Jayne crouched in the corner of her cell as she ignored the ever-present warning notification she had been dealing with for the last month.
Warning: Your mana has been sealed.
Warning: Your mana has been sealed.
Warning: Your mana has been sealed.
Warning: Your mana has been sealed.
Her cell was barely large enough for a full-grown man to lay down flat in and it reeked of unwashed bodies and waste. Jayne did her best to stay clean. She couldn’t stand being dirty, at least not to this degree. The dirt and grime of a hard day in the stables back home or digging through her father's mineral collection was fine, maybe even comforting but the stench of sweat filth was a whole other matter.
No natural light made its way into her cell and what little unnatural light there was came from what Jayne suspected was a rune light on the wall outside of her cell block. It was barely enough to see her own hands let alone navigate her cell with any grace.
Jayne still wore the academy dress she had been taken in. In part she saw it as a mercy since the other prisoners in the nearby cells wore nothing, but burlap rags caked in filth. None of them were the talkative types and most only made a sound when they were screaming and raving through episodes of madness. Jayne had tried to speak with them a few times to try and figure out where she was.
They weren’t a lot of help.
Dhinir’s thugs would be here soon. Every day before she was given her meal of gruel they took her blood. Obviously, she had never let them take it easily but with his mana sealed she had little choice but to give in eventually though she kicked every shin and spat in every face she could.
Why they needed her blood she didn’t know. She was aware of several arrays that could use a person’s blood for tracking purposes or debilitating effects but none of those were worth doing if you had the target in a cell. Jayne had asked why several times between kicks to the groin and shins, but the stupid Dhinir brutes wouldn’t tell her. She doubted the barbaric idiots had any idea in any case, but it was worth the attempt.
For now, however, that was at the back of her mind. In the corner of her cell, she used her dress to conceal her only speck of hope. In the dark stone of her cell’s floor was a tiny square. At a casual glance there was nothing to see, if of course you could ignore the near pitch-black lighting but under closer inspection and appropriate lighting an observant person would notice the strange cleanliness of the space.
Every day since she had been imprisoned the square had changed. The first day it had flashed a brilliant silver startling here from her crying. The second it had displayed a single rune she had recognized from the holy text of Dhoerin, “Patience.”
At first, she thought it was a cruel trick but every day since then it had begun to cycle through multiple runes. They were messages, telling her of her family.
“Parent. Taken. Sibling Safe.”
“Parent. Capital.”
“Sibling. Unknown.”
Jayne had tried to somehow communicate with who was sending the messages, but she had no idea how to use the strange method of communication. She didn’t know which sibling the messenger meant. Jayne desperately wanted to know if Kal and Lillian were safe, but the messenger didn’t clarify or repeat its previous messages.
After the first messages they only became more vague.
“Hope.”
“Trust.”
“Safety.”
Jayne didn’t know whether the obscurity of the messages was some kind of manipulation or simply a limitation of the process, but she prayed it was the latter. Seeing the message each day had become a ritual of solidarity.
But today, it was late.
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Normally it was the first thing she saw each day as she awoke and while those in nearby cells gibbered in their sleep but today it never came, “Come on! Please say something…”
Tears came to her eyes unbidden. Maybe something more important had come up… Or whoever was there had simply grown bored of speaking with her, “Snap out of it Jayne! You’re being foolish. You don’t need some stupid runes to survive here!”
The sound of the door leading out of the cell block slamming against the first cell’s door startled her, making her step away from the corner of her cell. In a rush she dropped her water bucket on top of the square and crouched down in the opposite corner as the sound of stomping armored boots drew closer.
Tears came to Jayne’s eyes as the blinding blue light of an opal lamp filled the cell block. Jayne’s cell door was made of rare quality wood and reinforced with bands of equally strong metal. About a foot above where her eyes would be if she was standing on her toes was a small grill that now bled the light of the lamp into her cell.
The footsteps came to her room first, ignoring all the other cells as they always did, and her cell door swung open with a crash. Jayne couldn’t help but flinch away from the noise and the blinding light as a large man stepped into the room.
[Jenkins Royd | Jailer 65 | Human]
“Arm, girl! Or we will take it from her neck!” Jenkin’s said through gritted teeth. The man hated the daily routine of taking her blood and not because he felt bad.
“Fuck you!” Jayne spat and jabbed her middle finger toward his face.
“Fine!” Jenkins stepped into the cell and backhanded her hard enough that she blacked out for a moment. A flash of golden light filled the room and Jayne felt her wrists heat up as the bastard’s skill activated as it always did, wrapping her arms in conjured chains.
