“Focus.” A soft, caring voice from another time cut through the haze.
“I am fucking focusing Sharla, I told you, I can only do it when I know it inside and out.”
“You are holding yourself back. Its is a limitation of your mind, not of your essence. You are leaning on crutches instead of running free.”
“Fine… I’ll try again.” Isley hazily remembered that he had something else to be doing right now, but the memory continued unabated.
He focused his mind on the creature he wanted to apparate. It took far more effort for him at first, and it was still far too challenging for him to bring forth entities that he hadn’t had the chance to inspect personally.
His favorite was a snake. A venomous serpent had once found its way into his family's garden when he was only four years old. Isley had managed to capture the viper without being bit, using a stick and a bucket to isolate it. He watched it for days. He kept it hidden behind a shed, knowing that if his parents or any of the servants discovered it they would have taken it from him in abject horror.
Isley could so easily focus on those beasts he knew well… Now Sharla wanted him to bring forth something he had never seen before, and only with the vague description that she had given him. It was a Ma’aleki oddity. Something that lived deep within the deserts of a foreign land. Isley was becoming very frustrated.
“Focus.” Sharla’s voice said again.
Isley felt pain again, and felt panic rising in his chest.
“Fucking focus.” The words struck Isley, and he felt a blow to his face.
“Fucking focus you piece of shit. We aren’t done here by a long shot.” The voice was not Sharla’s any more. Isley opened his eyes, and reality came flooding back to him.
He was bound to a chair with strong metal chains, layers and layers of them. They were taking no risks. He had apparated a dire rat the first night to steal away the keys to his cell. No one caught him or noticed his strange beast before he sent it away and he managed to slip his confines. He had made it less than twenty yards through the maze of his prison before the guards discovered him. They had broken thirteen of his bones. It was the first time the cleric had used his Light damned magics on him. They wanted to make sure that the interrogation could continue.
“Where were we? I’m afraid I dozed off again from the boredom.” Isley laughed, his head lolling to the side; spitting a thick globule of blood in the direction of his antagonist.
His petulant show of resistance was met with another blow to the side of the head from a gauntleted fist. “You were telling us about your accomplice.”
“Oh was I? That doesn’t seem right, considering she fucking abandoned me… I’m taking it as a breakup.” He paused for effect. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s not healthy to dwell on ex-girlfriends?” Another blow knocked him senseless for a moment. Isley couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. His questioner had never introduced himself, but Isley already knew so very much about him.
He was out of shape, a heavy-set man, balding, and wearing armor that had rust at the edges and no real signs of combat. He was in a hurry. His method of questioning seemed to be punching Isley until his sense’s nearly became unknit, followed by more blows until he was practically incoherent. After Isley fell into the blissful peace of unconsciousness, a cleric of the Light would be brought in to heal him so he could be questioned further.
Isley had struggled, but he was fairly certain he had managed to keep his count of the timing and number of times the cycle had occurred. Based on everything, he was fairly certain he was still on day three of the rough treatment. He needed to find a way to get out while these local, low rank simpletons still had him; otherwise he would actually be in trouble.
“What foul magics were the two of you using that night?” Another blow. “Why did you try and kill the Lightseer?” Another blow. “Are you trying to serve the… da… the… dar… are you serving evil ends?” Another blow.
Isley was caught up in it now, he couldn’t stop himself from bursting into laughter. “Oh Light man have you ever even done this before?” Another blow. Isley began to laugh, which caused him to enter into a coughing fit. Everything hurt, and laughing hurt even more, but Isley couldn’t stop himself. The interrogator was panting heavily, and he took a break, sitting his bulk on a chair behind Isley while he used a piece of cloth to clean the blood off of his gauntlets.
“You seem winded. Need to take a break?” Isley managed to wince out mockingly. “I’ll wait, I don’t seem to have any other plans for the day.”
“You pompous high-born piece of shit… You really think you’re something don’t you.” The man wheezed out. “You won’t be so smug once he gets here…”
“Heh, you can posture all you’d like good sir, but the fact that you haven’t killed me yet tips your hand.” Isley smirked, blood dribbling down his forehead, blinding his right eye. “I think I would love to meet your oh so ominously pronouned ‘he’. I would wager he has much more imagination than yourself…”
Another blow, from behind and half-expected, rocked his head forward, and Isley was welcomed once again, back into the sweet embrace of the void.
Isley stood over a metal bucket, stick in hand, poking at the creature trapped inside. “Quiet Lycius, if you keep hissing they’ll find out about you.” It had been half a day since he had managed to capture the serpent. He was so immensely curious about the creature. It moved without limbs, it had wicked teeth that it bared at Isley as it reeled up at him.
