Convulsing as the spell crawled across her body, One tasted blood. She had bitten either her tongue again, or another spot on her cheek. She didn’t know which at the moment; she would check later.

The manacles were cutting into her wrists, another set raked her ankles, the small oddly angled blades forged into the insides of the devices cutting into her flesh exactly as they had been designed to do. Deep enough to cause pain, and to draw enough blood to activate their enchantments, the Weeping Wives were a common tool found in slavers’ bags. The various enchantments would spend energy specifically to create intense pain. The spells wrought into the metal would drink her blood to renew themselves and drive the next activation.

The lessons they taught would be worked into the flesh of those held in these bonds over, and over. Again, and again. The lessons these things were made to teach were pain and docility. One could ignore the first, and would never be the second unless it suited her.

It didn’t currently suit her, not at all.

If you didn’t know how these spells used in enchanted tools worked on the body, and how the magic would deliver ever diminishing returns as time went on, as a person so entrapped, you might quickly be cowed into subservience. One was determined to not end this journey wearing these manacles. One knew how they worked. One also knew how they would fail.

The lightning spells were getting weaker each time they activated. Weeks of trial and error had shown her the trend of diminishing force at each activation. She worked herself into a daily routine of waking, struggling, pain, blood, and oblivion. Repetition. Her captors would give her a meager ration of water, and some hard bread randomly in the cycle. Every few days, they gave One a scrap of dried meat. Once even a bowl of broth; that had been a frustrating day. She knew they were not being kind in any way, they were just trying to keep her healthy enough to sell when they reached a city in the Kingdom of Salmet.

One didn’t know which city they were headed to now, though when the caravan she had joined originally started out, the intended city had been Hrishak. They could be headed almost anywhere, now.

One gritted her teeth, and braced her feet against the boards that made up the left side of the foul smelling little wagon she was stowed in, her neck and shoulders pressed to the opposite side, and slowly began to pull on the chains.

A sparking crackle, followed by body twisting spasms.

After the initial crushing pain of the spell’s charge, the slow caress of electricity through her body did nothing to dissuade One from her course of inquiry; pulling on the chains that held her in the back of the dark interior of this odious caravan wagon would drive the sharp edges of the manacle blades into her skin, she would bleed, the lightning effect of the spell would make her collapse, jerk and flail involuntarily. And when she was able, One would repeat the entire process.

One knew how long the caravan across the desert to Hrishak would take, and knew how many days she had been on the road before her hired crew had shown their true purpose before they betrayed her; but for all she knew, they could be headed now to Saadj. She didn’t know.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Now the days were a monotonous repeating set of still images in her mind: her lying in the dark, her pulling the chains to activate the spell, her body in pain, her sleeping, her being given water enough to live, and almost enough food for that same purpose, her pulling the chains to activate the spell, her body in pain, her sleeping, her pulling the chains to activate the spell, her body in pain, her sleeping, her pulling the chains to activate the spell, her sleeping, the light in the wagon shifting throughout the day.

“Even in the best of enchanted devices, every activation yields a lesser result. You either renew the enchantments, or in time you will have an item that has returned to mundanity.” her learned masters had taught One during her years at the Golden Spires. “The greater the output of the enchantments, the faster they will lose their potency. Even those cunning devices made to renew their own enchantments must flag and fail eventually. It is only a matter of time, if you do not reinvest in the workings of High Art. As yet, the only items immune from this rule are those few that take life. A spelled sword will use the death of its victims to completely renew the enchantments placed upon it, and thus the same with any tool so crafted.” Mistress Illia had stressed that devices like self counting abaci, ever-inked quills, and various enchanted measuring devices often used by the King’s many Factors and sundry bean-counters, wouldn’t have the enchantments renewed by the extinguishing of lives, or the eating of souls, but would merely be renewed by an Apprentice as part of a Pride’s weekly duty list, or the items would just be replaced. “Who would want a compass that always measured true angles, but only if you beat a man to death with it once a year?” the Mistress had asked the class one afternoon.

One, she was willing to admit to herself, was never the best student. Being keen never brought good students any real measure of success that she had ever witnessed, and so One had striven, instead for the proficiencies that would give her the positions of power and comfort she wanted. But now, covered in sweat and filth, in the back of a wagon that stank of her failures, and possibly dead goats, she was doing everything her memories would allow her to do to escape, and hopefully get herself back to a life of leisure and possible wealth.

She recalled what she could of the lessons. The secret, aside from learning to pick locks, and having access to lock picking tools, was going to be the Magical Law of Diminishing Returns. As long as these restraints had enchantments that would be reset by any other means than the letting of the last drop of her blood, she could wear them down to nothing. Given time. If she didn’t die first.

That would be a cruel irony. She thought acidly.

As she saw it, her options were: the blood caked restraints would break, she would die trying to break the restraints, she would electrocute herself into a permanent state of idiocy trying to break the restraints, OR, and this was important for One to remember, she would reclaim her freedom.

Or One would be sold as a slave. If they learned she had been Mage Trained, they might kill her, but would most likely hobble her using a set of cuffs, much like the chains that now held her, would make her only able to use her magic at the order of whoever held the control ring to the cuffs. She had to hold onto hope that these slavers didn’t grab her for her Talent, but for her being young, female, wealthy, and alone.

She pulled harder upon the chains, the muscles in her jaw tightening as One both heard and felt the crackling of electricity flash from the manacles straight through her flesh to her bones.