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[FIC] fire emblem: three houses - saints preserve us; chapters 1&2
title: saints preserve us - chapters 1 & 2
series: fire emblem: three houses
characters: seteth
rating: T
warnings: major spoilers for the game. body horror and violence.
Those Who Slither in the Dark have been building a new weapon to unleash upon the land. And to acquire the final materials, they have captured the right hand to the Archbishop herself: Seteth.
next: chapter 3
--
Chapter One:
For several horrid and lurching moments, Seteth didn’t know where he was. He did know that he was uncomfortably pinned to the ground- why were his legs- where was his trusty wyvern-
Seteth gulped in air and returned to reality. He had been half thrown from the saddle. While his legs were still entangled from when Eudora had been shot down by the sudden appearance of enemies from the right flank, it was by the Goddess’ mercy the wyvern had not landed on him. She still breathed, but even as Seteth slowly (and painfully) sat up to begin undoing his straps he saw how labored her breathing was and that she was not making the effort to stand.
“Hang in there, my friend,” Seteth murmured. Anything remotely near regular speaking levels was proving difficult to maintain. With one leg freed, he placed a hand upon her scaly shoulder. “Help will arrive soon.”
The distant sounds of battle trickled into his consciousness with every moment he took stock of both his and Eudora’s injuries. Flung out of reach, past the gouges of torn up earth from their crash landing, he could see the glint of his lance’s blade. His bindings came loose on the other leg and Seteth hissed in relief despite the fresh wave of pain it brought him. Really, his joints were not made for this anymore.The showering sparks of pain that erupted when Seteth shuffled to his feet confirmed that his ribs were indeed cracked.
He turned with a hand outreached to Eudora to examine her injuries. Still she lay curled away from him and unmoving. If she were beyond saving...
Then Seteth was breathless and stumbling. Something had hit him hard and it drove the air from his lungs and threw him forward to cling to Eudora’s saddle in an attempt to keep from pitching over. Dumbfounded, Seteth pushed himself away from the leather to see the fletching of an arrow from the corner of his eye. He reached for it, stupidly, but fresh pain erupted in his shoulder at the effort. He had been shot at.
Seteth had the presence of mind to curse himself for not going for his lance first. Of course there were enemies still about. But he did have an axe kept neatly strapped behind the saddle.
Seteth hauled himself back up, but his fingers felt numb and slippery and he couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t calculate how far away help was, where the enemy was, and goodness he was very dizzy and heavy all of a sudden.
Bloodloss? Some part of Seteth’s mind wondered even while he tugged heavily on buckles. He couldn’t muster the strength, and instead had to rely on his own weight to pull the damned thing open. No. His injuries were not that serious.
The arrowhead throbbed in his shoulder and his axe fell from its hold to lay useless on the ground. Seteth hissed in frustration and held onto Eudora in desperate need to keep on his feet even while the world rapidly tipped into noisy grey.
“Beware the wyvern! It’s still alive.” Seteth turned, his vision clouding, and darkly considered his incoming enemies.
Too many to fight, he would- Flayn. He needed to make sure they would not get to Flayn. He would stand his ground.
But in between heartbeats the effort of holding onto the straps became too great; Seteth collapsed.
-
Hours passed, not that Seteth knew, between bouts of awareness. He felt the wind in his face, and then the chill of being underground, and then complete darkness. Where was he?
Seteth loathed being the one left unaware on the best of days; and when he didn’t understand the complete darkness around him - of a distant red arrow that shone unnaturally, no there were more - the bitterness surged within and pushed away at the dense fog in his head. A battle, the wind in his face, unknown soldiers-
He was on his back, Seteth finally realized, and a quick jerk of his wrists and ankles confirmed he was strapped down. Someone was going to pay dearly for this.
“Again.” Seteth jerked in surprise. He could not twist his head far - nor did he want to, he felt as if twenty blacksmiths were all taking turns with their hammers against his skull - to see whoever spoke directly behind him.
