Out of Character:
The guard glared at me through a porthole, rapping the rusty iron door with his knuckles so hard the noise rattled around the corridor outside with a fierce bass. A strong beam of light penetrated the perpetual darkness of the room and caused me to recoil as it hit me square in the face, before a metal flap snap shut and returned everything to black.
It seemed my charge was satisfied all was in order.
I, on the other hand, was left quite literally in the dark.
I had awoken two hours prior on the floor of a small stone cell, bleeding, with no recollection of how I had gotten there or how I had been injured. My clothes had been stripped from my body along with my sword Enpera, leaving me naked and vulnerable. The small prickles in my gut that represented the strength of the souls of people I could usually sense nearby had dissipated entirely, replaced instead by a numb blanket that choked my awareness beyond the mossy, cramped walls of my prison.
Whatever this place was, it was heavily guarded and very secure. So secure, in fact, that attempts to summon Enpera Kurohitsugi proved fruitless. Some sort of anti-magic barrier sent me crashing to the floor into agonising spasms every time I tried to call upon my spells to aid me. As the futility of my situation became ever more apparent, I had taken instead to counting the sets of footsteps that walked in and out of the area beyond the door of my grimy, damp cell, just to glean as much information as possible and to perhaps even take my mind off feeling helpless.
I’d been doing that for about an hour now, concentrating through the horrendous pain that throbbed in the back of my skull. The clicks of their heels would slowly echo down the corridor every five minutes in pairs, getting louder on approach. They would then stop for a moment whilst the men conducted whatever business they had before the fading taps of leather soles signalled their departure.
The guards are walking two abreast.
”So what?” I said to myself as I took a breath of musty air. Even armed with that information, what would a naked, bleeding man with no weapons or magic do from within a cell?
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as my muscles started to ache from the chill and my frustrations started to build. It was then I really started to think upon how I had wound up here. Had whispers of my name and involvement with the Brotherhood of the Castigars reached the Imperial government? Perhaps they had sent a team of crack troops to deal with me and I’d been caught unawares? I nodded solemnly to myself, my memory still failing to recall my last movements. “That must be it.”
Several more footsteps crept down the corridor now, piquing my interest. These steps were heavier than the others, greater in number and pounding the floor with a faster tempo than before. Saliva whetted my mouth. New scents wafted into my nostrils from the backdraught as I settled my back firmly against the damp masonry of the cell’s threshold, the door holding my gaze tightly as I anticipated the portcullis once again being thrown open.
