Sol turned away from their glee in disgust, refocusing his attention to the older man beside him.
Neven looked drained already, and they hadn’t even arrived at their destination.
Sol wanted to kick himself. The water had eased the burning in his throat, but he would have survived the night without it. He should have passed the waterskin to his elder immediately, before their Quotidian captors had thought up another way to demonstrate their power.
Neven dropped to the ground.
Sol sat down as well, easing the tension in his legs. He had no words of comfort for the older man and even if he did, he would not have been able to utter them. The gem tied at his throat was designed to silence him, cutting off his ability to speak and thereby rendering his magic inaccessible.
He’d never met Neven before they were both taken from the island of Istroya. Their shared plight had brought them together, but the shame of their situation also kept them apart. Not that Sol had tried particularly hard to connect with his fellow Majis.
Friends were a risk Sol couldn’t afford.
One of the other soldiers left the fireside, carrying a long length of thin chain. The man’s pale skin and trimmed hair looked out of place with his ragged woodcutter’s disguise. He dropped one end of the chain to the ground and began to walk in a loop around Sol and Neven while intoning a high chant. The melody was deceptively pleasant, each note rising and falling only a few steps apart from each other, keeping the song in a high register.
Sol braced himself. He had become well acquainted with this ritual. At any moment, the mage would unpredictably drop his cadence to a dissonant set of notes.
The mage kept his melody pleasant as he finished circling the two prisoners. He reconnected the ends of the chain to create an unbroken loop around them.
Sol braced himself.
The mage’s voice dropped from his higher pitched head notes to a dissonant note deep in his chest.
As the melody became unpredictable and sporadic, Sol felt his mind slip into panic. A burning emptiness seeped into his lungs and he struggled to draw in a breath.
The mage continued to sing, his voice slipping effortlessly between melody and dissonance, as though he was replying to his own song, intent on tearing it apart.
Sol tried to breathe. He tried to ignore the sounds which washed over his body, seeping into his mind. No matter how hard he fought, the burning in his lungs only increased.
The mage began to move his hands, pinching the air in front of Sol and pulling it back to himself.
Sol felt the air drain from his lungs, as though the mage had literally pulled it out of him. His body froze, immobile under an unseen weight. His mind panicked further as his body refused to respond to his directives. His chest began to tremble from the lack of air, and he reminded himself that he would not actually die. This was a magical assault, not a physical one.
The mage continued, his quiet voice softly humming.
The burning inside Sol’s chest spread out toward his frozen arms and legs. He tried to imagine himself breathing, tried to ignore the pain. This would be over soon. As the burning continued, he felt energy leaving his body. That small reserve of self-control and hope disappeared as the mage drew it out of him.
Sol tightened his throat. His body screamed at him to sob in despair and shout his pain. Sol refused to give them satisfaction of hearing him crumble to their torment.
More importantly, he could not let them know the gem around his neck was a fake.
Though it felt like hours, Sol knew that only a few moments had passed. Using the only bit of remaining strength he had left, Sol lowered his eyes to the chain at his feet. The gems embedded in the metal strand had begun to glow. That was a good sign. It would be over soon.
After a few more moments, the mage dropped his hands and abruptly stopped the song.
Released from the spell, Sol felt his whole body sag toward the ground. He tried to fight the instinct, but his muscles were too sore to hold himself up and he fell to his knees, gasping in air as his bright flashes of light seemed to pop in the corner of his vision.
While his lungs were once again filled with air, Sol still felt empty inside.
Drained.
Squeezed.
The mage examined the chain. “Fully charged in record time,” he muttered to himself. “They will be pleased with this one.”
“They’ll never know me,” Sol spoke the words soundlessly, still treasuring every breath.
The mage had already returned to the fire with the other soldiers.
