Post #2615598 in The City of Chains, a roleplay on RPG

After her last-ditch attack on the guard attempting to shoot Ithilian, Amalia was dragged out of the Duke’s chamber, and though she knew this wasn’t leading anywhere good, she resisted no further. There wasn't any way she’d be able to get out of this just yet—but she knew that to acknowledge this was far from the same thing as giving up. She merely had to wait for the right opportunity, and bide her time until then. The guards had slapped on a pair of manacles, but wisely kept hold of her arms anyway.

She was quickly ushered down the stairs to the ground level, passing no one but a few servants on the way down, and then they herded her down a narrow side passage, to what looked like a trapdoor in the ground. Once they’d confirmed that more guards waited below, they dropped her down like so much chattel, and slammed the trapdoor shut. She landed on her feet, and was immediately seized by the new guards, and these ones added the indignity of a blindfold, presumably so she would not know the way out of wherever they were taking her down here. She spent her time counting steps and trying to stay as oriented as possible.

When the blindfold was taken off several minutes later, she found herself in what looked to be a dungeon, iron bars slotted into the stone floor on both sides. She locked her jaw while the guards stripped her of every useful thing she had on her, as well as everything but her last layer of clothing—a thin cotton shirt without sleeves and linen trousers. Her feet were left bare, and they even confiscated anything holding her hair in place, leaving her braid to unravel and the shorter hairs at the front of her face to fall in front of her eyes. She supposed they’d been told to remove anything that could possibly aid in her escape.

And then they took the shirt, too, slicing it off to avoid having to unshackle her arms. “Looks like he was right,” one of them remarked to the others, having discovered, much to her disgust, the small knife she kept tucked in her breast bindings, though they remained in place. “Can’t assume anything with this one.”

She remained silent and still as they checked her trousers as well, bare hands going places that bare hands did not belong without her consent. She drew a distinct line, however, when one suggested her smallclothes receive the same examination. The next hand to venture into her personal space was batted out of the way with an elbow, and the owner of it received a decisive kick to his nether regions, leaving no doubt that boot-less feet could still hurt quite a bit. “If I was hiding anything there, I would have killed you with it by now.” The threat was not empty, and the guards backed off.

One of them, perhaps feeling a touch of mercy, or else simply fear, tossed her trousers back to her, and though it was difficult to redress with her hands bound behind her, she did it. “Whatever he is paying you, it is not going to be enough,” she assured them. She didn’t doubt this was Marcus’s doing. Not anymore. It wouldn’t have been a difficult matter for someone like him to locate the guards that could be bribed or bartered into his service for the duration, and he’d likely set this much up some time in advance.

“Now, now, kadan, try not to terrorize them too much. They’re just the help, after all.” Amalia froze, stiffening in her spot, forcing herself to turn her head far enough to lock eyes with his. She had known he would show himself to her, of course—his pride would never allow him to miss an opportunity to gloat. She resisted the urge to grind her teeth—this was more difficult than she had anticipated it was going to be, perhaps because she’d somehow imagined she would be able to face this in armor, or at the very least clothed the way she preferred. Not half-dressed at best.

They were interrupted, however, when a new guard entered the area, clearly out of breath. “Milord, there’s bad news. The elf’s gotten away somehow. Looks like the Duke’s men let him out of the front gate not a few minutes ago. What should we do?”

Marcus raised a dark eyebrow, and spoke drolly. “What does one usually do when the rat’s gone to ground? Send in the hounds.”

“B-but the kennelmaster—“

“Make an excuse. You’re all dismissed. Leave us.” The Magister waved a hand, and the guards departed, one locking the door of her cell and handing off the key to their employer. A sly smile on his face, Marcus turned back to Amalia, who regarded him with a blank expression, a careful disguise of how disgustingly vulnerable she felt in this moment. He was alone, and she would have attacked him on the spot, had the iron bars of her new cage not separated them. It was probably for the best—in her present state of captivity, she would have been at a severe disadvantage, even before his magic was taken into account.

