For the June of Doom prompts: 3 "Well, well, well ...", 14 "What were you thinking?", 16 "At least it can't get any worse.", 18 "Headache", 25 "Guilt"
Sabrina takes her time. First she had a pleasantly undisturbed, long late morning nap and now she is soaking in a wonderfully relaxing hot tub, luxuriating in the delicate fragrances she added to the water and savouring the exquisite sparkling wine she is treating herself with. After the exhausting night and all the hiking hither and thither, it is a well-deserved reward for her troubles. The Nilfgaardian is not in danger of dying from his injuries anymore, she is pretty sure of that, and thus not in need of urgent care. Yet, he is clearly not fit enough to do much besides resting. So, all in all, he is rather useless to her at the moment. As the locking spell's effect will last until fairly late in the evening, there is no way he can escape from his unusual prison, no worries there, plus nothing dangerous is inside the bags she left with him, no knives or pointy forks or glassware that he could use to attack her or to hurt himself - unless he chooses to throttle or hang himself with the help of a ripped apart blanket. The man appears to have some serious mental issues with all these nightmares of his, and Sabrina is not a psychologist. However, she did not get the impression that Cahir is desperate enough to try such drastic measures to escape his imprisonment. Well, if he does end himself, then good riddance, one enemy of the free North less, but it would definitely surprise her.
No, Sabrina is almost a hundred percent certain that she will find the prisoner alive and with his health much improved once she returns to the cave. If only she did not have to walk all the way back there. Things would be much easier if she could use a portal, obviously, but it is impossible. The explosion of Tor Lara can still be felt in the structural matrix of magic on the island, and the lingering chaotic effect of its warped portal is too unpredictable and dangerous. Ending up with a missing limb or with her body parts scattered about all over the continent is not a desirable prospect, but it is a possible scenario if she did try to portal. No, it is not worth the risk. With a deep sigh, Sabrina sets out toward the cave in the late afternoon, carrying another bag filled with provisions.
When the sorceress enters the cavern, she indeed finds the prisoner alive. Only there is one thing she had not taken into account. Well, she should have, considering that he is a man, and apparently a pretty moronic one. Or a very unhappy one. Or he might just like the taste a little too much. Well, Sabrina cannot really blame him, she might have done the same in his position. Too bad, now the Nilfgaardian will hardly be able to appreciate her exceptional beauty and the special and very arousing scent she has applied to herself, just for him. Looks like her little interrogation game will have to wait for another day, and she was so much looking forward to it. What a bummer!
Sabrina's lips curl with disdain as she picks up the wineskin. Like she suspected, he has emptied it to the very last drop, and on an empty stomach to boot, as all the food is still there. What an idiot! No wonder he only grunts when she shakes him by the shoulder and shouts at him, but otherwise does not react at all. Drunk as a lord. Fantastic. Well, with this pretentiously long name of his, it is very likely that Cahir is some kind of a lord in Nilfgaard, or what was it again he said he is from? Vicovaro? She might ask him about it. When he is sober enough to answer questions. Might be a while. Good that she has not only brought more food - wine, too, however, Sabrina will make dead sure not to leave the Nilfgaardian alone with it in the future - but she has also remembered to take her favourite novel with her. And no, it is not a romance. Contrary to what many might believe, Sabrina loathes love stories and would not read one if it were the very last book on this continent. She prefers blood and gore, mystery and monsters, adventure and intrigue. Maybe, one day, she will write a novel of her own. After all, she has experienced quite a bit of adventure and intrigue herself in her magically prolonged life. Sex too, of course, lots of it, but romance? Nah, who needs that?
Sighing once again - and not for the last time today -, Sabrina sits down on her bedroll, slips off her shoes, props herself up against the cave wall with her pillows, stretches her legs, opens her book and starts to read. It would, of course, be nicer to do so outside, enjoying the evening sun and later the sunset on the beach. However, she decides against it. Staying inside with her prisoner might be safer. The chances of being discovered are very slim, but after all the trouble she has gone through to keep the enemy commander alive, it would not do for him to throw up in his intoxicated sleep and asphyxiate on his vomit. It would be quite an anticlimactic ending for their unexpected acquaintance. Imagine an adventure story with the main villain dying like this instead of in a fierce and deadly final fight with the heroic protagonist. Nobody would want to read such a disappointing conclusion of events. Well, Cahir would surely not want to experience it either, unless he intended to drink himself to death. How lucky that wine is not exactly the most effective means to commit suicide - except, perhaps, if you are a fruit fly and drown yourself in it. Indulged in a generous amount, it can certainly knock you out for a couple of hours, though, Sabrina suspects, and especially so when you have not yet fully recovered from almost bleeding to death just the day before.
