Chapter Text
The door closes, and he is left alone.
He is left, and he is left, the King has left him.
Seira has left him.
(except that it is not true; she didn’t leave him. She was-)
And…
So he is left alone.
Under his body, the floor is cold. Under his thighs and bottom, under his palms, the floor is stone-cold and wet, and sturdy, which is probably good, because he needs something sturdy now; something that is hard and unyielding, something that will not move away when he is hurt. The floor doesn’t move, or maybe it does, but only for a little bit. Charce is not really sure.
With some of its parts, his body is pressed against this hard, cold, wet floor. In some of its parts, his body hurts. His ribs, from when he was jabbed with a sword hilt. His shoulders, nigh dislocated, from when he was subdued—his arms were twisted behind and wrenched with considerable force, and it, it was bound to put a strain on them. These ones, and lower, the lower half of his body. His knees, from- Yes, then, and, and also now, when he was thrown in here, on his knees and hands and left shoulder, and, well, his palms also hurt, the skin on them lesioned and raw.
It is the most welcome when his body hurts in exactly the same places it is pressed to the floor.
It is convenient.
Maybe he should lie down.
Or maybe he should stand up.
He doesn’t know; he is left undecided.
He is left.
He is left.
He is left alive, while Sei-
Come to think of it, his throat is sore and raw too.
He should probably get used to it now, to the sore throat and the other symptoms of the common cold. He is to live here, in this stone chamber, and stone is a good heat conductor. It implies, among other things, conducting heat out of a human body. His clothes do not make for an adequate insulation material. His temperature will lower. It will trigger a number of adverse effects in his body. What are the symptoms of chronic hypothermia? He doesn’t remember them now. He doesn’t even remember if he has ever read about them at all.
He should write it down when they’ll become observable. He should pin the course of it going, as it progresses. He should record everything, as a part of an experiment. So he could show it to-
Oh, right. That’s right.
He has nothing to write on.
He has nothing to write with.
He has nobo-
He won’t ever be able to write any word in his life again. Not even one.
Well. Writing. He didn’t do it very often anyway.
He was more of an information consuming type.
Not information producing.
So, not a great loss, huh? Not a great loss at all.
Loss.
He scrambles to his feet, wobbles, grasps at the wall—a half of his weight against it, the raw skin of his palms against its coarse, abrasive surface,—and, for a moment, he feels satisfied. Then it is gone, and he makes a step, still not taking his hand off the wall; his legs don’t support him like they used to, like they evolved to. This, and the stone feels appropriate against his skin.
This whole chamber, it feels appropriate.
He makes another step, and stumbles, and picks his body up, and makes another step, and then has to turn right, and a step, and a step, and another step, and then a turn, and a step, and a stumble, and a step,—he doesn’t count them.
A turn. He turns 180° and makes a step, and a step, and a step, and then he turns left.
The door is still fresh closed behind him. It stands still, and it has a different texture to it. It hurts differently and it conducts heat differently.
He doesn’t want to look at it and doesn’t want to touch it, so he does neither.
And a step, and a step, and a stumble.