Private Tales Breaking the Silence

[Caeso Diemut]

Indignation had a powerful preeminence among emotions, easily able to squelch all others to make itself heard. And so it was with Caeso. Questions of wisdom and foolishness, indeed forbearance in all but the most threadbare of measures—that is to say, the dividing line between dialogue and force—abandoned him.

He already didn't want to be here, he already thought it the height of embarrassment that the Republic had not only meekly negotiated this deal but that he had been one of the two chosen to facilitate it, and now this misshapen megalomaniac had the unchecked gall to demand even more gold?

Caeso hotly responded, "What is this, then? A mere glance prompts your pithy remark? A sum was agreed upon, and that very sum has been delivered to you, if you would but take the time properly scale its weight. A deal was struck! A deal, Lord Admiral, was struck!"

His nostrils flared, and though he didn't remove his gaze from Dominic, he could see well enough Zinnia close by the monstrous man, looking very much the inversion of Caeso now. Her timidity was a fact he could only be vaguely aware of, for his focus was squarely upon the Lord Admiral.

And such a limited scope of situational awareness was not precisely a good thing.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia grimaced. Oh no. Ohno-ohno-ohno. She'd hoped for some of that noble, Diemut elegance, but Caeso gave into the proud temper instead. She looked to the other pirates, then to the admiral.

Nadia looked outraged, but that tusked scowl curled into a sneer very quickly. Toombs, seemingly unshakeable, simply gripped the handle of his anchor and hefted the thing. Several of the other pirates around murmured amongst themselves and shuffled about.

Dominic, for his part, well...it was hard to tell behind that ghoulish gaze and the thick beard, but Zinnia could have sworn he saw the man smile.

"Ye'll do fine, methinks." The Lord Admiral surmised with a slow nod. His gaze shifted to Nadia. "Get 'em in the manacles."

In an instant the surrounding Ceraki were closing on Caeso and Zinnia. Some bore mancatchers. Some had billy clubs. None were brandishing anything lethal looking, but their faces all spoke of greed and ambition. They intended to take the two initiates as recompense.

Heart in her throat, Zinnia drew her hammer and shield; negotiations had quickly failed, and the two were going to have to fight their way out.

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso backed up toward Zinnia, facing where she was not and sweeping an intense gaze around at the foes closing in. His swords by magical bidding drew themselves from his back scabbards and swung around in the air and came to his waiting palms, and Caeso gripped his weapons tightly.

"So it is treachery, then," he said.

And this was indeed all he had time to say or do before it began. Talk, as it has happened time and time again since the very dark and obscure grasp of earliest history, was often a thin veil behind which hid the clenched fist—a pretense. Here again evidence could be entered into the annals that force was the ultimate arbiter.

Maybe it was fear of Dominic or brazen confidence or perhaps both, but the pirates came as a unit and acted as the same instead of some loose rabble. Caeso shot a Forcewave off to blow two of them away, switched hard to his right to deflect the incoming strike of a billy club (and kicked the clubber's associate away in the next breath), and altogether the defense was off to a good start.

Yet it wasn't to last.

A sudden tightness clamped around Caeso's throat. One of the Mancatchers, as he was preoccupied, took advantage and deftly slipped that noose-like hoop about his neck and cinched it hard enough to steal from him much air. Caeso had fight in him yet, weathering some harsh blows from fists and clubs and striking back, but there was something about this Mancatcher which was disrupting his magic, making the practiced art of conjuring a Forcefield or summoning a Forcewave ten times more difficult. And as one man against many, no matter how skilled, the numbers game weighed ever more against him.

With one of his last efforts before he was finally subdued, he managed a look over his shoulder, back at Zinnia, harboring the desperate hope that the same fate had not befallen her as well.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Neither initiate was ready for what was coming. Zinnia's heart was in her throat. The pirates even in the immediate area outnumbered them a dozen to one, and these weren't the undisciplined riffraff that was expected. The wallflower's skin was sent crawling almost instantly, that same instinctual twinge that racked her form every time she had her back put up against a wall.

