Essek wakes up with a headache - a hangover, more precisely. It pounds beneath the back of his eyelids, and he instantly regrets all the indulgence he let the Mighty Nein convince him of in the celebration following the negotiations end.
That regret seems small, in comparison, to the regret he feels as he starts to formalize exactly where he is. Which is not where he had expected to wake up - lying in bed, next to Caleb, or perhaps lying in some chaotic drunken pile with the Mighty Nein, or really anywhere quite so pleasant.
There are metal cuffs, holding his wrists tight to the chair, with additional loops keeping his hands flat down and unable to make any somatic components of a spell. There is a gag in his mouth, to do the same to verbal components, and a man standing before him.
Archmage Trent Ikithon of the Cerberus Assembly. A man he had met, and talked to, and been warned of. A man who was, to some extent, his counterpart, Dynasty to Empire, and just as dangerous. Caleb’s former teacher, the one who left him with scars he shows freely and scars he can barely admit.
Ikithon grins.
“Good morning, Shadowhand Thelyss,” Ikithon says. “I trust the sleeping draught didn’t have any ill effects on you?”
He keeps deliberately still, nothing but a stone glare on his face, eyes locked onto Ikithon. That explains that, then, some sort of drug to induce unconsciousness - not magical in nature, or it wouldn’t have affected him, but such things were known. It didn’t explain why the Empire would risk taking him, however, right after a mutually beneficial agreement.
Ikithon smirks, not stepping closer. “You won’t be missed,” he says. “One of my Vollstreckers wears your face and your voice, floats in your shoes, per se, and is returning to Ghor Dranas in your stead.”
That’s - the thought of that is almost enough to break his composure, but he keeps his face even. There is no way whatever assassin has been sent will have the ability to fake his position as Shadowhand, or his knowledge of dunamis. He won’t last more than a day, less, even, with Caleb and the Mighty Nein.
“He is to empty your house of all spells and research, to make it appear as if you have fled, and return your books and notes here, as soon as possible,” Ikithon continues. “I wonder how your Queen will react? I hear she has doubts in your loyalty.”
Essek wonders why Ikithon is prattling on about his plans to a captive who is incapable of spilling any secrets, even accidentally. It seems sloppy, for a man Caleb described as the head of the Emperor’s assassins and interrogators.
Unless, of course, he has a way to-
“Read your thoughts?” Ikithon asks, stepping forward, and Essek flinches. “Has your Caleb been telling you much about me?”
Residuum glass inserted into screaming arms, an experiment that Essek is curious of the results but too steeped in trauma to be broached. A woman with hair in her eyes, laughing at their best efforts to break her open, slamming a shiv made of chains into Caleb’s throat. Tumbling stories of a child who had hope and zeal and who didn’t scream, through his torture, for the greater good.
“I want you to understand,” Ikithon says. “This isn’t about your position in the Dynasty, or the knowledge of magic that you hold - oh, I will take that information, when you are broken to the point that you give it freely. I don’t care about failures, or broken men running from my sight. I care about traitors, and those who they have turned to.”
Essek stills. He’s been trained in interrogation, both simple and forced, and he knows how to resist others interrogating him. But this isn’t an interrogation.
“You are to be his first punishment,” Ikithon says, “To remind him that those he turns to are weak, and I am always strong.”
This is torture.
Ikithon presses a hand to the side of Essek’s face, pressing a shocking grasp into his skin. Essek tenses, as the lightning courses through his body, but doesn’t struggle, and Ikithon brushes his cheek with a surprising amount of gentleness.
“It isn’t often I get to break people for the sake of making them broken,” Ikithon informs him. “Not since I was much younger. I always favored knives, then, or scalpels - I had an associate who did beautiful work with surgical tools.”
He does his best not to let his mind wander to knives, and cut apart skin, and all that is implied just a few words. He focuses on- what is safe to focus on- he focuses on sitting with Caleb, pretending to read a book while watching the other read, soft light illuminating his face and curls, a quiet night together, a warm peace.
“I prefer magic, now,” Ikithon tells him. “It is magic that sets us apart from the rabble, which allows us to rise to glory. And it gives us such inventive ways, to hurt.”
