Winds of Vesperia - Secured
Sep. 12th, 2013 12:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassAnother new story for Winds of Vesperia, this one taking place immediately after my last story and right before the start of next game. (Downtime? Not this time!)
They took Esmeralda first.
They took precautions, of course, commanding the captives to put down their weapons, stand at a distance from one another, and so forth, but they clearly had no intention of taking powerful prisoners to the jail in one large group that could rebel and overpower their captors. Esmeralda, as the highest-ranked prisoner and the one who had issued the formal surrender, was given the dubious honor of being taken away first. Two spearmen went with her, guiding her out of the courtyard and among the streets of Last Stand.
Illyria was next. As the least known of the group and the most seemingly complacent, she was also accompanied by two guards, and sent off in a different direction from the princess.
Garrett, a priest of Sigil, was shown some respect for his rank. They sent four guardsmen with him, true, but he was allowed to wear his full armor – at least for the moment. Jass was also escorted by four guards, known more for his womanizing and piloting than his skill in close combat.
Which left Sela, DAX, and two dozen spearmen.
The commander of the unit, the one issuing the orders, hesitated. Sela might not have her eagle, and neither prisoner their weapons, but their reputations preceded them. He could, no doubt, overpower them if they chose to fight – dozen-to-one odds were enough to daunt any fighter, especially unarmed – but he would likely take casualties or even losses, and he seemed unready to commit himself to that situation just yet.
DAX looked over at his elven companion. “I’ll take the ones on the left, you take the ones on the right?”
Sela stared at him, slack-jawed. “We surrendered, DAX.”
“We did? When?”
“When we put down our weapons.”
“Oh. I thought we were just evening the odds.”
Sela shook her head in amazement. She wondered whether DAX lived in the same world she did. She wondered if maybe she could join him wherever he was living, because it seemed like a more interesting and exciting place, and that was saying something given the adventures they’d already experienced together. “No, DAX. We’re giving them our weapons because we’re their prisoners now.”
DAX considered this. “I thought the plan was that we’d wait for me to be alone, and then the warforged would all rescue me and help me get the rest of you, and then we’d go get the ship Esmeralda needs.”
The guards gripped their spears tighter. For a moment, Sela could only stare in bewilderment. “No. The plan was for us to follow the princess’s lead, which in this case means we surrendered. To those guards over there with the spears.”
DAX seemed on the verge of another ill-thought-out statement or question when the guards’ commander decided this was a convenient moment to cut in. “Will you come peacefully and quietly?” he asked, trying to regain control of the situation.
Sela turned back to him and the forest of spears that pointed directly at her chest. “Yes,” she said.
The commander looked at DAX. “Both of you?”
DAX shrugged. “Okay. If that’s what we’re doing.”
One of the spearmen gestured with his weapon, and Sela realized she’d let her hands drop during her argument with DAX. She raised them again.
Deftly, the spearmen broke into two ranks and separated their prisoners, marching them in opposite directions. She couldn’t tell whether DAX had raised his hands again or not, but she realized with relief that it was no longer her problem.
The streets of Last Stand were busy. For all that it was besieged and at war, it was still the capital of a country and there was still work to be done. But men and women hurried quickly inside when a dozen guards marched in formation, a prisoner in their midst, and they moved at a quick clip through the city until they reached their destination.
The jail was ugly and solid, a building made for functionality and not aesthetics. It was old, with weathered rocks and an iron door. The guards directed Sela through the outer gate, the inner gate, and the entrance to the prison proper. She caught sight of longbowmen guarding the walls, a copy in miniature of the huge walls surrounding the city.
She wasn’t given much time to think about the prison’s defenses. The moment she entered, she found herself in a large room, thirty feet to a side. In the middle was an empty table. Around a second-floor railing were crossbowmen with their weapons leveled. At the far end was a man in red-and-silver wizard robes, the color of the Galandreth military, and two more guards. Sela was ushered inside by a half-dozen of the guards who had escorted her, and the rest closed the iron door behind her.
The mage at the far end of the room began casting, and the guards prodded her to the middle of the room. Sela regarded him as he worked his spells. Like so many of his profession, he was a thin man, with long fingers and piercing eyes. Next to the burly guardsmen, he looked like a delicate toy bought for a child to play with, or he would have if it had not been for the aura of authority he projected.
“Remove your armor,” he said, “and place it on the table.”
