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Adaine’s gone, and Riz is hurting, and Kristen can’t do anything about it.
They’re all trapped in tiny, individual rooms. Each one is about four feet by four feet, so not enough room to lie down, yet the ceilings are too high to touch. No doors, no secret seams, no magic that can be sensed. There isn’t any source of light, so Kristen can’t even see anything that could show her the way out, which could be possible since there’s nothing proving that all their rooms are exactly the same. Just because her friends have darkvision doesn’t mean they know everything.
It hadn’t been bad at first. Their rooms are all clustered together, it seems, and the walls are thin enough that they can hear each other. Once they woke up here they had just talked, trying to figure out how to get out and take down whoever kidnapped them. It was a given that they would win. They had to get back to school next week.
Then Adaine disappeared without a word.
It wasn’t long after that before Riz started screaming.
Riz cries out again now, and Kristen covers her ears.
It isn’t—it isn’t because she doesn’t want to help him. She really, really wants to, but Riz told her to save her healing spells, and she isn’t even sure if she can cast through solid steel.
Riz’s scream cuts off with an unpleasant choking sound. Kristen bites back the instinct to ask if he’s okay. Someone else will do it.
“You doing okay, Riz?” Gorgug asks hesitantly.
There’s a moment’s pause. Kristen holds her breath.
“Y-yeah,” Riz gasps, his voice trembling from the force of the electric shocks that he’d shared were pulsing up from the floor of his room. When he first revealed it, Kristen had felt a second of relief that it wasn’t her being electrocuted. Now she wishes it was her, if only so that Riz could sit in peace. “I—”
He cuts off into a half-stifled scream. This one contains every swear word Kristen’s ever heard, plus a few extra for good measure.
“I can’t do anything to help him,” Kristen whispers to herself. “I can’t help him.”
Riz’s wall goes silent.
Nobody speaks.
How long has Riz been writhing in pain without any help? Shocked over and over again, each burst of agony longer than the last?
Suddenly, Fabian curses from Kristen’s left. “I—there’s—”
“Fabian?” Fig asks uncertainly. “Are you okay?”
“I felt something—I think—”
Fabian gasps. Then screams, short and muffled.
Not Fabian, too. Kristen shifts to her knees, hands pressed against the wall between her and Fabian. If only there was some way she could push it down, get in and help him, but when she presses against the cool metal it’s as ungiving as ever.
“Fabian!”
He doesn’t respond. There’s a bit of movement, a shift of clothing from the wall between her and Riz.
“Is . . . Fabian. . . ?” Riz’s voice is thin and quavery. A moment later, he screams again, shrill and agonized, before it abruptly cuts off.
She can’t help either of them. She can’t help them.
But she can’t sit here and let them suffer, like everyone seems to expect of her. She has to be able to do something, right? What’s the point of being here if she can’t help in some way?
“I’m gonna heal Riz,” she says firmly. “I’ll at least try.”
“Kristen, he said—”
“Yeah, well, what he said was stupid.” Kristen raises her hands, mumbling the directions of the somatic component under her breath as she pushes the spell in Riz’s direction.
As she should have guessed, it almost physically bounces back, a small wave of warm healing magic hitting the back of her tongue. It can’t reach that far, or maybe she can’t cast it without seeing the target, or maybe it can’t pass through walls. Whatever it is, that’s one spell wasted and only one left.
“Did it work?” asks Gorgug.
“No,” Kristen grumbles. Stupid, stupid. She knew that wouldn’t work. She knew it wouldn’t. Ugh, she’s just alone here in a four-by-four room, metal on all sides, able to hear her party members but unable to do anything.
“Fabian?” Fig tries again. Fabian doesn’t say anything, but he grunts loudly, so he’s still there and conscious. That feels like it should mean more than it does. Kristen can’t bring herself to care when she knows that he’s hurting.
If she can’t do anything, maybe the others can. She grabs onto that wisp of hope before it can fade away into smoke. “Gorgug, can you go into a rage?”
They’ve already thought about it, but Gorgug had been apprehensive. He is, after all, larger than the rest of them. He can’t quite sit down fully, and his rage probably wouldn’t do much when he can’t even straighten his arms all the way. They had decided that while everything was relatively fine, they shouldn’t risk him injuring himself by such close quarters.
Nothing is fine anymore, though. Two of their party members are hurting and a third is missing, and they need help.
“I mean, I could,” Gorgug replies dubiously. “Should I give it a shot?”
“It’s not like we have any other options.”
Fig groans. “I wish I could summon my dad. He would get us out of here right away.”
“Isn’t that a warlock thing?” Kristen says.
“Hm. Maybe I should pick up some warlock training.”
Gorgug growls. “That—that makes me mad—because you should be focused on bard classes—”
“Yeah, Gorgug!” Fig cheers. “Feel that anger!”
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
Kristen covers her ears as Gorgug beats against the wall. Or, she’s about to cover her ears, when Gorgug suddenly stops.
“Riz?” he says, his voice all rage-rumbly.
“Riz?” echoes Kristen, sitting up straight.
She hears him, now, a couple of indistinctly mumbled words followed by a cough.
“I think I . . . passed out,” Riz says, though he sounds like he’s got something in his mouth. “I’m good, though.”
Then something weird happens.
There’s a sound under Kristen, some sort of weird rumble and rush, like an underground river or pipes filling up for a bathtub, or something like that.
Gorgug makes a sound that is suddenly very not-rage. “Um, guys? Is there water coming into your rooms?”
Kristen checks, just to be sure. “Nope.”
“No?”
“Huh,” says Gorgug. “It’s already past my ankles.”
“Maybe a pipe burst?” Fig says. Kristen, however, has already thought past that.
Riz is getting electrocuted. Something’s happening with Fabian that he can’t say. And now water is rising in Gorgug’s room.
It’s torture.
“Try to swim,” Kristen advises, though she knows that there is little he can do. “Maybe the ceiling is made of something else, and you can break through?”
“Maybe.”
Soon enough, Kristen stands silently as she listens to Gorgug’s updates. The water’s past his knees. It’s up to his chest. He’s treading water. It’s still rising. He can’t touch the ground. It’s still going. His arms are tired.
Eventually, his voice comes from above Kristen’s head.
“There’s a grate,” he gasps. “I can’t—the water’s—”
Then silence.
And Kristen collapses and stares at nothing as her friend starts to drown beside her.
Again and again, the water drains and rises anew, and Gorgug’s coughing fits are near constant. Fabian remains silent but for the occasional muffled noise. Riz sometimes wakes up, only to be electrocuted back into oblivion. And soon enough, Fig starts yelling as the walls of her room begin to close in on her.
Kristen can’t do anything. She can only sit there, criss-cross applesauce on the floor, and listen.
Eventually, what feels like hours later, Kristen finds herself almost relieved when green mist begins to rise from the floor of her cell.