A wave of the hand, and he’s wearing Caleb’s face. Caleb’s face, and Caleb’s hair, and Caleb’s long blue scarf. The coat, in purple, from the tailor he had recommended, over the tunic that could have, in all honesty, come straight from Essek’s own closet, and seemed more likely to be swapped through casual misplace every night they spent together.
“This, my friend,” says Caleb’s face, in Caleb’s accent, but not Caleb’s voice, not really, “is going to hurt.”
He was uneasy, before, but he isn’t certain he was scared, of the hurt that was certain to follow, of the secrets he was going to let slip because he did not have tight enough control over his mind in pain.
Now, however, he is terrified, and the grin that spans across Caleb’s face, in that moment, is so surely not his, nor is the burning fire that shreds his clothes to leave a handprint against his shoulder.
He presses two more such burns into Essek’s skin, carefully and deliberately. It’s hard to say how long they take, as they press firmly through burnt away cloth to sear skin. It takes an agonizing time, but at the very least it’s easy to focus on the pain, and nothing but the pain.
“A good start,” Ikithon says. “I can see the fracture lines. You’re young, for an elf. Fragile.” He wraps a hand around Essek’s throat, forces his head to point straight ahead, to match his eyes.
He’s not fragile, he thinks, and the smile like a laugh makes him feel sick.
“Keep your eyes on me,” Ikithon says, before reaching down past the tunic, beginning to fracture, cold fingers into Essek’s trousers, gripping around him.
He keeps his gaze forward, his eyes open through the pain, in spite, not fear, in spite to this man who is not as terrifying as he thinks he is, Essek forces himself to believe. He keeps his eyes stony and his body still, as Ikithon brings him to completion with Caleb’s hands.
When he comes, his eyes don’t falter, not even as the hand wrapped around his throat begins to burn more rapidly, the pain near overwhelming, pushing him closer to the edge of unconsciousness than he has been in a very long time.
The skin is scorched, and Ikithon’s hand retreats, Caleb’s face and form dropping away back to Ikithon and his Assembly robes.
“Now,” the man says, “to matters of importance.”
He leaves the room, and Essek tries to collect himself, to will away the pain. To wish desperately for the Mighty Nein to see through the Scourger wearing his face, for Caleb to understand, for them to come and set him free from this.
They are capable adventurers, with no ability to keep boundaries, and utter recklessness when it comes to keeping their friends safe. It will be soon.
It must be soon.
He starts a trance, and does not think about the trauma the Archmage is attempting to inflict, on whether it will last.
---
There is an apprentice set to care for him. They wear crimson robes, have hair cut so short it is nearly bald, and arms littered with fresh scars. Essek is not good, at judging the ages of humans, but they must be a child, still, or on the barest edge of it.
The apprentice doesn’t talk. The apprentice is sharp, cold, efficient, and Essek can see the unwavering loyalty that is characteristic of the Scourgers. The apprentice looks, he imagines, much like Caleb would have, at that age, and he hopes, as such, that maybe they are not beyond saving.
He is given water, the gag of metal designed to keep his mouth open but unable to speak, but no food. There is no tending to his wounds, although he is able to get off a trance, and so that isn’t as pressing a concern as it might otherwise be.
The apprentice does move him, though, from the chair to being chained up in the center of the room. His stiff muscles appreciate the movement for but a moment, before his feet are fastened to the floor.
And then, the apprentice sets to work on what was clearly the intended task, an intricate carving into the skin of Essek’s leg. It is labyrinthine, and from what he can see, there is some arcane nature to it, but not one immediately identifiable. The cuts are even, certain, even against the shaking of Essek’s legs - as solid as his will may be, his legs are weak - and over the course of what must be well over an hour, the intricate designs are up to his inner thigh.
The apprentice is careful, with the cuts, to avoid rampant bleeding, deliberate in the depth to insure a scar patter that will last some time, and possessing of an eerie silence that Essek is equal to match, even as his legs falter and he grabs against the chains holding his wrists above his head for support.
The apprentice is gone, before Ikithon returns, and Essek tries trancing again, in an effort to guard his body.
