I had some notion that I was being spoken to, but I was in no state to respond at all. My head was filled with a dull throbbing pain that wasn't going away, and the rest of my body felt so heavy that I couldn't move it at all. When someone started to move me around it took a shamefully long amount of time for me to realize it. I tried to resist but I had no energy. I wasn't even sure how I was conscious, I checked my heads-up display and it showed that I was not only out of blue energy, but entirely out of stamina as well. I felt my body flop down onto a hard surface of some kind, then nothing much more happened besides a sensation of being shaken and far away noises. I lost what little consciousness I had again after that.
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A groaning noise met my ears, and I realized I was conscious again. The groan sounded out a second time and I felt my throat vibrating, which made me realize that I was making it. The groan cut out and I inhaled, then opened my eyes. A skull-splitting flash of pain shot through the back of my eyeballs, making me shut my eyelids tight to avoid it. From what little I saw I knew I was indoors, and I suspected that the ceiling of the room I was in was made of stone. This is beginning to feel oddly familiar, I grumbled. After taking a few more deep breaths, I checked my body to make sure all my parts were still attached, then slowly opened my left eye to get a visual on my situation.
The ceiling was indeed made of stone as I had thought. It was mortar and rock, supported by some wooden beams, and I saw a wall that looked the same. Very slowly I opened my right eye, then traced around the room. I was on the floor of what was unmistakably a prison cell. The front of the cell had iron bars and a primitive locking door, the back had a cheap-looking wooden bed with a mattress on it, and in the back left corner there was a hole in the floor with a small wooden lip built over it for the disposal of waste. At least this one has somewhere to defecate, I sighed. The only light in the cell was coming in from lanterns hung in the hallway. Three other cells were visible, all empty.
I pushed myself up to my feet, once again ignoring my body's protests and copious pain, then walked over to the bed and sat down upright on it. My heads-up display still showed that I had virtually no blue energy available, in addition to showing that I was severely malnourished and under thirty percent of my peak stamina. How did I end up this debilitated? I wondered, Sure, I nearly died, but I nothing I did should have depleted this much of my nutritional stores. Out of curiosity I reached out to the wall and found a sharp spot, then made a small cut on my palm. I felt a tingle, rather than a burning pain, and the cut healed at such a slow rate that it took nearly a minute to close up entirely.
How was he so strong? I asked myself as I laid down on the bed. Now that I had calmed down and was in a safe place, I began to mentally review what had happened with Yaavety and tried to make sense of it. That must have been force magic, I concluded, He threw me around like I weighed nothing. The knife too, it stopped like it hit something, but there wasn't an impact or a deflection. He caught it in the middle of his neck. I hissed and shook my head when I remembered that I didn't even try to burn him with heat magic until later in the encounter, even though he had been in range. I need to remember to use all of my tools in combat, especially when I'm losing like that, I thought.
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Sometime later I was asleep again, resting in a half-dream where I was thinking about what to do next in my prison cell. All of a sudden a rushing cold washed over me and I snapped awake, nearly throwing myself out of bed in surprise and inhaling enough water to send me into a coughing fit. Outside my cell stood two guards, one male, and one female. The male had a bucket in his hands and a toothy grin on his face, while the female wore a scowl. Both were blonde and red-eyed, and both looked to be the same height.
“Get up,” the woman demanded. My temper, rather my body's temper, flared. I fought it back down, then met the woman's eyes.
“Was the water really necessary?” I asked. “I'm thirsty, I could have used it.” The presence of water had in fact triggered my body's thirst and hunger, which was quickly growing.
“Plenty of water soaked in those sheets,” the woman spat, “you can suck it out of there if you want it. Get up and present yourself.” I stood up and wiped my face off with my right hand. As it ran over the ivory bumps, new shots of pain dug their way about under my skin. I need to get these implants out, I knew immediately, they're probably hurting my ability to heal because I'm so weak.
“Where am I?” I asked. The male guard walked off and the female guard sized me up.
“East Vehrehr Constabulary Department,” the woman said, tapping a medallion on her chest. I noticed that her armor looked cleaner than the few other guards I had seen. “Now who are you and why shouldn't I have you beaten until you tell me what happened in that alley we found you in?” she snapped.
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“Why am I in custody?” I asked, ignoring her question entirely. The woman smacked the bars of the cell with a closed fist, causing them to ring out.
“I'm the one asking the questions!” she snapped. “Who are you?”
“Am I free to leave?” I asked. I felt a twinge of enjoyment when the woman gritted her teeth and swore under her breath.
