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Gale startled awake to a sluice of ice-cold water washing over him, pulling him from a nap he didn’t remember taking.
He spluttered, choking on stray droplets and blinking rapidly to clear the sting in his eyes. The cold soaked into him in an instant, thin fabric sticking to his skin – which was when he realised he was only in his undershirt and trousers. There was no protective robe on his person, and whoever had taken him (because he was certain he was supposed to be on a supply run for their dwindling potions) had made sure there was no weapon or otherwise helpful item on his person – even his enchanted jewellery was gone. He shuddered to imagine just how well they’d searched him.
As he scrambled back instinctively his spine hit something cold and uneven, and he felt the world sway sickeningly – had he been drugged perhaps? Hit over the head? Dizziness could easily be chalked up to both those instances, but he felt no pain in his head, nor any adverse effects from any of the potions and poisons he knew of.
Before he could get his bearings, a smug voice rang out.
“Lorroakan will be pleased,” began the voice nearby, and Gale hastily wiped dank water from his eyelashes to squint through bars at the tall, slender figure in the dim surroundings. A warehouse, possibly? There was no outside noise as far as he could tell, and the smell wasn’t easily identifiable other than musty. There were two other people further back from the man who talked, far too shadowed to make out, but no exit in his current field of view.
Gale stood up, brushing off his sodden clothes as if it were a casual occurrence, and wobbled slightly as the ground tilted with him, making a peculiar clanging sound. His stomach lurched with the unexpected movement as he realised it was, in fact, a cage he’d found himself in, small enough that he could reach both sides if he stretched his arms out, and suspended above the ground by a few feet.
He hadn’t the faintest clue what Lorroakan would want with him, but he knew he wanted nothing to do with it – the closer they’d gotten to Baldur’s Gate, the more stories he heard that convinced him he really didn’t want that meeting he was promised by Rolan back in the Grove.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?” The man continued, still smirking. Maybe he was oblivious to who Gale was, and thought he’d just caught a strange wizard off the street? Gale cleared his throat, subtly preparing hand movements behind his back.
“Ah, perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding? You see, I’ve never met the Great Lorroakan, but I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate a fellow wizard being...” he gestured to the cage he was in, “unwillingly relocated, and given a rather bracing bath.”
The man remained silent, eyeing him like the cat that caught the canary. An all too apt idiom, in this situation. Gale narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what exactly his game was. He hoped he could resolve this with words alone, as Wyll so often did. They could always steal the money back after he was freed and avoid bloodshed altogether, thereby keeping a low profile from the Steel Watch.
“It could be that we could still come to an agreement of sorts: I don’t know what it is you want from me, but if it’s money you’re after, I’m sure my friends and I have enough to spare.” He spread out his arms amicably, and hoped that the unsubtle insinuation of friends would clue his captors in that he had people looking for him. At the very least, if they were dim-witted enough to try and capture a wizard, they could be dim-witted enough to accept a bribe.
Instead, the man in front of him just shook his head, chuckling nastily as if he’d just told him a joke. Gale felt wrong-footed all of a sudden, fake smile faltering as he mentally readied a scorching ray.
“No, I’m afraid we can’t. You see, we have no need of your gold, because we’re already being paid.” He leaned forward as if telling a secret, but kept his distance from the bars. “And it’s not gold we’re getting, but power. Your capture is only part of the bargain. It’s what you know that is valuable to our client.”
Gale felt his heart begin to race. He’d heard enough; whatever information they wanted from him, it was bound to be too valuable to risk spilling, whether it was to do with the absolute, or one of his friends, or something else entirely. Lorroakan was an equally powerful and vile wizard, and he couldn’t take any chances.
As the man in front of him turned away to reach for something out of sight, Gale muttered the spell to release the multiple scorching rays at each of the figures he could see, picturing the weave build up to his fingertips as he pointed them forward-
And nothing happened.
His words fell flat and dull from his lips, and his hand didn’t emit the expected blast of fire – not even a faint glow. He tried to cast again, confused and beginning to panic as he lost his window of surprise, but the spell refused him once more. He’d felt wrong since he awoke, but had been too distracted until now to realise what exactly it was.
The weave inside him wouldn’t obey him because it was being blocked.
Once more the man closest to him laughed, this time full bodied and filling the room as Gale clenched his fists in mixed fury and trepidation, now thoroughly concerned for his own safety. He had no weapons, no gear, and now no magic. He was honestly helpless to whatever was going to happen unless somebody found him, and hopefully soon.
His captor turned around again casually, as if he’d expected the failed attempt at spellcasting, and Gale flinched as he saw what was in his hand.
His own staff, the Spellsparkler he’d received as thanks for saving Councillor Florrick. And here he was, standing barefoot in a metal cage and covered in water already. His grimaced as he braced himself, knowing there was no easy way out.
“It’s sussur, if you’re wandering,” the man said, gesturing towards the bars with the staff, and Gale couldn’t help recoiling as the electrified tip came close to the metal. His captor grinned. “Infused in the iron. You won’t be able to cast anything while you’re in there. I’d considered just silencing you, but then you wouldn’t be able to spill your little secrets.” He leaned closer again, close enough for the malice on his face to tell Gale exactly how much he enjoyed his profession.
“And we wouldn’t have been able to hear you scream.”
Gale scarcely had time to clench his jaw shut before lightning coursed through him, igniting every nerve in excruciating pain. His whole body seized up, twisted and unmoving as it fought off involuntary contortions and confused brain signals. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t even breathe through gritted teeth. His vision whited out, his ears filled with the crackle of energy all around him-
And then it was over.
