Enerv Scenes, Non-Continuity or Otherwise Offscreen

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For Symon

[illicitresearch]

(An alternative sequence, if this had not happened)

It had been, more or less, a successful ambush. Captain Bertram's company of brutes had been caught completely unawares in the dead of night, and while the resulting skirmish had pushed the empress's raiding forces back, it wasn't without the minor victory a few scorched tents, dead soldiers, demolished supplies and a handful of yet-living prisoners.

(Mostly.)

An odd standout among them was the scrawny thing they'd dragged out of the officer's tent, a young man too quick to cower and surrender himself, when hauled up from his nest of furs, bleary with bedraggled distress. It wasn't unusual, to unearth kept boys from Wulgrimm camps, though on closer inspection this one was declared far too intact to be a cell in use for very long. He'd been banded unlike most slaves of Euramar, at the wrist, and the device pulsed at a steady hum instead of delivering stinging injections at the throat, as was most common thes days. Conveniently, it seemed to keep him subdued, though he'd been bound like the others until it could be settled on, what to do with him. For now, a formal interrogation could wait.

Then the delirium set in.

That night, the guards posted by the prisoners kept jumping at shadows, hearing voices or shuffling noises where a quick patrol proved that all was well. One of the men swore up and down that they were being watched by a multitude of eyes in the darkness. Another was halfway to untying the largest of their prisoners, when it became clear that he'd recieved phantom orders from no one. Behind his bangs, slumped forward, Zexion played them against each other like puppets, until the most sensible of them was throughly convinced that the others had been driven to paranoid madness, or had taken some kind of funny mushrooms.