There was a clattering through the wood, and then many, tiny glints in the flickering of the fire as crossbows were hauled up onto shoulders and leveled at the two of them.
“Fuck.”
It wasn’t lost on Damien how ridiculous his predicament was the next morning as he sat in the thing the elves considered a cell. He could have survived the arrows that would have managed to pierce him, dodging the majority, and then cut a clean path through the elves to leave. He wouldn’t have even needed to make a terribly fast getaway. Amma, on the other hand, would not have fared terribly well with even one arrow bolt in her. He could heal a strike on her if it weren’t immediately fatal, but it would have to be quick, and to avoid the elves reloading and perhaps shooting her again, he would have to actually leave much faster than if he were on his own.
No, the risk of her death had been far too high for him to enact any kind of plan, a hypocrisy which also wasn’t lost on him—that would be a simple way to get the talisman back, and he wouldn’t even have to feel guilty about it, granted it would be a slow and painful way for her to go: suffering on the end of a crossbow bolt aimed carelessly for her thigh, bleeding out on the back of his knoggelvi. And then what would he do with her body?
The thought of Amma’s lifeless corpse had really cinched the decision. Damien struck it from his mind, not even a possibility, and gave himself—and the rest of them—up to the ridiculous elves.
So, there he sat. Knees splayed supporting his elbows, head bent, fingers pressing hard into his temples. Beside him sat Amma on the single, makeshift cot. She had her hands in her lap, back straight, and was chewing on her full bottom lip when he glanced over at her. There were nerves there, surely, but more a hefty confusion as she looked out at the forest all around beyond the bars of the cage they were locked up in.
Damien sat straight, slapping hands down onto his knees. “All right, I’ve had enough of this.”
Kaz spun toward him from where he sat at the cell’s bars, baring all his teeth in a grin. “Just give the word, Master, and I shall light them all ablaze.”
Both guards who stood by the exterior of the cage turned over a shoulder, casting wary eyes on the imp and then up to Damien. These two were indeed larger, taller than even Damien, and their shoulders were wide, but they had about three visible muscles between the two. Even the spears they carried weren’t formidable, adorned with twisting vines and flowering blooms, and their tipped ends were pointed but crystalline, looking so delicate that they might snap if there was an attempt at running through even his bare stomach.
Damien rubbed a hand over his face in frustration. He wasn’t intending on getting them out of there through force, not until it was safest for Amma—even if they were weak, he didn’t know how precise they might be—but there was something else. Damien didn’t object much to theoretically cutting through an army for his own freedom, and even less so for Amma’s, but when that army was justsofrail, it felt…darkness, he supposed it feltwrong, but by whose moral standards he absolutely refused to ponder.
He had agreed with Amma the night before, stupidly he supposed now, that the conversation the elven leaders insisted on having about them in a separate hut high up in a tree would result in their simple release. She had shrugged, asked him to be patient, and the two eventually both fell asleep, propped up against one another’s shoulders. But as dawn brightened the shaded forest, and he felt arcanely renewed, his patience proved to have worn to nothing overnight.
“I demand to speak to your lord,” Damien said, stalking up to the bars made of thin, reedy wood and tied at cross sections with a hempen rope. He grabbed onto one, and when the whole cage wavered, he scoffed.
“We do not have those, but when the conclave is ready, you shall,” said one of the guards, turning to him fully.
Damien’s hand shot out and took the guard by the neck of his robe, dragging him right up against the thin bars. “Make them be readynow.”
The second guard gasped, scrambling and nearly dropping her spear, and then managed to somewhat level it at Damien from the other side of the cage. “L-let him go!”
“Oh, Damien, don’t hurt him,” Amma said though only with a wary sigh and not her usual panicked concern.
Damien snarled at the elf he had captured. He had fully dropped his spear, face smashed against the reeds of the cage, palms up in surrender. The other guard’s brandished weapon was just beside him. Using his free hand, Damien reached out and plucked the crystal spearhead right off. With a sigh, he dropped the guard who crumpled backward, and tossed the head of the spear between the bars, over the guards’ shoulders, and into a thicket of ferns. “This is pathetic,” he groaned, turning back to Amma.
She shrugged a bit, smiling with apology. “I know, but it’s weird too, right? Why are they pretending to haunt this place?”
“Because they’re utterly abysmal at everything else,” Damien spat, glancing over his shoulder to see the guard he had grabbed straightening his robes. The other was down on all fours in the bushes, looking for her spearhead. “I mean, really,thisis how you keep prisoners? In a flimsy box of wood and string?” He gave the so-called cage another shake.
The guard who had been manhandled clutched his spear, eyes going wider, but said nothing.
“And you’ve put us in here together so we can plot our way out in tandem?” Damien gestured back to Amma sitting on the single, narrow cot, which had been a complete waste of an only-one-bed situation and managed to somehow heighten the frustration he was feeling.
“Well,”—the elf glanced about— “we’ve only got the one cage.”
Damien pinched the bridge of his nose and took a long, slow breath. “You didn’t even take away our weapons,” he grumbled then snapped his head up and paced. “You have naught but a few branches and sticks between you and a blood mage. You can’t really expect this to hold me. You must be aware that I could burn through this sorry excuse for a cell and snap both of your necks before you even knew what was happening.”
“Um, Damien?” Amma cleared her throat. “Are you really complaining they didn’t put us in a sturdier cell?”
“I know you’ve likely become accustomed to this, Amma, but I find it ridiculous. Is it too much to ask to be treated like a threat? I mean, look at me.” He held his hands out, turning to her and standing to his full height.
Amma’s throat bobbed as her eyes trailed down him. “I am,” she said in a slip of a voice, fingers grasping the edge of the cot. She bit her lip again.
Before his knees went inexplicably weak at the look she was suddenly giving him, he turned his vexation back on the guards. “We’re not even tied up. Where are the manacles? Preferably enchanted, to suppress magic, and with a hex to cause just the slightest bit of pain to put the pressure on.”
The guard cocked his head, eyes narrowing, and then he held up a length of rope.
“That will do,” Damien grumbled and stuck a hand out through the cage. The elf passed it to him. “Amma, come here, please.” Still eyeing the guard with annoyance, he turned to Amma as she eased herself up to the bars.
“What are we doing?” she asked in a little voice, blue eyes flicking out to the elves and back to him.
