The 90th of Zi'da 720
It’d been a while since Oberan had last found himself in jail, and it was every part as horrid as he remembered.
Justifiably, the Blackguard had locked him into the high security part of the Hall of Rule and Reprimand. Perhaps a precaution, perhaps a sign Oberan’s performance during his capture the other day had given the authorities reason to put him in the same category as people like Kasoria. Maybe they’d have put him on this floor either way, but it wasn’t for him to know. He’d forgotten the charges on which his arrest was based, but for the Tower Guard to have been involved, it probably was something serious.
In times like these, ‘serious’ was synonymous with ‘Sintra-related’.
Which made things rather obvious. Kasoria had been sniffing out and eliminating Sintra’s agents as he said he would – so the resistance’s intelligence network reported. Oberan himself had run off with Sintra’s Cube, had interfered with her efforts to dissolve mind-altering poison into the water supply, and had been part of the group that had uncovered her secrets under Rhakros.
The pair of them were thorns in Sintra’s bloated, eight-legged backside. An easy way to curry favor with her was by handing them over to her web guard. Perhaps Pahnr had already given up, settling for a bargain with the future queen of Etzos, attempting to negotiate a suitably high position within her new government.
Disappointing, really. Of all the things he’d pondered over the past few seasons, Pahrn capitulating was not one of them. Then again, Oberan also hadn’t expected half the populace to be supporting Sintra either.
Useless, as expected, a sneering voice came, setting his blood ablaze with his veins. I ask one thing of you. One. I give you the opportunity to prove your worth, and you waste it. So much for all your bluster, eh? Is boasting all you are good for? You embarrass me, boy. Each breath you take brings me great shame.
Oberan pinched his eyes closed, furrowed his brow, and tried to silence the mental voice as best he could. To no avail. Failure’s shadow loomed over him, its presence heavy like the weight of the world itself. One chance to prove them wrong, to show them results and flip them the bird. Gone. Poof. Vanished into thin air. The voice continued to taunt him, booming within his mind. Laughing, cursing, mocking.
So Oberan dove deeper, seeking out the empty spot where the Guardian’s consciousness had once seated. The Guardian was gone now, but an echo still remained. Sensations, words, sentences. Engraved in his consciousness. He touched it without hesitation, letting the static wash his mind clean. Feeling the pressure of the Guardian within his soul, incompatible with his Mortalborn existence. Hearing the now-familiar booming words in that tongue he no longer understood.
Clarity.
All was not yet lost.
Even if it was, Oberan refused to sit around in a cage waiting like a lamb for the slaughter.
In this high-security area of the Hall, the cells housed one inmate each, and were mostly bare. A bench –bolted to the floor—and a bucket for excretions were the only luxuries afforded to the prisoners. Hands chained to the wall, enough slack for Oberan to move around his cell a little, but not enough to allow him to reach the bars. On the other side of the locked door extended a hallway filled with similar cells, a guard on watch somewhere in the middle.
Not a challenge at all.
With but a thought, the manacles covering Oberan’s wrists vanished into the Vault, leaving only a an empty chain link behind. He conjured the cuffs back a moment later, reattaching them to the chain. Rubbing his wrists –despite having worn the shackles for only a couple days, his skin already started to chafe and color an angry, irritated red—Oberan produced the Rupturing Orb within his hands. The crystalline surface reflected the ambient light, but refused to activate under his touch. None of the symbols he traced over the sphere had any effect, unable to evoke but a brief flash from the artefact.
Antimagic? Oberan frowned, returning the Orb to the Vault. But didn’t this work last time? Mind flashing back in time, raking up memories of when he’d acquired the Orb in the fist place. Graeslin’s faulty plan. The disastrous jailbreak. Oberan escaping with Tio and Rat. Further back, to the gathering of pawns beforehand, coerced through blackmail. Zipper and her little brother. The discussion of the plan. Explaining someone needed to tamper with the warding array so Graeslin could rupture in and out. Right, right. They lock up mages in here as well, can’t have them casting in here.
