AN: So I'm sorry this is steadily becoming torture porn, but this is just how Ra'Zhag met his pretty Nord and I really need to put his imprisonment into some context. I also changed the synopsis cause I felt some people might be expecting a love story and ended up with this pfft. But this a warning that this chapter is REALLY GRAPHIC, even compared to the last, so read on at your own risk. The love stuff is coming soon I swear, I can't keep writing about this stuff myself./

Pillars of white marble, veined with blue tendrils as fine and thin as rabbit hair, strained up against the vaulted ceiling and lined the walls on either side. A long red carpet, trimmed with gold, sprawled out before him, illuminated by a grand glass chandelier that swung listlessly overhead. It swung to the left and shadows skittered to the right, it swung right and they fled to the left, and they pooled around the edges of the warm circle of light when it flashed over the center of the room. It clinked as it moved, the bits of intricately cut and carefully placed glass winking at certain angles. The walls were red as well, though a more earthen tone of red, like blood mixed with mud.

He shifted uncomfortably in his armor. Having never worn a cape, it felt strange to have the long yard of fabric trail after him with every step and bundle at his feet whenever he stopped. He tried walking down the carpet in the long, graceful strides he felt he had to make, but ended up halting every few steps to adjust the damn thing. It seemed unnatural. The radiant white armor and long flowing cloak, they all fit him snugly, but it felt like he was wearing another person's skin. He felt eyes on him from some unknown figures hidden in the shadows where the chandelier never touched. This is not your place, they seemed to say. But something pushed him forward down the red walkway all the same, fumbling and adjusting all the while, until he came to the end of the room. It was dark there. A wall as black as pitch looming ahead of him. Even when the ever swaying light swept up towards it, the light was lost to the blackness, swallowed up before it had a chance to pierce the shadows. He halted. The tips of his polished boots peeked over the edge, where the world simply stopped. And before him stretched an endless maw of nothing.

It made his stomach flip.

"Will you betray her?" Someone called to him from deep inside the nothing. A woman's voice that rang the halls behind and made the nothing quiver. A familiar sounding voice, who it belonged to, he could not say. Thousands of questions burned in his mind, but he found himself speaking before he had a chance to.

"No." It bubbled from his lips before he had a chance to contemplate the question. Betray who?

"Do you pledge your sword to her?"

"My sword, my life, and my heart." He wasn't sure how the speech came so easily to him. It was like a vow he'd practiced a thousand times before now, even though he had never said it before.

"Do you forsake your Masters?"

"Hers will be the only voice that guides my hand."

"Will you protect her?"

"Always."

"Liar." She said it calmly, but it made the floor beneath his feet buck and nearly dropped him to his knees. The eyes in the shadows behind him burned into his back.

"N-No! I would never- I will protect her with my life!"

"LIAR!" The halls heaved in a great wave that rushed down the corridor, the floor undulating and pushing the pillars so hard against the ceiling that many of them cracked, and the chandelier shattered, all before the voice seemed to speak. The word became a cacophony of crumbling marble and crackling glass. He stumbled to regain his footing when the wave struck him, but tripped on his cloak and fell back hard. The eyes were nearer now, so near he could see white orbs peeking out of the walls. His heartbeat was hammering in his skull.

"I swear I will protect her! I swear it in judgment of the Nine, and may the Daedra take me if I lie!"

It did nothing to quell the chaos and the halls rumbled and groaned as everything began to corrode around him. Fear gripped him by the roots of his soul itself as he forced himself to stand, whirling on his heels. His cape fluttered behind him and he dashed as swift as his legs could carry him back down the hall. The floor rose and fell and heaved beneath him, the chandelier swung; the shards of glass littering the floor and hanging frozen in the air cutting at him when he ran through them. But the faster he ran, the deeper his boots sucked into the carpet, until his legs were submerged in a river of red quicksand. You can't run, the voice was his own now, but he had not spoken. It chased after him from the void and fell deafening upon his ears. You can't run, turn back! You have to go back! But he couldn't. He had to run, he couldn't return to the darkness, but he could move no further forward. He clawed at the floor, leaving gashes in the ground that began oozing black. And he screamed and he screamed his vow, though he felt it in his heart to be false, until the vow became cries for mercy, and the pillars collapsed and the walls fell away into darkness. Until the cloak clasped at this throat burned away and his armor rusted and decayed into dust. Until hundreds upon thousands of Khajiit breached the bounds of the shadows they had watched him from, eyes milky white and sightless, and descended on him with claw and fang.

