Tempered by the Will

33 - Faded

Vica dragged her feet through the tall grass, wondering why it was so hard to run. It felt like she was trying to sprint underwater, her arms and legs moving in slow motion against an invisible mass of syrupy sap all around her. She couldn't feel the grass blades tickling her legs, either, nor the cold of the brisk night air that should have eaten straight through her because she was wearing no clothes at all.

Wait - what? Where were her clothes? She wrapped her arms around her bare chest and looked around for someplace to take shelter, her mind moving at a sluggish pace as she tried to remember what had happened. Think, think. She crouched down among the tall grass and flinched at the uncomfortable sensation of the blades tickling her bare bottom, but as horrifying as it was to find herself utterly naked and defenseless in the middle of nowhere, she had to focus on figuring out how this had all come about in the first place.

...Heat. She remembered that. Scorching heat that seared her face, her throat, her lungs. And there had been the pain, too, and she winced at the very recollection of it. But she wasn't hurting anymore now, was she? She unwrapped her arms from around herself, moving to prod around her body and test it for injuries -

"You're not wearing anything."

Her chin shot up. There, standing right in front of her as if he had been there the entire time, was Constantine. He stared down at her while she clapped her arms around herself again.

"What's the point?" he asked with a noncommittal shrug. "I've already seen everything anyway."

She was about to volley back an indignant reply when she realized her mouth was no longer working. It felt like someone had stuffed it full of wool, and her hands flew to her throat when the mass began traveling down into it. It hurt, she realized. It hurt badly. She could hardly breathe.

"Do you want me to make it better?"

She looked up again just in time to see Constantine stooping down to her level, and suddenly, he was just as naked as she was. Her eyes narrowed, the first hints of understanding seeping through her consciousness -

"It's too bad," he added in a whisper as he held her face in his warm hands, "that I'm already dead."

* * * * *

Vica awoke with a ragged scream, arms and legs straining against something that held them down. Not rope, something softer, wider, like bands of fabric. But there was no way to tell, as when she opened her eyes, it was only to pure darkness. She was blindfolded, she realized, but she couldn't see even a sliver of light through whatever they had wrapped around her head. Was the fabric just that thick or was it perhaps nighttime still? She remembered now what had happened - the flash fire, the explosion, flying through the air and landing in a heap with a lifeless Constantine on top of her. How much time had passed since then? An hour? Several?

"Peace, or we'll put you back out if we have to."

A hand slammed against her face and mashed the back of her head into what felt like the rough bark of a slender tree trunk. She was standing up, she realized finally, not lying down. And bound to a tree no less, so that she could scarcely movee more than her fingers. Her arms were wrenched back around the trunk as well, and her elbows and shoulders ached with a horrific pain from being stretched so uncomfortably.

Oh, and she was gagged, was she? She tried to move her mouth around the woolen clump and nearly hacked on it, the rawness of her throat making it feel as if she were swallowing splinters. She could make sounds and scream around the gag, but judging by the unholy tenderness of her nose and throat, she suspected that making too much noise would not only piss off her captors, but also draw blood. The disgusting, coppery taste that lingered on the back of her tongue was proof enough of that.

Constantine, she thought. He was nearby. She could feel his anti-magic filtering through the air to stifle her power, which disappointed and relieved her in equal parts. It meant he was alive, but on the other hand, now she had no way of freeing herself. These binds and knots digging into her flesh were agonizing even when she held still - whenever they shifted against her scorched skin, she had to bite back her groans while holding in her tears.

But where exactly was Constantine, then? He was close enough to nullify her magic, and yet the pressure wasn't suffocating. Her power was just beyond her reach, and yet if she tried, if she tried a little harder, and if her head would just clear and her body stop screaming in pain...then she might just be able to...?

And if she could pull it off, if she could fight to yank back her magic even for an instant, then surely she could grab Constantine and try to make a run for it no matter how dizzy she felt right now. No, wait, she needed to run off on her own so that she could get out of the grasp of his anti-magic aura. If she could do that, she could sweep away their captors on her own, and then drag Constantine to safety at her leisure.

Something. Anything. Breathe, in, out. Focus.

Slowly, she became aware of the wetness in the air. Raining, it was still raining. It was little more than a fine mist right now, but it was enough to make her clothes cling to her raw skin with a mildly uncomfortable moistness. And yet it soothed her too, cool and light.

Right. This wasn't good, but it wasn't the worst that could have happened. She was alive, Constantine was alive. She just had to get rid of this damned blindfold so that she could see, damn it.

"Stop moving, witch. You're only going to hurt yourself if you keep doing that. You'll be out of there soon enough once someone comes to pick you up."

Witch? Had the man just called her a witch? No one but the most backward called mages witches anymore...which was a clue in itself to who he was. And not just him, but the other murmuring voices that she could hear if she strained a little. There weren't just a few of them either, but several. More than several. Damn this blindfold, if she could only see then she would be able to try to fight back.

"Mmgf. Mmg." She mumbled around her gag, building volume with each passing second. Could Constantine hear her? Was he awake yet? If he wasn't, then there was another problem. He was already half-dead, but if she tried to push back his anti-magic and blindly attack everyone around her, she would end up hurting him as well.

The last thing she remembered seeing of him was his slack face and the tatters of his cloak on fire. And - he was hurt, she remembered that, too. Hurt badly. Had they done anything for his burns, his wounds?

"Mmhmhm! Hm!"

"Someone do something about her," one man grumbled just loud enough for her to hear.

"Pull out the gag?"

