Ashyn knew that it was going to begin like this. He knew it the moment they took him away from her. He took one thing away with him though as they drug him out of that council chamber. A name. Her name.
Brodea. This was the name of his enemy.
And just has he knew the moment he defied her, it wasn’t a surprise that night when his cage climbed back upwards to the glade above on its own.
Uriel jeered up at him from the other cell, and gave a mock salute as Ashyn went alone, skyward, “Try not to die too fast wizard.”
He needed to be strong, Ashyn told himself. He needed to be brave.
It happened almost too fast for him to register. As soon as the lift of his cell stopped, the elves were on him. He tried to defend himself, but he didn’t have anywhere near the martial skills they did. Fists and feet lashed out at him, striking him all over.
Pain exploded in so many places at once it was dizzying. He felt a pop at his side, and he knew that one of them broke his rib. Then he was down on his hands and knees, blood streaming like crimson waterfalls from his nose, mouth, and ears. He coughed and spat, struggling to hold himself up. His entire body wrenched with pain.
More kicks against his side, another pop, Ashyn groaned in misery. His arms quaked as he tried to sustain himself, tried to hold on.
What happened? He thought they feared his magic. What gave them strength?
A foot caught him under his jaw jerking his head violently backward. A bloom of fire raced across his mouth, down his throat and gripped his spine. He fell backwards gurgling and choking.
A form moved over him quickly. Almost protectively. “Do not to kill him!” Ashyn heard one of the elves chitter quickly. He recognized the voice instantly. It was Jenhiro.
Grateful for the reprieve, Ashyn rolled to his side coughing and wheezing. Thick stringers of blood hurled from his throat and left flecks of red spittle across his lips and chin.
He felt another one of them hovering over him as well. He glanced upwards. There was something in his hand. It was balled up and lumpy.
Jenhiro knelt down next to Ashyn, and held out his hand. The elf placed the compacted object into Jenhiro’s out-stretched hand. The wizard could see it more clearly. It was a bag.
Ashyn tried to speak, but only sputtering grunts came from his mouth. His stomach clenched tightly, his whole core in violent spasms.
They shared eye contact, and Ashyn wasn’t sure what it was he read in those dark eyes. Guilt, pity, sadness. One thing he was certain of, Jenhiro was deriving no pleasure in this. That brought him comfort.
Jenhiro unraveled the bag, whispering, “You need to endure, dui Nuchada. I will find her, and then you will answer questions.” He pulled the sack over Ashyn’s head.
His world went dark. Ashyn felt himself jerked to his feet. Another wave of pain laced through his body. Then he felt his hands bound tightly behind his back. The rope was so tight that it bit into his flesh. The moment the final knot pinched against his skin, the elves dragged him away from the cells.
They were careless in how they moved him. Repeatedly he slammed into rocks, logs, and stumps. His head banged into low-hanging objects. Forced to hang his head, the aches in his chest grew.
His blindness added another level of terror to the whole ordeal. He was aware of his own wheezy breathing. It sounded like thunder in his ears. He also heard the elves talking amongst themselves, but it was broken and hard to understand. Like slang. He knew they were talking like that on purpose. He gave away too soon that he could understand them; it forced the elves to come up with different methods.
Where were they taking him? What did they not want him to see? He tried to detect where he was going by his sense of smell, but everything was so saturated in the smell of copper that he could barely distinguish one odor from the next.
He stumbled along for what felt like hours until he realized that he wasn’t surrounded any more. There was only one person each in front of and behind him. It was then he realized he was climbing.
He knew where they were taking him. He also knew that if he lurched suddenly to the right, everything could end before it even began. How long had he been climbing? Was it only a few feet or did he hit around fifty or more? He wasn’t sure.
If he risked it and was wrong he would probably just break his legs, and that would put him in a worse predicament. Was he even capable of suicide? It was a question he asked himself when he knew what Brodea wanted from him. Would he be capable of killing himself to stop her from translating the book?
He realized even with fear beating his heart that the answer now was the same as before. No. His desire to live was too strong. Was it greed that he wanted to live, or just his love of life? His mind was so jumbled, he didn’t know.
The bag was soaked with sweat and blood by the time he finished the climb. He could hear the whistling of wind from the massive portal at his left side. On his right, he distinctly heard the crackle of torches.