A bit of focus and a drain on her "battery" saw her hammer's head burst into flames. Just as with Caeso, several of the privateers rushed Zinnia in tandem. She blocked an incoming club strike with her shield, shoving the assailant away before striking him square in the chest with her fiery maul. That one went down screaming. A quick heel turn led to a follow-up spinning blow against another attacker, nailing the unlucky target in the temple.

Three more were already following up the initial assault, and Zinnia didn't have the crowd control abilities that Caeso did. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the noose slip around her partner's neck. They needed an escape, and fast. The gold-eyed girl swung a wide arc with her hammer, trying to create space while she reached down to her belt with her shield hand. She'd stored equal amounts fire and water in a crystalline grenade shell. The device would jet enough steam into the immediate area to serve as an unpleasantly hot smokescreen for anyone that wasn't heat resistant. If she could just activate it, maybe she could grab Caeso and the two of them could make a break for it.

No dice. The moment her main hand hit the end of its arc she felt a powerful grip seize her wrist. Zinnia grit her teeth and whipped around, wide-eyed, to see the dour face of Toombs staring down at her. In the same motion that the behemoth buccaneer had grabbed hold of her he'd also clasped a metal ring around Zinnia's arm. The flame on her hammer went out instantly.

"Let GO!" the wallflower shouted, trying to yank her arm free while ramming her shield into Toombs' closed fist. The titan responded by silently lifting Zinnia into the air by her wrist, grabbing her shield and tossing it aside, clamping her other wrist into the paired end of the manacles, and finally slamming Zinnia face first into the cobblestone beneath them. She felt the hot trickle of blood begin to run down her face from some unknown fracture, as well as the immediate throbbing that came with head trauma.

All Zinnia could do was look up helplessly and apologetically at Caeso, pain in her heart that she had failed them both.

"Heh...thought Vel Anir's 'finest' would've lasted a bit longer n' that. Well done, lads. Get 'em in a cell," Dominic congratulated his men, arms wide in celebration of the meager task, and the pirates cheered. He took a few lumbering steps, lowering himself to be on more even footing with the two initiates. "And welcome t' the Black Fortress, ye whelps. Enjoy yer stay!"

The Lord Admiral smiled, a grin that could have made the devil himself shudder.
"It's gonna be a long one."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

THE CELL​

Caeso had received a number of parting gifts from his assailants—underhanded punches to the face here, opportunistic kicks to the gut and groin there. He was already beaten, and so it wasn't so much in the effort of subduing or keeping him subdued that these roguish acts were done, but merely as it were to establish dominance. As an additional punishment, mayhap, for going against the decree of the Lord Admiral Dominic Foresend. Or maybe just because a few of the lads got a rise out of getting a few cheap shots in on an opponent already down, among them perhaps the shared, gigglingly gleeful thought of Ah, he's a big guy, he can take it.

Before long, he and Zinnia were tossed into a dimly lit cell. Caeso could scarcely recall the journey to their dark, confined environs through the aching pain and the simmering cloud of anger looming behind even that. He was made well enough aware of it though when he was thrown in and the unmistakable metal groan of a cell door closing, locking, met his ear.

"Don't get too comfortable," said the last of the pirates, laughing malevolently to himself, as he strutted off.

Caeso slowly worked himself up from his prone state on the floor to sit. There was a weight on his arms, and he looked down, and the moment he did the memory pierced through the fog of pain and anger: yes, anti-magic cuffs had been applied to him and Zinnia as they were being dragged to the cell.

"I should have known," he said, staring down at the cuffs still, not yet looking Zinnia's way. "Not that the pirates are untrustworthy, but rather that the Republic is incompetent."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Mercy was not on the minds of the privateers this day. Muffled, echoing laughter, singing, and jeering echoed through the onyx halls of the Black Fortress. Zinnia, too, was bruised and battered. Toombs had taken the time to beat the resistance out of her as she'd flailed in his hold. When the time came for the duo to be thrown in their cell, the anchor-wielder had literally thrown Zinnia in, and she'd rolled to a halt near the back wall of the cell. She recalled that Nadia had smugly said something about returning to "appraise their new goods" sometime later.

