Captured-19- Lightning
This is a Series, Start here
TW: religious abuse, Non-con touch, electrocution, victim blaming, burns, PTSD, sex mention, near-death experience
There were several days where Harrow didn’t see anyone. Food and water were delivered through the doorway, the waste bucket was replaced, and then it was closed again. He tried to count them but lost track around eight. Or maybe it was nine?
Every now and then the door would open, then close with no effect at all. He supposed they were checking on him, making sure he hadn’t removed the horrible blindfold. He tried to shout questions but got no answers. One of these cold nights might have been Solstice Night. He wasn’t sure. Happy Birthday to me, he thought, shivering and cramped under his blankets. There was frost on them the next morning.
That night, a bundle was thrown in with his single daily meal. It hit him in the chest but he unrolled it. Another larger, heavier blanket, a shirt, and thicker, warmer boots made of sheepskin. The shirt and the boots were much mended and clearly had many owners before, but he welcomed them. Maybe it was his birthday after all. Even the single cloth layer of a shirt between him and the cold made a difference. It had been altered, split on the sides and the tops of the sleeves instead of only down the front, so that it could be put on or taken off someone without removing shackles. It took him a little while to do up the ties but having it on felt good. He felt more like a person with proper clothes on.
Conroy finally returned one early morning. “Did you miss me, Harrow? I’ve been busy, I know, and neglected my duties to you. Now, let me help you out of that shirt,” he said, deftly unfastening it and dropping it on the mattress. “You won’t need a shirt today.” He produced the blindfold. “I know you must have missed this.”
“Not remotely… Sir.” Harrow scowled at it, as it was brought forward and put around his face. He didn’t even try to resist, he realized, even as he let it happen to him. That was a frightening thing to notice.
Conroy took him cheerfully by the shackled wrists. “Come along, little warlock. I have something exciting to show you. I’ve deliberated with the other Purifiers and Father Anselm himself and they’re letting me use something new with you.”
Harrow had to go where he was led. Conroy no longer seemed to need the two large guardsmen to move him. He’d become weaker, lost so much of his strength.
They ended up in the forge room. Harrow knew it instantly- some things stay in your memory when aided by torture, and the charcoal and rusty metal smell made his stomach clench. In the center of this room, he knew, was the anvil. At one end would be the rack. He was led another way this time, and found his back being pushed against a stout upright wooden pole or pillar.
Conroy hailed someone else nearby. “Sir Daveth, can I borrow you? Bring that blade over here. Just you make sure our warlock doesn’t move while I unchain his arms, hm?”
Someone huge filled the space in front of Harrow, and a knife edge, still hot from recent working, was set at his throat.
An older man’s deep voice rumbled, “This is fine steel but it hasn’t been quenched yet, so don’t make me taint it with the blood of a warlock, hm?”
Harrow tried to lift his jaw away from the blade but it followed, pressing against skin, too warm to be comfortable but not still hot enough to blister. He tried to slow his breathing, deepen it- terror of whatever was about to happen to him wouldn’t make it any better, and might make it worse, but the only thing that had ever come to him here was incredible pain.
Conroy was unlocking his shackles, then pulling his hands behind him and tying them with rope. “I don’t want metal on you for this. Don’t worry, you’ll get the shackles back later.”
Harrow’s scarring wrists and halfway up his forearms were tied to each other and the post, pulling his shoulders back hard against it, and then even his legs were being bound to it.
“Don’t want you collapsing while I’m trying to work,” said Conroy.
Harrow dared to try a whisper past the blade. “Sir- Sir, what is this?”
“I’ve been approved- Thank you, Sir Daveth, you can go back to your work- to use something I hadn’t been permitted to before, and I think it may be quite effective. Are you frightened, Harrow?”
Even after the knife and the presence of the other Purifier went away from him, he was still trying to breathe slower. “Yes, Sir.” The answer just fell from him, when he’d meant to say No Sir. He recognized the effect. “Circle of Truth…” he whispered. Anything said inside that ensorcelled ring had to be true. It couldn’t make you tell any specific truth, but you had to speak truth. The one exception was if you tried to say No when the truth was Yes, then that’s what you’d get.
“You’ve encountered one before. Good. I have made this one around the post you are bound to. I can stand just outside it and still lay hands on you.” He put his hands on Harrow’s scarred shoulders to prove it, almost caressing, and leaned close, lowering his voice. “And I know how much you enjoy that, Harrow.”
Harrow wrenched his shoulders trying to free himself from that touch, but all he got was a mocking laugh from Conroy, who let go after watching him struggle a bit.
“You haven’t been able to work magic in ages. Not here. I’ll bet that’s been driving you absolutely mad. But I can use power here, and not only healing spells. So let’s start simply. Will you confess your deeds to me and embrace Arost?”
“No, Sir.”
A hand touched his shoulder with a crackling jolt and his whole body went rigid, arching back against the pole as pain raced through his nerves, clenching his jaw, tearing into him with a suddenness that drove the air from his lungs- and then it was over, and he was gasping.
“That is a wizard’s spell. I can bring lightning to hand, and inflict it on whoever I can touch. Perhaps you’ve seen it used. I have the talent to learn a little magic beyond the gifts of Arost, and I’ve been given permission to use it on you. Doesn’t that make you feel special?”
He had seen it used. Wizards called it the Shocking Grasp and it- he’d never imagined what being hit by lightning felt like, but now he thought he might be able to guess.
“Now, are you a warlock of Asmodeus?”
“Y- yeh- yes, Sir.”
“Good. Keep being honest and I won’t have to hurt you. Did you lead the cultist cell in Montebria?”
Yes, Sir.”
“What are the names of the contacts you had to reach other cells?”