A dilapidated ceiling hung above him. His screams for mercy had become a pathetic whimper, and the Khajiit had left him. He studied the cracks between each brick for a few moments after his eyes shot open, thrusting him from the world of frantic vows and hidden voices to a world of cold, damp stone. He was thankful for the cool stone beneath him, as the dream had soaked him through with sweat, and his heart still thumped painfully in his ribcage. He grimaced, moving to sit up. Metal ringed his wrist and pinned him where he lay. Suddenly reminders of his battle made his skin prickle in goosepimples at the fierce stinging in his chest and back, and he let his head fall back against the stone bed he was shackled to. He looked down at himself.

The burn wound had festered, the red and irritated skin blotching around the raised blisters that had spread, and it was colored shades of rotting black about the edges and puss yellow towards the center. A stench rose up from the injury and made his nose wrinkle in disgust. He pressed his head as far from it as he could, but the charred skin was draped directly over his collarbone, making this difficult if nigh impossible to get away from the stink of dying flesh. The rest of his body hurt from bruises and was weak with exhaustion, the pain from the knife wound in his back mingling with pains fresh and old, and pains he didn't remember having before. His head lolled insensibly to the right, and his gaze fell on tools laid out on a wooden table against the far wall. Bone saws and pliers blotted with blood and rust, dangerous looking serrated blades, hooks, a small, crooked harpoon. They all looked ill maintained but freshly used, the dim torchlight catching rubies at the tip of the knives. He wanted to grimace, but the movement wrinkled the skin beneath the cut on his cheek. Ra'Zhag strained against his binds, arching his back as he turned his eyes upwards towards the sound of metal moaning above his head.

Hanging from the ceiling behind him sat a heavy iron cage that twirled slowly and dispiritedly. Bones were scattered around the ground under the high strung cage and an intact forearm and hand fell over the floor of the cage, hanging limp between the slits. A pale almond hand slithered through the bars and dug it's sharp nails into the wall nearest it, pushing the cage in circles.

Locked inside was a young Imperial, dressed in a roughspun tunic and trousers, dyed by patches of red. His hair was black as tar and half as thick, tumbling down his back in knots of rat nests, falling well past his waist. A comely face, speckled with stubble, was marred by a single bright red scar reaching from his jaw, over the bump of his lips, and stopping just below his aqualine nose. He was rather full faced for being imprisoned, not looking like the underfed skeletons Ra'Zhag sometimes saw hanging out front of Stormcloak keeps. In fact, he looked mildly disinterested in his predicament, amber eyes half-lidded in a look of boredom as he sang. Ra'Zhag blinked. He is singing?

It was only now that Ra'Zhag came to notice he was humming softly, the sound almost imperceptible above the groaning bolts in his cage.

"I came to my lover by the sea,

And by the sea she returns to me,

In a dress of foam and tide and weed,

My bride the sea returns to me.

Oh woe, below the waves we go.

Oh woe, my love dance to and fro."

"Hello?" Ra'Zhag croaked, finding his throat felt of nettles to speak.

"Awake are we?" The Imperial's voice was deep and thick, as melodious when he spoke as it was when he sang. "You're a big fellow, aren't you? Took three of those skinny mages to get you into bed. Quite a travesty to see them try to heave you above their heads, only they struck me when I laughed about it." He lifted his hand to nurse a bruise mottling his jaw under the stubble.

"Where are we..."

"Some dank place, I couldn't give you the name. I fear they won't allow me a look at my map. Just as well, I've always been shit with directions."

"We can not be far from Winterhold..." Ra'Zhag muttered to no one in particular as he moved in his constraints again to look around, perhaps hoping for a sign.

"Aye, I was hunting Horkers near the College when they took me." His face scrunched in irritation as something dawned on him. "Those bastards probably ate my meat and used up all my blubber, oh now I am mad."

Mad may have been a more apt word for the Imperial than we was aware. Ra'Zhag strained to roll half-way on his side and craned his neck to look at the wall behind him.

