Anders woke up, which was the first of many surprises consciousness held for him. He was relatively confident that he was awake because he knew the feel of the Fade as only a mage could, but in all other respects he might as well be caught in a nightmare.

He tried to take stock before panic had a chance to creep in on him. He was sitting up in a chair, his arms supported on wide armrests. A first exploratory attempt to move told him that his elbows were held by some kind of strap and his hands were restrained, somehow held splayed open. He remembered the feel of something cold being closed around his hand and the only image that came to mind was having his hand trapped inside an iron gauntlet that had rusted into immobility. Wriggling his fingers gave him the same impression. There was virtually no room to move inside whatever held them, and something was strapped so firmly around his wrist that he could not even try to withdraw his hands from the restraints.

He tried to open his eyes, but a gentle, firm pressure did not allow it. In fact, gentle, firm pressure seemed to be the order for the day across much of his body. When he swallowed, he felt straps under his chin, across his cheeks, and a wide band of something that, when he tried to open his mouth or move his face, drew tight across his mouth, dug into his nostrils, and covered most of his cheeks. He had enough room to breathe through his nose, but a head cold would be fatal.

He was blind and muzzled, hands immobilized, arms restrained. When he tried to move his legs, they were equally bound, and the movement made him aware of more straps at his waist and across his chest. In fact, the only place anywhere on his body that he had any freedom of movement was his neck – he could turn his head freely, which told him only that he was in a completely silent room.

He could see nothing, touch nothing, direct his magic at nothing. He was alone and he was helpless.

That is when the terror finally won past his careful walls and took a shrieking run through the rooms of his mind.

Alone in the silence!

When he had spent a year in solitary confinement, he had talked to himself, told himself stories, sung songs, even screamed at the top of his lungs just to fill the silence. Now he could not even do that. He was alone and he would go mad of it!

Not alone.

Justice took the terror and thrust it back outside the walls of their joint resolve, building the walls up to protect Anders from himself. Justice the individual was weakening again in Kirkwall's malevolent influence, but he still carried enough of the reminder of who he had been from their time back among the Grey Wardens to be the companion Anders needed in that moment.

Anders' gratitude could not be expressed in words, but words were usually extraneous between them.

Bolstered by Justice's support, he tried to put together what he remembered. He remembered Nives and the delicious treachery stew. She had been Antivan? Anders remembered Zevran joking that Crows were trained to tolerate poisons that would incapacitate or kill most people. His stories had included excessive amounts of vomiting and the elder Crows' amusement at the apprentices' expense, but the meat of the story remained. She had eaten some of the stew with him without effect – had Nives been a Crow?

Templars would not hire the Crows. He considered that perhaps he was just a side target in some strike against Zevran and Widald Amell, but that did not feel right either. Why wait until he was back in Kirkwall if it was meant to target people back in Amaranthine? Justice presented him with the memory of the man in robes who had come just before Anders had lost the fight to keep his eyes open. Not a templar, but someone who could afford the expense of hiring an Antivan Crow just to drug one apostate?

Footsteps.

He raised his head, listening to someone approaching with an unhurried tread of hard soles on stone.

"They told me you were awake." It was a man's voice, with a familiar accent that Anders wasted no time trying to identify in favor of a more immediate question.

They? Had there been silent observers for his waking and futile attempts at movement? Ordinarily, this would be where he would mouth off. Perhaps something along the lines of "Bondage? I usually save that for the second date, but I suppose the voyeurism will do."He would just have to settle for thinking it, but it lacked the same impact if it did not annoy someone.

"It certainly took you long enough. I am disappointed. I thought the stories of Grey Wardens and their recuperative powers would be more accurate, but you slept for nearly a day." The man came nearer, and despite himself, Anders turned his head toward him like a sunflower following the sun.

Anders felt a moment of panic before he realized that had to be a lie – he was not hungry enough, thirsty enough, or in dire enough need of a piss for that to be true.

The man's voice came from right by his ear intimate in its proximity, yet distantly amused. "I thought an abomination would be more impressive."

He recognized the accent – Fenris' accent.

A Tevinter accent.

The terror tried to climb the barriers Justice had erected, but together they fought it off. He was alive and oh so carefully restrained. If he were slated for death, he would be dead for now. No, this man wanted something else, and when people wanted things, sooner or later, an opportunity arose.

"Your breathing just got harder," the man said. "Is it that I know your secret?"

Anders flinched from an unexpected brush of fingertips in his hair, pulling loose strands back from his face and gently working it free of the straps around his head. "Or have you guessed who I am?"

Anders tried to pull away from the overly-intimate touch, but the man hooked his fingers in something attached to one of the straps at the back of his head and pulled him back into place. "How did you come to possess my runaway wolf, hm? Yours to kill, is he?"

The detached amusement fled the man's voice turning it harsh. "He is mine to kill, and now so are you. Nod if you understand."

Anders held his head still until the man – Danarius, it had to be – used his hold on the strap to nod Anders' head for him.

Maker, Anders wanted to kill him. He wanted to even have his mouth free for long enough to challenge the magister to a duel. He felt certain that if he could just speak, he could piss Danarius off so thoroughly that he would have to do something other than this.

Danarius released his head. "You don't understand yet, but you will. From now on, you may thank your master by bowing your head."