“No,” she growled, “you're locked up because you fit the exact description of some vagrant who was threatening people with a knife yesterday. The same knife we found on you covered in blood, by the way, meaning you stabbed someone with it.”
“It was my blood,” I replied.
“Sure it was,” the woman retorted sarcastically. Right, there's no way they could tell anyway, I thought, though I suppose that's fortunate for me since a DNA test would be troublesome. “You also look very similar to the descriptions of another man we've been looking for. Tall, darker skin, black hair, weird accent. You have anything to say about that?” the woman prodded.
“I've met plenty of people fitting that description,” I replied.
“Cut the shit,” the woman snapped, rapping the bars again with her fist, “the other man we're looking for is suspected of at least one murder. He's an associate of the Hatchet Crew and has been seen with Koylzmeyl Zae'ey'yaob, a well-known thief and general piece of trash. You wouldn't happen to know anything about him, would you?” I can't tell if she is seeing through my disguise or not, I grumbled to myself.
“Sorry,” I replied, “I'm so hungry that I'm finding it hard to think about anything. Do you have any food?” The woman scowled at me and for a moment I thought she might come into the cell and try to attack me. In my weakened state, I doubted that I could fight her off, considering that she would heal rapidly and apparently I wouldn't. Instead, the woman turned on her heel and stomped out of the room without another word.
I tried to lay back down on the bed to conserve my strength, but it was soaked and disgusting from the water that had been thrown on it. Instead, I found a dry spot on the floor and curled up there to rest. It's strange how similarly these people behave to the law enforcement figures that I'm more accustomed to, I thought, I suppose certain things must either be universal or a natural result of the human psyche. My stomach growled and vibrated so forcefully that it hurt, and I fought down the hunger again.
At least an hour passed with no further visits from anyone. As I lay motionless on the floor, a strange smell reached my nose. It was something in between stale bread and grass, and it was coming from somewhere in the cell. Unable to fight my stomach any further, I pushed myself back to my feet and began sniffing around. To my horror, the smell was coming from the mattress. Thoughts of bacterial infections and other such ailments flashed into my mind, but the urge to eat from my stomach was too powerful. Before I knew it I found myself splitting the fabric cover open and spilling the contents.
The bed was stuffed with grass of some kind, but not the normal grass that was common outdoors. Instead, the grass was tubular, and the water had softened it to the point that it was floppy and pliable. What should have been leaves coming from the stems instead turned into wispy strands of plant material that resembled coarse cotton. I brought one of the strands to my nose, confirming that it was what was creating the food-like smell, then took a bite before I could stop myself.
The texture of the plant was awful, like rubber but with hair on top. The taste wasn't much better. I didn't have much to compare it to, but my body just found it to be generally unpleasant. I braced myself for my gag reflex to kick in and punish me for doing something so stupid as trying to eat my own bedding, but it never happened. Instead, I managed to choke down the mouthful I had, and my body demanded more. Tired of fighting it I gave in and feasted on the disgusting, half-rotten grass that I had spilled all over the filthy floor of the cell.
I ate a full quarter of the material in the bed before I started to feel strange and stopped. Whatever was in the plant, it was not agreeing with my digestive system. I curled up on the floor again, breathing slowly and occasionally groaning in agony, debating whether or not I should try to induce vomiting to save myself. A check of my heads-up display showed that I was getting some nutrition despite all the pain so I steeled my resolve and fought to keep the food down. The lump of food I had eaten was so durable that I could feel it travel through me, pressing up against the sides of my intestines after it left my stomach. I hoped that nothing would rupture because I knew that I wouldn't heal fast enough to avoid dying if anything did.
Several more hours later I was recovering after having spent a very unpleasant time passing the bedding into the waste hole in the cell's corner. The reason for the discomfort, I intuited, was that the matter was only semi-digestible due to a high cellulose content. Whatever type of acid or other solvent this body used to digest food, it wasn't capable of breaking down cellulose properly. I wish I had known that before I went and ate a bunch of it, I thought, I'm pretty sure I would have died from intestinal rupture if I had gorged on it enough to properly replenish myself.
The rest of the bedding was still spilled all over the floor, but the water had evaporated enough that both the empty mattress and the bedding was now dry. Instead of trying to re-stuff the mattress I laid down on the floor and covered myself with the empty bag like a blanket. The whole ordeal with the food had worn me out again, and I didn't need to check anything to know that my body needed more sleep. In all the time I had been suffering in the cell neither the woman nor her male counterpart had returned, so I assumed that they either didn't care or were occupied with other things. As I drifted away again I briefly had thoughts of Suwlahtk, but they vanished before they formed into anything coherent.