And then he saw the other he shared this room with. Another Khajiit lay atop a stone slab on the other side of the room, with fur the color of fresh leather spotted with black. His face stared out into nothing, awake and yet unfocused as if he slept, his features slack and lifeless. Lengths of his fur had been peeled back to expose the muscles and tissue in his chest, the skin pinned at his sides by long needles stuck into the rock he lay on. Small puncture wounds dotted the exposed flesh. The blood that had dribbled from the wound had long dried and turned brown like autumn leaves where it had pooled around his body, caught in his fur, and poured onto the floor. Ra'Zhag felt bile rise in his throat, but had nothing in his stomach and nowhere to turn to release it. The Imperial must have caught the little sound of sick he made.

"Your blood fought well, if that will console you. He cut one of their throats with those claws of his before they could restrain him, near took her head off. And he never pleaded. Screamed, but that's to be expected of everyone, even the courageous." It was somewhat consoling. Ra'Zhag's heart always pained for the sufferings of his own people before it would the hardships of mer or men.

"That one is a stranger to me." The suffer in his voice would say otherwise, but it was true.

"All the same."

Ra'Zhag stared at the quickly paling eyes of his brethren. His brother stared back. "What do they...what do they do here..."

"Isn't it obvious?"

He grimaced. It was, terribly so, but Ra'Zhag secretly hoped there was something else in store for him.

"How long have you been here?"

"Time is nothing in a room without windows," the Imperial mused. He pulled on his short whiskers. "I didn't have the sense to mark my days anywhere. But summer was only just dawning when I was captured. What is it now?"

"Still summer. Nearing fall."

"Not long then. Gods be good! I might make my niece's wedding yet. I was so hoping to see her married off to that bastard farmboy from Riverwood. Sweet lad, no matter what my Aunt says. She's a dry cow anyway, and she raised the village whore, so who is she to complain about what man will wed her daughter? It's not as though any Jarl will marry a woman heaving a belly swollen with another man's child. It's a slap to the farmboy, honestly." Something told Ra'Zhag he didn't have a niece. The Imperial once more reached out of the bars and pushed off the wall, spinning the cage idly. "Oh, I've been rude, I haven't introduced myself, have I? My name-" He stopped when the cage made him turn his back on the Khajiit and waited until it turned around again. "-is Avari."

"Ra'Zhag."

"Well, Ra'Zhag, I suggest you settle in. It may be your only respite for a long time." Avari shifted to force his legs through the bars, laying his hands against the floor of the cage between them. "Mind if I finish my song?"

Voicing no objections, Ra'Zhag listened as the Imperial picked up his song where he had left it. His eyes stayed on his kin. Practically a cub. He couldn't have been past fifteen summers, lithe of legs and chest, but the lines of muscle under his peeled skin made him seem more powerful. Ra'Zhag couldn't tear his eyes from the gore of his body sprawled over the slab. Was this the work of the mages in the courtyard? What use would they have in torturing his kind? And not just his kind, the Imperial as well, and there may well be other rooms with more inhumane tortures being carried out on the other mer and men and beasts to be found in Skyrim. To what end? He would ask his cell mate, but doubted the singer had any more of a clue than he did. And children no less. The skinned Khajiit was only a child. Whether he died courageously or died simpering like a babe, he shouldn't have died. He snapped his eyes shut to spare himself the sight a moment longer.

Avari sang and somewhere water dripped in the distance, and Ra'Zhag stared at the inside of his eyelids, unable to let himself look at the body another moment longer for he would surely drive himself mad. The stench of his sickness eventually faded, or at least he grew accustomed to it, even as the pain of his wounds gnawed relentlessly at the back of his mind. The Imperial sang of the sea and the love he lost to it, he sang songs Ra'Zhag knew from the sands of Elsweyr, some he knew from the taverns in the holds of Skyrim, and some he didn't recognize. When Ra'Zhag could bring himself to speak and ask where he learned them, the singer said he wrote them, and beamed when the Khajiit half-heartedly praised them. Ra'Zhag's thoughts turned -dully- to what would befall him while Avari sang of a lusty Argonian maid. He wouldn't die like the cub, he told himself, he wouldn't allow his body to die no matter what torture they inflicted. He would not die; not until he was an old, crotchety bastard with children and grandchildren, and not before he saw his home at least once more. He would catch a lizard again, only then could he die in peace. He found himself looked up at Avari. His goals must have been far broader than catching lizards, but he deserved to reach them as well. Though he didn't know much of him or held his company for longer than a few hours, he didn't want him to die either. So he prayed. Prayed for sands, prayed for Avari to see his niece (whether she existed or not), and simply prayed. He found himself thinking of his dream, or what he could remember of it. He recalled how he had to beseech some unknown force to spare him, only he was without doubt as to whether or not this force existed in the first place. As for the Nine; he was having his uncertainties.