Isley stared at it, watching it coil and uncoil. He wanted to catch a mouse somewhere to put into the bucket with it, but was still too scared to leave it alone. He was mesmerized by it’s movements.
“You can bring it forward you know, this spirit inside of you.” A warm voice said from everywhere, and nowhere.
“I know. I remember the ritual.” The boy said with a man’s voice, still standing over the bucket with his stick. “The night I died.”
“You did not die.”
“I remember it though, the pain, the blood… I remember all of it. Twice.”
“I know, I remember mine as well.”
The voice drifted off, and the boy strained his ears to hear shouting in the distance. It was his parents, fighting again. The voices filtered into his mind, he faintly acknowledged that the voices weren’t his parents.
“You nearly killed him!” A voice he heard as his father’s, but not.
“He will break soon, I just need some more time! He didn’t die, just make the clerics heal him and I swear I can get everything out of him!” Another voice, his mother’s, but not, echoed through the garden to the shed that the young Isley stood near.
“No, you’re done… We will wait until he gets here…”
The young boy shrugged and went back to playing with his snake.
Isley awoke back in the dank room they had prepared for him. A young woman was standing over him, two armed guards standing just behind. Her hands were glowing, and Isley could feel his sense, and his body, knitting itself back together.
“Hello there beautiful, I appreciate it.” Isley said slurring his words as he awoke, trying to wink at the young woman, but realizing the crusted blood on his face made it quite difficult.
She spat on him, backing away as soon as he awoke. “There, that should be fine.” She turned without another word, her face a trained mask of tranquility, barely containing her seething disgust.
The two guards stepped out after her, one of them raised his fist threateningly. When Isley did not wince or flinch, he snarled at him and stepped through the doorway, locking all six of the hefty locks on the cell. They had taken extra steps after his first attempt at escape.
The guard settled down in the chair in front of him. Isley smiled at him. “Fuck off twat.” The guard growled menacingly.
“Long shift?” Isley said, swinging his legs over the side to test his bones. The chains around his ankles jangled, and he found himself just at the edge of their reach as he sat up.
The guard gave no response.
Isley flexed his limbs one at a time, and gingerly tried to rotate his neck. The priestess had done her work well enough. He was still very sore, and his head was reeling, but he couldn’t find anything broken.
“Do you have the time?” Isley asked as politely as he could muster.
The guard didn’t respond.
Isley rolled back onto the un-padded cot. His eyes flickered up to the stone ceiling. He tried to guess how long he had been unconscious. Based on his stomach's pang of hunger, and the last time he remembered being given some sickening gruel, it had to have been a full day of questions and punches.
He pondered his options. The guard may have the keys to the myriad of locks on his cell, but it was entirely possible there was another guard nearby. Six separate locks could mean six separate keys… He would have to get the guards to open the locks, there was no chance of his opening them himself. Then there were the chains around his ankles, tying him to the stonework firmly. He couldn’t bring forth his trump card, not yet. Frankly that was probably what they wanted him to do. A chance to verify the reports of the Emperor’s guards.
He thought about that night again. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Everything had gone perfectly. They had managed to catch the Lightseer’s guards off balance, the two had been caught downstairs and delayed by the fire. He played it out in his head again and again. The beast of Sharla had managed to hold the two at bay it was up to the beast of Isley to end the boy. A single, largely helpless teenaged boy. It should have been easy. Isley had taken down much larger challenges. Time and again, even before the ritual, he had been able to take life whenever it suited him to do so.
If only… His mother, somehow, had appeared in front of him. How had she known to come so quickly? Isley’s gut wrenched again, and he curled up in a ball as his emotions wracked him in ways he had never imagined he could feel. If he hadn’t hesitated, if he had just cut her down, and then finished the boy…
He pressed his eyes closed tightly. He could feel the whispers inside of him, barely there, at the edge of his mind. Sharla had warned him, but he hadn’t expected it to be like this. In that moment, as he raised his arm to rend his bitch of a mother in two… he couldn’t do it… and it was the voice in the whispered shadows of his mind that had stopped him. He didn’t think it was possible; Sharla had assured him it wasn’t. He needed answers, and Sharla was the only one he could ask.
But Sharla had already stepped away. She left him behind. He understood why she had to flee, she could hold two of the guards at bay, but all four? There was no way she could have held out. She could have come for him though… It would have been easy, she just had to step to him first, then she could step both of them away… Isley knew she could have done it… She had chosen not to.
