ruinations | (no subject)

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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.

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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?"

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."

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."

"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?"

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?!"

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."

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."

"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."

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..."

"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!"

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.

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.

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."

"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.

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.

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.

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.

The woman met his gaze after a time, waiting for a response that did not come. She settled to better sit before him, her eyes wandering his form and frowning after a time. "I have food and water," she told him quietly, her voice gentle.

It didn't seem as if she expected much of a response to Waver, as she continued on even without a word being spared to her. She set a hand down in front of the cage and tapped at the concrete there. "I have to open this up to give it to you, all right? You can run if you want but the door is locked. You won't be able to go anywhere." Her eyes were on his. "I want to unlock your hands, too, so you can eat. If you try to hurt me, though, I will hurt you back. Understand? I don't want to do that...but I will if you try." Every word was terribly calm coming from her and she maintained eye contact throughout the one-sided conversation, waiting for any sign of movement or understanding from Waver.

Waver's gaze drifted to the tray at the words 'food and water' with a flicker of understanding, though he didn't feel relieved. There was a vague recognition in the back of his mind that food and water meant they likely weren't going to kill him, at least not immediately, and he hadn't been left in this cage to die if they'd sent someone to check on him. But other than that, he couldn't find the capacity to care very much either way. Even the thought of water didn't make him feel thirsty anymore, though he knew he needed it. His mouth felt too stuck to open.

So he only nodded. After a few moments, he moved to sit up slowly, pushing himself up on his bound hands.

She lifted a hand and seemed to gesture at the side panels. A device over hand in the form of a glove seemed to be what controlled the cage mechanism, and the electric bounded field turned off. Its dimensions, too, changed to allow Waver for more room to move. The woman reached for him with her bare hand, coaxing for him to come closer. "Here, let me see those." Once close enough, she took his hands in hers so she could look at the structure of the bindings, and she gave him a long look. "You need to cooperate, all right?" she asked again. And without waiting for his affirmation, she used the glove to power off the rod binding his hands and made to unhook it, pulling it away that he might be able to move his hands.

The cuffs around his wrists remained. His magic was still locked away despite the removal of the rod, which was placed to one side. With her other hand, she grabbed the tray and brought it over, though she gave Waver room if he wanted to stand or at least move out of the cage. She had offered, after all.

Her red eyes followed his vacant expression, catching sight of the mark on his lip which he'd nibbled open more than once. "Does it hurt?" she asked softly.

As soon as the electric barriers powered off, Waver scooted tentatively closer, extending his arms so the stranger could remove the cuffs. She did not. Still, she disassembled enough of the mechanism that his hands could be apart, and the shirt could come off the rest of the way. Waver pulled his arms back against his chest once it was done, fingers curling over and rubbing at his wrists even with the metal bands still on them. He didn't try to use any magic.

When the tray settled before him, he just looked at it. He did not move to stand, either.

The question made him look back up. Although he didn't realize what exactly the woman was referring to, he nodded, the gesture almost grudging, suspicious. His lip hurt. His arms hurt. His head hurt. Everything hurt, in some way, a persistent, dull ache from the stress, the cramped quarters, dehydration, all of it. What a stupid question.

"I can loosen those a little," she said, about the cuffs when he was rubbing at his wrists. "But only a little." Her look was thoughtful rather than serious, and she opened a hand again for him, gesturing for him to come just a little closer. With one hand, she pulled the tunic down from her shoulder and handed it to him. "Here. You're probably cold." The other one she plucked away and folded up, setting it to the side.

As Waver allowed her the chance to look at his face, she gave it some careful scrutiny. "It's pretty swollen," she murmured, and held out her bare hand, palm up. Each step was deliberate, careful, coaxing. Waver could refuse if he wanted to. That was the point. A little control put back into his grasp could do wonders...if done right.

"I can heal it, if you want."

But only if he wanted, if he felt it was safe to allow her to.

Still just listening in silence, Waver watched her. His eyes had focused more in the minutes she'd come into the room, sharply following every movement now, while his own remained slow, tense and careful. For a moment, he considered the suggestion, eyes locked on the woman's, noting the strange color. When she offered the clothing, he took it, hesitated, but did not put it on. Instead, he let the tunic fall across his lap and proffered his wrists once more.

Until she'd loosened the cuffs as promised, Waver didn't even acknowledge the other question, but finally, with effort, he opened his mouth. The word was barely a whisper.

"Why?"

The cuffs were loosened only enough that they could not be pulled from his wrists and down off of his hands. But his circulation would be better, she assumed, and she sat back when he finally managed to make better eye contact with her. She lifted a slim brow. "Why? What do I have to gain from leaving you hurting?" There was a lofty lift to her shoulders, but the set of her lips was severe. "It's messy. They accomplished little from hurting you - and now you're less inclined to open up." She scooted away so she could nudge the tray between them, to give him some semblance of space.

"You didn't choose what your father did but you're the one suffering the consequences of it. Isn't that enough?"

As soon as she loosened the metal bands, Waver withdrew his hands toward himself again, and returned to rubbing his irritated wrists, testing how much space was between the metal and his skin. Now, he could slide a fingertip beneath either cuff at least, trying to soothe the soreness.

He didn't look up again until the mention of his father. Waver drew his knees up, curling his arms around them, but he did not hold the woman's gaze, instead staring past her at the door.

"You killed him," he pointed out quietly. Wasn't that a consequence? Waver still didn't even know who these people were or what they wanted, but the stranger was right about at least one thing: Waver had definitely held no sway over his father's decisions.