“Who are you,” Seteth demanded. His throat was parched, but that only made the command in his voice all the more raw. “Show yourself and release me immediately.”
No one responded except for the embarrassed shuffling of feet.
From his periphery, Seteth watched as a syringe topped with a clear liquid came into view. He did not give them the satisfaction of noise then it was jabbed into his arm.
“What is your purpose with me.” Clearly they did not want to kill him, was he to be made a bargaining chip to Lady Rhea? Laughable.
Once more there was no answer and Seteth did not try again. He clung to his clarity to examine his surroundings once again. For a sign, any clue beyond endless lines and darkness. Everything was unnaturally smooth. The ceiling that disappeared into darkness so that he could not see how high it was. Was he still underground? Did he imagine it? What of the battle. What of his allies?
...What of Flayn?
Seteth slept.
-
“Is it not a marvelous piece of machinery.” A slimy chuckle. “It could be art, had it not a more grand purpose.”
Silence settled like dust - dust? There was no dust here whatsoever. Everything gleamed, brightly polished, as though an army of maids had laid waste to every inch - and Seteth started awake once more as the voice went on. He struggled to listen, but wished he hadn’t.
“Long ago my ancestors learned to make powerful tools. Powerful weapons. We,” pride, anguish, and disgust slid across the word like oil over stones, “have continued that research in an attempt to refine it. I daresay our forefathers had perfected it as it was.”
A new red burned in the air. But instead of the strange, hard, clean lines inlaid into the walls, this red burned and pulsed. It spread like molten rock between the cracks of an ancient shield.
“A Hero’s Relic,” Seteth heard, even as he watched death replay itself a hundred times over in that blood colored shimmer. “Powerful beyond all reason. ...But times have changed. Weapons have changed. While we could not build upon the forging itself, we realized we could refine our ideas of what a weapon was. How large, how far it could reach, how much destruction it could do within its own power.”
Dread seeped into Seteth so deeply he felt he would be crushed from the sheer weight. He knew the voice spoke of the massive javelins of light. The false wrath of the goddess.
Robes shifted and then the voice was by his ear - in his ear. Two long nailed fingers drew back his hair to expose his jaw and ear.
“But we will require your bones for that, my dear friend.”
-
Chapter Two:
“You have forgotten how to fly,” Macuil said.
It was not an accusation, but Seteth heard the disappointment all the same.
“It… has been a while.” He had not flown in centuries. For Flayn. So that she may be hidden just a little longer. Safe from those who would harm her.
Something that sounded like a rock slide came from Macuil - a rare laugh. “You have always been cautious. Too cautious now that Seiros whispers to you again.”
“Rhea," Seteth had stressed, “has been nothing but accommodating. She has done so much-”
Macuil ignored Seteth entirely and instead had begun gathering himself up to stand and leave - again. He feels like a petulant child, but Seteth called up at him regardless.
“Why have you forgotten how to walk among men?”
Macuil’s wings cast shadows the size of ships.
“Macuil!”
“Goodbye, brother. May we meet again.”
The earth shook when Macuil heaved himself into the air, and Seteth was left behind to watch him vanish into the clouds. He could not chase him anymore even if he wanted to.
-
The low and constant buzzing would drive Seteth mad long before any of the speeches his jailer, and he made them quite frequently enough, would. He sensed movement and opened his eyes to see another masked mage winding a bandage around his arm that left Seteth feeling cold. They had bled him again.
He could do little but watch, whatever the guards on either side of him thought, as the mage finished and collected a glass pot (a beaker, Hanneman would insist) brimming with blood.
“We thank you for your contributions,” the voice lilted with laughter. Then they left, and the panel to his prison slid so seamlessly back into place it appeared there was no exit at all. At least he knew where it was now.
The guards unshackled him, his wrists heavy and boneless, and left him as well. In between the blood loss and drug, it was hours before Seteth sat up without his head threatening to fall off his shoulders. Another hour before his feet touched the floor.