... ... ...
The sun has long ago set over the horizon in the west when the Nilfgardian begins to groan and stir. Sabrina puts her book to the side and walks over to where the prisoner is struggling to sit up, moaning and looking almost green in the face in the light of the magical sphere that is floating along next to the sorceress.
"Well, well, well, who have we here waking up from the dead? A Drunkgaardian!" Sabrina mocks. "Hope you feel as shitty as you look! What were you thinking? Guzzling down the entire content of my wine skin! On an empty stomach! I should have known you Nilfgaardians are not only ruthless war criminals, but also a sorry bunch of alcoholics!"
"Please, would you stop screeching at me?" Cahir pleads miserably and with another groan, burying his aching head in his hands. It feels like at least the double normal size and pounds mercilessly, a huge smithy with gigantic rock trolls wielding monstrous hammers against the reverberating iron anvils.
"I don't screech! My voice is beautifully melodious! But Nilfgaardians wouldn't know beauty if it jumped right into their face, would they—"
Before Sabrina can finish her sentence, Cahir has turned to the side, clutching his stomach, and begins to dry-retch spasmodically. Shit, he cannot remember having ever felt that badly hung-over. No, not true. After he had killed Gallatin, he drank himself into a stupor, too, to get the horrible images out of his head, and the smell of iron, and the thought of his friend lying in an unmarked grave six feet under in the Cintrean forest, cold and stiff and soon to be devoured by worms and maggots until only bleak bones would remain. And it was all his fault, his crime. He just so managed not to throw up into the Emperor's face when Emhyr came to welcome him home the following morning. He must have been a pathetic sight then. Physically, he feels even worse at the moment than on that fateful morning, but at least he has not murdered a close friend, or hurt the girl - the Princess who will change the world. The blood of the Scoia'tael is on his hands, yes, and he is not proud of it. None of this mess was their fault. Still, it had to be this way. But not Gallatin, he should never have done it. He should have refused to obey no matter the consequences, should have warned his friend and arranged for him to escape. They should have run away, together. Now it is too late. He can still see the hot blood spouting from the grisly wound in his friend's neck, his wide, dark eyes filled with shock and betrayal. Shuddering at the vivid mental images, Cahir heaves again, retching bile and gastric fluid onto the cave floor. Gods, he feels more like dying now than yesterday when he actually would have bled to death if not for Sabrina saving his life.
"Here, have some water," the blonde sorceress says, this time in a much softer tone of voice that, unlike before, does not make his head explode into a thousand shards of agony. The water is cool and fresh and helps to wash away the acidic taste of vomit in his mouth.
"'m sorry," Cahir mumbles, not looking her into the eye. Sabrina is right, of course, getting plastered like this was an embarrassingly stupid thing to do and, with a really bad hangover inevitable, he knew he would come to regret it. But it was the only way to keep the nightmares at bay, the dreams of Tissaia de Vries piercing his mind until he felt like going mad from the excruciating agony, the visions of Princess Cirilla and the Slaughter of Cintra, the images of Gallatin dying in his arms in a huge puddle of blood. The dreams have been becoming worse and worse, and when he woke up all alone in the cave after another such horror trip, he needed the wine to calm his frayed nerves. If it was up to him, he would choose never to go to sleep again. Unfortunately, it is not possible.
"Headache?" Sabrina asks, her voice strangely sympathetic. Cahir nods weakly. The mother of all headaches. It must be obvious from the pathetic way he squints up at her, even the soft light from the magic sphere hurting his retina. And the sounds are still worse. And yes, he has only himself to blame for his sorry state.
"I believe I could help you with the headache. But I will have to touch your temples," Sabrina proposes, smiling at Cahir encouragingly. He blinks at her, baffled. She seemed to be pretty angry with him just a few moments ago, and now she is offering to help him? Why would she wish to do that? Perhaps it is a ruse to extract his thoughts with her chaos? However, Sabrina could try to do that anyhow if she wanted to, there is no way he would be able to prevent it from happening without a weapon and against her magic. So, why ask his permission if that is what she intends to do? Should he trust her? Or better not? Why are those sorceresses always so damnably difficult to make heads and tails of?