Isley held back the tears. He had long ago developed walls and barriers against the cruel and uncaring nature of the world. He just didn’t think he would have to put those walls up against Sharla, not after years of her tearing them down. She was just another falsehood after all. He curled up tighter and tighter, his gut reeling. If he had anything in his stomach, it would probably have come up by now…
He had long ago realized the world was full of lies and false faces. The priests, his family, his friends, the Light itself… they were all just like him, full of anger and hate and rage. The only difference Isley could see was that they just lied about it. He was the only one that was willing to be honest with himself. Everyone else was lying.
He dozed for a time, his mind repeating hateful mantras, one person at a time. It started where it always did, he focused on the person, their face, their name, their voice, their smell… and focused on his hatred and wrath, time and again, inside his mind. His mother. His father. His sister. His brother... The priests. The girls he had pined after as a young man that laughed in his face. The boys that had mocked and derided him. The Emperor. Person after person, face after face. He had done this ritual as he fell asleep as long as he could remember. For the first time, as his nightly ritual continued, he added Sharla to his list.
It hurt him more deeply than he thought possible. It hurt more than any wound he had suffered. It hurt more than the ritual. He was quivering, shaking, partly from the cold of the night air that had begun to seep in, but more from the unbridled sadness and anger. He shook, but gradually began to fall asleep.
Isley was brought out of his cell twice further to be interrogated over the ensuing month. Time lost all meaning, and he found himself hiding deeper and deeper inside his own mind to escape.
Isley awoke with a start. A sudden cry, muffled, followed by a grunt, then silence.. noises barely able to be discerned from his cell. He held still, his mind racing, brought fully awake by the potential implications. She had come for him after all. Of course she would, he smiled. She would have hell to pay for leaving him to be beaten for as long as she had, but she came for him after all…
He rolled over, and in the dim light through his cell bars he saw a man fiddling with the keys, trying different options on the first lock. Isley thought he recognized him, but couldn’t figure out why. He wasn’t one of his fellow insurrectionists, and he had never seen him hanging around Sharla’s preachings before.
“Isley, we are gonna get you out of here.” The voice said in a kindly tone. “Just have to figure out all of these keys first…” He trailed off in frustration as he fiddled with the first lock. Finally he managed to find the right one, and gave a brief ‘Aha!’ before he began on the next one down.
“Who are you?” Isley asked. He was now very suspicious of this man. He couldn’t place where he knew him from, but he already felt strong emotions of hope, warmth, even kindness towards the man. Isley felt himself drawn to trust this person. He steeled himself internally. A spell of some sort?
“My name is George, George Littleton. I was a… friend… of your brothers.” The man said, a sly smile on his face as he clicked the second lock. “Your father and I have been working together in a way. He’ll be here soon.”
“My father? He’s here?” Isley said, moving to the edge of his chain. It clanked against the wall, punctuating his confusion.
“Yup, and we’re getting you out of here. We have horses ready nearby.” George said, followed by another ‘Aha!’ as he found the third lock’s mated key.
“What do you mean? My father? Why would he be here?” Isley’s face was contorted in confusion. He couldn’t process this situation. This man, who claimed to know Isaac, was here to free him with his father? “Why?” Was all he could ask as he trailed off. He heard the familiar breath, the grunts of exertion, and the tapping of a cane on the stone floor.
“Because you’re my son Isley…” The wheezing voice of his father said from just beyond the view through the cell. “And I love you.”
‘Aha!’ George clicked the fourth lock. “Almost there.”
“Good, good.” The bulk of Thibeault appeared in the door. He was breathing hard, but he looked more healthful than Isley had seen him in years. “Listen son, there is a lot to explain.” He wheezed. “And not a lot of time…”
“I’m listening.” Isley said, genuinely intrigued by this bizarre turn of events.
“George and I have been working together since your brother went missing.” Thibeault said, patting the man on the back. He seemed to have caught his breath. “He came straight to me when Vagiri came home.”
‘Aha!’ A lock clicked.
“Isaac’s horse?” Isley said, careful to maintain his facial control, marred with blood though it may be. He controlled his inflection carefully.
“Yes, Isaac’s horse.” George interjected as he clicked the final lock. ‘Aha!’ He swung the cell door open with a flourish. “It was injured, and it came back to the stables riderless… Isaac isn’t one to get drunk and fall off in the woods somewhere, so I suspected foul play.”
“And so he came to me.” Thibeault said as he moved into the room. “Your mother was careful, and so we needed to be careful too. We couldn’t make anything public without proof.”
“Mother?” Isley asked slowly. George began digging through the pile of keys for one that would work on the manacles around his ankles.
“Yes, that woman has schemes within schemes… Everyone assumed Isaac had gone north like he said he would, and we let them believe it while we tried to unravel some of them.” Thibeault sat on the bed alongside Isley. “Your mother couldn’t control Isaac, and with him gone, now the inheritance goes to Isabelle.”
