Private Tales High Tension Containment

[Eleanor]

Somewhere in Falwood

Someone at the Academy thought they were hilarious. They were the only one.

Eleanor and Vance had been sent on a mission together. Alone. Fuck, was the first thought Eleanor had when the Proctor had given them the mission details. The two of them were to go to a predetermined location in Falwood to deliver a confidential message to someone within the spy network. They only knew where they were going and that the person they were meeting would say a pleasant day to meet you here. Eleanor thought it all sounded silly and she was not a fan at all.

The Initiates were nearing the meeting spot two days into their journey. They were to meet at high noon and by Eleanor's estimate, they had about an hour or so to go.

"I still don't like this, Vance. It is a weird mission to send two Initiates on." She said that, but the Academy had been sending the kids on some weird ass missions this last year. It was like they were weeding out the soon-to-be Dreadlords since there was no longer a lovely graduation ceremony that would take care of at least half.

Vance Calgrave

 

[Vance Calgrave]

The Falwood was not a place two young almost-dreadlords should be eager to find themselves. Though the truce with the elves had held, and the new Republic seemed keen on repairing relations even further, the elves' memories were very, very long. Some of them had been alive during the last wars, a notion that Vance would hardly be able to comprehend even if he cared enough to try. Good news was, he didn't.

Vance had been excited about the assignment at first. Dangerous territory? A chance to encounter ancient foes of Vel Anir? A way to further demonstrate his power to the Academy, old guard and new? He had accepted the assignment gladly (without choice, obviously) and only faltered when his partner was mentioned.

One: Vance didn't like partners. He relied on himself first and foremost and didn't want to bog himself down with worrying about some other chump. Two: Eleanor was one of the last people he wanted to spend any time alone with. They were friendly enough now, sure. Shared disaster at that miserable ball and a few training exercises had showed that maybe they could move on from past... incidents... but alone in the woods for weeks? It made his collar feel too tight and he fidgeted with his sleeves when she spoke to him.

"It's busy work," he replied, scanning the branches above them for the hundredth time that day. "Too out of the way for 'Lords, and not dangerous enough to be worth their while." Gods, he hoped there would be danger.

He wore his usual mission gear: similar armor to what he trained in but a bit nicer looking. He had made sure to clean the various copper bars and mesh that affixed to his arms, legs, and torso, and his sword hung comfortably at his side.

"Wish we had a better description of where to go, though. A big tree... there are thousands of fucking trees!" A bird called above them, and Vance was too bored to appreciate it.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor had stopped herself from launching things at Vance's head a few times on the trip already. She had been on her best behavior though. Unfortunately for Vance, Eleanor's best behavior still consisted of sarcasm and snark. She rolled her eyes as they walked.

"They gave us more of a description than a big tree," she mocked his tone. "You just don't like paying attention to details even when they are pertinent to the mission."

Eleanor had read the details and she was sure Vance had glanced at them at least. He was absolutely the last person she wanted to be on this mission with. Her and Edric had worked well together with only a little fighting. She had a feeling that would not be the case here. No, these Initiates were going to butt heads the entire mission.

She sighed deeply and rubbed her forehead before addressing her partner again. She breathed to five and then she spoke. "Look, we deliver the message and get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. We should be home soon."

Her not wanting to murder him slowly was a big step of progress in her book. She was not sure what his problem was though. He had never been mad at her. He had just avoided her because of her ire. At least that is what she had always thought...

 

[Vance Calgrave]

"I pay attention to the details that matter," he said with only a little bite back in his tone. "Like how many knife-ears we're likely to find."

Fuck-all, that's how many, he thought with a sour grimace. He didn't want go for a walk, he wanted to fight. To actually do something befitting a dreadlord. Hell, even escorting a diplomat would have been better. At least then he'd get to look the enemy in the eyes, push his weight around a bit.

Eleanor was agitated, and normally Vance would have been tempted to poke that agitation for his own amusement. Only he didn't really want to with her, it wasn't the same. Figures, he couldn't even have fun with his partner on this mission.

