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Douxie doesn't exactly know where things went wrong.
The plan was simple enough, he thinks. They were going to draw the Order out where no civilians could be harmed, cut off their magic, and take them down once and for all. There were many moving parts to their plan, but the mechanism of execution was a well-oiled machine that had been working steadily for nearly a year. They worked well as a team. It shouldn't have fallen apart as quickly as it did.
The whole thing puzzles him. Or maybe that's just a side effect of the wound that he feels blooming fresh atop his forehead. Still, if there was one aspect of this whole situation that Douxie didn't regret, it was his decision to back up Claire as she ushered everyone out of danger. He had promised he would be right behind her, but as Bellroc had surged towards the open portal in pursuit of Nari, Douxie knew he wouldn't be able to stop them and run away at the same time. Claire would berate him for breaking his promise, however small it was in the grand scheme of things, but so long as Nari and the others were safe, Douxie figured he could handle her wrath.
And so what if the Order had taken him instead? They had unfinished business, anyway.
He doesn't know where exactly they've taken him to, some sort of abandoned railway station built from brick and dust, but he figures it hardly matters. They had bound his hands in the air, his own magic now nullified by the spell they'd embedded in the amber runes that encircled his wrists. The soles of his feet just barely brush up against the ground. Douxie peers down at his own reflection in a puddle of black water, a blurry visage soon overtaken by a layer of thin, creeping ice.
Douxie lifts his head.
Skrael drifts towards him, cold and angry. "The boy wizard," he says slowly, drawing out each word. He levels his staff towards Douxie, the ice of the stone pressing into his neck and tilting his chin up. "We told you that you would die for what you did," he hisses.
Douxie bares his teeth in a grin, defiant. "And I said I'd planned on it, remember? But I suppose none of us got what we wanted that day."
"What a shame it is, then," Bellroc steps forward, "that your plans always seem to go awry."
"Comes with the job," Douxie says nonchalantly. "An occupational hazard, if you will. Can't say the two of you have got the best track record, either. You wanted Nari, but you've got me."
Skrael's eyes narrow. "And who's to say that was accidental? We can retrieve Nari whenever we please. She is a necessity. You, on the other hand," he spits, digging the sharp edge of his staff into Douxie's chin, "are a threat."
"One that should have been dealt with on that castle," Bellroc finishes.
"Yeah…wish I could say I'm sorry about that one, but I'd be lying," Douxie says lightly. He figured that nothing good could come of chiding the Order like he held any semblance of power here, but there was little else that he could do until someone came looking for him. Buying time it was, then. He fixes his glare on Bellroc. "What stopped you from getting rid of me in the city, then?"
"To grant you death at this point would be a kindness," Bellroc says simply, leaning closer to peer at Douxie, "and I do not make it a habit to be charitable."
Douxie throws his head back as best he can and laughs. "I think you guys have a pretty warped definition of what constitutes as charity," he quips. It's bait.
Bellroc tilts their head. "Enough of your games," they growl, raising their arm.
Hook, line, and sinker. Time's up.
Douxie forces another bitter grin. "Do your worst."
"You could have saved yourself from this fate," Bellroc says, almost sympathetically. "A pity, then, that you're too much of a hero for your own good."
Lowering his staff, Skrael follows suit. His mouth twists into a smile. "You should have run when you had the chance, little wizard."
The runes along Douxie's vambrace spring alive with blue light, and he finds himself screaming in agony. His magic flares wildly, unbidden, desperate for an outlet, but the Order's restraints around him are stronger. As Bellroc and Skrael force his magic to life, the spell within their bindings pushes back against it, trapping the energy within his body.
It's excruciating. Douxie thrashes wildly against his restraints as pain explodes beneath the surface of his skin, starting from the veins in his wrists and winding its way through his arms, his legs, his chest. It stabs into his heart like a burning knife, cutting towards the lungs, and Douxie finds suddenly, terrifyingly, that he can't breathe.
The pain is suffocating.
Douxie feels every push and pull of the war inside him, the way his magic fights beyond its limits to break the Order's chains around it. He thinks the excruciating nature of both powers combined could kill him outright, break him and burn him and tear him limb from limb from the inside out. For a moment, he wonders why they haven't just done that already. Perhaps this was what Bellroc had meant by death as a kindness, or perhaps the pair of them just liked to play with their food.
But then he feels the balance shift, and as the familiarity of his own magic recedes backwards like a wave to the sea, Douxie feels his stomach churn in sickening, awful realization.
They weren't trying to kill him. They were taking away his magic.
"No," he chokes out amidst anguished, wordless cries. "You can't—" His plea is cut off as he feels something within him break with a snap that resonates through his soul, the pressure of the Order's magic crashing down upon him with full force, and another scream tears itself from his throat. The world around him fades into harsh, blinding white, fire in his veins replaced with the shock of bitter, unforgiving cold. The feeling washes over him like ice water, dragging him like a current, and Douxie goes limp.
The Order's magic takes advantage of his motionless state, gripping him by the shoulders and pushing his head deeper under the water. It drowns him in the absence of his own resonance, a terrifying understanding that what was once nested at the very core of his being had been torn away. That feeling of suffocation returns, made worse by the unresponsiveness of his limbs, and Douxie feels the aura of his magic dissipating like the air in his lungs. He gasps, choking on everything and nothing all at once.
And then suddenly, it's over, and his head breaks the surface of the waves.
Douxie feels every ounce of heaviness that settles into his limbs as the Order retracts their spell. Fragments of magic dance at the edges of his mind, thin cobwebs desperately clinging to the walls of his soul. He draws in a short, shuddering breath, and its tremor is strong enough to dislodge a helping of them. The pain of it ricochets through his body, and he wheezes feebly.
His chest feels horribly, achingly hollow.
