Work Text:
“Help! Help, I need a doctor!”
Julian Devorak looked up from his notes and sighed. It would be when he was close to a breakthrough that someone needed help-- but almost before the thought crossed his mind, he was out of his seat and striding toward the door, throwing it open, peering out into the night. The street seemed deserted. Not one to leave someone in potential danger, he stepped outside fully and let the door swing shut behind him.
“Hello?” he called. “Someone called for a doctor?”
He moved quietly in the direction he thought the cry had come from. There was nobody conspicuous nearby, no signs of a scuffle or blood on the street.
“Hello?” he called again, looking around. “I’m a doctor, I may be able to help--”
Julian felt a sudden sharp pain at the back of his skull, and then everything was dark.
When he came to, Julian was disoriented. He was lying on his side, his hair falling haphazardly over his face, on what seemed to be a dirt floor. He kept his breathing as even as he could while he took in his surroundings-- a very large, dark room, making it even harder to see through his hair than it would be otherwise; hard, dusty floor; the familiar and perhaps insufficiently unnerving smell of blood; sounds of shuffling and scratching as if by something very small, like a rodent or--
or--
Julian sat up very quickly and immediately regretted it when the dark room swam slightly. He winced, remembering the sudden pain before waking here, and touched the back of his head gingerly. There was a swollen, bruised feeling where he touched. When he pulled his gloved hand back before his face, there was no sheen of blood changing the way the dim light illuminated his glove, so he ignored it.
The scuttling noise he was less willing to ignore.
He followed the sound-- and what more trouble could he get into following sounds tonight, really?-- until he found a wall, following it with one hand on its surface. He startled when his hand hit a set of chains and jangled them against the stone wall. The scuttling noise got louder, as though the creature (or creatures) making it had been frightened, and then it suddenly stopped. He cursed under his breath.
“Блять, now I’ll never find them.”
He spread his hand over the wall where the chains were-- or had been, as they seemed to have moved. They couldn’t have swung so far from the small motion of brushing against them, could they?
The next thing Julian knew, the chains were snaking around his arms, the shackles clicking around his wrists. He cried out in alarm, throwing his weight backward, but was pulled back to the wall by the fetters he seemed to have stumbled into, his forearms pulled upward to rest on the wall near his head.
“Блять!” He struggled against his bonds to no avail. “Че за блять!”
His shirt was pulled back from his neck and a chill ran down his spine. There was no sound, no indication that anyone else was in the room. He turned as far as he could in order to look behind himself, but there was nothing. Even as his shirt continued to pull back from his clammy skin, it seemed to do so of its own accord, until it was ripped from his torso, leaving only the tattered remains of his sleeves under the chains.
“Ёбаная магия!”
A cackle resounded in the chamber-- or was that in his head?-- as a heavy, cleaving feeling split his upper back just over his left scapula. He screamed through clenched teeth, absently wishing he didn’t know that was what a sword felt like. A substantial weight collided with his lower ribs on his right side, crushing the remaining breath from his lungs, likely along with two ribs. His legs gave out from under him, leaving him to fall to his knees as the chains pulled his arms taut. He felt his head pulled up and back by his hair, felt the strap of his eyepatch snap. He felt another force collide with his cheekbone and nose, hoped it hadn’t broken either one. Felt his sinuses collecting blood. Spat blood onto the floor.
“Just get it over with,” he grumbled under his breath.
The chain around his left arm suddenly jerked along the wall behind the right, whirling him around and hauling him off his knees. He remained suspended by the chains, his weight borne largely by his shoulders, pulling the gash in his back painfully. He peered into the dark of the chamber, straining to see something, anything.
Just then, a grimace overtook his face as he felt a sharp implement sliding into his flesh, much like he imagined a scalpel might feel. His gaze dropped to his own abdomen, where he could barely see in the dim light as an incision appeared and started oozing blood against his pale skin. He watched in fascination as the cut grew, bisecting his lower abdomen and bleeding freely into the waistband of his trousers.
“That might take a bit longer than usual to heal,” he said aloud, noting with an odd detachment how dizzy he was getting from blood loss. “It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.”
"I agree," whispered an unfamiliar voice. "I look forward to such a process."
Julian simply laughed until he lost consciousness.