(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

[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."