The only problem his private investigation faced was that he hadn’t a clue where to find Maganti. It wasn’t likely that the location where he’d rescued Shane Arndt from would still be operational. What fool would risk remaining at a compromised location...besides Nolan.
Still, even though Maganti had likely vacated it, perhaps Loken could find a clue to help him in his search. It was the only lead he had, so his options were limited.
He teleported there, veiled upon arrival, and frowned at the exhaustion tugging at the corners of his mind. He’d performed multiple enchantments only hours ago, so the fatigue wasn’t surprising. Regardless, he had more than enough strength to handle any humans he encountered.
Through the darkness, he could see that one building on the estate—the main one—had lights on.
Someone was there.
Rage overpowered caution, and he teleported into the room where Arndt had been held hostage. To his absolute surprise, Maganti was there—sitting at his desk and drinking a glass of amber liquor. A fireplace lit the room, casting flickering shadows, but otherwise the room looked the same as it previously had.
Maganti had been witless enough to stay? Was he not even marginally concerned about Loken’s wrath? The dullard.
Drawing his daggers, he dropped the veil and approached, no longer hiding from his prey. He wanted Maganti’s last moments to be filled with nothing but primal terror.
“You look entirely too comfortable,” Loken said coldly. “Let me fix that.”
He advanced as Maganti met his gaze...and smirked.
Magic snapped shut around him as he unwittingly walked into another spelltrap, constricting his chest and limbs like serpents. He pushed aside his disbelief that Maganti might somehow be the unknown pilot—the magic of the spelltrap felt the same—and focused on having his magic fight back, exhausted though he was. His knees hit the floor under the crushing assault, but he gritted his teeth and poured every ounce of his strength into resisting.
It felt like he was drowning, and he had precious few moments before his body surrendered to instinct.
The click of a gun cut through the haze of pain. Polished shoes stepped into view and cold metal pressed against his forehead.
“You're hard to kill,” Maganti said, as if commenting on the weather. “I imagine I could find a way. I’m a resourceful man. Fortunately for you—or maybe unfortunately, really—someone had given me incentive not to try.”
His limbs were unresponsive otherwise he would have beaten Maganti to death with his gun. His voice chafed Loken’s already ablaze nerves, and as soon as he finished overpowering the spelltrap, he was going to—
“Give it to him,” Maganti ordered someone Loken couldn't see, and the irritation in his voice had Loken wondering if whoever it was had hesitated.
Good. Loken hoped they were afraid. They were right to be. As far as Loken was concerned, they were all dead. Despite their inevitable demise, he could do nothing more than sneer as a man cautiously approached to stick a needle in his neck, injecting him with some unknown substance.
He hissed, the feeling of ice spreading through his veins.
Maganti looked down at him with a plain look, detached yet somehow satisfied.
Loken mentally cursed the cowards as consciousness faded.
Chapter 10
Blinding, disorientating light.
Had he fallen asleep in the gardens again? He’d spent many days helping his mother tend to her plants as a boy, and as a young man, he often retreated there when he was in need of peace and quiet. On the rare occasion, he’d been known to doze off in the warm light of day, safe among the blossoming trees he’d regularly played tag in with his mother as a child.
So, why had he retreated to the gardens this time? He couldn’t remember. There was only a hum of anxiety in the back of his mind that he couldn’t explain, the knowledge that something was wrong.
“My son.”
He turned away from the rift he’d created and found himself staring into the face of his mother, contorted with grief and heartache. It pained him to know he’d wounded her, but he wouldn’t be deterred. He’d made his choice. This was for the best.
Feeling her magic building, trying to reach out and stop him, he gave his own a push to finish the spell. Then, eyes locked with hers, he stepped through the rift.
“Lailoken! No! Stop!”
Suddenly, he realized it wasn’t the soft grass of his mother’s vast gardens against his back; it was cold, merciless metal.