What hurt most by now wasn't her wounds, though. The wallflower lay in a fetal ball for some time, facing away from Caeso. When she finally pulled herself into a seated position she kept her knees tucked to her chest and her head down.

"It's n-not the Republic, Caeso," She answered him at last, voice low, sullen. "It's m-me...it's always me..."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"I am happy to cast you in with that bumbling lot, if such is your wish," Caeso said irritably, nursing his bruised jaw with a hand.

Kress, what a sorry sight they the two of them must be! It would have been better to die in battle, swords and hammer in their hands, than to be reduced to this pitiful state of impoverished and shameful captivity. Yet for all the vexation coursing through his veins, all the criticism he could sling, Caeso knew the fault for this failure ultimately lay with himself. He alone was responsible for his person, all of its well-being and all of its woes. Had he the remedy to this outcome, whether that be sharper foresight or a keener edge of magical power or what have you, then this could have been avoided.

Alas, they were here.

"To be brought down by treachery! That refuge of the weak, that weapon of cowards!" Caeso growled hotly, speaking merely to vent that simmering anger. "But of course it would be treachery. What else would one expect to find in this den of scum and filth? And yet ours was a mission couched inside of a velvet glove instead of an iron fist."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

"Enough, Caeso!" Zinnia snapped.

From beneath downcast eyes, hood and hair draped over top, the wallflower grit her teeth. Caeso's words stung, but to the girl's surprise they did not beat her further into her depression. Instead, they stoked the cinders of her anger. She locked her gaze with the floor, head down, refusing to look at the noble boy.

"S-say what you want about me. I'm worthless g-gutter trash, a n-nobody, and I know that. But I w-won't listen to you trash our home--my home--anym-more."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"You spoke of your own worth. I was merely inclined to agree."

She glanced over to her, trying to meet her gaze but unable, or it was downcast and nearly the whole of face anyway disguised by dangling hair and lingering hood.

"As for the Republic..."

He scoffed.

"That Rebellion which birthed it was the worst event in all Anirian history."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

"Please," Zinnia hissed back. "Now you want to pull your p-punches? I see the way you l-look at me, Caeso. I know what disgust looks l-like."

An unusual growl was starting to enter her voice, a building, gravely texture that didn't fit the usually demure girl.

"And if you h-hate the republic so much, then do something about it. You're a noble, Caeso, Vel Anir is y-your country. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"It means everything to me." Caeso snorted, and then said haughtily, "And I venture that it means more to me than it ever could to you."

For he was a noble, born of distinguished blood, and therefore with deeper ties to the land, so he believed.

"It is for me to endure to see my country held hostage by a bunch of treasonous, upstart usurpers. Not. You."

The deeper tone of voice from the girl was of no special note to him.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

"You have NO IDEA what Vel Anir means to me!" Zinnia spat, fingers clawing at whatever they could scratch at. "The Academy. The Dreadlords! VEL ANIR! That they could give a freak like me a chance, a home, a purpose! I would do anything for Vel Anir, Caeso, ANYTHING!"

She felt her skin crawling. Felt the tightness in her scalp. The pain in her teeth, the burning in her eyes.

"Don't you get it?! I admire you, Caeso, because I thought you were everything an Anirian should be. I waste all my time trying to impress you, trying to...to...I don't know, be like you, in the stupid hope I can get you to acknowledge me, but you're so bloody pigheaded!"

In her frustration, the gold-eyed girl hadn't even realized her stutter had dropped away. Instinct took over, yet still she dared not face him.

"You're a blasted noble for Kress' sake, you actually have the power to make change. Stop enduring and actually do something, give me a reason to admire you!"

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso, caught up in the heated exchange as he was, did not yet notice the lack of Zinnia's stutter either. He kept his gaze squarely on her, even if she lacked the wherewithal to meet it. He took in what she said and kept himself in check. His answers were formulated. Where she was verbose, he would be succinct.