“You have interesting friends, kadan. Some of them in very high places, these days. But no one will mind if the dogs tear a thieving elf apart, now will they?” She didn’t reply, only lifting her chin slightly and glowering at him. She dare not say what she really thought—if Marcus was underestimating Ithilian, it was to their benefit, and if she pressed him on the point in an attempt to gain an upper hand in her own situation, he might see fit to take care of things himself rather than trusting his men to it, and she didn’t want that.

“But no matter. I confess, I am quite distracted by our little situation right here. It’s so familiar, don’t you think?” It was, and that familiarity had her muscles locked in place. She could not exactly tell what it was, but she suspected it was mostly fear. Not the kind of intellectual caution that came about because she merely understood something to be dangerous, but visceral, almost animal, fear. No amount of meditation could allow her to forget what had happened last time she’d been imprisoned at his mercy—even if somehow she could make her mind forget, she swore her body and soul would remember anyway.

Marcus stared at her for several seconds, and she imagined that he might well be reading her thoughts from the set of her stance, because after a while, he sighed heavily. “It wasn’t personal, you know.” He sounded almost morose, almost like the person she had once believed him to be. “You have no idea how hard I tried, to get the Ariqun to entrust me with that list, instead of you. I never wanted to hurt you, kadan. In fact, I wanted you to come with me, when I left them. I never did think you were meant for the Qun. And it seems I was right about that.” Amalia’s jaw tightened. He spun lies so smoothly even she couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or not, but it didn’t matter to her anyway. There was no forgiving him, and no forgetting what she’d endured because of him.

“Of course, now it’s a little bit personal, I must admit. It’s not every day someone gets the better of me, and I was quite inconvenienced by your refusal to speak. I’d promised the Archon all the Qunari in Tevinter, you see, and he does not take broken promises lightly. I almost lost everything to my name.” He folded his arms behind his back, perfectly at ease and poised. He still favored deep red, she noted, feeling keenly the contrast between their positions at this very moment. He had all the power in the situation, and she was already chafing under the yoke of that understanding.

“Pity you didn’t.” Amalia’s tone was flat, but her eyes were hard.

Marcus smiled, more a gruesome split of his patrician face than an expression with any warmth to it. She’d seen someone smile more truly with only half the right muscles to do it. “So cold you are.” The smile widened slightly, and he reached through the bars, tracing an index finger down the scar on her cheek. “I did not give you this. Perhaps I could not bear to mar your face? It seems you have not been so careful, however.”

Amalia took a large step backwards. It was conceding a defeat, she knew, but she could not stand being touched by this man. Something about it made her feel filthy, when from anyone else it would have been merely annoying, or perhaps not even unwelcome, depending. The glint of triumph in his eyes made her seethe. “What do you want, Marcus?” She hated this, how it was so clearly he who controlled the tenor of this conversation, to say nothing of its content. How he could manipulate his words and gestures and in so doing, tilt her moods and reactions to his whim. She hated that he knew her that well, still. For all that she had changed, some part of her was still the stupid girl he’d tormented.

His expression darkened. “Now, but that is the question, isn’t it?” It was a murmur more than anything. The shadows in the catacombs fell in the hollows of his cheeks, feathering across his jaw, sharpening his lines even further and shrouding his eyes until she couldn’t read his face. It looked more like a skull than anything, with how fair his flesh had become since their days in the sun. But then he shifted, and the effect was gone.

“I want you to suffer, kadan. In all the ways I have suffered.”

She scoffed. “You? The only thing in you that has suffered is your pride.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, just a glimmer of iris between lash-lines. “What could you possibly know of suffering?” A flash of irritation moved across his face, so quickly she might have imagined it. Still… it was something, something she might be able to use.

“And yet I know enough to teach you pain still. I know it did not seem so at the time, but there were things I spared you, before. Things I will not spare you this time.”

Amalia squared her shoulders. “I endured that. I will endure this.” It was the one thing she knew with certainty she could do.

“Will you? Very well then. I’ll be back with your friend’s corpse. Well… what’s left of it, anyway. We’ll see how you endure that.”

Snippet #2615598

located in Kirkwall, a part of The City of Chains, one of the many universes on RPG.

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