He was forced to stop, and then brought to sit. He felt the hard granular surface of a wooden chair beneath him. His hands were bound to the back of that chair.
The bag was violently jerked from his head, and he felt the piercing torchlight assail his eyes. He heard a collective series of gasps around him. He squinted his grey eyes into the room, but it was hard to make anything out. There were many murky forms around him. Strange silhouettes.
“Blood Wizard,” one of them muttered in their tongue.
Another spoke with a hint of fear, “You have brought him here?”
Another cried, “Quickly, bind his liar’s tongue!”
Ashyn felt a rope pulled tightly over his mouth, pulling his cheeks back, and curbing his tongue.
Soothingly, a voice he instantly recognized as Brodea’s broke in, “Councilors, relax. We have taken precautions against his dark ways. He has been depleted of energy. Were he to try and cast on us now, he would be killing himself, am I correct?”
Ashyn saw one of the forms move forward, the top of it, its head he assumed, bobbed vigorously. “The feedback would claim his life, in his current state, absolutely.”
Ashyn felt his head loll to its side. He barely had the strength to lift it. But the images were solidifying, and the first thing he noticed were feet. Dozens of bare feet, all intertwined with one another.
“First Councilor, what is the meaning of this?” a different, slightly elderly voice demanded.
An elf stepped in front of him, her well-muscled thighs just in his field of vision. Her coppery skin was slick with sweat. Brodea.
“First Councilor!” another said alarmed.
Brodea pulled his head back so he could look up at them, at her. His grey eyes burned with malice as he looked towards her.
Triumphantly she announced, “The Blood Wizard is powerless right now, Councilors. Keep him taxed, and his body won’t be able to handle the stresses of a spell.”
“And what would be the point?” another asked, “After Tehirs joined the Spirits, you were quick to end his peace with them. Why keep this one alive?”
Brodea looked away from Ashyn. He could tell by the painful grip tightening in his hair that the Wild Elf did not appreciate the challenge. “Tehirs followed the guidance of the Spirits at his particular time, now I follow their guidance in a different time. I believe this one can help us.”
“Help?” the elder spoke up again. Ashyn could wearily hear the murmurs around him. How could their enemy help them?
Brodea released his hair and walked away from Ashyn. Once more his head slumped low. He tried to look for Jenhiro, but all he saw were rows of dirty feet. He noticed among those feet quite a few who were discontented. Their legs twitched, and a few members tapped the ground with the pads of their feet, clearly nervous.
Then she was by his side once more, as was another. Ashyn tried to find the strength to lift his head and look up, but it was so hard. He wanted to learn all of them. He needed to know his enemies if he was to find a weakness in them.
His head raised only an inch, before it was grabbed by Brodea once more and violently yanked towards the other elf. She was holding the tome.
Ashyn managed a muffled grunt, “No.”
Brodea had clearly chosen to ignore his weak words as she spoke over him. “As you know, the druids can do no more with this book; the Elder of Vines has even stated that only a wizard can decipher the rest. Something to do with Destruction. Well, now we have a wizard.”
Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the crowd of Councilors staring at him warily. “Why should he share such information? And even more, why should we believe anything that comes from that poisonous tongue of his?”
“Pain has a way of getting all men to speak,” Brodea stated so coldly, yet so surely, that it sent a shiver down Ashyn’s spine. “We will break this wizard. The Spirits demand it be done.”
He could see looks of concern etched on the faces of the elves around him. Good he thought. Let them worry. He would not give Brodea what she wanted, no matter what.
“And when will you begin?” the one Ashyn recognized with Brodea before, asked.
Ashyn could feel Brodea’s smile by the heat radiating from her body. “Immediately.”
Ashyn closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If Jenhiro was not here, then Ashyn knew why. The hunter couldn’t be. That comforted Ashyn in some small way. He needed to endure this. He only hoped he had the strength to do what was necessary.
~ ~ ~
Ashyn watched as the councilors stood and filtered out of the chamber. They were just going to leave? Leave Brodea, their First Councilor, and the wizard alone?
His head hurt, his brain was foggy, and yet he couldn’t understand why they would do this? What happened to the fear of a wizard’s magic? Even if they were right, that he wouldn’t risk a spell now, what about later?
