2. Captor

Therius woke up to the rattling of chains and cries of prisoners around him.

It was no surprise to him, now. He'd woken up hearing screams, and he fell unconscious hearing screams. He wasn't sure by now how many times he had blacked out by now. It was hard to tell while he was being beaten, because pain would become the central thing in his mind.

His sight had barely adjusted to the darkness when the opening of a cell door caught his attention.

He was back-the Gurak right-hand man of Zangurak, that is. Zesha. His captor, red aura burning fiercely around him, had the most disdainful grin on his face as he slowly approached the white knight, stripped of his armor and weapons. Therius knew too well why Zesha would come down here, to be seen among the other human prisoners. It was for the sake of trying to make Therius break.

Therius mentally called himself stupid for losing his guard when he fell off the balcony earlier, when Zesha punched him in the head. Had he blacked out while falling, he most likely wouldn't have had a safe landing-he could have died. Instead, he was lucid enough to flip about in the air and land on both feet, a bit steady, unshaky, but safe-or so he thought.

That moment had been when the other Gurak soldiers overhwhelmed him, and eventually one of them knocked him out in the chaos. Had he been just even more careful, surely he could have evaded capture...or at least, that was what Therius thought.

"Get up." He felt Zesha sharply kick him in the side. Before Therius could do a thing, the Gurak had bent down and lifted him into the air, holding him by the neck. Therius tried to struggle, but the effort was in vain-he was far too weakened by the beatings from Zesha earlier, and he knew that struggling would only make things worse. Yet still, he struggled. He wanted to get out of this place-but most of all, he needed to find Lady Callista, at the very least! Rescue her from her captors, at the very least get her away from them before they could catch up...

Zesha eyed him, malice glittering in the dark eyes as he shoved Therius against the brick wall behind him.

"How...pitiful." Zesha murmured softly, still grasping Therius by the neck. The white knight struggled to breathe as the Gurak captor leaned forwards to the point that their foreheads were touching, both pairs of eyes forced to gaze at one another. "I thought there would be more to you than just this struggling, weakened, body that can't even get itself to stand after being beaten so much."

Therius hated that tone in his voice. It was whimsical, a gentle mocking of worthless sympathy that couldn't really be sympathetic. If there was one thing the knight knew too well by now, this man that beat him was sadistic to the core.

Therius couldn't even speak a word in protest, to combat the vile sickness that poured from Zesha's lips. The captor had placed a shackle of some sort about his neck-a collar, to constrict his vocal chords from saying otherwise.

"I wouldn't make you wear that-" He gestured to Therius' collar, as he gently traced Therius' mouth with one hand- "If you had behaved from the very beginning. Obviously, though, you made your decision, human. Don't think it's coming off anytime soon."

Therius bit.

"Y-you...You damned wretch!"

Therius felt the heavy hand backhand him in the face, and Therius spat out blood, making its way to the floor as he coughed a bit. Zesha dropped Therius with the other hand, gazing at his cut fingers before glaring at the knight with complete rage in his eyes.

The next thing Therius felt were fists-one after the other. One, two, three, four...all aiming towards his torso, his face. He felt himself being flipped over so that his face was pushed against the floor, Zesha's hands in keeping his hands above his head as the other yanked at his blood-caked white hair. The aching cuts and bruises all over him sent a stronger jolt of pain to his head, and Therius couldn't suppress a pained groan.

Zesha yanked a bit on the white hair some more, undone from its neat braid earlier, and he leaned close to Therius' ear.

"Is that what you want?" Zesha hissed, the venom of his voice seeping into Therius' hearing. "You want more pain, you wretch? So be it."

Zesha withdrew himself, before bending down to pick up Therius by the neck again. The white knight felt himself grow limp in his captor's grasp, powerless to stop what came next.

One more punch, one more backhanded slap in the face, and Therius' world blacked out once more, as the screams of fellow human prisoners echoed in his ears.

Callista awakened, finding herself on hard, solid ground. Her vision was blurry at first, with nothing to be heard but her own breathing and the ticking of a clock. Her vision cleared to see a clock at the right wall of the room, though she couldn't see the time because there were silver , long bars standing vertically that obscured the view-

Wait...what?

She blinked a few more times, and her vision cleared and adjusted to the darkness around her. She soon realized that she was in a cage. Looking around for a door, she saw the lock on its door. She was stuck in here, for as far as she knew. At least it was spacious enough for her to move around a bit, but she would have to stay in a crouched or sitting position, not standing.

Where was she? Well, most likely captured by the Gurak, of course, but...what was this place? None of it looked familiar to her. There was a window at the far end of the room on the left wall, moonlight shining through. It was nighttime now, she realized, and she must have been unconscious for a good while. The engagement party to Jirall did take place in the past morning, after all.

Before she could try to figure out whose room this belonged to, a door opened from the far right. In walked none other than her captor-though dressed differently than when she first encountered him at the ball. He wore armor, now, and no mask, revealing his face. Two swords, sheathed, hung from the left and right hip as he glanced at her and closed the door behind him, before he sauntered over to her and got onto a knee to face her properly.

"So," He murmured with a sneer on his face, "The Countess-to-be finally awakens. I almost thought that I killed you earlier, but apparently you have the talent of surviving."

Callista said nothing at first, before speaking up. "Where am I? And who are you?"

The Gurak captor smirked leaning close to meet her face. "My name, I repeat, is of no importance to you. And if you must truly need to know of your location...well, I'm sure you can figure that out for yourself. You've been captured by the enemy. I can't think of a worse situation than this..." He withdrew from her just a little bit, before speaking again. "I would highly suggest that trying to escape would be the worst of options. You don't want to end up like others that have tried-in fact, that may be even worse than merely being captured by the enemy, correct?"

It was then that she realized there was blood, dripping from the Gurak captor's hands. She shivered slightly at the sight-she didn't want to know whether he just killed someone with his bare hands, or...

Her captor chuckled a bit as he saw her paling face.

"Stay out of trouble. It's the best option to take-" He stopped speaking as soon as soon as he heard someone knock at the door. He withdrew completely from Callista, before he walked towards the door and opened it, a tray of food being put into his hands afterwards. "Zepha...thank you. Though...you know I don't eat that much."

Callista heard the familiar voice of her captor's brother, Zepha, respond. "I thought you might need something to eat, anyway. And...the extra is for the little Countess-to-be, according to Lord Zangurak." He drawled gently, chuckling a bit. "Good luck trying to bear with her presence in your own chamber, Zesha."

Zesha merely let out a groan. "Shut up, brother."

"What? It could be interesting..." The other murmured, a tender tone in his voice afterwards. "Never mind. I'll be seeing you later, brother."

Callista thought she heard Zesha smile, but she couldn't be too sure. "See you later..." He closed the door using his foot, holding the tray carefully with both hands as he set it onto the table. He paused, before he snatched a piece of bread-stale bread-from the tray and he shoved it through the bars of the cage.

"That's for you." Zesha hissed softly. "Lord Zangurak apparently doesn't wish to starve you. You better be grateful for it."

Callista looked down at the bread in her hands, before taking a bite out of it. At least it wasn't like they were going to starve her to death-not like the other humans that they might have taken prisoner. Watching as Zesha ate with his back to her, she counted her blessings as she quietly ate the stale bread in her hands. At the very least, she was not stuck in the castle with Jirall fawning for her attention.

Of course, being stuck sharing a room with your captor wasn't exactly an ideal situation, either.