His prison was smaller than his office. He had been afforded the decency of a bed that doubled as an examination table, toiletry in the corner, and a chair and table that had been bolted to the floor. Seteth had only the strength to lower himself in the chair before his knees gave out.
-
“I won’t wake up and be a dragon now will I?” Aegir had rubbed at her shoulder, where the patch was, and teased him with one of her signature smiles.
“I daresay not,” Cichol had said back, face drawn. There was a war to be won. “You will experience changes though.”
Her smile had turned tense. “And I accept them.” A breath to steel herself. “Cichol… what does it feel like when you change? Out of pure curiosity, I ask, and not that I am dreading the idea of one day my bones tear themselves apart to-”
Peace, Aegir. It will not happen.” He had waited until she was mollified. “As for changing… well it is a bit like standing up.”
“Standing up?”
“You are the same person, are you not? But you have folded yourself into a different… shape, so to speak. Straighten your legs, balance upon your feet, straighten your spine. It is merely about rearranging your body.”
“I… see,” Aegir had tapped her chin, unconvinced. “But, Cichol, when I am seated, I tend to keep the same amount of limbs and mass and teeth-”
“It is only a metaphor, Aegir.”
-
Seteth lurched. He had been nodding off again. A plate and cup, both wooden, had been laid before him on the minuscule table; their contents were questionable in color, texture, and viscosity all in one. Across from him though, grey hands clasped and figure swathed in dark robes, stood his jailer.
“What do I call you?” Seteth asked before he could think on it more. “For all your visits to me, I have not been given it.”
And while he could not see it, but Seteth imagined the slow spread of a smile behind the pointed mask. A voice like pond scum.
“You may refer to me as… Lieutenant.”
“Very well, Lieutenant,” Seteth mustered every bit of dignity he could despite the circumstances. “What have you to ask of me today.” From the last visits that Seteth could remember, the Lieutenant had pried Seteth about the state of Garreg Mach, the surrounding town, of history and fables and everything in between.
The Lieutenant laughed and it was not a pleasant sound. A horrid gurgling of mud and waste that clashed with the never ending drone that emitted from the lights. Seteth felt ill.
He had been locked in the damned room for three days at the very least. But even for his knack for keeping time he could not account for however long his drug induced stupors had been. The guards stood outside so he could not track the changing of the guards nor glean anything from them.
Seteth envied Macuil’s talents countless times before, for his ability to read between the lines and see the unseen, and he wished for them yet again. No, caution and faith seemed to be his sole tools.
The laughter finally came to a stop, leaving a vacuum in the little prison. The Lieutenant gestured to the plate of drugged gruel.
“No questions today, unless you feel the urge to divulge Garreg Mach’s secret entrances.”
As if they weren’t aware of them or had spies searching for others. Seteth’s eyes narrowed in answer.
“No... ? Then you will be pleased to know you shall be allowed some light exercise today. We do need to keep you in good health after all.”
So that he could continue to fuel them with more blood. Taking his bones, as much as the Lieutenant had threatened to take from him, would be the end of that. Is that what they had intended for Flayn those years ago? To leech the blood from her until they had no more use for her? Had they wanted her bones as well?
The fury must have shown on his face for the Lieutenant laughed again.
-
His meal ignored, the Lieutenant summoned guards and Seteth had finally been let out. Hands restrained behind his back, yes, but out. Mercifully the buzzing died in volume as soon as the door slid closed behind them all, and Seteth was in a dark corridor. The inlaid lights, its noise still there bearable, were the only indication of where walls and floor were. It was disorienting.
And humiliating. Seteth had long been divulged of his cassock and shoes and was marched down the halls into a much larger, but still very much dark and underground, room in only his tunic and braies. But where the drone had ended, now Seteth could hear the rumble and clank of machinery - like hundreds of mills going at once - beneath his feet.