Sela spared a glance for the crossbowmen on the balcony and spearmen behind her, sighed, and removed her chain shirt. It slid through her fingers and onto the table like a strand of fine-spun rope.
“Your circlet,” said the mage.
Sela slipped her fingers beneath the mindvault and took it off her head. She supposed she should have known they would remove her magic items, but even in the few months she’d owned it, the mindvault had proved so useful. She placed it on the table next to her armor, silver next to mithral.
“Your belt,” instructed the mage. “Your goggles… Your ring…”
Sela took off each item as she was instructed, trying to remain stoic. She had lived most of her life without the benefit of magic items. She would do it again if she had to.
“Empty your pockets and turn them out to show they are empty,” said the mage, and Sela did as she was told. The psi crystal from the Athos depot joined her magical items, as did her flint and tinder, a whistle, and a signal mirror. She turned out her pockets.
The mage looked at her, expectant, but Sela was not sure what he was waiting for. A moment of silence passed before the mage pursed his lips. “And the rest of it,” he said, unhappy at having to actually voice the instruction he found both obvious and distasteful.
Sela found it equally distasteful, but she was not in any position to argue. The pile on the table grew larger: the leather jerkin she wore beneath her armor, her boots and hose, her cote. She removed the necklace that had been given to her by a friend and the sash she wore in honor of her old commander. When the mage continued to gaze at her impassively, she unlaced her breeches and removed those as well.
She stood before her dozen captors barefoot, in her underwear and a chemise that barely reached to her mid-thigh. She returned the mage’s stare, defiant. After a moment, he gave a slight nod. “Step back from the table,” he said, and Sela did so.
One of the guards picked up her effects and carried them off into another room, no doubt to join her lance, sword, bow, daggers, and shield.
“Widen your stance and hold your arms out to your side,” said the mage.
Sela ran her tongue across her top teeth and did not move.
The mage’s expression darkened. “I will not ask again,” he said in a low voice.
Sela no longer wore her goggles, but she could practically feel the crossbowmen refining their aim. She exhaled sharply and did as she was asked.
One of the guards stepped forward and searched her, checking the hems of her garments and feeling for hidden items on her person. She was surprised that no one leered or jeered. The guard who searched her was thorough but professional. Sela thought of what he might be looking for: a lockpick in the hem of her chemise, perhaps, or a dagger strapped to her inner thigh or beneath her breast. He found nothing, and Sela kept her stare fixed on the mage, who returned it without emotion.
At length he was done. Sela dropped her arms before she realized that the guard had not stepped back. He was, instead, holding a pair of manacles. Good, heavy metal that would no doubt make Garrett proud. Sela glanced at them, glanced back at the mage, and this time he did not need to give the obvious command. Sela held her hands forward and let the guard place the restraints on her wrists.
“You will be taken to a cell,” said the mage. “And fed. We are not monsters here.”
With that, she was led away, deeper into the prison, and away from the wizard.
She did not pass any of her companions as she walked the corridors of the prison. She wondered where they were. One of the guards opened a door and prodded her inside. The lock clanged shut behind her.
The room was small, though not much smaller than a standard ship’s berth, and barely less furnished: a pallet with a thin sheet rested against one wall, a chamber pot on the other. A small skylight revealed that it was still light out. No doubt many people were simply going on with their lives, with no idea that there were six new prisoners in the city’s jail, and not much caring even if they knew.
They fed her eventually: water and a porridge of barley and a few beans. In a city where even the nobles had to subsist on smuggled food, it was as good as she could expect.
She waited. Day turned to eclipse, and back to day. Sela analyzed the situation as best she could.
No doubt they assumed she was a Falan spy. Why else would she – a Falan “deserter” – turn up supposedly by chance with the king’s granddaughter, already inside the walls of Last Stand? No doubt she was here to steal secrets and report back to the Falan court or military command. What else could they possibly think? The truth was far too strange.
And the truth… Sela sighed. The chances that the Galandreth council would allow Princess T’ainesa ni’Esma vaun Falan to speak to Duke Calayon, that the Duke would agree to speak with her, that he would listen to what she had to say, that he would believe her… It was already asking much. And that he would agree to let her use his Epsilon ship to hunt down the Bright Dawn, a warship that was still synonymous in most civilized nations with the final destruction of Galandreth… Well, Jass might not want to know the odds, but Sela calculated them to be slim indeed.