Trancing, upright, mere hours before a previous trance, is not an easy feat. Not that it matters, it’s not enough time for a trance before the door opens again.
Caleb steps in, and Essek’s eyes alight with hope, which he quickly takes to shutting down, and hopes Ikithon didn’t see the momentary lapse. And it is Ikithon, not Caleb, for if the fact he wasn’t asking if Essek was alright or trying to find a way to free him from his bindings was an indication, the lack of any members of the Mighty Nein tumbling after him surely is.
Ikithon pivots, walks behind him, and Essek can hear the sounds of things being moved behind him. He hasn’t been able to see much of the room, it is blindingly lit, and his positioning has been deliberate, but he has enough experience to gather what is probably behind him.
“Personal experience?” Ikithon asks, steely, and Essek holds back the thoughts his questions bring to surface, of the more physical tortures he has overseen. “I thought not. I can recognize someone who’s only been taught the theoreticals.”
The whip slashes across his back, and the surprise of it send him reeling forward against the chains. It is not a forceful blow, but it is a sharp and stinging one, and he can tell that there will be no amount of mending that can save his clothing. A shame, they had been nice.
A second, and he can tell that Ikithon has decent enough form not to overlap the marks, yet, but he’s clearly not a master.
That thought earns him a third, quickly, overlapping and painful and Luxon it hurts. He stays standing, barely, does his best not to flinch or falter with each hit.
“Not the most delicate of tools,” Ikithon remarks with two more strikes of the whip, “but effective, for what I’m trying to create. They’re quite striking, visually, and I can tell they’ll leave beautiful marks.”
He steps forward, then, and Essek knows what is going to happen, before it does. Repetitive, he thinks, with a force.
“A good teacher values repetition,” Ikithon says, pressing fire into the edges of the long lashmarks.
It’s worse than the hands, it’s worse than the whip, it’s worse than the careful deliberate cuts. Essek pulls against the chains, tugs away, but there’s no give no escape, and it burns.
“Starting to learn your place?” Ikithon whispers in his ear, still behind him, hands still burning.
Time hasn’t been real at all - today? - but it has lost all focus in this set of moments, mind unbound. The lashes across his back are burned close along the edges, and he has but a moment of hope and respite, as he feels it finish and his back ache and burn, before that too is broken as the chain supporting him upwards goes lack, and he falls tumbling to the floor.
Ikithon kneels down, pulling his face up until they are level, and his eyes are blue, the same blue that Essek has gazed into, copied perfectly.
He tries to find an error. Something wrong. But the face before him is Caleb’s, done to such a detail that simple disguise illusions never match.
Ikithon snaps a collar around Essek’s still bruised throat, and attaches his chained hands to it, before standing and pressing a hand into Essek’s hair.
At first, it is almost gentle, a parodied affection, but the grip tightens, and he’s forced forward, forced kneeling, force to take it was Ikithon starts fucking his face.
There is not even the pretense of mocking the affection shared between him and Caleb, this is nothing but driving and forceful, and if the metal holding the mouth open allowed Essek would bite down with all the force he could. But instead his jaw is held in place and Ikithon drives into his mouth fast and hard, and all he can do is choke.
It takes a very long time for Ikithon to come, and he very deliberately pulls out to make sure it gets all over Essek’s face, and into his hair, which is just frankly uneccessary.
“Beautiful,” Caleb’s face says, and it is only when he looks up, to meet that face, that it drops away into Ikithon’s once more. “I am quite enjoying these breaks I get to have with you, Essek,” he says, with a sharp emphasis on the name. “It will almost be a shame, when Bren has been dealt with, and you will be relegated to a mere intelligence source.”
Essek thinks about the scourger, crushed to death with gravity, and he thinks about the same happening to Essek. Or any of the powerful, very destructive spells Caleb could unleash to obliterate the man.
Ikithon laughs, and turns, and leaves.
Essek shifts off of his knees, relieving the pressure on his scarred leg. It’s difficult to position himself, with the way his ankles are still chained. It’s better than still being held up, but not by much.
Sitting on the floor in the cell, he starts to meditate.