Anders held his head stubbornly upright and heard Danarius laugh before his footsteps receded. Thirty-four steps before he was alone in the silence.

He tested his bonds again, finding them just as unmoving as they had been when he had first tried them. He was not too thirsty yet, nor too hungry yet, and he was not yet at the squirming in his seat stage with his bladder. Most importantly, while he had no idea where he was in Kirkwall, he knew that he was still in Kirkwall. Nowhere else in Thedas, outside of some isolated shrines to demons and old gods, had quite the spiritual pall over it that Kirkwall did.

He tried to occupy his mind with questions – how many men did he remember at the clinic before he lost his fight for consciousness? How much had Danarius' voice echoed on the walls? Could he guess from that how large the room was?

Who had informed him that Anders was awake? And were they in the room now?

That last thought made Anders' skin crawl and despite the futility of it, he turned his head from side to side, holding his breath to try to hear someone else's breathing, or the scuff of a shoe on stone. He heard nothing and eventually subsided.

Time held no meaning locked in the dark, unable to move. He shifted occasionally, but after an hour or two or maybe three, his ass fell asleep, his legs tingled, and his shoulders grew stiff. Who said sitting around on your ass all day was a good thing?

Finally, in self-defense against the boredom and omnipresent fear, he started to doze.

As soon as his head began to loll, something gave his bare forearm a sharp pinch. He jerked awake with a gasp that was painful past the gag and twisted his head ineffectually trying to find the source of the pinch.

Nothing happened.

Lots, and lots of nothing.

This is how a Tevinter blood mage does torture?

He started to doze again, and just as soon as his head drooped, another hard pinch.

He grunted against the muzzle and flailed his head uselessly.

Now he was starting to lose track of time. He was getting thirsty, he could feel a raw spot rubbing under one ear where one of the straps shifted with his breathing, and he had to take a piss.

Just how did one signal that to silent watchmen? Was there a series of grunts? Please Messeres, could you take my cock out for me?

He feigned falling asleep, letting his head dip, and jerked his head around the instant he felt fingers on his arm.

Nothing.

His imagination insisted that Danarius had chosen shades to guard him. That right that moment, some monster half-floated over him.

Justice reminded him that he would feel the weakening influence of such a creature, and that whoever it was, was just a mortal being. Albeit a patient and stealthy one.

The next time he dozed off, Danarius' voice woke him. "Tired so soon? Mortal bodies are so frail, aren't they?"

Anders' head shot up, turning toward Danarius, who was standing at his right. He felt a hand twist the cuff on his right wrist. "We tried removing this along with the rest of your possessions, but it wouldn't come off. I can sense the magic in it, I wonder, what does it do?"

On demand orgasms, I know where you can get one of your very own. Go see Xenon, tell him I sent you. Anders wished Danarius were the kind of evil bastard who liked snappy repartee, but no, his wit was wasted alone in his head. Justice was the worst audience for such things and always had been.

"Little matter for now," Danarius said, releasing his wrist. "I presume you are tired by now. Hungry? Thirsty? Surely your body has needs. All you have to do to see them met is thank me. You know how."

Oh he knew. All he had to do was bow his head and Danarius would ungag him?

Anders was still for a moment while pride warred with guile. Then he bowed his head.

Danarius patted his head before Anders heard thirty-four steps and then silence.

Minutes later, a knife cut into the meat of his thigh.

Anders screamed behind his muzzle, as much in surprise as in pain and fear, but the cut was not repeated, and a moment later he felt fingers rubbing something into the cut. The pain from the knife quickly turned into a burn that spread outward from the point of the cut, leaving behind a numbness that sapped his spirit and muted his connection to the Fade and even to Justice.

Magebane. He knew it when the poison reached his tongue, a flavor that was more a color than a taste, acid green and hateful, cutting him off from his ability to use magic until the poison wore off.

He felt the tear in his trousers pulled open enough for the cut to be bandaged and then two sets of hands unstrapped him enough to slide forward in the chair. One set held him impersonally while another pulled down his trousers and smalls and pushed a cold pan under his thighs until he realized what was expected of him.

The sound of piss hitting the pan was the loudest thing in the room. The entire process of wounding him, unstrapping him, and holding him for the most impersonal cock-grab of his life had taken place in utter silence. He felt like a thing, not a person.

He knew on one level that this had to be the intent, but it still struck him as little else had since he had woken here.

The hands shook him off, whisked away the pan, and pulled up his smalls and trousers before he was pushed back in the chair and strapped in again. Only then was the muzzle across his mouth unstrapped.

"Makers hairy balls!"Anders swore immediately before he opened and closed his mouth and worked his jaw back and forth. "You sure do know how to treat a fellow. I used to have to pay extra at the Pearl for this kind of treatment, next time do you think you could—"

A cold spout hit his lips and immediately started to pour a lukewarm broth into his mouth. Anders had to shut up and swallow or wear the broth. He swallowed down the broth as quickly as he could until the spout was taken away, a dry cloth was swiped over mouth and chin, and the muzzle was quickly replaced.

The hands retreated, the room was silent, and though he held his breath and listened for all that was in him, he heard not the faintest movement to indicate that anything was being taken away or cleaned up, or that the owners of the hands had ever existed.

He was once again, utterly alone.