Avari had began a throaty rendition of "The Dragonborn Comes".

"Quit your yowling, leech!" Ra'Zhag jolted, looking to the doorway that lead up to a set of crumbling stairs. A black, robed figure stomped down them, brandishing a dark wooden staff. "How many times do I have to tell ya'!" He struck the Imperial hard across the legs, making him yelp and forcing him to pull them in through the bars again, huddling his knees against himself. Dejected, he fell silent. Ra'Zhag instinctively moved forward to strike the mage in return, but only met the cold bite of his shackles bearing into his skin. The mage turned to him when he heard the rustling, and a smirk lit his face from under his robes. Another black hooded figure descended the stairs soon after, one arm wrapped in a sling and held against his chest. He sneered when he met Ra'Zhag's gaze.

"Hmph. So this one's awake."

The first robe crossed the room to Ra'Zhag, staff scraping against the ground, and the sound echoed in the small, wet room. He stopped, laying a cold ivory hand against the stone slab. Lingering this close, he could smell mead roiling from his breath when he spoke. "Sleep well?"

Ra'Zhag mustered what saliva he could spare and spat in the mage's face.

He, in turn, cracked the Khajiit against the cheek with a gloved fist, clutched around the length of his staff. Ra'Zhag felt a tooth in the back of his jaw loosen as blood quickly pooled in his mouth. He spouted that at the mage's feet, splashing his boots with red spittle.

"Bastard," the mage growled, stepping away. The second came to replace him, draping an arm over the Khajiit's torso and resting a hand on the other side of his body. The straps holding him in place kept him from tearing the mage's throat into strips, though his attention stayed pinned on the visible pulsing under the skin at his neck, every tiny bump of the mage's heartbeat bringing the violence, fear, and hatred up in Ra'Zhag's chest like bitter acid. He said nothing, but moved down to Ra'Zhag's legs. Ra'Zhag wanted nothing more than to wrench free of his binds and kick him in the chest.

But he froze as something glinted under the yards of threadbare, black cloth. A tool slipped from his sleeve in a flash of metal; a rusted auger with a splintery wooden brace suddenly clasped in his hand.

"You killed Barul," he ground through gnashing teeth, "And Trig. You cost me my arm." He handed the tool off to the first mage. The first robe drove it into Ra'Zhag's leg. "You will not leave here alive. But neither will I let you die." The tip of the tool dug into bone, then burrowed deeper and deeper as the twisting blades spun, steadily burying it into his skeleton. Metal soon began to slice into his flesh as the sharp edges running in a spiral up the instrument met his skin. "You will beg me to release you into Sithis' embrace before I'm done. And I will deny you." Ra'Zhag threw his head back with a scream he could no longer contain. When he tried to tear his leg away from the instrument, his foot caught against the shackles, but he couldn't will himself to stop thrashing, and soon his ankle had been worn raw.

"Cowards!" he roared once he'd found his voice amongst the sea of clashing pains in his head. "Fight for your brothers if you're so-" He grit his teeth, tears swelling in his eyes as he bit back another scream. A bone cracked. He fell back with a sharp cry. Words blanked from his mind and spots began to swarm his vision. Just as he was ready to relinquish himself and let darkness take him, the auger twisted in the opposite direction, unwinding itself from his flesh and bone and finally it was freed from him.

Hands gripped him by the jaw.

"That was the first taste. Not quite enough to sate my appetite, but there will be more to come, I promise you." The mage released him, and then they were gone before Ra'Zhag could bring the world back into focus, only for the world to darken and black.

This would be the first night of many, and as the mage swore, it would not be the last.