After many minutes there were only three people left in the open chamber with Ashyn. The First Councilor, the male who he could now tell was a druid, and a very different elf.
Instead of the naked flesh that he was growing accustomed to, the figure before him was dressed in a simple long flowing green dress. Her hair was a silvery-blonde that ran straight and pure down her shoulders to the small of her back like spun platinum. It cascaded around her body like captured sunlight. Elongated slender ears poked out of the mass of her silvery hair and rose to sharp points just above the crown of her head. She had a heart-shaped face with a soft, round nose. Her lips were perky and curved upwards in the corners. It seemed as if the young elf was constantly smiling. No markings covered her flesh, but he knew what she was: an Exemplar.
The Exemplar walked right up to him and bent down to look into his eyes. Ashyn tried to look away, but Brodea grabbed his head firmly, and held him in place with incredible strength.
Ashyn closed his eyes, Xexial’s words to him as a child still echoed through his head. “The magic has a way of ensnaring anyone who looks in the eyes of the Exemplar. You become bound to them in ways you don’t truly understand. Some say it feels like love, others ecstasy. Either way you become enraptured by the magic.”
Ashyn realized now, how truly disadvantaged he was. Of course they would use the Exemplar in this way. How could they not? He almost wanted to laugh at the irony. The pain put a stop to that. He was still nothing more than an ignorant child. He thought that the elves should fear him. Of course they would fear him, but they had someone that could control him. Someone that could look into his soul. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
“Open your eyes,” Brodea commanded from above him.
“No,” he croaked out.
There was a sudden pressure at his right shoulder-blade. “Open them,” the order came again, simply and powerfully.
“Never.”
Ashyn gasped in shock, as he felt a thin object pierce through his body and slide up underneath the bone of his shoulder.
“Open them.”
He shook his head violently as sweat beaded his brow. Pain exploded through his back as he felt her rotate whatever blade-like object pierced his back. It grated against the bone. A moan of agony escaped his lips.
Fire ripped through his body as he felt another penetration into his body. His left shoulder this time. His whole frame convulsed as both objects twisted inside of him, leveraging against the bones of his shoulders, pushing them outward away from his body.
Suddenly, Brodea’s mouth was against his ear, “This will end if you open your eyes.” His mind foggy with pain he wasn’t even aware that she let go of his head.
“No,” he tried to say. In reality, though, it came out as a plaintive cry.
He could feel her hands against his back manipulating the torture devices inside of him. “If you don’t open your eyes, it will get much, much worse. We will have to start cutting things off you. Things that are important and won’t grow back.”
She slid around to the front of him, he kept his eyes shut but felt the heat of her mouth only inches from his. Then she slid her knee up between his thighs, driving the point home. “Things you might want to keep.”
Ashyn felt her grip around him, like a hug, but the fire in his back returned anew. Her mouth was back at his ear. “And when we have removed all we can from your body without you bleeding to death, we will be forced to cut off your eyelids so you cannot shut them anyhow. Making all of this pointless resistance futile.” As she finished, she bit down on his earlobe so hard he felt her teeth tear through the ball of flesh. Blood dribbled against his neck from the wound.
Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. He squeezed them shut tightly. The pressure of her body lifted. He braced himself for more pain, for another stabbing feeling somewhere in his body. He prepared himself for the worst pain he could think of, a knife down by his loins.
It didn’t come. He waited, the tension building in his chest. He knew it was inevitable, to feel the pain again. She was just toying with him. Like a cat playing with its prey.
Then it happened. It wasn’t at all what he expected. There was no rending of his flesh, no burning intense fire in his loins. There was only a sound. A simple crack.
There was no pain. No physical pain anyhow. No. The sensation that bombarded him was completely his alone. He knew the sound intimately. He felt the whistle of wind surge past his cheek. His mind was thrust back a decade as the biggest terror of his childhood gripped him.
A whip. His eyes flew open in fear, and he was enveloped in the swirling platinum eyes of the Exemplar. Magic danced and rippled across her eyes. Her pupils looked like twin hurricanes as the liquid mercury twisted around their black forms. He could feel the power in them, and the power between them, and he knew the First Councilor was right. It was futile. He was hers.