He slapped a hand to his neck suddenly. "Ow! Fuckin' bugs..." This forest was the worst. Ella was right, the sooner they got out of here the better. Only... where was here? He couldn't really see where they... and the path was a lot more twisty than before...

"Hey, Ella? D'you feel funnneenrrgh." And he fell into unconsciousness before his face hit the dirt.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor shot Vance a glare. She was agitated. She didn't want to be here with him. He distracted her and that made her mad in and of itself. She may have gotten over their past but she still had some kind of weird feelings towards him. The dance had just solidified it and it drove her mad. It's like the Proctors knew when they had sent them on this mission together. They knew and they wanted to fuck with the Initiates.

Vance complained about a bug and she swatted at the back of her own neck when she felt the sting. "I really fucking hate bugs," she said as her hand hit something that was sticking out of her neck. "What the..." Eleanor pulled it out and looked at it. A tiny dart.

She looked up when Vance said her name but she couldn't form words to say back to him. They wouldn't come out. She was yelling yes in her head. She saw him hit the ground as she tried to take a step and toppled over. The world went black.

-----

Ella's eyes snapped open and she groaned at the pain that shot through her head. Her hands felt around her and then she slowly turned her head to check her surroundings. The room was lit by a few lanterns that sat on a table outside of the cell. The cell. The CELL!

The Initiate sat up and saw she had been laying on a cot. Vance was on the concrete floor next to her. "What the fuck? Vance..." she swung her legs around and bent down to shake him.

 

[Vance Calgrave]

He was having a very strange dream. The woods had turned to darkness and there was a terrible stinging in his neck and his nose hurt really, really bad. Then he was floating, floating on a sea of... hands? Hands that turned into water or leaves and then he was still. Ella was there, he couldn't see her but she was there.

Vance woke up swinging, which tended to happen when being shook awake after a chemically induced coma in a prison cell. He shot up into a sitting position. Oh gods, too fast. The room started spinning again and he turned over and wretched onto the stone and straw-covered floor.

After spitting and wiping his lips, and with the cell coming back into focus, he rose to his knees. Definitely a cell, definitely just the two of them. Definitely captured. "Fuck!"

 

[Eleanor]

Ella pulled back as soon as Vance swung. She was not about to get hit in the face for trying to wake him up. She grimaced and felt bile rise in her throat when he threw up. She didn't do well with bodily fluids besides blood. She held it down though and just started at the redheaded boy as he got to his knees.

"They drugged us. I don't know who they are but they ambushed us and fucking drugged us." She scowled as she lifted her hand towards the bars. She sent her magic out in an attempt to pull the bars apart but nothing happened. There was no magic. She had no power.

"Fuck!" She yelled and tried to raise some of the straw off the floor. Nothing. No movement. No hint of power. "I cannot use my magic, Vance. They have some kind of shield on the cell."

They were completely and truly fucked. They didn't even know who had attacked them yet.

 

[Vance Calgrave]

Vance let out a gutteral yell of rage, getting unsteadily to his feet and pulling on the bars as hard as he could. They looked like wood but felt like metal, and no matter how hard he pulled he could not break them. No matter how much he rattled the door it would not leave its hinges. Despite his rage, there were no sparks shooting from his hair and no electric hum along his copper wires. "Damn it all!" He yelled and threw a hand forwards, but he may as well have just been pointing out the door's latch, because nothing happened.

He tried again with identical results: no lightning, no power. He reached instinctively for his sword and found it missing, and then looked stupidly around the room as if his captors would have left it politely in the cell after removing it.

"I know who they are, fucking elves! Look at this place. Wooden cage, bark roof. Damned savages." He kicked the cell door, but all he got was a nasty vibration up his leg.

His breathing finally started to calm a little bit, once his brain figured out that force would not get them out. "Ok. Ok. We're stuck and without magic, that's fine." He hated how that stupid proctor from back in the courtyard was being proven right by this. If you can't fight without magic you don't deserve it or some similar horseshit. "They'll check on us eventually. They must want something from us, otherwise we'd be dead. When the guard comes, you lure them in close, I'll reach through the bars and grab them, and force them to open the door."