More lights in the shape of arrows burned in the distance, five from where Seteth stood, more perhaps deeper within. Then he was pushed forward and he and his guards both stood in the center of the room. The Lieutenant was joined by five other masked soldiers. Mages by the cut of their cloth.
“You have been quite the understanding guest,” the Lieutenant praised.
Seteth felt a cold sweat begin to break out. Was this to be his execution? Had they gathered what they wanted and came to collect his bones for their monstrous weapons? Escape had always been at the forefront of Seteth’s mind, but what few plans he had boiled down to waiting for allies or attempting to break free by sheer will alone. He was stronger than the average man, yes, but surrounded like this he would be dead within minutes.
Something jabbed into his upper arm and Seteth hissed in surprise. Another dosage. And another to his other arm.
“What are you doing.” Seteth’s heart, already pounding from the prospect of death - of never seeing Flayn again, she will be alone and in danger - gave a lurch and then Seteth was kneeling on the smooth floor gasping for air. His head swam, his heart raced, and he felt like he was being torn in two.
A disconnected part of himself watched the guards step away and the mages behind the Lieutenant kneeled to press their hands to the floor - a pattern. There was a pattern inlaid into the floor, a spell-
“A combination of sedative and stimulant,” the Lieutenant said, even though Seteth heard nothing over the roar in his ears. “We know you would never change willingly for us, so we have decided upon the best course of action - as well as testing out a spell we have been developing.”
Gasping, Seteth pressed his forehead to the floor, seeking balance and the coolness for his spiking fever, and below him the spell lit up. Blue, as customary for the primary blocks of any spell. But only briefly before it was flashing red, an angry red, and the distorted void ringed by soul aching pinks and violets surrounded Seteth.
“It is a shame we cannot be more scientific about this process,” the Lieutenant lamented, the glass of their mask lit up by the spell. “But we do only have one test subject and a limited amount of time.”
The spell’s components had all linked and activated. Then Seteth was screaming.
“Come, beast, show us your true form.”
series: fire emblem: three houses
characters: seteth
rating: T
warnings: major spoilers for the game. body horror and violence.
Those Who Slither in the Dark have been building a new weapon to unleash upon the land. And to acquire the final materials, they have captured the right hand to the Archbishop herself: Seteth.
next: chapter 3
--
Chapter One:
For several horrid and lurching moments, Seteth didn’t know where he was. He did know that he was uncomfortably pinned to the ground- why were his legs- where was his trusty wyvern-
Seteth gulped in air and returned to reality. He had been half thrown from the saddle. While his legs were still entangled from when Eudora had been shot down by the sudden appearance of enemies from the right flank, it was by the Goddess’ mercy the wyvern had not landed on him. She still breathed, but even as Seteth slowly (and painfully) sat up to begin undoing his straps he saw how labored her breathing was and that she was not making the effort to stand.
“Hang in there, my friend,” Seteth murmured. Anything remotely near regular speaking levels was proving difficult to maintain. With one leg freed, he placed a hand upon her scaly shoulder. “Help will arrive soon.”
The distant sounds of battle trickled into his consciousness with every moment he took stock of both his and Eudora’s injuries. Flung out of reach, past the gouges of torn up earth from their crash landing, he could see the glint of his lance’s blade. His bindings came loose on the other leg and Seteth hissed in relief despite the fresh wave of pain it brought him. Really, his joints were not made for this anymore.The showering sparks of pain that erupted when Seteth shuffled to his feet confirmed that his ribs were indeed cracked.
He turned with a hand outreached to Eudora to examine her injuries. Still she lay curled away from him and unmoving. If she were beyond saving...
Then Seteth was breathless and stumbling. Something had hit him hard and it drove the air from his lungs and threw him forward to cling to Eudora’s saddle in an attempt to keep from pitching over. Dumbfounded, Seteth pushed himself away from the leather to see the fletching of an arrow from the corner of his eye. He reached for it, stupidly, but fresh pain erupted in his shoulder at the effort. He had been shot at.