Bellroc curls their hand into a fist, and as they do, the glowing shackles disintegrate around Douxie's wrists. He hits the ground with a grunt that knocks the fragile air from his lungs, body overcome with cumbersome weight and frozen in place. In the absence of all his warmth, he becomes acutely aware of the tears that burn their way down his face. Even without the restraints binding him and his magic, every inch of his skin buzzes, alight with the fading sparks of his own power. He blinks his eyes open slowly, and his vision swims. He's too numb to tell if it's from dizziness or from tears.
Douxie watches, dazed, as Bellroc and Skrael cloak the building in an illusion spell before vanishing in another whirlwind of smoke and ice. He lays still for a long moment, trying to teach his lungs how to draw in air again.
When the weight on his chest no longer feels like it's made of his own heart, Douxie forces his arms to move. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, bearing enough of his weight to drag his leaden body across the cold ground. It's a slow process, one that threatens to undo every shaking breath he draws into agonized, barely retrained lungs. Eventually, though, he makes it to the wall, twisting his body so that he can sit up against it.
He's not sure how long he sits there, immobilized by pain and struggling to keep his breathing even. Every few moments, he feels a new wave of agony ripple across his body, another thread of magic fraying and falling loose from his very being.
When his friends finally arrive, he hears them more than he sees them. Darkness closes in around his line of sight, vignetting the world into greyscale. Faintly, he hears the sound of his own name, and he knows that they won't find him through any of their own means.
Douxie clenches his jaw and winces at the way it lights every one of his nerves on fire. He fights against every ache, every spasm that twists across his limbs, and forces his hand to move. He finds a fragment of his fractured power and latches on to it with all the energy he can muster, cycling through the runes on his bracelet. If he could stomach the effort of it, he would probably be screaming, but the weight bearing down on his body reduces any sound of his struggle to a pathetic, whispered groan. Finally, he locks the spell into place, and with a slow and heavy breath, lets the magic burst from his fingertips.
The effort saps what little of his power the Order had left behind, and in an instant, his vision dips from grey to pitch black.
The building—a roundhouse, Claire had supposed—is dark and cold when they arrive, and more importantly, empty of one missing wizard. Jim tries to ignore the twinge of fear settling in his stomach.
"Wha- he's not here?" Toby says, confused. "Claire, are you sure you—"
"Of course," Claire interrupts. "I connected to him. This is where he should be." She looks towards Archie instinctively, as if to ask for confirmation. Archie only shakes his head, uncertain.
Jim thinks that might be worse. "Something's wrong," he agrees. "Let's look around."
The group settles into an uneasy silence, splitting up across the space. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, and as the minutes crawl by, the tension builds with it. Jim holds his breath, waiting for the moment to split, for someone to find something, anything, that quells the fear churning rampant in the air.
When it finally happens, it's not through any of their doing.
The tracks in the center of the room burst to life with a soft yellow glow, shifting and twisting until they're locked in a new configuration. The runes that line the structure erupt in a brilliant light, bringing heat to the room for the briefest of moments. The group avert their eyes and wait for the light to pass.
When it finally fades, Jim takes in the roundhouse with fresh eyes. Runes and images line the walls, glowing unnaturally like ink under black light. His gaze sweeps the room and lands on a figure slumped against the far wall. It's Krel who shouts first. "Douxie!"
Panic makes Jim move fast, but Archie is faster, crossing the room in seconds and landing in dragon form at his familiar's side. Douxie's head hangs bowed, his weight pulling him forward and leaving his hair falling down over his face. Jim kneels before him, searching for any sign of movement in his friend. He sees nothing. "Doux?" Jim places a tentative hand on Douxie's shoulder, pushing him back towards the wall and lifting his head.
He stifles the urge to sob when he does. Douxie's eyes look lifeless, half-lidded and staring right through him. Irises that were once a vibrant warm hazel were fading, overtaken by a sickly shade of grey that seemed to be bleeding its way in from the edges like ink on paper. Soft cyan light pulsed in the pupils of his eyes, a dim and fleeting heartbeat. Once or twice, Jim catches the light sparking and sputtering, like a dying flame.
Jim's heart sits like an iron weight in his chest, silence stretching around him for what feels like eons. Relief threatens to shatter him when he sees Douxie's chest rattle with a small, sudden intake of breath. He falls still again for a moment. Then, another breath. They're sharp and staggered, and can't possibly be supplying him with enough oxygen to last, but it means that he's still breathing.
That he's still alive.
"For heaven's sake, Douxie," Archie murmurs anxiously beside him, drifting up to nudge his familiar's head with his own. Douxie's head lolls to the side, eyes glassy and unfocused. "What have they done to you?"
Jim steels himself. "We can figure it out once we get him out of here," he says firmly. Behind him, Claire has already opened a portal back to the castle. Jim slips an arm behind Douxie's back, ready to maneuver the body of the much taller wizard into his arms.
Aja approaches him. "I've got him," she offers gently, stooping down to lift him with all four of her arms. She carries him with ease, and in her grip, the vacancy in Douxie's expression becomes all the more apparent. Archie leaps up from the ground, shifting into his cat form before landing gently on Douxie's chest. He curls himself tightly over Douxie's heart and purrs softly, the gentlest sound of non-contentment. Once Archie has settled, Aja makes straight for the portal, Krel close behind.
Jim rubs his burning eyes and glances towards Claire and Toby. He's positive that their rosy eyes mirror his own. Claire tries to smile. "He'll be fine," she says, an attempt at reassurance for both them and herself. "He's been through a lot worse."
"Yeah, I mean, Blinky and Nari will know how to help," Toby adds.
Jim watches as Douxie is carried through the portal, just as far gone as he was when he was left behind. He swallows. "I hope you're right."