Jayne kicked at the man’s legs as he drew closer and drew a large syringe from his belt, but he ignored them besides a few irritated grunts. His rough callused had pushed down hard on the side of her head, pressing it painfully against the cell floor as he slowly inserted the syringe.
Tears of pain and hopelessness poured from her eyes as she felt the sting of her blood being drawn. She shivered and her heart froze as her eyes fell upon the water bucket covering the still dark square.
Jenkins pulled out the syringe and shoved her into the wall, “What the?” The man looked around the cell for a moment, but Jayne didn’t have energy or will to hurl any more insults his way and just watched him shrug and leave the cell.
Jayne simply lay on the floor of her cell for several minutes as the waves of dizziness passed. She kept staring at the patch of darkness where the bucket was, wanting to check the square but also dreading how she would feel if it still remained dark.
Gingerly she crawled over to the bucket by feel more than sight and flipped it over, careless of the water she was wasting. Silver light filled the cell but this time she felt no reprieve as she read the rune, and the heart aching dread that had settled on her shoulders only hardened.
“Problem. Five.”
Quotz shivered as she felt the restraints of dominating power harden around the edge of her domain. It felt as if cold iron tightened around her heart with every moment it stayed in place, but it was a discomfort she would have to endure.
The silver ambient light of her domain flickered and dimmed. Her will, forced to reconfigure the demi-plane’s structure to extend its life span due to its new prison. Why Dhinir had bothered with such a measure since Kalum Lesta’s return she did not know. Now they were all blind to the goings on of the world.
Quotz smiled at the thought of Fyborh creating a ring of such power. He was always one to come up with potent creations at the most ridiculous time and under the strangest of circumstances.
Rising from her seat on the balcony, Quotz walked slowly through the twisting halls of her library. Her reconstruction had shrunken it significantly giving it a more mundane appearance, but its appearance was not what steadied her. It was in these halls Dhoerin, Fyborh, and herself had discussed their plans to secure the existence of their universe but before that it was also the place had spent so much time learning of the threads of all.
At a space about halfway down the main passage between the shelves lay a space as mundane as the rest but as Quotz’s foot fell softly to the floor the library changed and she found herself standing in the small dining room of her past. Sunlight shined through open windows and the sounds of birds chirping over the constant bustle of a town market.
Quotz took a seat at the table and leaned back in her chair, taking the last place where everything had been right. Friends seeking greater heights together and when they could not do it together, they were sure to meet whenever possible. The table itself was of simple craftsmanship and the chairs were the same kind anyone could find in the taverns across Va’nir. Dhinir, Uton, and Canmis didn’t like their meeting place but the only way to pin Fyborh and Dhoerin down was to promise Fyborh food from the chef here and bribe Dhoerin with the local alcohol.
Quotz sighed and pulled her mind away from memories of a better time and focused on the now. She waved a delicate hand over the table in front of her and a complicated pattern of runes speed across the surface of the table in a flash of silver. No more than a second later Quotz felt another enter the room.
“So! Things are going as badly as could be expected!” Dhoerin said with false cheer as he threw himself into the chair beside her, “Dearest Brother has locked my domain up tighter than one of your scholars nickers.”
Quotz frowned at Dhoerin’s choice of words but nodded, “We expected this. What of Canmis?”
Dhoerin shrugged, “She got the same treatment as far as I can tell. I wasn’t able to stroll in as I usually would. Earae too.”
“That is good. Dhinir grows paranoid,” Quotz nodded.
“Damn right he is, he cleansed his own fucking people! Did you detect where the mana ended up?”
Quotz nodded carefully, “Yes. It is as we feared. He has diverted it away from its path back to the Core Forge. I suspected as much when he waited for Kalum Lesta’s ring to be in play before attempting such a blatant act. Your spy is safe?”
Dhoerin shrugged again, “Not sure. Leaving his previous post was a risk but I trust the man would be able to make the adjustments. Now that the ring is tampering with out sight, I will not be able to contact him for some time, but he knows his duty,” Dhoerin rolled his shoulders backward as if trying to scratch an itch Quotz doubted he actually felt, “You said Kalum Lesta came to you through some kind of system guidance right? Do you think he trusted you?”
Quotz almost smiled, “No. Not at all.”
Dhoerin frowned, “That’s going to make things a real pain, but he will figure it out soon enough. What was he like? I kept my gaze off him ever since that final day,” His gaze fell up on Fyborh’s chair.
“He is a lot like him. Though I don’t believe I ever felt Fyborh angry with us,” Quotz said, her tone low, “I see why they got along.”
Dhoerin turned away from Fyborh’s chair, his usual humor dulled somewhat, “Yeah, well being like Fyborh isn’t exactly healthy,” In the next instant Dhoerin was gone, leaving Quotz alone once more.