“I don’t kn- AUGHHH!!” The lightning punched into him, tensing his muscles to tearing, filling his mouth with the taste of blood where he bit his tongue. As it left him again he coughed, then spat to the side. “I truly don’t know their names, Sir! See? Truth. I swear I don’t. They had coded designations. No names.”
“Alright, I believe you. Now- Do you remember everything that happend in the fire at Montebria?”
“Not everything, Sir.” Harrow had to try to spit out blood again.
“You were burned badly, weren’t you?” Conroy leaned closer.
“…Yes, Sir.”
“You had to feel yourself being eaten away by the fire, didn’t you?”
“Ye- yes Sir, I- I don’t want to relive it, Sir-“
“I want you to, Harrow. I need you to remember it. Smell it, feel it, flames on your body devouring you, the smoke stifling you, the ash falling like snow…” Conroy knew the forge room smelled of soot and ashes already, to help the memory live.
Harrow shook his head, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest, He could feel it all again and he couldn’t breathe, not enough air-
“Who is Tristan?”
“S-sir?”
“Who is Tristan, Harrow? Was he at Montebria?”
He coughed, choking, and spat blood aside again to try to ease his rapid breathing. “I- I had a friend, and he was- was there, and I’ve lost him and now I’ll never see him again! That’s who Tristan is! I swear!” All of it true. And all a kind of lie, he knew, but he had been an artist with words, could twist words to say what he needed to say, to mislead- To protect.
Conroy was silent, then, “Good. That matches what you said the last time I asked you. I believe you.”
“I- I can’t lie- Not here-“
“That’s right. Now, tell me something you’ve been hiding from me.”
“What?” Was he becoming transparent under torture? Did the man know?
Conroy seized his shoulder again and once more the lightning shattered his mind, made his eyes see a wall of white, shook him against the pole until he was sure he’d pass out from lack of breath or his head striking wood.
“Tell me something you’ve been trying to hide from me. Anything you like. I know you must have plenty of secrets. You’re going to give them up to me. Nothing is yours to keep, little warlock.”
Harrow tried to inhale properly, tried to speak, but his mind felt fragmented, his head hurt and he was dazed as well as in pain. “I- I think your knight Ard has my book. The- record of spells I kept- They took it from me- when I was caught.”
“Good. Tell me another secret.” Conroy was pacing again, circling him.
“I’m… happy about getting new boots?”
“Ah, also a truth. Keep talking, Harrow, or you risk upsetting me.”
“I have nightmares… about the anvil.”
“And what else do you have nightmares about, Harrow?” Conroy said softly.
“The fire. Burning. And the rack.”
“Am I in those nightmares, Harrow?”
“…Yes, Sir.”
“Good. I like to think you remember what I’ve been trying to show you. Tell me something else.” His voice moved in close by Harrow’s ear. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else. Don’t refuse me.”
Harrow gritted his teeth. “What if I don’t want to?”
Lightning, slamming his head back, making him convulse where he stood bound, the ropes rasping against his struggles and burning his skin, blood running from his open mouth, lightning driving through him ready to tear him apart- and it stopped as suddenly as it started. Harrow’s head dropped on his chest. “Hh- Hh- Alright- Alright. Let me think. I… I hate these burn scars.”
“Harrow, I’ve known that since the first day I saw you. Your face was lit with shame. Do you need punishing again?”
“No! No- I…” he was fairly sure his face was darkening with it now as well, knew that was the point of these inane questions, knew Conroy meant to humiliate him in every way possible, and he let the words run from his mouth like his blood. “I haven’t… been with a woman since this happened to me… because I don’t want to see how they’d look at me. Is that personal enough for you?”
“Wonderful what a Circle of Truth can do, isn’t it? Now, this next? This isn’t about questions. This is because I want to keep you practiced at begging. So beg for me.”
Lightning again, battering around inside his body like a frantic moth of fire inside a jar, scorching his bones and cramping his legs, locking his jaw tight shut and stopping him breathing, and it went on- and on- too long, he couldn’t breathe- His vision filled with sparks, then darkened-
Then once again he was sobbing, fighting for breath against the ropes that bound him, his head down. “P- please! Please, not again- Sir, Please,” he cried, hating himself.
“Very pretty, Harrow. I see you’ve remembered. But I am going to hurt you one more time.” He pulled the blindfold off Harrow’s face. “I want to know what this does to you. It’ll be brief, don’t worry,” he said, and his hand touched Harrow’s chest, fingers spread around the warlock mark, ready to bring the palm down against it, the hissing crackling flashes of lightning gathering to that hand.
Harrow felt his touch, saw what he meant to do, and started to thrash wildly against his bonds, frantic. “No! No!! Gods, No!! I gave you what you wanted! Please- No, don’t, don’t do this, please, no, I- “
His heart was struck through by an incredible pain in a blaze of light that exploded into blackness.
Harrow drifted up from the depths of some cold void. Voices were vague sounds above him. He saw nothing. He lay on his back, cold iron underneath him. Voices again, arguing, then suddenly what felt like a hammerblow. Then another. It struck his chest right over the warlock mark, right over his heart, someone’s gloved fist hitting hard enough to crack ribs and his eyes opened wide, letting in light, his lungs filling with air- he hadn’t been breathing- and sound rushing back as well, Conroy’s voice saying, “Look, I know what I’m doing, he’ll live-“
He was lying on the anvil, on his back, limbs dangling off the sides. He was sucking deep lungfuls of air as hard as he could, and with every breath things became clearer. His heart had stopped. He had just been, ever so briefly, dying. Almost within reach of the Fiend himself, Asmodeus, who would claim his soul. Someone was screaming, shouting incoherently in terror, and he realized it was him.
“He’ll have to rest after that. Shut him up and take him back to his cell.”