Seteth had the presence of mind to curse himself for not going for his lance first. Of course there were enemies still about. But he did have an axe kept neatly strapped behind the saddle.
Seteth hauled himself back up, but his fingers felt numb and slippery and he couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t calculate how far away help was, where the enemy was, and goodness he was very dizzy and heavy all of a sudden.
Bloodloss? Some part of Seteth’s mind wondered even while he tugged heavily on buckles. He couldn’t muster the strength, and instead had to rely on his own weight to pull the damned thing open. No. His injuries were not that serious.
The arrowhead throbbed in his shoulder and his axe fell from its hold to lay useless on the ground. Seteth hissed in frustration and held onto Eudora in desperate need to keep on his feet even while the world rapidly tipped into noisy grey.
“Beware the wyvern! It’s still alive.” Seteth turned, his vision clouding, and darkly considered his incoming enemies.
Too many to fight, he would- Flayn. He needed to make sure they would not get to Flayn. He would stand his ground.
But in between heartbeats the effort of holding onto the straps became too great; Seteth collapsed.
-
Hours passed, not that Seteth knew, between bouts of awareness. He felt the wind in his face, and then the chill of being underground, and then complete darkness. Where was he?
Seteth loathed being the one left unaware on the best of days; and when he didn’t understand the complete darkness around him - of a distant red arrow that shone unnaturally, no there were more - the bitterness surged within and pushed away at the dense fog in his head. A battle, the wind in his face, unknown soldiers-
He was on his back, Seteth finally realized, and a quick jerk of his wrists and ankles confirmed he was strapped down. Someone was going to pay dearly for this.
“Again.” Seteth jerked in surprise. He could not twist his head far - nor did he want to, he felt as if twenty blacksmiths were all taking turns with their hammers against his skull - to see whoever spoke directly behind him.
“Who are you,” Seteth demanded. His throat was parched, but that only made the command in his voice all the more raw. “Show yourself and release me immediately.”
No one responded except for the embarrassed shuffling of feet.
From his periphery, Seteth watched as a syringe topped with a clear liquid came into view. He did not give them the satisfaction of noise then it was jabbed into his arm.
“What is your purpose with me.” Clearly they did not want to kill him, was he to be made a bargaining chip to Lady Rhea? Laughable.
Once more there was no answer and Seteth did not try again. He clung to his clarity to examine his surroundings once again. For a sign, any clue beyond endless lines and darkness. Everything was unnaturally smooth. The ceiling that disappeared into darkness so that he could not see how high it was. Was he still underground? Did he imagine it? What of the battle. What of his allies?
...What of Flayn?
Seteth slept.
-
“Is it not a marvelous piece of machinery.” A slimy chuckle. “It could be art, had it not a more grand purpose.”
Silence settled like dust - dust? There was no dust here whatsoever. Everything gleamed, brightly polished, as though an army of maids had laid waste to every inch - and Seteth started awake once more as the voice went on. He struggled to listen, but wished he hadn’t.
“Long ago my ancestors learned to make powerful tools. Powerful weapons. We,” pride, anguish, and disgust slid across the word like oil over stones, “have continued that research in an attempt to refine it. I daresay our forefathers had perfected it as it was.”
A new red burned in the air. But instead of the strange, hard, clean lines inlaid into the walls, this red burned and pulsed. It spread like molten rock between the cracks of an ancient shield.
“A Hero’s Relic,” Seteth heard, even as he watched death replay itself a hundred times over in that blood colored shimmer. “Powerful beyond all reason. ...But times have changed. Weapons have changed. While we could not build upon the forging itself, we realized we could refine our ideas of what a weapon was. How large, how far it could reach, how much destruction it could do within its own power.”