The scene all played out wonderfully in his head.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor sat on the cot with her legs pulled up to her chest. Her chin rested on her knees as she watched Vance try to use his lightning. She had told him that they couldn't use their magic but he tried anyways. She didn't blame him, she would've done the same thing if the roles were reversed.

"Elves? But why?" Her brain was still a little foggy from the drugs and her head hurt terribly as well.

Vance started to calm down and she looked over at him as he outlined his terrible plan. "Vance, that plan won't work. They were smart enough to capture two Dreadlord Initiates and put up some kind of magical shield, I do not think they will get close to the bars."

She looked at him like he was an idiot for a second before she put her forehead on her knees so she was looking at the legs. She was not sure why but she felt a tear forming in her eye and she did not want Vance to see. They had both been in plenty of dire situations before and everyone had come out alive but at least there was a chance of getting out of the other situations. This one seemed hopeless.

 

[Vance Calgrave]

"Well what have you got? We can't just wait for them to show up." He didn't like not being in control, he didn't like being confined. He needed to get out of here and be back in charge of the situation. Though without magic, without weapons, their situation did seem impossible.

Ella was just sitting on the cot, curled up in some sort of fetal ball. "Hey!" he barked. Then, sensing some sort of distress with all two ounces of empathy he possessed, stepped forward and said more softly, "Hey."

He moved to put a hand on Ella's knee but stopped a few inches away, hovered for a second, and then opted to crouch in front of the cot instead. The ceiling was too low for him to stand fully, anyway.

"We need to work together. You're right, it was a bad plan." A good part of him wanted to berate Eleanor for freezing up, for still sitting on the bed instead of helping him tear down these walls... but he had enough sense to realize that wouldn't help. Not right now, anyway.

He took a deep breath and the humming through his armor faded away. "Do you have an idea?"

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor lifted her head and looked at Vance crouching in front of her. She was not sure why she had frozen and she felt foolish. "I..." She just studied his face for a moment before she continued. "I don't have any ideas. We don't have any weapons, no magic. Vance, I think we are stuck in here until we know what they want."

Ella still wasn't convinced that it was elves but she had also never really had any contact with their kind before. She slowly lowered her legs to the ground in the small gap between him and the cot. "Sorry, I just really hate the fact that we are trapped," she rubbed her forehead and sighed.

Ella looked around the cell. There was nothing but straw, the simple cot, and the two Initiates. Hmmm, she let out before she spoke. "What if we threw some straw in their face? No, that is dumb and it will just piss them off."

 

[Vance Calgrave]

Vance could manage calmness for about two minutes, after which the prickling anxiety came back. He stood again and set to pacing. "What do they want with us?" he muttered. Far from the type to belittle his own importance, Vance still had to admit it was odd to capture apprentices, especially during a supposed truce.

He turned and stared back at Eleanor at her straw suggestion. He raised an eyebrow and choked down every single impulse he had to scoff at her. "Yeah, I don't think-"

"Anirians."

"Blasted fuck!" Vance practically leapt back from the cell's bars as the voice came unannounced from without. A figure stood there in a deep blue cloak that obscured everything above their nose, but the face that could be seen was thin and angular. Vance had not heard any footsteps, no movement of cloth or straw to warn of this one's approach. It was almost like they had just appeared.

He instinctively tried to pull on his magic, but all he could manage was a gentle, weak warbling from the copper rods. Fright turning to rage in an instant, he barked back at their onlooker who had yet to move.

What?"

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor just wanted Vance pace around the thread like a literal caged animal. She was still sitting uncomfortably on the cot when she heard a voice followed by Vance's cussing.

Her eyes focused on the figure that stood outside the cell. It was creepy and Eleanor slowly stood and came to Vance's side. Like Vance, she had not seen or heard anything either so it made her wonder how far the non-magic magic shield extended around the cell. Obviously not very far. What if they would get outside the barrier...would their magic work even if they were inside the cell still? Probably not.

Ella and Vance seemed to ask similar questions of the man at the same time...