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timeasmymeasure
Fill: Caleb/Essek, Essek/Ikithon, hostage, torture, non/con - 1/2
Date: 2020-02-26 11:05 pm (UTC)That regret seems small, in comparison, to the regret he feels as he starts to formalize exactly where he is. Which is not where he had expected to wake up - lying in bed, next to Caleb, or perhaps lying in some chaotic drunken pile with the Mighty Nein, or really anywhere quite so pleasant.
There are metal cuffs, holding his wrists tight to the chair, with additional loops keeping his hands flat down and unable to make any somatic components of a spell. There is a gag in his mouth, to do the same to verbal components, and a man standing before him.
Archmage Trent Ikithon of the Cerberus Assembly. A man he had met, and talked to, and been warned of. A man who was, to some extent, his counterpart, Dynasty to Empire, and just as dangerous. Caleb’s former teacher, the one who left him with scars he shows freely and scars he can barely admit.
Ikithon grins.
“Good morning, Shadowhand Thelyss,” Ikithon says. “I trust the sleeping draught didn’t have any ill effects on you?”
He keeps deliberately still, nothing but a stone glare on his face, eyes locked onto Ikithon. That explains that, then, some sort of drug to induce unconsciousness - not magical in nature, or it wouldn’t have affected him, but such things were known. It didn’t explain why the Empire would risk taking him, however, right after a mutually beneficial agreement.
Ikithon smirks, not stepping closer. “You won’t be missed,” he says. “One of my Vollstreckers wears your face and your voice, floats in your shoes, per se, and is returning to Ghor Dranas in your stead.”
That’s - the thought of that is almost enough to break his composure, but he keeps his face even. There is no way whatever assassin has been sent will have the ability to fake his position as Shadowhand, or his knowledge of dunamis. He won’t last more than a day, less, even, with Caleb and the Mighty Nein.
“He is to empty your house of all spells and research, to make it appear as if you have fled, and return your books and notes here, as soon as possible,” Ikithon continues. “I wonder how your Queen will react? I hear she has doubts in your loyalty.”
Essek wonders why Ikithon is prattling on about his plans to a captive who is incapable of spilling any secrets, even accidentally. It seems sloppy, for a man Caleb described as the head of the Emperor’s assassins and interrogators.
Unless, of course, he has a way to-
“Read your thoughts?” Ikithon asks, stepping forward, and Essek flinches. “Has your Caleb been telling you much about me?”
Residuum glass inserted into screaming arms, an experiment that Essek is curious of the results but too steeped in trauma to be broached. A woman with hair in her eyes, laughing at their best efforts to break her open, slamming a shiv made of chains into Caleb’s throat. Tumbling stories of a child who had hope and zeal and who didn’t scream, through his torture, for the greater good.
“I want you to understand,” Ikithon says. “This isn’t about your position in the Dynasty, or the knowledge of magic that you hold - oh, I will take that information, when you are broken to the point that you give it freely. I don’t care about failures, or broken men running from my sight. I care about traitors, and those who they have turned to.”
Essek stills. He’s been trained in interrogation, both simple and forced, and he knows how to resist others interrogating him. But this isn’t an interrogation.
“You are to be his first punishment,” Ikithon says, “To remind him that those he turns to are weak, and I am always strong.”
This is torture.
Ikithon presses a hand to the side of Essek’s face, pressing a shocking grasp into his skin. Essek tenses, as the lightning courses through his body, but doesn’t struggle, and Ikithon brushes his cheek with a surprising amount of gentleness.
“It isn’t often I get to break people for the sake of making them broken,” Ikithon informs him. “Not since I was much younger. I always favored knives, then, or scalpels - I had an associate who did beautiful work with surgical tools.”
He does his best not to let his mind wander to knives, and cut apart skin, and all that is implied just a few words. He focuses on- what is safe to focus on- he focuses on sitting with Caleb, pretending to read a book while watching the other read, soft light illuminating his face and curls, a quiet night together, a warm peace.
“I prefer magic, now,” Ikithon tells him. “It is magic that sets us apart from the rabble, which allows us to rise to glory. And it gives us such inventive ways, to hurt.”