“I have been digging up everything I can, your mother has lots of little naughty soups boiling in all kinds of pots.” George said, fiddling with the keys.
“So when she claimed to have found you, or some sort of monster, or something, attacking the emperor, and well, none of it made any sense.” Thibeault said slowly, leading Isley. “Tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know. They say I tried to kill the emperor.” Isley said, his face impassive. “I don’t know what happened.”
Thibeault sighed. “I have some suspicions, there are magics that could control you, or make it appear like you were some sort of monster… I don’t know how she did it yet, or why. We can’t say anything until we can prove it, and without evidence there isn’t going to be anything we can do.” Thibeault was obviously very physically uncomfortable, shifting from side to side on the bed. His legs seemed to be seeping fluid through the heavy bandages beneath his pants.
Isley nodded silently, trying to formulate the appropriate response for these new developments. “Why now? Why break me out now?” Was the first thing he could think of to say.
“I talked with Helena, but there was nothing she could do. They have the eyewitness testimony of the guards, and from Zadore. I couldn’t tell her my suspicions… She and Zadore are too close to one another.” Thibeault said, moving his hand to his chest. “They have sent for you to be moved, and they have sent an inquisitor… he is due to arrive within the week.”
‘Aha!’ the last lock clicked, finally, and Isley rubbed his newly freed ankles.
“So now you go to Meliora…” Thibeault said, sighing.
“What? Why Meliora?” Isley said, using a rag George had offered to scrape off some of the dried blood.
“If your mother was working magic to deceive the guards and frame you, friends of mine in Meliora might be able to help.” Thibeault pulled a letter from his pocket, it was stamped and sealed with the Lamia family crest. “And frankly, you can’t stay in Kiva… maybe not anywhere in the empire.”
“You and George… working to find Isaac… Why didn’t you tell me before?” Isley said slowly, testing each word before committing to them.
“I know you and your mother never saw eye to eye… but… I couldn’t know. I couldn’t know for sure, until she tried to frame you.” Thibeault said.
A distant shout echoed through the halls.
“Well, that’s all the silence five hundred gold coins can buy these days I suppose…” George said wryly, helping Isley to his feet. Suddenly, with the jolt, Isley found himself very, very dizzy. He nearly collapsed, and would have were it not for George helping him balance. The sound of panic began to echo through the halls.
“Thibeault, we have to go!” George said urgently as he half helped, half drug Isley through the cell door.
“No… no… This was always a one way trip for me…” Thibeault said sadly as he scooched his bottom further onto the now empty bed. “Isley, this is the last time I bail you out of trouble. I have given everything I have to give… I know it isn’t enough… It could never be enough…” He trailed off for a moment. “Go. I don’t know how all of this will play out, but I will see it to the end. I’m tired. And frankly I’m ready for whatever end the Light holds for me.”
Isley couldn’t look his father in the eye. George paused for one more moment before the argument was rendered moot by the rapidly approaching guards. They fled, leaving his father behind.
The maze of the prison offered a wealth of opportunity for Isley to become turned around. Somehow, George seemed to have some idea of where they were going. Isley followed a step behind as they slinked around corners through the darkness.
George threw up an arm, silently bringing them to a stop. Ahead, the light of a guards lantern flickered, illuminating the stonework dimly. He gestured again, Isley had never been trained in such militaristic arm flailings, but he presumed he meant hide. Isley tucked himself into an alcove, and by the time he was fairly certain he was out of sight, he realized he had lost track of George.
The footsteps ahead came slowly, unhurried. A guard, one of the many faces that Isley had come to revile during his stay, rounded the corner. His mouth was overly full, and he was chewing whatever he had hastily shoved down his gullet. He was wiping his greasy fingers on his wrinkly shirt as he made his way through the hall.
Isley held his breath. He was tempted to close his eyes, but in his terror he just stared, wide eyed, as the guard sauntered past him. He was certain that he would be discovered, and the sound of his own panic driven heart was going to give him away.
The guard continued, and Isley let himself go slack. He sighed, and stepped out of his alcove. Suddenly, another guard, unheard by Isley, rounded the corner. Isley froze, standing too exposed. The guard met his eyes, and his mouth opened. Before his shout could resound down the corridor, George appeared behind the guard that had surprised Isley. His well muscled arms flexed, and revealed this veins as he tightly clamped them around the guard's neck.
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There is more to Isley's tale, Isley the Brother-bound, Isley the Summoner, Isley and his Eidolon, but here is where the story truly began. If you want to know more, let me know. If you already know the rest, well, then you were probably at the table when it played out. :-)
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