Getting out wouldn’t be as simple as walking through a portal then. No matter, Oberan had other tricks up his sleeve. He rolled his shoulders, altering his posture. Slipped into pseudo-invisibility. A key manifested in his palm, heating up and deforming a moment later. Just like that, the door to his cell swung open, hinges squeaking. Oberan waited for the guards to investigate, but no-one came. It seemed they hadn’t noticed.
So he just shrugged and walked out, closing the door behind him. No point in keeping it wide open. The longer it would take the guards to realize he’d vanished, the more time he had to stroll through the Hall unimpeded. Which was exactly what Oberan did next, wandering the halls silent and unseen like a ghost.
Past the cells in his block, several occupied but more than half empty, past the duo of guards in warded armor, leaning against a wall chatting idly. Out of one hallway and into the next, in search of the stairs that’d take him up the next level, back to the ground floor. Or perhaps he should seek out Kas first? Little use in doing so though; without the Rupturing Orb he couldn’t get the assassin out easily. Maybe if the Raggedy Man wasn’t injured he’d risk it, but in his current state Kasoria couldn’t take on one guardsman, let alone a whole horde of them.
Though perhaps he could go say hi. It’d been a while since they’d last met, after all.
Mind made up, Oberan continued his wandering, ignoring the stairwell when he finally came across it –though he did file the location away for later—and heading to another cellblock instead. If not for the signs labeling the different sections of the Hall, he’d have thought himself back where he started. Everything looked the same, giving the illusion of some complicated maze. Perhaps that was the point.
He found no Kasoria in this block, though Oberan did encounter someone who’d apparently had the same idea as himself. Rounding a corner he bumped into something that wasn’t there, colliding with some invisible form. Both of them dropping their respective technique, surprised to find someone else who could do what they did.
Oberan slapped him straight across the face, not even fighting the impulse. “Well met! You must be the one they call Ulric?” He whipped an arm out to block the retaliation coming from the other man. “Are you searching the stairs? They’re that way.” Pointing, he snaked his arm in angular patterns, tracing the route in the air. “Second one left, third to the right, then go straight until you get to the next T section. Right again, then the first to the left.”
It’d been a while since Oberan had last found himself in jail, and it was every part as horrid as he remembered.
Justifiably, the Blackguard had locked him into the high security part of the Hall of Rule and Reprimand. Perhaps a precaution, perhaps a sign Oberan’s performance during his capture the other day had given the authorities reason to put him in the same category as people like Kasoria. Maybe they’d have put him on this floor either way, but it wasn’t for him to know. He’d forgotten the charges on which his arrest was based, but for the Tower Guard to have been involved, it probably was something serious.
In times like these, ‘serious’ was synonymous with ‘Sintra-related’.
Which made things rather obvious. Kasoria had been sniffing out and eliminating Sintra’s agents as he said he would – so the resistance’s intelligence network reported. Oberan himself had run off with Sintra’s Cube, had interfered with her efforts to dissolve mind-altering poison into the water supply, and had been part of the group that had uncovered her secrets under Rhakros.
The pair of them were thorns in Sintra’s bloated, eight-legged backside. An easy way to curry favor with her was by handing them over to her web guard. Perhaps Pahnr had already given up, settling for a bargain with the future queen of Etzos, attempting to negotiate a suitably high position within her new government.
Disappointing, really. Of all the things he’d pondered over the past few seasons, Pahrn capitulating was not one of them. Then again, Oberan also hadn’t expected half the populace to be supporting Sintra either.
Useless, as expected, a sneering voice came, setting his blood ablaze with his veins. I ask one thing of you. One. I give you the opportunity to prove your worth, and you waste it. So much for all your bluster, eh? Is boasting all you are good for? You embarrass me, boy. Each breath you take brings me great shame.
Oberan pinched his eyes closed, furrowed his brow, and tried to silence the mental voice as best he could. To no avail. Failure’s shadow loomed over him, its presence heavy like the weight of the world itself. One chance to prove them wrong, to show them results and flip them the bird. Gone. Poof. Vanished into thin air. The voice continued to taunt him, booming within his mind. Laughing, cursing, mocking.
