5This story will contain slash, so if that offends you, please, do me and yourself a favour and go away.
Julian
He'd lost track of how many days since he'd been captured somewhere around seventy-two. He had been scraping marks into the grime on the bricks of his cell until his fingernails had turned green and black, but then they had chained him up after they'd realised he was a sorcerer when he had killed one of his guard with a blast of flame. It wasn't that he'd though it would actually work, but rather that he had just woken up and was more than a little pissed off at doing so in a dank cell with only an archer's slit of a window. It seemed his captors were possessed of a basic knowledge of sorcery if they knew that he was fairly useless without his hands.
And there had been the small matter of tearing his fingernails out. The torture had started tamely enough—as tamely as torture could—though what they were torturing him for in the first place he could not fathom. Every night, he told the men in the smart-looking white coats that never seemed to get stained by his blood that he had no memory of any of the events about which they asked him, nor indeed any memory as to how he had gotten where he was. After the first time he'd told them so much, they had sent a doctor by who had asked his name (Julian Arrhenius), the year (1633 of the New Empire), and basic information, which he'd all been able to answer easily enough. And so they had concluded he was lying and went on torturing him.
Julian looked up as the door to the cell swung inward. He could barely see since they had taken his glasses from him, but he saw the white blur and closed his eyes, readying himself for what he knew was coming. It was as if he was watching the development of the torture techniques from the stone ages into modern times—they had started by hitting him, with hands, booted feet, and whips, and he had gone on to food and sleep deprivation, more gruesome things like tearing his nail out, and now this most modern method of all. No matter how much he would thrash—which, admittedly, was not much anymore—they would manage to lash him to the ground, lying horizontally across the stones whose coldness and dampness he had long since ceased to feel. Then the ringleader, recognised by his equally pale hair, would tug on his thick rubber gloves and lift a metal rod from a well-cushioned case. He and the others would pull goggles on; thick ones, which pitch black lenses that were mirrored so that they reflected the little light from the corridor brightly. Julian clenched his teeth, wanting to scream but being far too paralysed in fear even to allow a single sound past his lips.
The leader would then hold the thin rod—rather like a lightning-rod—perpendicular to his torso and he must flick some unseen switch, or maybe one of his assistants did, because he certainly was no sorcerer, yet a current would build throughout the slim piece of metal until it possessed a near blinding intensity, and then the charge would flow outwards, dripping slowly to the tip as though it were syrup left in the cold too long, before suddenly lunging into him. He felt, every time, as though the man had stabbed him with the rod, but he knew that it was just he current. He also knew that it had something to do with his Source, that unending well within him from where he drew his magic, as though they were electrocuting it somehow. And his Source being closer and more vital to him than blood, it hurt worse than if they had indeed set his blood to boil beneath his skin.
Just when he thought he had no energy, they would do this to him and the screams would be positively ripped from his throat. And somehow they prevented him from passing out. Maybe it was just that the pain was too great even to do that. He didn't care why; just counted the seconds until they let him alone, until his back stopped arching so high that only his shoulders and heels touched the floor. As tears leaked from his eyes, he thought suddenly that it was like a bee-sting at his very core, only magnified to an almost unbearable level. Like swallowing fire, like breathing in hot wax and having it drip down into your innards, like—but they were done in minutes, and he collapsed on the ground so that they had to drag him like a corpse back to the wall and chain his arms high above him. His head lolled, and something wet trickled out of his mouth, which he guessed was saliva unless they'd managed to burn his organs, in which case it was probably blood. This time they allowed him to go to sleep immediately afterwards, and if they hadn't, he was sure he would have died.
A kick in the head woke Julian up the next day, and then a blow to the stomach when he promptly fell asleep again. This time he was up, and he glared into the bleary sunlight that itself seemed coated in the sludge growing on his walls. His walls. That was the worst, maybe; the idea that he had been here so long that the room was his. He spat the blood that had pooled into his mouth since being kicked onto the floor, but most of it landed on his thigh.
"Pathetic," the man above him jeered.
"Like to see you do any better," he slurred, closing his eyes again. It wasn't like he could see anything, anyway. Why waste the energy of keeping his lids up?
"What'd you say, you son of a whore?"
Julian laughed (as something in his mind finally admitted he'd gone mad) at that. He didn't even remember his mother, so in all likelihood, the man was right. Unfortunately he didn't accept his being right graciously and hit him across the face so that his lip split open all over again.
"Graool," leave him another man said, and the one crouched before Julian rose and turned to leave, though not before spitting in his direction. It mixed wit his blood on his thigh to make a pink, foamy mixture that made him want to retch.
He looked up after minutes of silence, and then realised that the place was absolutely silent. Wherever he was, it had always had some kind of noise, and so he knew immediately something was wrong. If he could just listen closely enough through the fog in his head—but there was no need, as footsteps were approaching his cell quickly with periodic skids to halt the runner, as though he were checking every cell. But it couldn't have been the patrol, since those men usually walked slowly and idly, in heavy boots whose hobnails echoed eerily on the ground.
"Good lords," a voice breathed from his doorway, which, he determined must have been open. Whoever it was came closer before crouching right before him and taken his face in one calloused hand, though the touch was gentle.
"Arrhenius?" Julian blinked up at the man, unable to recognise him even from a distance of even two feet. "Oh," the man said softly, and moved off to his left. Ah, the lenses were dirty, but at least his keepers hadn't broken them, he noted happily as the man slid them onto his face. And then his stomach dropped like lead off a rooftop.
"Oh," he said, though not in the tone of soft discovery the other man had said it in.
"About fucking time," he finally said, spitting more blood on the stone floor and himself. Henry, the king's son and soldier, looked taken aback before sitting back on his heels with a more closed off expression.
"Your welcome," he said, drawing his sword. Unwittingly, Julian flinched, and saw some pity creep back into the other man's face. He had half a mind to spit at the goddamn soldier for having taken his sweet fucking time, but doubted he had enough saliva left in him. The chains on his wrists were broken and his arms dropped heavily to his sides. He saw in horror that his wrists were encircled in a thick rope of blood that was sure to scar, and as Henry moved closer to him, he passed out on the floor.