"Are you stupid? She'll be able to do incantations or whatever it is that they do. You don't know what she's capable of."

"But I can stand next to her and just gag her again if she -"

"Leave it. She'll tire herself out."

Like hell she would. Even now, she could feel herself gaining her strength back, little by little. She wasn't confident enough to try to throw off the anti-magic aura yet, but soon...soon, she would make a break for it. She couldn't do much about the binds themselves, but surely she could try to expel her power in one strong burst behind her to try to break the trunk she was bound to. It was a skinny one, skinny enough that her fingers could almost touch (she guessed). She knew she could damage it soundly. It would hurt when she fell over with it, but she was willing to tolerate a few broken ribs or a crushed hand if it meant getting out of here.

Felix had better be ready to heal her when she found him again, though.

But before that, she needed to know where Constantine was. If he was behind her and she had the tree snap and fall on top of him - he was already gravely hurt. She couldn't risk it.

"Hmmmgf! Mmf!" she tried again, shouting into her gag louder and louder as she built momentum. Her throat felt like she was scraping it with a blade over and over again, but if she could annoy them enough to make them take out her gag, then she could try to get what information she could out of them with innocent questions.

"Gods on high, she's not going to stop. Take it out for a second and find out what she wants."

Good. She would lie and say that she was thirsty or something, any excuse to keep the gag out at least for a moment. She thought furiously, trying to plan something clever and dangerous. Constantine was the sneaky, deceptive type; he would be better at this than she was. But she was all they had now. She was going to have to figure out how to be sneaky and deceptive on her own.

"Ugh!" She gagged the second she felt the wool yank out of her mouth. Disgusting. She could feel strands of it sticking to her tongue. But this was no time to complain. Damsel in distress, she told herself. Damsel in distress, as pitiful as she could make herself look. "Please...water...just a little..."

"Someone fetch her something."

She heard a sigh and a grumble, but this was the voice of yet another man. How many damn people were here right now? And where had they come from? She remembered only the three men in trapper's hides before the fiery explosion, but she knew for a certainty that there were far more voices than that murmuring amongst each other just a short distance away.

"Where's...where's my friend?" she asked, making sure she sounded weak and helpless. More feminine, she told herself, and despite the pain, she forced her voice to pitch just a little higher than normal. "Is he alright? The one who was with me."

"You mean Constantine, woman. He's got no friends, though, you're mistaken."

A rousing wave of quiet chuckles from at least half a dozen men answered the wry jibe. Damn him. Damn all of them. Too damn many -

"But where is he? Please tell me."

"Ah, have no fear. He's right next to you. We put him there so that you can't do your mage tricks, of course."

What? Right next to her? Impossible, she would have known because she would be drowning under the weight of his aura -

"But he's just about dead. Long live the king, the assassin king is finally going to meet his forefathers. He'll last long enough for our friend to come pick you up and take care of you himself, but not much longer than that. Good riddance. He was never with us, so he was always against us. And anyway, can a mage afford to have sympathy for a Resistant?"

"Stop trying to talk to the witch, she'll get in your head -"

"And what, turn me into a newt? Give it a rest."

An argument erupted then that seemingly embroiled every single one of her captors. They ignored her while she sagged against her binds, stunned silent. Constantine, next to her? They were lying, right?

"Here, girl."

She let the water drizzle out of the side of her mouth when she felt the spout of a waterskin touch her lips, pretending to be incapable of drinking properly. She tried it twice more to give it a genuine feel, then:

"Can...can you take this off? From over my eyes?" It was a young man, barely more than a boy judging by the reedy timbre of his voice, so if she was going to appeal to anyone's sense of sympathy and guilty, it was his. "I won't do anything, I promise. Please..."

The other men were still loudly arguing about something completely irrelevant now, and she heard the boy blow a sharp sigh. A second later, the cloth slipped away from around her head, and then she was blinking hard in the dim light. Just before twilight. She could see the first tinge of color starting to stain the sky through the branches of the tree she was tied to. It had been several hours since everything happened, then.

But that wasn't what she wanted to see. She dropped her gaze while pretending to inch closer to the waterskin the boy was holding, casting her eyes around the ground.

She choked when she saw it. Him, that is. Constantine, tied up and left in a heap on the grass no more than two feet away. He wasn't moving as he lay on his side, trussed up and utterly limp. She couldn't even see his chest rising and falling - just his miserable condition and nothing more. Why was he naked? Had these damned scavenging trappers really taken his scaled leathers off of him?

He was right there in front of her, but his aura - it was faded and fading still. She could feel her magic climbing back into her fingertips, sparks circulating in her blood.

Was he - dying? Was that why he felt like he was moving farther away even though she could see with her own eyes that he was motionless on the ground, close enough to touch if she weren't bound?

"He'll die," she murmured. "Are you all going to just let it happen?"

The boy shrugged and pressed the wineskin spout to her lips. "Just drink," he said. "And we're doing you a favor anyway, the way I see it."

He was seeing it wrong, then. Vica tore her eyes away from Constantine's still form and fixed her dead-eyed stare on the ring of men sitting around a small fire a little distance away. She didn't care enough to count how many they were. One, two, ten, she didn't care. This was going to end the same way regardless.

"I'm not sorry for this," she said, and that was the only warning the boy got. With clenched jaw and every muscle in her body tensed, all pain forgotten, she fought through Constantine's wavering aura, clawed at her magic, hooked it through with her fingertips and dragged it out of her very core with all her strength and all her sanity and all her fury and all her desperation -

- and released her power with a scream that pierced the darkness like a sea of knives.