There had been three of them. Three that grabbed him. Brought him here. He had counted them as they led him through the tower, past the cells and then further – to that heavy metal door that in the darkness, that seemed to open into a hole in the earth.
They had jostled him down the uneven staircase, single file and shoulders still scrapping either side of the narrow stone walls. Single file, downwards, with two in front of him and one behind. There were only three templars that had taken him – but now, in his nightmares there were always so many more.
Or was 'nightmares' not the right word. Because he wasn't in the fade. These visions weren't spirits. They appeared when his eyes were open, entirely the fault of his own mind. It was concocting its own horrors just to have something to look at that wasn't the blank slab of cell wall – like his mind was casting Waking Nightmare against itself on a loop.
The cell was bitterly cold, the stone damp against his bare skin. They had stripped him of his robes, manacled his wrists and ankles, then by torchlight, they had inspected every inch of him. He wanted to curl up into himself, sink to the floor, hold his knees to his chest, and disappear. They made him stand up straight as they manoeuvred him like an obscene marionette. His arms and legs felt disconnected, too heavy and strange to his own.
They were gone now though. That was how come he could feel stone wall against his back and his knees against his chest. Although could still feel their eyes and fingers raking over him when he closed his eyes. The touch of stone was real, he told himself, but only that.
He had not understood at first why they were doing this to him, what they wanted. Then, the largest of the templars stopped dead, stilled his sweating hand at Niall's collar bone and barked,
"Is this one?"
The other two had lent closer to peer at Niall's shoulder, which began to burn with three torches so close to his skin. Then, through the pain and darkness, and confusion he realised what they were doing. He had a small scar on his shoulder. They were looking for scars. Scars were caused by cuts and cuts bled. Scars could be evidence of blood magic.
He fought to pull together a coherent thought,
"That's old. Years old."
He could see the larger templar's face twist in suspicion as another other said,
"It does look faded."
He had tried to explain. That Petra had pulled a textbook from the top shelf when they were apprentices, it had slipped from her grip and landed right on him, its corner left the scar. They must have accepted his garbled explanation because their inspection of his body resumed without another word.
When they stopped, the largest templar slapped him on the back, a perversely cordial gesture. The man saw the look on Niall's face,
"You know, it wasn't my idea of good night either staring at your scrawny arse. But, Knight-Commander's orders."
Another of them tossed him a brief look that could almost have passed for sympathy whilst the third, who couldn't be more than a templar-recruit he was so young, now had his eyes fixed on the ground.
As the three men went about extinguishing the scones on the walls that had given the cell a faint glow of light, Niall was frozen to the spot. He barely registered the lights going out, nor templars retreating back up the staircase, swinging shut the mental door behind them, and finally plunging the cell into total darkness. Then, without consciously registering the movement, Niall shuffled backwards, three quick steps in succession until his shoulder blades hit the wall and he allowed his knees to buckle and collapse him to the floor.
-o0o-
Niall woke with a jolt at the sound of - it had sounded like a scream – but as his mind regained consciousness and registered where he was, still shackled in an unknown cell, everything was silent. Eerily silent aside from a slow, constant drip of water seeping through from above. He didn't know when he had fallen asleep. Or how long he'd been down here in the dark. He was shivering violently, but there was so little he could do about it that it hardly seemed relevant.
He wanted to scream. Or to struggle, thrash against his manacles until he slipped free of them. He wanted to fight back. But alone in the dark, there was no one to fight. For a second he allowed himself to wonder, to hope, that magic might be able to help him. But even before he tried to summon mana, he could tell it was no use. The cell had to be covered in anti-magic wards and ruins, they explained why he felt so foggy, so alien to himself.
There was nothing he could do but sit and wait for templars to return. Which they had to, didn't they? Panic rose like bile in his throat when the thought occurred to him, they could just leave me here.
He willing himself to focus on something, anything else. Torrin's face appeared in his mind, smiling at him as Niall had left his room, maker, that could only have been a matter of hours ago. The thought was incomprehensible to him.
Torrin, of course, Torrin. They couldn't leave Niall down here. Torrin was a senior enchanter, and if Niall went missing he would ask questions. People couldn't just disappear without a trace.
Except, his mind supplied to taunt him, don't they?" A lifetime of passing acquaintances flashed facelessly across his imagination. Apprentices who had never become mages. Mages who one day were just no longer there, who must have had friends – friends who had understood that to survive in the Circle was to not ask too many questions.
Another wave of nausea passed through him. Anything else. He had to turn his thought to anything else. He would even take a demon for company over the thought that he would die here.
But no demons came. So, in the absence of all else, he screwed shut his eyes and, under his breath, began to pray.
-o0o-
The next time he awoke, it was to unmistakable groan of a door creaking open and the rush of light that flooded in ahead of the single figure now descending the staircase, torch in hand. By now, he was so used to the dark that the torchlight hurt his eyes. He tried to keep them open, not wanting to let the man in full templar armour out of his sight. His every muscle ached but still tensed instinctively at the templar's approach.
When the man reached the bars of his cell he didn't speak a word. Instead he nodded to Niall without meeting his eye and slipped a crisply folded set of robes through the bar. Then, he took a key from his belt and unlocked the cell. He stepped inside and released Niall from the manacles before abruptly disappearing back up the stairs and out of the door, which he did not lock behind him.
For a moment, all Niall could do was stare. Then some instinct kicked in and he began to move automatically. He felt like some external force was in control of him as he slipped the clean robes over his head and then slowly, as though he was afraid he'd hallucinated the whole thing, reached out his now free arm to pull open the cell door. It opened. And still without fully registering his own movements, he stepped out and made his way up the stairs and out of the large metal door. Once he was out into the basements he picked up his pace to a run. There was no one down there. He made it to the door that led back into the main tower.
The door opened into the foyer of the library and just like that he was back in his usual surroundings, as though nothing had happened. He stumbled forwards with no destination in mind. The soft light of the library at dusk burnt his eyes like he was staring directly at the midday sun.
A group of apprentices clutching their books bustled past him. Some of the kids were practicing shield spells in the elemental section under the eye of their tutor. There were bored looking templars stationed in every other doorway.
The weight of the normality began to make him feel dizzy. All that had happened to him was only the inevitable realisation of a threat that had been there all along, since he'd first stepped foot inside the tower as a little boy.
Niall's chest felt too tight and his breath too shallow. The shelves and shelves and shelves of books seemed too high, they towered over him. And the ceilings were too low. And he couldn't breathe. Another group of mages walked through the corridor, one brushed against his arm as she passed – too close. And he had to get out.
He started walking faster and faster, then reached the door to the staircase, out of the view of any templars, and broke into a run.
He ran to his room and swung the door shut behind him. For a second he felt safe before it dawned on him, this room was no more his than the library, or the classrooms, or the kitchens. The only thing keeping the templars on the other side of that door was that it was where they wanted to be. Niall found himself summoning the last of his strength to drag his armoire away from the wall – there was no logic, it wasn't an affective barricade against mages or templars – but he pushed it in front of the doorway anyway. With the futile barrier was in place between him and the rest of the world, Niall's legs finally gave out beneath him.