Alarm raced through his veins, but even a burst of adrenaline did nothing to clear his groggy mind. He tried to groan but couldn’t, and trying to do so sent pain shooting through his face. He writhed, finding that each of his limbs were restrained.
Blindly, he reached for his magic but found it was...it was gone. He couldn’t feel it, and the more he reached, the further away it seemed, locked just beyond his fingertips. Was that the reason for his disorientation? It was like trying to breath with a bag over his head.
He was suffocating.
“Yoo ara fasenading kreechar.”
Loken forced his eyes to remain open, blurry though his vision was. A man stood beside the table. A familiar man.
Draven Lestat. He caressed Loken’s forehead like one might a pet, and Loken tried to pull away but couldn’t move a muscle. His skin crawled at the contact...or was that a side-effect of having his magic suppressed?
“Wat ara yoo? An alean ora preveaslee andaskavard speeseez?”
Lestat’s tone made Loken assume he was merely thinking aloud, but he couldn't understand the madman. The translation spell was gone, and English was no clearer to him than the calls of a viln.
He’d never felt more alienated, his connection to the universe muffled and his ability to understand and be understood stifled. Loken snarled—or, rather, he tried to. When he did, agony once more shot through his face. Finally, he realized why; his jaw was wired shut. Metal was embedded into his flesh, ensuring silence. Likewise, his arms and legs were not merely shackled; they were bolted to the table.
He wanted to scream in rage. How dare this human pin him to a table, like an insect to be studied? How dare he meddle with Loken’s magic? How dare he silence his tongue?
I’m going to kill you. Slit you open and feed you your own intestines, he mentally snarled, envisioning the sweet vengeance he would get. His rage was a wild inferno, uncompromising and all-consuming.
Lestat spoke again, droning on and on, but Loken was losing the ability to focus on the meaningless sounds.
Nothing in Lestat’s voice prepared him for the sharp metal that then pierced his chest. Loken writhed, battling his restraints. Whatever drugs Lestat had flooded his body with kept him weak. Was it the drug that kept him separated from his magic? Loken didn't know, but he felt cold, vulnerable without it. Naked, stripped bare. He’d never had his magic bound before. On Rellaeria, it was commonly done to criminals who were also sorcerers, but Loken had no idea it felt like this. It was like having a limb removed or a sense gagged.
He’d rather have his eyes gouged out.
Despite the pain, the agony, he met Lestat’s expressionless eyes defiantly. When Lestat twisted the blade in his chest, Loken was momentarily glad for the metal that clamped his jaw shut because it kept him from screaming.
After another moment, Lestat ripped the blade free and studied the wound. “Olredee heeling…” he droned on once more, uttering more meaningless syllables.
Loken hoped that his enforced silence would aggravate the curious madman. If Lestat would only remove the metal bindings on his jaw, Loken was certain he could manipulate his way to freedom...but no. That was a hopeless route, wasn't it? Lestat wouldn't understand him.
For the first time in his life, he was without his greatest weapon: his words.
Exhaustion overwhelmed him, sedated as he was. When he found the strength to open his eyes again, Lestat was gone from view, but he could hear the man tinkering with something in
the room.
When Lestat continued to speak, Loken wondered if he even realized his captive couldn't understand him.
“Raɡardles, this is going too hert. I doo apalehjyz.”
Then agony consumed him—white hot, ripping pain that burned him from the inside out until his mind could take no more and dragged him under.
It became routine.
Hazy consciousness.
All-consuming agony.
Darkness.
Repeat.
Whenever he found the strength to wake, Lestat took it as a sign that Loken was ready for more, and agony would consume his body and mind.
Some days were different than others. Some days Lestat seemed interested only in hurting him because he could. To test Loken’s pain threshold and push beyond. Other days, he approached with scientific curiosity, cutting, drilling, and inspecting.