And what would happen then? The princess might be used as a bargaining chip against her grandfather. Perhaps she would be killed out of spite. Garrett had the Church of Sigil to protect him – to kill him would be to bring down the wrath of his church. DAX had the warforged who thought he was some sort of king, and he couldn’t die anyway. Jass could charm and bluff his way out of practically any situation. But her… all she had to protect her was the imprisoned princess of Galandreth’s sworn enemy.
She supposed she had always known she would die in Galandreth. In truth, she was surprised it had taken so long. The war should have killed her, would have killed her except for some impossible luck. She’d outlived her fate by five years, had miraculous escapes more than once, and now she was back and waiting for the enemy to finish the job. She found she wasn’t angry, just sad for all the adventures she would never have.
The door to her cell opened. Two guards stood in the opening. One of them gestured, and Sela stepped out into the hallway, the links on her manacles clinking softly. She walked between them to a set of stairs and then descended into a basement, this one lined with solid, heavy doors. They opened one of them and walked her in.
This room had no bed, no chamber pot. There was a table in the middle of it, a chair to each side. A flickering torch provided the only light. There were slits in the walls, places where a mage might stand on the other side and cast spells, or an archer might shoot an arrow, all without being seen by the prisoner.
One of the guards indicated the seat on the far side from the door, and Sela took it. With a practiced motion, the guard slipped her manacles into slots in the table, preventing her hands from moving. The table was bolted to the floor, and so was her chair.
The guards left.
She did not know how much time had passed, now that she was away from her skylight. It might have been two hours, maybe three. Maybe more.
She heard the key sound in the lock, heard the turning of tumblers. The door was pushed open. Two guards stood beside the door, remaining in the hallway. A man in wizard robes – not the one who had overseen her intake – walked between them into the room. He was tall, thin, and bald. A holy symbol of Myr hung lightly around his neck.
He cast spells the moment he stepped into the room. Sela braced herself, but felt nothing, not yet.
He smiled at her, an apologetic smile that said, ‘I’m sorry you need to be in this situation, but we’ll both have to make the best of it.’ He took the chair opposite her and set up a writing station on the far side of the table: parchment, quill, ink, blotting paper, candles, all neatly arranged.
“I’m sent from the council,” he said when he had finished his preparations. “And I think you and I should have a nice, long chat.”
The door thudded shut with finality behind him.
Secured
They took Esmeralda first.
They took precautions, of course, commanding the captives to put down their weapons, stand at a distance from one another, and so forth, but they clearly had no intention of taking powerful prisoners to the jail in one large group that could rebel and overpower their captors. Esmeralda, as the highest-ranked prisoner and the one who had issued the formal surrender, was given the dubious honor of being taken away first. Two spearmen went with her, guiding her out of the courtyard and among the streets of Last Stand.
Illyria was next. As the least known of the group and the most seemingly complacent, she was also accompanied by two guards, and sent off in a different direction from the princess.
Garrett, a priest of Sigil, was shown some respect for his rank. They sent four guardsmen with him, true, but he was allowed to wear his full armor – at least for the moment. Jass was also escorted by four guards, known more for his womanizing and piloting than his skill in close combat.
Which left Sela, DAX, and two dozen spearmen.
The commander of the unit, the one issuing the orders, hesitated. Sela might not have her eagle, and neither prisoner their weapons, but their reputations preceded them. He could, no doubt, overpower them if they chose to fight – dozen-to-one odds were enough to daunt any fighter, especially unarmed – but he would likely take casualties or even losses, and he seemed unready to commit himself to that situation just yet.
DAX looked over at his elven companion. “I’ll take the ones on the left, you take the ones on the right?”
Sela stared at him, slack-jawed. “We surrendered, DAX.”
“We did? When?”
“When we put down our weapons.”
“Oh. I thought we were just evening the odds.”
Sela shook her head in amazement. She wondered whether DAX lived in the same world she did. She wondered if maybe she could join him wherever he was living, because it seemed like a more interesting and exciting place, and that was saying something given the adventures they’d already experienced together. “No, DAX. We’re giving them our weapons because we’re their prisoners now.”
DAX considered this. “I thought the plan was that we’d wait for me to be alone, and then the warforged would all rescue me and help me get the rest of you, and then we’d go get the ship Esmeralda needs.”
The guards gripped their spears tighter. For a moment, Sela could only stare in bewilderment. “No. The plan was for us to follow the princess’s lead, which in this case means we surrendered. To those guards over there with the spears.”