So Oberan dove deeper, seeking out the empty spot where the Guardian’s consciousness had once seated. The Guardian was gone now, but an echo still remained. Sensations, words, sentences. Engraved in his consciousness. He touched it without hesitation, letting the static wash his mind clean. Feeling the pressure of the Guardian within his soul, incompatible with his Mortalborn existence. Hearing the now-familiar booming words in that tongue he no longer understood.
Clarity.
All was not yet lost.
Even if it was, Oberan refused to sit around in a cage waiting like a lamb for the slaughter.
In this high-security area of the Hall, the cells housed one inmate each, and were mostly bare. A bench –bolted to the floor—and a bucket for excretions were the only luxuries afforded to the prisoners. Hands chained to the wall, enough slack for Oberan to move around his cell a little, but not enough to allow him to reach the bars. On the other side of the locked door extended a hallway filled with similar cells, a guard on watch somewhere in the middle.
Not a challenge at all.
With but a thought, the manacles covering Oberan’s wrists vanished into the Vault, leaving only a an empty chain link behind. He conjured the cuffs back a moment later, reattaching them to the chain. Rubbing his wrists –despite having worn the shackles for only a couple days, his skin already started to chafe and color an angry, irritated red—Oberan produced the Rupturing Orb within his hands. The crystalline surface reflected the ambient light, but refused to activate under his touch. None of the symbols he traced over the sphere had any effect, unable to evoke but a brief flash from the artefact.
Antimagic? Oberan frowned, returning the Orb to the Vault. But didn’t this work last time? Mind flashing back in time, raking up memories of when he’d acquired the Orb in the fist place. Graeslin’s faulty plan. The disastrous jailbreak. Oberan escaping with Tio and Rat. Further back, to the gathering of pawns beforehand, coerced through blackmail. Zipper and her little brother. The discussion of the plan. Explaining someone needed to tamper with the warding array so Graeslin could rupture in and out. Right, right. They lock up mages in here as well, can’t have them casting in here.
Getting out wouldn’t be as simple as walking through a portal then. No matter, Oberan had other tricks up his sleeve. He rolled his shoulders, altering his posture. Slipped into pseudo-invisibility. A key manifested in his palm, heating up and deforming a moment later. Just like that, the door to his cell swung open, hinges squeaking. Oberan waited for the guards to investigate, but no-one came. It seemed they hadn’t noticed.
So he just shrugged and walked out, closing the door behind him. No point in keeping it wide open. The longer it would take the guards to realize he’d vanished, the more time he had to stroll through the Hall unimpeded. Which was exactly what Oberan did next, wandering the halls silent and unseen like a ghost.
Past the cells in his block, several occupied but more than half empty, past the duo of guards in warded armor, leaning against a wall chatting idly. Out of one hallway and into the next, in search of the stairs that’d take him up the next level, back to the ground floor. Or perhaps he should seek out Kas first? Little use in doing so though; without the Rupturing Orb he couldn’t get the assassin out easily. Maybe if the Raggedy Man wasn’t injured he’d risk it, but in his current state Kasoria couldn’t take on one guardsman, let alone a whole horde of them.
Though perhaps he could go say hi. It’d been a while since they’d last met, after all.
Mind made up, Oberan continued his wandering, ignoring the stairwell when he finally came across it –though he did file the location away for later—and heading to another cellblock instead. If not for the signs labeling the different sections of the Hall, he’d have thought himself back where he started. Everything looked the same, giving the illusion of some complicated maze. Perhaps that was the point.
He found no Kasoria in this block, though Oberan did encounter someone who’d apparently had the same idea as himself. Rounding a corner he bumped into something that wasn’t there, colliding with some invisible form. Both of them dropping their respective technique, surprised to find someone else who could do what they did.
Oberan slapped him straight across the face, not even fighting the impulse. “Well met! You must be the one they call Ulric?” He whipped an arm out to block the retaliation coming from the other man. “Are you searching the stairs? They’re that way.” Pointing, he snaked his arm in angular patterns, tracing the route in the air. “Second one left, third to the right, then go straight until you get to the next T section. Right again, then the first to the left.”