"I promise I won't hurt you," Sabrina says with another sweet smile. To her own surprise, she truly means it. The Nilfgaardian looks too adorably confused and pitiful, more like a lost puppy than an enemy commander. She likes how his mussed up, longish brown curls frame his face, too, and how he flushed from embarrassment when he apologised. No, she does not want to hurt him, but weirdly enough, she would very much like to touch him, and not only his temples.
Cahir gives her another uncertain look, but then he nods, very slowly. Sabrina kneels down behind him.
"Put your head in my lap and try to relax," she says. "It will only take a few minutes and you'll feel a lot better. And if not," she adds brightly, "at least it can't get any worse, right?"
Closing his eyes, Cahir does as requested. Yet, as much as he tries, the relax part stubbornly refuses to work. With his head pounding like a thousand war drums it is hard to imagine that things could get worse, and Sabrina sounded like she genuinely meant what she said. However, from experience Cahir knows that she is wrong, that things can get much worse, that there is a hundredfold worse pain at a sorceress's fingertips. A pain that is more terrible than dying. He swallows hard against the rising panic. She has promised not to hurt him, that she is different from Tissaia de Vries. He is not chained to the stone chair with his head pressed onto its cold and indifferent edge as he is crying his lungs out. Sabrina's lap feels soft and warm, and now he can sense this smell again, not as strongly as before, but it is there, her smell. Vanilla and lemon with this exotic undertone. He takes a deep breath, inhaling her scent. It helps, at least for the moment.
"Ready?" the sorceress asks.
"Yes," he says hoarsely, trying hard to focus on those differences to keep the panic at bay. Warm and soft. Not the chair. Not Tissaia. Vanilla and lemon.
He gasps and goes as rigid as a board when Sabrina lays her fingers on both his temples and begins to mutter a spell, her magic seeping into his mind. However, unlike Tissaia's, her tendrils of chaos are not invading and boring and shredding his brain to pieces and tearing and ripping his every memory apart. They are as warm and soft as her lap. Her muttering has turned into a silvery sing-song, and now the sorceress rubs gentle circles around his throbbing temples. It feels soothing, comforting, not threatening or painful. Not like Tissaia. Not like the chair. Cahir takes another deep, still a little shaky breath and lets go of his fears, relaxing into the warmth of her touch. She will not hurt him. He believes her. Vanilla and lemon. Not Tissaia. With Sabrina it will not get worse, only better. It is getting better already. The throbbing, pounding pain in his head is slowly fading with her soothing whispers and gentle massage. He could get used to this. It feels safe. She feels safe. Maybe she can keep his nightmares away too. Who knows?
Sabrina continues half singing, half whispering her headache-relieving spell and the accompanying massage for a few more minutes until she is sure Cahir has fallen deeply asleep in her lap. How fortunate that this is the one healing spell she is really good at. It has come in handy plenty of times in the past after too much partying together with her fellow sorceresses, and with the one or other lover. None of them has ever had a pronounced touch aversion like the Nilfgaardian commander, though, or any touch aversion at all, on the contrary. Tissaia's questioning methods must have left quite an impression on the man. It is very gratifying to see that her magic has worked on him nevertheless. She smiles down at Cahir with satisfaction. The fever is gone, too, and tomorrow Cahir will indeed feel much better, Sabrina is sure of it. A job well done. He looks so peaceful in his sleep. And cute. A sudden and very surprising wave of affection washes over Sabrina and she tenderly brushes some stray locks from his brow. Mmh, how strange, she is not developing feelings for her prisoner, is she? No, can't be. Sabrina shakes her head at herself. He is the enemy. He is only here because she intends to get to his secrets, the military ones. Yes, she is planning to have fun with him while doing so, but it is supposed to stay merely physical. She has no use for stupid emotions, and especially not any toward an enemy commander, no matter how cute he looks. Remember Sodden, Sabrina, she tells herself, remember the thirteen mages who were killed on that hill, remember Vanielle of Brugge, Lytta Neyd, Gorazd, Yoel Grethen, ...
With a sigh, Sabrina carefully extracts herself from under her sleeping prisoner and stands up, suddenly feeling very tired herself. It has become quite chilly in the cave and this, of course, is the only reason why she moves her bedroll closer to the Nilfgaardian's, quite a bit closer. Well, with this new sleeping arrangement, she will also be able to calm him down without having to get up in case he has another nightmare. Plus, if he starts to snore too loudly - like far too many men tend to do - she can just reach over and smother him with a pillow while still staying in her bed.
Why on the continent has she not thought of that before?