Days, weeks, months could have passed, and Loken wouldn’t have known the difference. There was no way to tell time, and Lestat rarely spoke to him, as if he was a lesser creature not worth the effort. Loken had no idea what the madman hoped to accomplish, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. As resilient as his physiology was, he could feel his body weakening without nourishment. Concerningly, he knew he could go well over a week without eating before feeling minor effects, which gave him an idea of how long his captivity had been thus far.
He took comfort in the fact that it would all be over soon, humiliating as it was to be killed on some backwater planet by a barbarian.
What did it matter how he died, he mused. The end result was the same. A permanent reprieve from his pain.
Lestat must not have been ready to let his experiment perish because the next time Loken woke, the familiar agony did not greet him. Instead, Lestat drugged him with a paralytic agent and cut him open. For the first time, with Lestat’s hands inside of his body, Loken felt true terror. It was, ironically, what he’d first feared ALPHA would do with him.
Thankfully, after minimal exploring, the madman inserted an apparatus (attached to an outside source) and closed him up. Afterwards, Lestat muttered words, once more caressing Loken’s forehead.
The sincerity in his tender touch made Loken’s stomach recoil. Or maybe his nausea was from the tube now inserted into him.
While Lestat prattle on, Loken invented yet another way he would one day kill Draven Lestat.
He ignored the snide voice in his head that told him every day that passed only increased the unlikeliness of his escape.
Hazy consciousness.
All-consuming agony.
Darkness.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
When will it end? Why won’t it end?
Feverish chills broke the pattern.
He hadn’t been ill in centuries. Was his body giving out? Without access to his magic, strapped down to this table with his mouth wired shut, there would be no escape otherwise. Especially since his fleeting moments of consciousness were filled with only agony.
Someone was leaning over him, fussing with the tube in his abdomen. The blurry form came into view, and Loken startled at what he saw: spiral horns, eyes like pools of lava, and scales where smooth skin should be.
Drakain.
They’d come to claim their wergild. Him. Granted by King Balan of Rellaeria, son of Leodegan, Ruler of the Alatheia System.
He fought against the restraints, preferring death to being taken by the merciless Drakain.
The reptilian beast scrutinized his abdomen, ignored his antics, and spoke in a thoughtful, clinical tone.
Loken must have made a sound because the beast raised a clawed-finger to his cheek and spoke soothingly.
Let me die. Mercy. Mercy, he wished he could plea, but warmth flooded him, and he knew no more.
A woman hissed in irritation.
A man gave a snappy reply.
Two more shushed them.
Loken couldn’t find the strength to open his eyes as the voices got closer, but even with them closed, he could see the flash of light.
A man spoke, sounding uncertain.
The woman murmured, suddenly close, and barked an order. A man argued back and forth with her. Or were all the men arguing with her? He couldn’t focus.
Loken had but a moment to wonder why they sounded familiar before pain tore through him. He writhed, lurching as far as the restraints allowed until a hand touched his bare chest.
“Lailoken.”
His voice startled him. Had his mother come for him? He wanted to cry at the idea, both in fear and relief.
The woman who’d said his name—a name he hadn’t heard aloud in so long—spoke again, her tone gentle.
When he opened his eyes, he was met with a familiar face that he couldn’t quite place. Not his mother. The sincerity in her eyes pierced him, soothing a part of him that remembered her. He tried to do as she requested, but as each restraint was ripped from his flesh, a whine was torn from his throat.
As they hauled him to his feet, supporting most of his weight, her hand ghosted over his cheek and down to his jaw. “Wee kant ramoov this nou,” she said, sounding as pained as he felt.
Loken raised his hand to feel, for the first time, the contraption that bound his jaw. His magic still lingered just beyond his reach, keeping him weakened, but he was no longer helpless. Summoning every ounce of strength he had left, he gripped it with both hands and pulled. Ignoring the cries of protest, he tore flesh from his jawline as he wrenched it free. The pain was nothing compared to the agony he’d been through every day of his captivity.