DAX seemed on the verge of another ill-thought-out statement or question when the guards’ commander decided this was a convenient moment to cut in. “Will you come peacefully and quietly?” he asked, trying to regain control of the situation.
Sela turned back to him and the forest of spears that pointed directly at her chest. “Yes,” she said.
The commander looked at DAX. “Both of you?”
DAX shrugged. “Okay. If that’s what we’re doing.”
One of the spearmen gestured with his weapon, and Sela realized she’d let her hands drop during her argument with DAX. She raised them again.
Deftly, the spearmen broke into two ranks and separated their prisoners, marching them in opposite directions. She couldn’t tell whether DAX had raised his hands again or not, but she realized with relief that it was no longer her problem.
The streets of Last Stand were busy. For all that it was besieged and at war, it was still the capital of a country and there was still work to be done. But men and women hurried quickly inside when a dozen guards marched in formation, a prisoner in their midst, and they moved at a quick clip through the city until they reached their destination.
The jail was ugly and solid, a building made for functionality and not aesthetics. It was old, with weathered rocks and an iron door. The guards directed Sela through the outer gate, the inner gate, and the entrance to the prison proper. She caught sight of longbowmen guarding the walls, a copy in miniature of the huge walls surrounding the city.
She wasn’t given much time to think about the prison’s defenses. The moment she entered, she found herself in a large room, thirty feet to a side. In the middle was an empty table. Around a second-floor railing were crossbowmen with their weapons leveled. At the far end was a man in red-and-silver wizard robes, the color of the Galandreth military, and two more guards. Sela was ushered inside by a half-dozen of the guards who had escorted her, and the rest closed the iron door behind her.
The mage at the far end of the room began casting, and the guards prodded her to the middle of the room. Sela regarded him as he worked his spells. Like so many of his profession, he was a thin man, with long fingers and piercing eyes. Next to the burly guardsmen, he looked like a delicate toy bought for a child to play with, or he would have if it had not been for the aura of authority he projected.
“Remove your armor,” he said, “and place it on the table.”
Sela spared a glance for the crossbowmen on the balcony and spearmen behind her, sighed, and removed her chain shirt. It slid through her fingers and onto the table like a strand of fine-spun rope.
“Your circlet,” said the mage.
Sela slipped her fingers beneath the mindvault and took it off her head. She supposed she should have known they would remove her magic items, but even in the few months she’d owned it, the mindvault had proved so useful. She placed it on the table next to her armor, silver next to mithral.
“Your belt,” instructed the mage. “Your goggles… Your ring…”
Sela took off each item as she was instructed, trying to remain stoic. She had lived most of her life without the benefit of magic items. She would do it again if she had to.
“Empty your pockets and turn them out to show they are empty,” said the mage, and Sela did as she was told. The psi crystal from the Athos depot joined her magical items, as did her flint and tinder, a whistle, and a signal mirror. She turned out her pockets.
The mage looked at her, expectant, but Sela was not sure what he was waiting for. A moment of silence passed before the mage pursed his lips. “And the rest of it,” he said, unhappy at having to actually voice the instruction he found both obvious and distasteful.
Sela found it equally distasteful, but she was not in any position to argue. The pile on the table grew larger: the leather jerkin she wore beneath her armor, her boots and hose, her cote. She removed the necklace that had been given to her by a friend and the sash she wore in honor of her old commander. When the mage continued to gaze at her impassively, she unlaced her breeches and removed those as well.
She stood before her dozen captors barefoot, in her underwear and a chemise that barely reached to her mid-thigh. She returned the mage’s stare, defiant. After a moment, he gave a slight nod. “Step back from the table,” he said, and Sela did so.
One of the guards picked up her effects and carried them off into another room, no doubt to join her lance, sword, bow, daggers, and shield.
“Widen your stance and hold your arms out to your side,” said the mage.
Sela ran her tongue across her top teeth and did not move.
The mage’s expression darkened. “I will not ask again,” he said in a low voice.
Sela no longer wore her goggles, but she could practically feel the crossbowmen refining their aim. She exhaled sharply and did as she was asked.
One of the guards stepped forward and searched her, checking the hems of her garments and feeling for hidden items on her person. She was surprised that no one leered or jeered. The guard who searched her was thorough but professional. Sela thought of what he might be looking for: a lockpick in the hem of her chemise, perhaps, or a dagger strapped to her inner thigh or beneath her breast. He found nothing, and Sela kept her stare fixed on the mage, who returned it without emotion.
