the circuit in the form of a vile, dangerous pyramid. If he moved his head, his wrists would be tugged, and vice versa.

The guards left him like that, alone in silence, for a time. The insides of the cuffs seemed crueler this time, as if teeth were gnawing into his wrists to sap at his inherent magic, which did not have the time to restore itself from the brutality of the day prior.

[tryhard]

It was a decent night's sleep, at least, a bit of a break. He'd finished his dinner, tried to relax, even relished some time reading until he grew too tired. For a few hours, he didn't feel nearly so much like a prisoner.

Waver had known it wouldn't last. But he hadn't expected what followed.

He was still blinking away sleep when the guards dragged him from the room, barely waiting for him to put his shoes and shirt back on. It happened so quickly. Disoriented with sleep and shock, Waver staggered along with the long strides of the guards, craning his neck to look over his shoulder at Devyn with wide, terrified eyes as the third guard blocked her from coming. They'd never done that before.

Understand what it looks like, Waver. You, your magic unbound, potentially attacking him - and me, hurting him to keep you safe.

This time, Waver had the sense not to try to fight or argue, but he panicked. They left Devyn behind, and he didn't know if she was being taken somewhere else; he didn't have much time to wonder or care. With the frightful experience from yesterday still fresh in his mind, Waver did his best to cooperate and try to prove he wasn't really trying to attack, that he wasn't going to be a threat-- and still they cuffed him, despite what he'd heard Devyn saying last night. Still, the cuffs were the same spelled material that curled around his magical ability like a clamp, like the teeth of a trap closing.

He didn't understand the cord. Or the collar. Waver's first instinct the moment it closed around his neck was to struggle and pull, and his hands twitched, pulse thrumming frantically in his throat as he fought the urge down desperately.

Then, the guards left him like that, bound and locked in, left him alone with his own drumming heartbeat and shallow, frightened gasps filling the ensuing silence. It was a while before he dared to even move, tugging gingerly against the roughness of the cuffs to test how far to cord would go, only to find how restricted his movement really was.

All he could do was wait. Wait, and try not to let the fear provoke him into struggling more. Waver pressed his palms flat on the table to try to ground himself, head dipping slightly forward with the tug of it, and forced himself to breathe.

[rechaining]

An hour passed, perhaps two. The only sound besides his panicked breathing, even alleviated, was the buzzing of the lights. Eventually, there were footsteps and the door opened to two more guards - but the first was the man who had interrogated Waver on his first day, a file in hand. He moved to sit across from him as the door closed and locked, his gaze sharp. He set the file down, opening it.

"You've been cooperative until now, until your little stunt yesterday," he said quietly, every word deliberate. "Your case was under review, now put on hold." The potential for Waver to be allowed to go with the Zhentarim to his home, to show them the path to that they wanted. "Until you prove you can be trusted again...or not."

He turned his hand, showing the glove again. A flick of a finger and the teeth seemed to close in on Waver's wrist, hungry, sharp. "Understand?"

[tryhard]

To Waver, it felt like a very long time.

The initial panic plateaued, started to fade, and eventually dulled out into a pervasive sort of uncertain dread. Alone with his thoughts in the silence, Waver stewed in it.

How long would they leave him here? Where was Devyn, and was she being punished somehow too? And when he caught himself wondering, he wondered also why it even mattered, why he even cared. He couldn't rely on her. He couldn't let himself think he could rely on her--

But she'd helped him. Perhaps she'd even put herself at risk to do so, and now what?

Beneath the fear, another emotion squirmed uncomfortably in the pit of his belly. Guilt. If he hadn't struggled, if he hadn't tried to argue with the guards yesterday when he'd been given some freedoms, if he'd just gone along with it and tried to bring the issue to Devyn first, maybe it would have turned out differently. Maybe he wouldn't be here.

Not that it mattered now.

Though Waver was not tied down to the chair in any way, he didn't try to stand. The time spent tensely hunched over the table, afraid to move his arms too much lest he trigger whatever it was the cord did, made his shoulders and back ache with stiffness. He could sit up or leaned down, carefully. He could lift his head and look around. But the cord would tug if he moved too fast and too far, and something inside the cuffs would bite into his already sore wrists, making him flinch and fall still again immediately. After a few times trying to stretch out the discomfort, Waver gave up and just sat there, elbows on the table, letting his head drop listlessly onto one of his forearms when he got tired of holding it up.

By the time he finally heard footsteps down the hall, Waver was sure he'd been in the tiny room for hours. His pulse sped up at the sound, an uncomfortable surge of relief and sharpened anxiety pushing him to sit up too fast and wince at the tug just as the door opened to admit his captors. Though it had been some time, Waver recognized the man who approached first to set his folder down with a quiet slap against the tabletop. He couldn't help the way his gaze flitted over to the page, trying to make out the upside-down words when it opened.

His eyes snapped back up to the interrogator's face as soon as the man spoke.

"I--" Waver opened his mouth to assure him, to explain the misunderstanding, but the words caught in his throat before he could get more than a single syllable out. It twisted midway through the word into a sharp, shocked gasp. His hands jerked up from the tabletop as if it had burned him, but of course he couldn't move away from the cuffs clamped tight around his wrists.

Waver's eyes lifted from the glove to the man's face, watery and wide.

"Y-yes."

[rechaining]

His eyes narrowed on Waver's features. "Good." The twinge of electricity stopped with just the barest motion of his finger, and he took a seat across from him. Briefly, he glanced towards the door, past the other guard, but no one else came. His gaze shifted back towards Waver. The file, opened now, allowed him to produce a series of pictures - the first a set of his father's basement in the manor, and the trouble they seemed to be having breaching its defenses.

The second set of pictures was of Kayneth's office at the university, which seemed to have produced no real leads for them for the time.

There seemed, too, to be a third set, which he picked up and set aside, face down. His eyes settled on Waver's face. "How aware are you of the defenses your father made in the manor?" he asked. The tone was not accusatory. "Or were these other secrets he kept from you?"

[tryhard]

It was difficult to focus when he was scared, disoriented and aching. Waver swallowed hard, trying to settle his racing heart.

He took a few moments to look carefully at the pictures, less because he needed to examine them in detail and more to give himself time to breathe and formulate a response without his voice shaking.

"I'm aware they exist, and some of the general shielding spells, inside the bounded field." They'd clearly broken through that to get in, that night. Waver pressed his palms to the table again, leaning forward and staring down at the photos.

"I wasn't allowed in the basement, or in his office when it was locked, but... I have some guesses. Methods I know he favors-- favored."