Dellen waited to see how Arlo and his other captor would respond.

There was a tense interplay before the two nodded and left.

The tallest guard at the post looked at Dellen, even with the mask on, he was visibly bored, “One night here will cure you of the temptation to break our rules.”

“I was just climbing the stairs,” Dellen protested.

“Why? What duties had you out of your quarters after two in the morning?” The guard asked, his tone made it clear that Dellen’s answer was immaterial. “Electrical Aether, we have a wet holding cell for you.”

Dellen’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “A… wet holding cell?” His eyes traveled down to the guard’s chest. The symbol there looked about as complicated as the symbol on Arlo’s chest, Third Trinity he decided.

Three guards instead of two, and armed with more than just Aether. Dellen was unsure whether he would rather get hit by an Aether attack or by a sword, but either way, his situation was worse. Meekly he allowed himself to be pointed down the hallway, with the guard following just over his shoulder.

“What time will I be let out of the cell?”

“Questions are not encouraged, nor is speaking unless you have been asked a direct question.” The guard said in a reprimanding tone.

Dellen held in a grunt.

Gilgamesh did not feel a similar need to hold in his opinions, “How did you manage to spend more than a day here?”

Dellen continued without answering. The dripping sound that had caught his attention when Arlo had first brought them down grew louder. They arrived at a narrow wooden door with a small square cut out of it. The wood was wet. Not just damp, but swollen and dripping.

“What is this?” Dellen muttered to himself, luckily he was quiet enough that the guard either did not hear him, or felt no need to reprimand him again.

Another guard walking behind him unlatched the door and picked it up, revealing the room beyond.

The room past the door was unlit and dark, but the little he could see was flooded with water. At a guess, it was only an inch or so deep, but Dellen was looking at a stone room with water running down the walls with a submerged floor, and a wooden door.

“Go inside.”

“You’re not going to go in there, are you?” Gilgamesh asked.

Dellen looked at the water-laden room of misery and decided to act. Ball lightning flared to life in each of his palms and shot from his hands at the face of the guard with two free hands.

The guard deflected both ball lightnings with the flat of his sword before backhanding him across the face. The back of his hand crashed into the mask, and split his lip. Dellen lifted off of the ground, pulled up by his neck and jaw, hurled through the narrow door. His shins slammed against the frame, spinning him in the air. Still reacting, his arms came up to protect his face just in time to cushion his head from slamming into the ground through the scant inches of water.

Pain ran up and down his legs, over his face, and through his arms. Dellen lay stunned in the water, a groan escaping bloody lips. Water soaked into his clothes. He was just aware of the sound of a sodden wooden latch being forced back into place.

“Dellen, are you alive?” Gilgamesh asked.

Dellen groaned in response.

Gilgamesh floated up to the small hole in the door and looked inside, “Dellen?”

“Yes?” Dellen said from the ground, hands on his face.

“You seem to get hurt an awful lot,” Gilgamesh noted.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Dellen forced out, waiting for the pain to fade.

“Did you get a good look at the door? It’s wooden, and the latch holding it in place is set into stone, there are no hinges or metal anywhere… and this is a thick, heavy wood, I don’t think you can break through it.”

Dellen had seen the door, that was why he had attacked the guard and been swatted down. The pain was receding enough for him to appreciate how cold the water was. The chill felt good on his injuries, soothing his face, arms, legs, and neck, but he could already imagine that the temperature was going to be a problem soon.

He sat up and felt a fresh set of aches assault his senses.

“Any ideas?” He asked Gilgamesh.

“Don’t get caught next time?”

Dellen did not want there to be a next time. If there was, he would at least bring along some kind of weapon that he could use. Something more useful than the buttons Miss Thornbrook had given him.

A shiver ran along his steelskin.

He looked around his cell, the only light came from the small hole in the door. His eyes were adjusting, albeit it slowly, the room was narrow, there was perhaps enough room for him to lie down, diagonally, if he was willing to stay prone in the water.

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Dellen started to pull himself up, but his legs wobbled beneath his weight, and his arms shook when he tried to push up.

“Maybe you should just sit down for a while.”

Dellen returned to the floor and hung his head, letting his face throb. “Maybe I should,” he agreed, he felt exhausted from the brief altercation, his body and all of his limbs felt heavy.

“I can’t stay in this cold water,” he said at last.

“I don’t know if you can get out of the cell.”

Dellen pulled up his robe, and felt for the bag Miss Thornbrook had given him, there were dozens of buttons in it. He dumped out the wet bag, spilling the buttons all over the floor, then he dropped the bag, letting it crumple in the water.

“What are you doing?” Gilgamesh asked.

Dellen ignored him and focused on his Spark Core. His core spun, but even his Aether felt sluggish. He pushed Aether below his waist, and spread evenly through his crossed legs, then he pushed down with a magnetic field.

He slammed into the ceiling.

“Dellen? Dellen? Dellen?”

Dellen’s head hurt. Another groan came out of his mouth. Shivers wracked his body.

“Oh good, you are alive.”

“What happened?” He asked, the other pains across his body made their presence known. He was lying face-up in the water. Anything more than moving his fingers and his toes seemed like too much.

“You sat up, then you shot toward the ceiling, slammed your head into the stone and collapsed on the floor. I think you’ve been unconscious about an hour, maybe two, it’s hard to tell in here.”