"What do you want?!"

 

[Vance Calgrave]

The figure stood with unnatural stillness. Their hood was clearly fabric, but it could have been carved from stone for how little it moved. They did not answer the two dreadlords at once, preferring to let the heavy silence press on them for a few agonizing seconds.

It was not until Vance could hear his own heartbeat in his ears that the person spoke again.

“What are you doing in Falwood?”

Vance still couldn’t see the face above the nose, but the voice was weirdly soft for how stern it’s tone was. He glanced to Ella before glaring back.

“Going for a walk.”

More silence. Then the figure turned and left.

“The hell was that about?”

A very long time passed. Vance had no way to tell for sure, but the dull light in their little cell had time to change hue before the figure returned. Again his face was hidden, and again he asked:

“What are you doing in Falwood?”

Was this some sort of elvish fucking mind game? Well they wouldn’t break. The longer they were in here the more time the Academy had time to send a raiding party. Surely that’s what they would do.

 

[Eleanor]

"We were just delivering a confidential packet. You have it. We don't even know what it says," Eleanor was definitely the more even tempered out of the two Initiates at the moment. Everything she said was the truth too. She had no idea why they had been sent on this errand.

She looked at the figure and then at Vance. She was growing more irritated by the second in this cell without her magic.

She stepped closer to the bars and the mystery person before speaking again. "Why did you take us? What do you want?"

Eleanor's voice got louder as she spoke. She was so frustrated with not knowing anything.

 

[Vance Calgrave]

Vance stood just behind Ella as she approached the bars, feeling a strange mix of support and... appreciation? For her fearlessness? Something like that. He knew well enough how powerful she was, and how fucked these knife-ears would be if even one of them managed to break free of this cage. That pride was keeping him from melting down into a full-blown episode of kicking at bars futilly.

She made a good point, actually. Why had the elves captured them? They had the packet the pair was delivering and had, painful as it was to admit, totally overpowered them. It would have been simpler to just kill the two of them. If it was a matter of the treaty, or prisoner exchange, why question the two of them at all? Had the situation been reversed, Vance would have sent a crust of bread and some murky water to the prisoners and been done with them until the exchange. Unless...

A victorious and insufferably arrogant grin cracked across his features, and he laughed. He paced back into the cell with his hand to his head, laughing as condescendingly as he could manage before coming back. "Because they don't know what it says either!" He pointed at the cloaked figure. "They can't read the damned thing, it's magically sealed and they can't undo the spell. Oh, that must kill you."

The hooded man, who until now had been stone-faced, did tighten his lips at the mocking tone.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor turned to look back at Vance. That arrogant, all knowing grin that she found so attractive was on his face and she slowly raised a brow at him for him to share with the class. As he did, a smile formed on her face too and she crossed her arms over her chest. Ella didn't step back to where Vance was standing though. She stood strong and even raised her chin in defiance.

"So, what I am understanding, Vance, is that they need our help." She tilted her head to the side and held a finger over her lips like she was contemplating this situation.

"They need our help yet here we are in this cell that blocks our magic. It doesn't seem very nice of them to keep us like this...does it?" She finally turned and walked back to stand by Vance with a smirk on her face.

 

[Vance Calgrave]

“No, no it doesn’t,” he sneered, crossing his arms and standing up tall with self-satisfied pride. He felt much better now, although he still felt somewhat hollow without the charge of electricity running through him. It was quieter, he admitted, and somewhat easier to organize his thoughts... that was not A fair trade at all.

He didn’t even balk at Eleanor standing nearby, didn’t think to feel uncomfortable when they were sharing in this victory.

The cloaked figure turned and walked away again. “Yeah get out of here,” Vance scoffed and threw up a rude gesture to the retreating back. “He’ll be back. They better start offering us some trades if they want our help.” Not that they would be any help. Vance had no damn clue how to open that box.

 

[Eleanor]

"I doubt that will happen. They will torture us first. If they are willing to do this," Ella motioned at the cell around them. "Then they will be willing to torture us to get what they want."