“Eko morja na. Cordiae. Cordiae,” he muttered, each syllable like chewing rocks. His voice sounded not only strained; it sounded broken. His face, especially his jaw, cried out in protest.
A man spoke to the woman, sounding concerned.
She ignored him and asked Loken a question, but he couldn’t answer. Why didn’t she understand he couldn’t answer her? He didn’t even understand the inquiry.
“Eko morja na. Cordiae. Cordiae,” he mumbled, repeating his mental plea from earlier as his eyes slipped closed.
Let me die. Mercy. Mercy.
He collapsed, hating himself for his own weakness.
Maybe, if he was lucky, this time he wouldn’t wake.
“Why me?” Loken demanded. Why had Balan, his uncle, chosen him for this punishment? Were Sanjay and Zakir not as culpable? Had they not broken kingdom law as well? Why should he shoulder the greatest punishment?
His father avoided his gaze. “Your uncle thinks you better suited to this task.”
“Better suited to be a sacrifice?” he cried. He was more hurt, more confused, than angry. He felt betrayed. By his own family, no less!
“Cease your theatrics, Lailoken!” Urien snapped. “Had you obeyed your king—”
“I’m not the only one who went to Draferia!” he cried, on the verge of hysteria. Why was his own family willing to abandon him to these monsters? Just the thought of being forced to be their prisoner, the wergild for the fallen soldiers, was enough to send him into a panic attack. “I tried to stop them! You know it was Sanjay’s idea to go! He confessed!”
“The Drakain asked for you!”
Loken felt all of his anger wash away in light of that stunning confession. “W-why? I’m but the second son of the General of Rellaeria.”
Urien looked conflicted, pained. “You are much more than that.”
Confusion couldn’t begin to describe what he felt, but he remained silent, afraid that if he interrupted, his father would not elaborate.
“Balan told King Rokar that the idea to visit Draferia was yours.”
What? “Why would he do that?” Loken asked, chest aching from the piercing betrayal.
“Because it was easier to keep the peace by explaining that a young man only desired to visit his birth world than it would have been to speak the truth: that the crowned prince of Rellaeria frivolously made the decision to break a centuries old treaty.”
Loken stared at
his father. “He lied and told them my birth world is Draferia? What nonsense is this? When they discover the deception, I’ll be torn limb from limb!”
“Lailoken,” Urien said, his tone gentler than Loken had ever heard it. “He did not lie.”
Had he misheard? “What game is this?”
Urien did not falter in expression or tone. “My brother returned home with a young changeling, a rare and precious gift. In the times of our father and his father before him, changelings were raised as infiltrators. And they were good at it. Too good. Many races began extinguishing them, but the Drakain did not. Your uncle saw an opportunity, and he took you.”
“He...he kidnapped me?”
“No, Lailoken. He—"
“He found a changeling youngling, and he couldn't resist. He stole me—"
“It was his right!” Urien bellowed.
Loken hadn't realized he was crying until his vision blurred. Horror, revulsion, self-disgust. There was too much to feel, and when he looked back to the man who wasn't his father and was greeted with a tired look, rage was added to the list. How dare he think he had the right to look exhausted?
“So, that's why you're going along with it, then? It must be easy to give up the Drakain changeling who was never your real son.”
He fled, not giving Urien a chance to deny the truth.
Chapter 11
He awoke in a panic, heart pounding, and assessed his surroundings with the skill he’d learned exploring the wilds off world. He was in a large, open room. It looked like the suite he’d occupied in Nolan’s facility, but that couldn’t be right. It had to be a figment of his drugged mind. Any moment, Lestat was going to come into the room and shatter the illusion.
Loken closed his eyes, trying to come to terms with the inevitable. When he did, he realized that he was lying on a soft surface, not a metal table. That couldn’t be right either. Had he finally lost his mind? He shifted as much as the restraints would allow...and realized there were no restraints.
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