An hour or two, Dellen spared a thought for Finnegan and Miss Thornbrook. Waiting without knowing was hard, they must have all been worried. There was someone else with them, he got stuck trying to remember who. A name came to him, Eliza, Eliza was the other person with them.

“It’ll be dawn soon,” he said, forcing the words through a jaw that kept trying to clench.

“What?” Gilgamesh said. Dellen realized that Gilgamesh had been speaking the entire time and he had not heard him or responded.

“Sorry, still getting my bearings,” he mumbled.

“You’re right, it will be dawn soon, is that relevant?”

“Breakfast,” Dellen explained.

“I’m not sure this is the kind of place where they bring you breakfast,” Gilgamesh said doubtfully.

“No,” Dellen said, “They’ll be serving breakfast, the syndicate will be waking up soon.”

“You mean the order,” Gilgamesh corrected him.

“I mean the order,” Dellen said with a tired nod. Another shiver rippled through his torso. His steelskin felt clammy, except where it ached. “I need to get dry.”

“Think you can do the levitation trick, without slamming into the ceiling?”

“I don’t know,” he did not think he should be using Aether at all, his thoughts felt sluggish, but being cold was not going to help. He turned his attention to his Spark Core and pulled on the Aether. It circulated through his legs again. This time he pushed down with a much weaker magnetic field. His body wobbled, and rose out of the water, with his robe still trailing into the liquid below. He became aware of the mask on his face, it felt cold on his stiff cheeks.

His robe was a sodden, uncomfortable mess, clinging to his skin. He pulled it up, over his head. After a moment’s consideration, he dropped the robe in the water beneath him, and took off his mask, dropping it in his lap. Immediately he felt better without the weight on his body, or on his face.

The drop in weight from his robe had him bob an inch higher into the air. Dellen could feel the myriad buttons dumped on the floor, they had either been caught in a notch, or pushed to a corner of the room, creating eleven stable points for him to push off of.

“What are you going to do now?”

Dellen’s teeth chattered, “Dry off?”

“It’s cold and damp in there, and the air isn’t moving, you need a source of heat to dry off.”

“That might be a problem.”

“What happens to iron if you push enough Electrical Aether into it?”

“It heats up,” Dellen said, “I suppose I could find one of those buttons and use it to warm myself.” He reached down to find one of the buttons he could feel stuck in a notch in the floor. His fingers went through cold water and found the button, but it would not budge. He smiled in spite of himself, he was holding it in place with a magnetic field. Of course it was stuck in place.

Dellen pushed himself up to a standing position and released his magnetic field, then he tried to pick up the button again, this time his fingers went through the cold water and he picked up the button on the first try. He cupped the button in his palm, and created a small magnetic field beneath it, anchored to his palm. The button rose up.

Dellen then pushed Electrical Aether into the button, increasing the flow bit by bit. At first there was no visible effect, then he felt heat radiating from the iron. A truer smile crossed his face, this time making him wince as it pulled on his split lip. The heat felt luxurious. Dellen increased the flow of Electrical Aether. The metal stayed dull, but it was on the verge of being too warm, even at a distance from his skin.

Half an hour passed with Dellen moving the iron around his body, using the heat to dry his clothes.

“What about the robes?” Gilgamesh asked.

The robes were still cold and wet in the water beneath him. He supposed he could dry them, though he was not sure if there would be any benefit. Dellen frowned, “I might dry them, I’m not sure, in the meantime,” he snapped the fingers on his left hand, and a dancing spark of electricity appeared above his fingertips throwing light and crackling shadows. It was the first time he felt strong enough to just look around the room.

His circumstances were not much improved by the added light. It was a small cell, perhaps six feet diagonally, and the walls were stone slick with water. He looked around, trying to find a drain, but as far as he could tell, the water just seeped out, gradually.

“Are you getting tired using that much Aether?”

“From the Aether? No.” He shook his head, “From getting attacked, then hitting my head and not sleeping? Yes, very much so.” The Aether was heavier for him, moving more slowly, but he could manage. The lack of sleep was going to be a problem that had to be managed, just like the cold had to be managed.

“Well, what are you going to do?”

Dellen looked around unsure, “I’m going to need to sleep.”

“What if you heated up the water?”

“What if I did?” He asked, feeling confused.

“You need to sleep, what if you heat up the water and try to sleep lying against the wall. If the water is warm enough it will take hours to be cold enough to be dangerous to you again.”

“Sleep in the water?” Dellen asked, a frown of distaste on his lips.

“It’s that or be useless when someone comes to find you.”

Grumbling to himself, Dellen released the button he had been using to dry himself, letting it fall into the water, hissing as it hit the surface. He then created a magnetic field in his hand that let him pull all of the buttons in the cell into a single pile. He considered the walls. The ‘driest’ of them was the door itself. With a sigh he split the buttons into two piles, one to each side of the door, he then, used magnetic fields to pick up each stack of buttons and fed Aether into them.

His progress was slow, but the stacks warmed. He knew he could have brought them all up to a fierce glowing red, or even white, but that would have made the cell so hot that he might have cooked himself in the steam. Once the buttons were warm, he lowered them into the water and kept his hands just above them.

He was careful not to warm them so much that bubbles formed around them, he wanted the water to warm, not to boil. The sapping chill faded from the room, and the water began to feel tepid rather than frigid. Dellen then sat between the piles in his freshly dried clothes, replacing the silver mask on his lap, and continued to push Electrical Aether into each of the piles

“I’m making progress,” he said to Gilgamesh.