A wave of the hand, and he’s wearing Caleb’s face. Caleb’s face, and Caleb’s hair, and Caleb’s long blue scarf. The coat, in purple, from the tailor he had recommended, over the tunic that could have, in all honesty, come straight from Essek’s own closet, and seemed more likely to be swapped through casual misplace every night they spent together.
“This, my friend,” says Caleb’s face, in Caleb’s accent, but not Caleb’s voice, not really, “is going to hurt.”
He was uneasy, before, but he isn’t certain he was scared, of the hurt that was certain to follow, of the secrets he was going to let slip because he did not have tight enough control over his mind in pain.
Now, however, he is terrified, and the grin that spans across Caleb’s face, in that moment, is so surely not his, nor is the burning fire that shreds his clothes to leave a handprint against his shoulder.
He presses two more such burns into Essek’s skin, carefully and deliberately. It’s hard to say how long they take, as they press firmly through burnt away cloth to sear skin. It takes an agonizing time, but at the very least it’s easy to focus on the pain, and nothing but the pain.
“A good start,” Ikithon says. “I can see the fracture lines. You’re young, for an elf. Fragile.” He wraps a hand around Essek’s throat, forces his head to point straight ahead, to match his eyes.
He’s not fragile, he thinks, and the smile like a laugh makes him feel sick.
“Keep your eyes on me,” Ikithon says, before reaching down past the tunic, beginning to fracture, cold fingers into Essek’s trousers, gripping around him.
He keeps his gaze forward, his eyes open through the pain, in spite, not fear, in spite to this man who is not as terrifying as he thinks he is, Essek forces himself to believe. He keeps his eyes stony and his body still, as Ikithon brings him to completion with Caleb’s hands.
When he comes, his eyes don’t falter, not even as the hand wrapped around his throat begins to burn more rapidly, the pain near overwhelming, pushing him closer to the edge of unconsciousness than he has been in a very long time.
The skin is scorched, and Ikithon’s hand retreats, Caleb’s face and form dropping away back to Ikithon and his Assembly robes.
“Now,” the man says, “to matters of importance.”
He leaves the room, and Essek tries to collect himself, to will away the pain. To wish desperately for the Mighty Nein to see through the Scourger wearing his face, for Caleb to understand, for them to come and set him free from this.
They are capable adventurers, with no ability to keep boundaries, and utter recklessness when it comes to keeping their friends safe. It will be soon.
It must be soon.
He starts a trance, and does not think about the trauma the Archmage is attempting to inflict, on whether it will last.
---
There is an apprentice set to care for him. They wear crimson robes, have hair cut so short it is nearly bald, and arms littered with fresh scars. Essek is not good, at judging the ages of humans, but they must be a child, still, or on the barest edge of it.
The apprentice doesn’t talk. The apprentice is sharp, cold, efficient, and Essek can see the unwavering loyalty that is characteristic of the Scourgers. The apprentice looks, he imagines, much like Caleb would have, at that age, and he hopes, as such, that maybe they are not beyond saving.
He is given water, the gag of metal designed to keep his mouth open but unable to speak, but no food. There is no tending to his wounds, although he is able to get off a trance, and so that isn’t as pressing a concern as it might otherwise be.
The apprentice does move him, though, from the chair to being chained up in the center of the room. His stiff muscles appreciate the movement for but a moment, before his feet are fastened to the floor.
And then, the apprentice sets to work on what was clearly the intended task, an intricate carving into the skin of Essek’s leg. It is labyrinthine, and from what he can see, there is some arcane nature to it, but not one immediately identifiable. The cuts are even, certain, even against the shaking of Essek’s legs - as solid as his will may be, his legs are weak - and over the course of what must be well over an hour, the intricate designs are up to his inner thigh.
The apprentice is careful, with the cuts, to avoid rampant bleeding, deliberate in the depth to insure a scar patter that will last some time, and possessing of an eerie silence that Essek is equal to match, even as his legs falter and he grabs against the chains holding his wrists above his head for support.
The apprentice is gone, before Ikithon returns, and Essek tries trancing again, in an effort to guard his body.