At length he was done. Sela dropped her arms before she realized that the guard had not stepped back. He was, instead, holding a pair of manacles. Good, heavy metal that would no doubt make Garrett proud. Sela glanced at them, glanced back at the mage, and this time he did not need to give the obvious command. Sela held her hands forward and let the guard place the restraints on her wrists.
“You will be taken to a cell,” said the mage. “And fed. We are not monsters here.”
With that, she was led away, deeper into the prison, and away from the wizard.
She did not pass any of her companions as she walked the corridors of the prison. She wondered where they were. One of the guards opened a door and prodded her inside. The lock clanged shut behind her.
The room was small, though not much smaller than a standard ship’s berth, and barely less furnished: a pallet with a thin sheet rested against one wall, a chamber pot on the other. A small skylight revealed that it was still light out. No doubt many people were simply going on with their lives, with no idea that there were six new prisoners in the city’s jail, and not much caring even if they knew.
They fed her eventually: water and a porridge of barley and a few beans. In a city where even the nobles had to subsist on smuggled food, it was as good as she could expect.
She waited. Day turned to eclipse, and back to day. Sela analyzed the situation as best she could.
No doubt they assumed she was a Falan spy. Why else would she – a Falan “deserter” – turn up supposedly by chance with the king’s granddaughter, already inside the walls of Last Stand? No doubt she was here to steal secrets and report back to the Falan court or military command. What else could they possibly think? The truth was far too strange.
And the truth… Sela sighed. The chances that the Galandreth council would allow Princess T’ainesa ni’Esma vaun Falan to speak to Duke Calayon, that the Duke would agree to speak with her, that he would listen to what she had to say, that he would believe her… It was already asking much. And that he would agree to let her use his Epsilon ship to hunt down the Bright Dawn, a warship that was still synonymous in most civilized nations with the final destruction of Galandreth… Well, Jass might not want to know the odds, but Sela calculated them to be slim indeed.
And what would happen then? The princess might be used as a bargaining chip against her grandfather. Perhaps she would be killed out of spite. Garrett had the Church of Sigil to protect him – to kill him would be to bring down the wrath of his church. DAX had the warforged who thought he was some sort of king, and he couldn’t die anyway. Jass could charm and bluff his way out of practically any situation. But her… all she had to protect her was the imprisoned princess of Galandreth’s sworn enemy.
She supposed she had always known she would die in Galandreth. In truth, she was surprised it had taken so long. The war should have killed her, would have killed her except for some impossible luck. She’d outlived her fate by five years, had miraculous escapes more than once, and now she was back and waiting for the enemy to finish the job. She found she wasn’t angry, just sad for all the adventures she would never have.
The door to her cell opened. Two guards stood in the opening. One of them gestured, and Sela stepped out into the hallway, the links on her manacles clinking softly. She walked between them to a set of stairs and then descended into a basement, this one lined with solid, heavy doors. They opened one of them and walked her in.
This room had no bed, no chamber pot. There was a table in the middle of it, a chair to each side. A flickering torch provided the only light. There were slits in the walls, places where a mage might stand on the other side and cast spells, or an archer might shoot an arrow, all without being seen by the prisoner.
One of the guards indicated the seat on the far side from the door, and Sela took it. With a practiced motion, the guard slipped her manacles into slots in the table, preventing her hands from moving. The table was bolted to the floor, and so was her chair.
The guards left.
She did not know how much time had passed, now that she was away from her skylight. It might have been two hours, maybe three. Maybe more.
She heard the key sound in the lock, heard the turning of tumblers. The door was pushed open. Two guards stood beside the door, remaining in the hallway. A man in wizard robes – not the one who had overseen her intake – walked between them into the room. He was tall, thin, and bald. A holy symbol of Myr hung lightly around his neck.
He cast spells the moment he stepped into the room. Sela braced herself, but felt nothing, not yet.
He smiled at her, an apologetic smile that said, ‘I’m sorry you need to be in this situation, but we’ll both have to make the best of it.’ He took the chair opposite her and set up a writing station on the far side of the table: parchment, quill, ink, blotting paper, candles, all neatly arranged.
“I’m sent from the council,” he said when he had finished his preparations. “And I think you and I should have a nice, long chat.”
The door thudded shut with finality behind him.