Dread seeped into Seteth so deeply he felt he would be crushed from the sheer weight. He knew the voice spoke of the massive javelins of light. The false wrath of the goddess.
Robes shifted and then the voice was by his ear - in his ear. Two long nailed fingers drew back his hair to expose his jaw and ear.
“But we will require your bones for that, my dear friend.”
-
Chapter Two:
“You have forgotten how to fly,” Macuil said.
It was not an accusation, but Seteth heard the disappointment all the same.
“It… has been a while.” He had not flown in centuries. For Flayn. So that she may be hidden just a little longer. Safe from those who would harm her.
Something that sounded like a rock slide came from Macuil - a rare laugh. “You have always been cautious. Too cautious now that Seiros whispers to you again.”
“Rhea," Seteth had stressed, “has been nothing but accommodating. She has done so much-”
Macuil ignored Seteth entirely and instead had begun gathering himself up to stand and leave - again. He feels like a petulant child, but Seteth called up at him regardless.
“Why have you forgotten how to walk among men?”
Macuil’s wings cast shadows the size of ships.
“Macuil!”
“Goodbye, brother. May we meet again.”
The earth shook when Macuil heaved himself into the air, and Seteth was left behind to watch him vanish into the clouds. He could not chase him anymore even if he wanted to.
-
The low and constant buzzing would drive Seteth mad long before any of the speeches his jailer, and he made them quite frequently enough, would. He sensed movement and opened his eyes to see another masked mage winding a bandage around his arm that left Seteth feeling cold. They had bled him again.
He could do little but watch, whatever the guards on either side of him thought, as the mage finished and collected a glass pot (a beaker, Hanneman would insist) brimming with blood.
“We thank you for your contributions,” the voice lilted with laughter. Then they left, and the panel to his prison slid so seamlessly back into place it appeared there was no exit at all. At least he knew where it was now.
The guards unshackled him, his wrists heavy and boneless, and left him as well. In between the blood loss and drug, it was hours before Seteth sat up without his head threatening to fall off his shoulders. Another hour before his feet touched the floor.
His prison was smaller than his office. He had been afforded the decency of a bed that doubled as an examination table, toiletry in the corner, and a chair and table that had been bolted to the floor. Seteth had only the strength to lower himself in the chair before his knees gave out.
-
“I won’t wake up and be a dragon now will I?” Aegir had rubbed at her shoulder, where the patch was, and teased him with one of her signature smiles.
“I daresay not,” Cichol had said back, face drawn. There was a war to be won. “You will experience changes though.”
Her smile had turned tense. “And I accept them.” A breath to steel herself. “Cichol… what does it feel like when you change? Out of pure curiosity, I ask, and not that I am dreading the idea of one day my bones tear themselves apart to-”
Peace, Aegir. It will not happen.” He had waited until she was mollified. “As for changing… well it is a bit like standing up.”
“Standing up?”
“You are the same person, are you not? But you have folded yourself into a different… shape, so to speak. Straighten your legs, balance upon your feet, straighten your spine. It is merely about rearranging your body.”
“I… see,” Aegir had tapped her chin, unconvinced. “But, Cichol, when I am seated, I tend to keep the same amount of limbs and mass and teeth-”
“It is only a metaphor, Aegir.”
-
Seteth lurched. He had been nodding off again. A plate and cup, both wooden, had been laid before him on the minuscule table; their contents were questionable in color, texture, and viscosity all in one. Across from him though, grey hands clasped and figure swathed in dark robes, stood his jailer.
“What do I call you?” Seteth asked before he could think on it more. “For all your visits to me, I have not been given it.”
And while he could not see it, but Seteth imagined the slow spread of a smile behind the pointed mask. A voice like pond scum.
“You may refer to me as… Lieutenant.”
“Very well, Lieutenant,” Seteth mustered every bit of dignity he could despite the circumstances. “What have you to ask of me today.” From the last visits that Seteth could remember, the Lieutenant had pried Seteth about the state of Garreg Mach, the surrounding town, of history and fables and everything in between.