Trancing, upright, mere hours before a previous trance, is not an easy feat. Not that it matters, it’s not enough time for a trance before the door opens again.
Caleb steps in, and Essek’s eyes alight with hope, which he quickly takes to shutting down, and hopes Ikithon didn’t see the momentary lapse. And it is Ikithon, not Caleb, for if the fact he wasn’t asking if Essek was alright or trying to find a way to free him from his bindings was an indication, the lack of any members of the Mighty Nein tumbling after him surely is.
Ikithon pivots, walks behind him, and Essek can hear the sounds of things being moved behind him. He hasn’t been able to see much of the room, it is blindingly lit, and his positioning has been deliberate, but he has enough experience to gather what is probably behind him.
“Personal experience?” Ikithon asks, steely, and Essek holds back the thoughts his questions bring to surface, of the more physical tortures he has overseen. “I thought not. I can recognize someone who’s only been taught the theoreticals.”
The whip slashes across his back, and the surprise of it send him reeling forward against the chains. It is not a forceful blow, but it is a sharp and stinging one, and he can tell that there will be no amount of mending that can save his clothing. A shame, they had been nice.
A second, and he can tell that Ikithon has decent enough form not to overlap the marks, yet, but he’s clearly not a master.
That thought earns him a third, quickly, overlapping and painful and Luxon it hurts. He stays standing, barely, does his best not to flinch or falter with each hit.
“Not the most delicate of tools,” Ikithon remarks with two more strikes of the whip, “but effective, for what I’m trying to create. They’re quite striking, visually, and I can tell they’ll leave beautiful marks.”
He steps forward, then, and Essek knows what is going to happen, before it does. Repetitive, he thinks, with a force.
“A good teacher values repetition,” Ikithon says, pressing fire into the edges of the long lashmarks.
It’s worse than the hands, it’s worse than the whip, it’s worse than the careful deliberate cuts. Essek pulls against the chains, tugs away, but there’s no give no escape, and it burns.
“Starting to learn your place?” Ikithon whispers in his ear, still behind him, hands still burning.
Time hasn’t been real at all - today? - but it has lost all focus in this set of moments, mind unbound. The lashes across his back are burned close along the edges, and he has but a moment of hope and respite, as he feels it finish and his back ache and burn, before that too is broken as the chain supporting him upwards goes lack, and he falls tumbling to the floor.
Ikithon kneels down, pulling his face up until they are level, and his eyes are blue, the same blue that Essek has gazed into, copied perfectly.
He tries to find an error. Something wrong. But the face before him is Caleb’s, done to such a detail that simple disguise illusions never match.
Ikithon snaps a collar around Essek’s still bruised throat, and attaches his chained hands to it, before standing and pressing a hand into Essek’s hair.
At first, it is almost gentle, a parodied affection, but the grip tightens, and he’s forced forward, forced kneeling, force to take it was Ikithon starts fucking his face.
There is not even the pretense of mocking the affection shared between him and Caleb, this is nothing but driving and forceful, and if the metal holding the mouth open allowed Essek would bite down with all the force he could. But instead his jaw is held in place and Ikithon drives into his mouth fast and hard, and all he can do is choke.
It takes a very long time for Ikithon to come, and he very deliberately pulls out to make sure it gets all over Essek’s face, and into his hair, which is just frankly uneccessary.
“Beautiful,” Caleb’s face says, and it is only when he looks up, to meet that face, that it drops away into Ikithon’s once more. “I am quite enjoying these breaks I get to have with you, Essek,” he says, with a sharp emphasis on the name. “It will almost be a shame, when Bren has been dealt with, and you will be relegated to a mere intelligence source.”
Essek thinks about the scourger, crushed to death with gravity, and he thinks about the same happening to Essek. Or any of the powerful, very destructive spells Caleb could unleash to obliterate the man.
Ikithon laughs, and turns, and leaves.
Essek shifts off of his knees, relieving the pressure on his scarred leg. It’s difficult to position himself, with the way his ankles are still chained. It’s better than still being held up, but not by much.
Sitting on the floor in the cell, he starts to meditate.