"Why should I desire the admiration of a self-proclaimed freak?"

She didn't respect herself, that much was abundantly clear, and if she didn't respect herself then why should he? What was more wretched than morbid indulgence in self-loathing?

To her second, persistent argument, the overly vague do something, he said, "All efforts shall be done, each in their own time. I am not a fool like Gilram."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Again, it stung more coming out of his mouth than her own. The chains of her manacles went taught as she pulled at her bonds. Finally she looked up at him, stared him dead in the eyes. Her own were ablaze, her pupils razors.

"Maybe because I'm one of the few people that actually likes you. And I would think that's something a smart noble would want, to have people like them. Do you know what happens to nobles when they're hated? They get rebelled against. That thing you hate so much."

The girl huffed and looked back down. Truly he did not know her heart, was too stubborn to understand it, or at least--perhaps worst--didn't care.

"You are a fool, Caeso. Just a different kind. The least you could do while you're biding your time is to stop whining in the meanwhile."

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso straightened his back. Squared his shoulders. Lifted his chin ever so slightly.

"You presume...to instruct me?"

There came a sharp rumble in his throat, and then he spat on the floor in the intervening space between them. The glob on saliva glistened in the low light of the cell.

"That is what I think of your counsel. Now spare me any further histrionic wailing."

At last he broke off his gaze, turning his attention then down to the cuffs secured about his wrists. Two separate entities, similar but distinct, bond together by a chain.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

"...Like I said. A fool."

The fire went out. Zinnia was done. There would be no cooperation, no unity between Anirian kin. Just blind pride until the end.

Nadia, the orc woman from before, sauntered up to the bars and slammed a metal rod against them. Even knowing the duo likely wouldn't look upon her, she bore a wicked, triumphant grin.

"All this talk o' change an' revolution, bahaha! You'll do nothing now. Yer both about t' be slaves. Whether noble r' scum, yer buyer won't care. Simmer in the equality, you two!" she cackled as she turned to leave once more to let the initiates wallow in their failure.

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Caeso raised his gaze, looked over his shoulder, once he heard the voice of Nadia. Defiantly he stared at her, endured her gloating.

"We will see," he said in response as she turned to leave.

Then he looked down to his cuffs again. What he could take heart in were all of the unarmed combat training courses the Academy drilled into its Initiates. Proctors had cuffs just like these, slapped them onto wrists just like these cuffs were shackling him now, and thus ensured that Initiates had to fight one another without their magic. The familiarity of having already been in a situation like this was, at least, some cause for calm.

He just had to await the right opportunity. The right opportunity, not necessarily the first one, the right one, because he knew well that he would only have one shot at it. Whether Zinnia had the wherewithal, or even the will for that matter, to act was something he could not hope for nor rely on—not after what just transpired between them. For all intents and purposes, he had to form his considerations around the expectation that she would be of no help to him; at best, fending for herself.

For now, it was all he could do to wait. And then, when the moment came, to trust in the strength he had thus far cultivated. This, to wipe away the shame of having been captured in the first place.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia was done. The fight had burned out of her. The crawl stopped, and so did she. She had no allies here, no hope. Only solitude, and a life of servitude in her future. With nothing else to say and nothing to do, Zinnia rolled onto her side facing the wall and tried to let sleep find her. Surprisingly, the cold, damp, stone floor did not impede her in that regard.

---

Time passed. It was difficult to distinguish how much. No natural light pervaded the dungeon beneath the Black Fortress. Stale bread and unidentifiable gruel was brought for the captive initiates to eat, twice daily, along with water that looked like it had been used to clean dishes before being offered to them for sustenance.

Before long, Nadiya returned once more, wearing that same shit-eating smirk she was so fond of. Again she rattled the bars of the cell, waking both initiates if they were attempting sleep.
"Dinner tonight, whelps. Rouse yerselves and be ready t' be on yer best behavior. This mebbe yer las' time outta the cage fer a good, long while, so bes' nae to get on th' Lord Admiral's bad side!"