The Lieutenant laughed and it was not a pleasant sound. A horrid gurgling of mud and waste that clashed with the never ending drone that emitted from the lights. Seteth felt ill.
He had been locked in the damned room for three days at the very least. But even for his knack for keeping time he could not account for however long his drug induced stupors had been. The guards stood outside so he could not track the changing of the guards nor glean anything from them.
Seteth envied Macuil’s talents countless times before, for his ability to read between the lines and see the unseen, and he wished for them yet again. No, caution and faith seemed to be his sole tools.
The laughter finally came to a stop, leaving a vacuum in the little prison. The Lieutenant gestured to the plate of drugged gruel.
“No questions today, unless you feel the urge to divulge Garreg Mach’s secret entrances.”
As if they weren’t aware of them or had spies searching for others. Seteth’s eyes narrowed in answer.
“No... ? Then you will be pleased to know you shall be allowed some light exercise today. We do need to keep you in good health after all.”
So that he could continue to fuel them with more blood. Taking his bones, as much as the Lieutenant had threatened to take from him, would be the end of that. Is that what they had intended for Flayn those years ago? To leech the blood from her until they had no more use for her? Had they wanted her bones as well?
The fury must have shown on his face for the Lieutenant laughed again.
-
His meal ignored, the Lieutenant summoned guards and Seteth had finally been let out. Hands restrained behind his back, yes, but out. Mercifully the buzzing died in volume as soon as the door slid closed behind them all, and Seteth was in a dark corridor. The inlaid lights, its noise still there bearable, were the only indication of where walls and floor were. It was disorienting.
And humiliating. Seteth had long been divulged of his cassock and shoes and was marched down the halls into a much larger, but still very much dark and underground, room in only his tunic and braies. But where the drone had ended, now Seteth could hear the rumble and clank of machinery - like hundreds of mills going at once - beneath his feet.
More lights in the shape of arrows burned in the distance, five from where Seteth stood, more perhaps deeper within. Then he was pushed forward and he and his guards both stood in the center of the room. The Lieutenant was joined by five other masked soldiers. Mages by the cut of their cloth.
“You have been quite the understanding guest,” the Lieutenant praised.
Seteth felt a cold sweat begin to break out. Was this to be his execution? Had they gathered what they wanted and came to collect his bones for their monstrous weapons? Escape had always been at the forefront of Seteth’s mind, but what few plans he had boiled down to waiting for allies or attempting to break free by sheer will alone. He was stronger than the average man, yes, but surrounded like this he would be dead within minutes.
Something jabbed into his upper arm and Seteth hissed in surprise. Another dosage. And another to his other arm.
“What are you doing.” Seteth’s heart, already pounding from the prospect of death - of never seeing Flayn again, she will be alone and in danger - gave a lurch and then Seteth was kneeling on the smooth floor gasping for air. His head swam, his heart raced, and he felt like he was being torn in two.
A disconnected part of himself watched the guards step away and the mages behind the Lieutenant kneeled to press their hands to the floor - a pattern. There was a pattern inlaid into the floor, a spell-
“A combination of sedative and stimulant,” the Lieutenant said, even though Seteth heard nothing over the roar in his ears. “We know you would never change willingly for us, so we have decided upon the best course of action - as well as testing out a spell we have been developing.”
Gasping, Seteth pressed his forehead to the floor, seeking balance and the coolness for his spiking fever, and below him the spell lit up. Blue, as customary for the primary blocks of any spell. But only briefly before it was flashing red, an angry red, and the distorted void ringed by soul aching pinks and violets surrounded Seteth.
“It is a shame we cannot be more scientific about this process,” the Lieutenant lamented, the glass of their mask lit up by the spell. “But we do only have one test subject and a limited amount of time.”
The spell’s components had all linked and activated. Then Seteth was screaming.
“Come, beast, show us your true form.”