She let out a long sigh and took Vance's hand in her own. She squeezed it before she realized what she had done. There was no electricity flowing through her from his power...it was just the spark between them. She quickly pulled her hand from his and looked up at him sheepishly. It was an odd expression coming from the serious Initiate.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "I just...I don't know..." Why was she acting weird all of a sudden? She really hated how she got around Vance and now they were stuck in this cell together.

 

[Vance Calgrave]

Vance’s face could not have been more surprised when Ella took his hand. His mouth got very dry, and when she pulled away he breathed a sigh of relief and looked away, resolving to ignore that it had ever happened.

“We’re trained to resist that sort of thing,” he said still facing away from her so she couldn’t see his burning face. They had also been trained to escape these sorts of situations, and Vance was much happier with the idea of breaking free than being tortured.

He held a hand up in front of him and looked over the distinct lack of sparks. Useless, he thought bitterly, clenching his fist. He thought about throwing another mini tantrum but instead looked at the glint of copper that had been woven along his sleeves.

You’re a fuckin genius, he sneered and grabbed at his sleeve. A few good tears later and he had exposed enough of the wire to fit some into their cage’s latch, which he jostled around roughly trying to pick it.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor had to admit that it was a good idea but after a few minutes of struggling and jostling, it had not budged. "You can't just stick it in and wiggle it, Vance! You have to finesse it!" She said as she came over and held out her hand for the piece of copper.

She got down to eye level with the latch and inserted the copper wire. She was more gentle than he had been and she took more time and care with it. She also had more patience and gave it a little longer to work than he had. "It would be great if this worked!"

 

[Vance Calgrave]

Vance jammed the copper wire around in the lock more roughly as his frustration grew before letting out a growl of annoyance. He glared back at Eleanor before huffing and passing her the wire. "Fine then. Finesse it."

He stood and leaned his back against the cage bars as she worked, wishing he could just kick down the door and be done with it. He was about to respond to her with something snarky when he saw a shadow move across the far wall.

"Someone's coming, hurry up!"

He took a stance and felt the hollowness again as he reflexively tried to call on his lightning to no avail.

 

[Eleanor]

Eleanor almost had it when he yelled at her to hurry up and she lost her concentration. The copper wire fell from her hand as the hooded figure came into view. She picked it up and quickly threw it behind her. Hopefully to hide in a shadow.

“Eat.”

Ella sighed a frustrated sigh and looked at Vance as bread and water was pushed through the bars. Ella made a face and then looked at their elf capture.

"How about you let us go or you can at least be a little nice if you want our help..."

 

[Vance Calgrave]

Vance stifled a curse as the pin dropped and he quickly stood up straight as the figure came into view. It was obvious to anyone who cared that he had been up to something, but apparently the elf didn't care and just threw some food at them.

"Classic elvish cuisine, I see." If the hooded being was insulted, he didn't show it.

"You would be wise to request our help."

"What, like 'let us out?' If we knew that would work we'd have tried it much earlier." Vance's insufferable sneer was ignored.

"Hey, wait!" he called to the elf as they turned to leave. Vance thrust a thumb at Ella. "She's gotta go, you know. 'Take care' of things?" If Ella could get out, even just to use a latrine, she could maybe map their position. Much to Vance's disappointment, the elf just pointed to a dark corner of their cell where a small pot lay.

So that's what that was for.

"Not all of us are used to shitting in the woods, you know!" He called after the retreating elf. He couldn't see their face, but he knew they were smiling horribly.

 

[Eleanor]

Ella just glared at the door long after the mysterious elf had left. She wanted to punch something so bad. Vance was there but she didn't want to punch him...not at the moment at least.

"It was a nice try, Vance," she said as she walked over to the cot and took a seat. She leaned forward and clasped her hands together. Ella tilted her head to look up at Vance and she tried to form a smile. She couldn't. There was no smiling right now. No sarcasm, no joking, no joy.

"Maybe they will take one of us out of here for torture and we can use that to our advantage." What advantage was that? There was none. She was talking out of her ass.

"Vance...I am scared..." Her voice had gotten progressively quieter with syllable.