backscene: last rites Who: Ser Tobias Statler, Constans Ledaal. Where: Kinloch Hold. When: 9:43, Pluitanis. Summary: Although the boy has never been anything but trouble, Ser Tobias attempts to extend Constans some comfort at the lowest moment of his life. Rating: I can at least guarantee there won't be any sex? Completed.
These cells, he thought, must be somewhere below the tower itself. When they’d finally dragged him here he hadn’t been able to keep open his eyes, but he’d felt them walking down, down, down. It was cold enough to see the faintest puff of each breath, and dark, a solitary torch somewhere distant giving off a pale, guttering flame barely enough to see his own hands by. No one was here with him, no other prisoners, not even a Templar to guard him; the silence was perfect, pervasive, unadulterated, the like of which could be found nowhere else in the Tower. So many people living so close meant there was never true silence to be found … except, apparently, here, in the ancient stone bowels of Kinloch.
Constans had never in his life felt so completely and terribly alone.
The whole of him was smeared with blood: robes, face, hands, everything. Blood was in his hair. Most of it was his. His ribs still ached where Aurin had battered him, but that seemed so long ago now, and mere physical injury inconsequential. The First Enchanter had been decent enough to see to healing him, not that he’d be alive now at all if someone hadn’t taken that unsavory task upon themselves, but he’d never been given the chance to wash up. Although his hands were bound firmly at the wrists to hinder him casting, he’d unconsciously begun to rub them together, pads of his thumbs scrubbing away at the dark dried stains caked into his knuckles and under his fingernails. There might have been a little bit of his old vanity in it, but mostly it was anxiety, his body seeking something to do while his mind reeled. Maker, he was… he was so scared. And so tired. Body and soul. All his anger, his righteousness, his fragile, callous pride had come howling out of him hours ago, spent and shattered against the bulwark of Aurin’s rage. He had none of that left to hold onto, nothing that could let him hold up his chin in the face of what he’d done. The overwhelming sense that it had all been in vain, all evil and prideful and foolish, all for nothing ate away at his mind and left him trembling on the floor from more than just the cold.
Coming to terms with his sentence hadn’t grown any easier. Yes, he had asked (begged) for Tranquility, anything to stay alive, but he still felt like he was counting down the hours to his execution. Was any of it true, the things people whispered about Tranquil? That they had no souls; that sundering a person from the Fade forever stripped away whatever essential thing it was that made them a person? He tried not to think about it, forced himself to remember Desiderio. Whatever he had done to deserve this, whatever they turned him into, Constans prayed that he could not be made to forget his little brother. Never, not ever, would he abandon that boy. Please, Maker, don’t be so cruel.
But the Maker, if he was listening at all, certainly didn’t listen to the prayers of bloodmages.
Somewhere in the distant, echoing chambers of the tower’s underground prison, he heard a heavy iron door creak open and crash shut again with a horrible finality. Huddled against the wall of his narrow cell, his voice choked away by fear and a grimace contorting his features into grotesque despair, Constans began to weep soundlessly, his chest hitching. He turned his face away from the bars, willing himself to stop but unable to pull himself out of his spiraling hysterics. What a pathetic end to a pathetic life- sobbing like a child at the sound of a Templar’s approaching footfalls.