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Such slumber as it was, Caeso was nonetheless roused from it by the raucous banging on the bars by their smug jailor. He was sitting on the ground, his back propped up against the wall, head formerly drooping in his sleep but now slowly rising as he woke.

He gave a grunt of acknowledgement to Nadia and nothing more, waiting until she went snickering down the hallway, waiting until the far door opened and closed and silence with its accompanying stillness descended again, and waiting even a few moments longer for good measure.

Then he glanced over toward Zinnia, stating the mere fact of the matter.

"This will be the one opportunity allotted to us."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia barely acknowledged the stimuli. Time was a blur. She could barely remember how the last...however long they'd been here, had progressed. She recalled eating, sleeping, forcing herself to exercise despite how wildly she did not want to. The gold-eyed girl hadn't spoken a word to Caeso since their argument. She hadn't even looked at him.

Now, however, she slowly turned her head, stared at him blankly for a moment, and offered a slow blink. With a sigh, she simply lied on her back, curled her knees up, and began doing sit-ups. Each time she hit the top of her arc she made eye contact with him again, as if inviting him to expand on his statement but never asking directly.

 

[Caeso Diemut]

Was it worth it? Trying to break the silence? Caeso just watched Zinnia perform her sit-ups for a moment, and then pressed on anyway.

"The envoy can rot here," he said. "Even thinking about salvaging the mission is a luxury which cannot be afforded, cuffs or no cuffs. Ours is a plight beyond desperation, being as we are caught in the worst of circumstances in the middle of a hostile city."

It was doubtful that they would be able to get these cuffs off here in Cerak. Might as well pray for Anirius to swoop down from some high heaven and scoop them up, for all the likelihood of it happening.

"Getting to the Portal Stone..."

He checked himself. They, most likely, wouldn't have access to their magic, nor a key. So how could they even use the Stone? The best possible scenario would be to take some local, low-level mage hostage and force him to either make a key or to activate the Stone for them. But that could not be relied upon.

Correcting himself, Caeso said, "...getting out of here is the highest, the only, priority."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Why was Caeso even bothering to tell her this? What difference did it make? Zinnia already knew that he didn't care what she thought, what input she might have. Even still, his words irked her. Enough that her voice creaked from behind the parched curtains of her neglected vocal chords. The words came between the folding of her abdominals, chunks being offered at the top of each arc, alongside her burning stare.

"We'd be...returning...as f-failures. You're...c-content with...that?"

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"Failures," Caeso said, shaking his head before looking off to his left to muse. "Is a man, armed solely with a meager sword, tasked with fending off the might of an entire army, a failure when inevitably he is overcome? No. He was set up to fail."

He looked back to Zinnia.

"If by...what, Anirius's intervention mayhap, there is some miraculous opportunity to secure the envoy, then of course we would take it. But Vel Anir abandoned gods long ago. What we have here are anti-magic cuffs we cannot shed from ourselves, an envoy whose location we do not even know, and a city filled to bursting with hostile cutthroats and scoundrels."

He hated that all this was the case, but he would be a fool to deny it.

"What I am truly saying, Zinnia, is that we are of no use to anyone dead."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia let out a long sigh. She pulled herself to her knees and stopped.
"M-maybe...you might be r-right."

The gold-eyed girl could not serve her home if she was dead or enslaved. No petty backlash at Caeso was worth that fate.

"Then what are you s-suggesting?"

 

[Caeso Diemut]

"Nothing more than that we, for the sake of our futures, maintain a level of vigilance once that orc opens this cell door. From that time forward we must spot and seize whatever opportunity may arise—perhaps to that end some signal between us could be devised."

If Caeso spotted a chance that Zinnia did not, or vice versa, a covert way of informing the other to get ready would be beneficial. He may have cast a heavy judgment upon Zinnia over these past days, but the fact of the matter was that each of them, despite their sour appraisals of one another, could benefit by truce and cooperation.

"In any case, Nadia is right about one thing: if we see ourselves returned to this cage, then it will be a good, long while. And it is here that they will deprive us into weakness such that any hope is almost certainly precluded in its entirety."

Zinnia