Gale crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath between a wounded, animalistic cry of pain as he was finally able to use his lungs. His limbs twitched of their own accord where he was kneeling on the bottom of the cage, and his hands shook where he clutched at his chest, half terrified that the orb in his chest would be out of control, and half thinking that his ordinary, very human heart could give out from the shock.
He knelt weakly, timing his breaths with the drip, drip of his wet hair hanging in front of his face like a shield. Slow, taunting footsteps echoed in the room as someone walked around him, the crackling, buzzing aura of the staff making him jolt away from the bars each time it got too close.
“That was a mere taste of what you’ll experience, should you decide to try and keep your secrets,” the voice said. Gale barely had the energy to follow it with his head. Every limb felt like lead, and he was already wrung out.
“A certain little soldier told us you’d been on the hunt for the Nightsong after him.”
Gale felt his breath catch in his chest, but tried not to show it. Gods no, he couldn’t let them know! Maybe he could lie his way out of this-
“We know you’ve managed to get it. What you’re going to tell me is where you’re keeping it. And if you answer quickly...” He trailed off, tapping the bars with the back of his knuckle, and watched intently as the wizard inside shrunk back from the sound. “Maybe it won’t hurt so much.”
The words were sickly sweet, and Gale felt his insides turn to ice. They knew the truth, without a doubt. If he was understanding correctly, it was Aradin that let slip their success to these unsavoury characters, after a poor bluff from Shadowheart when they’d met him outside of Sorcerous Sundries just that morning. Unfortunately for Gale, he could neither lie his way out, nor tell the truth about her location – there was no universe in which Gale willingly gave up a friend, or even a stranger, to such a man. Not under his own will.
Then again, he was the least battle-able of all their rag-tag team – without his magic, he was merely a man, soft and weak, and he was horribly aware of it right now. For a selfish moment, he wished somebody else was in his place; someone like Lae’zel would brush all this off in an afternoon, and would never give up information. He quickly shook the thought away, ashamed of his own weakness. They would surely look for him when he failed to return to camp, he would just have to hold out until then.
He purposefully didn’t imagine what would happen if they didn’t.
In his bedraggled state, sopping wet and still slightly breathless, Gale did his best to affect honest confusion.
“Ah, hear that from Aradin, did you?” He tutted, shaking his head at the unimpressed face he spoke to. “Well, it’s to be expected. The man’s half-mad with grief! After his own endeavours were so tragically unsuccessful, I’m sure a smart man such as yourself could agree that he-”
He didn’t get to finish his already-feeble bluff before the man muttered again, and the staff shot a blue bolt into the cage.
Gale writhed soundlessly as the spell struck him, his mouth agape in a scream that was trapped in his chest. Everything from his lungs to his fingertips spasmed horribly with each jolt. The water worked against him, creating a terrible feedback of shooting pain travelling along his burning skin on seemingly endless repeat. His knees and feet felt scorched where they touched the metal floor, and at the back of his tormented mind he wondered if the skin was really melting, or if it just felt like it.
The spell cut off again, just as suddenly as it came, but his body was still out of control. It tingled and jerked with aftershocks as he was finally allowed to cry out wordlessly, and he fell onto his back, wrung out and unable to catch himself. Trembling hands clawed at his chest futilely, trying to calm his racing heart. He gulped stale air between agonised sobs, and tasted blood.
“I hope you aren’t trying to take me for a fool.” The footsteps came close again, and Gale tried to look, straining his head back to see where the pain would come from next. Through the steaming strands of his fringe, the figure of his captor looked horrible twisted, like something out of a cautionary children’s book. Or perhaps it was the pure malice that seemed to seep from his every pore, grin pale and shining in the blue light of the staff. It loomed over him, and Gale couldn’t move any further away.
“You will tell me where you’ve hidden it,” it spoke lowly, promising torture no matter what he did now. “And I will have my reward.”
There was a moment of silence, then. A last opportunity for Gale to forsake his friends, his pride, and his honour.
He stayed silent, and stared resolutely up into the face of his captor with no small amount of fear.
With a frustrated growl, the man drew back again.
Another shock surged through him, and this time, it didn’t stop.
The sheer agony of it was even worse than last time. The distant, coherent part of his brain that was always analysing realised that the strength of this cantrip had been infused with latent energy from the first two. But in the moment, he didn’t care, he couldn’t even think.
Wave upon wave of artificial lightning shot up every nerve like he was being burned alive twice over. His eye stared wide and unseeing, and his mind went blank. He couldn’t breathe, and yet he could still smell the acrid smoke from where he felt the hairs on his arms and chest begin to singe. Through his involuntary thrashing and jerking, he could tell that even his clothes were beginning to steam.
He didn’t know how long it lasted, whether it was a mere second or an hour, but he wished it to be over. His heart beat painfully against his ribs, feeling like it was about to burst. For a moment, he hoped it would.
And then it was over and he sucked down air into aching lungs, feeling like a landed fish with the way he jerked and twitched where he lay, waiting to gain control of his limbs again. His ears sang deafeningly, either burst or injured from the extended torture. Hot lines cut into his face where tears he hadn't been aware of had started to heat up too much on his skin. He hoped vaguely that it wasn’t anything that would scar.
Sound began to filter back in muffled snapshots, though he still couldn’t see more than silhouettes. How much damage could internal lightning strikes cause one’s senses, he pondered, exhausted. His fingers still spasmed uncomfortably and his skin still felt like it had recently been lit on fire, but for whatever reason, the torment had stopped. Maybe the idiot had realised that you can’t wring answers from a melted brain.
As sounds gradually became clearer he became aware of agitated talking, although it still sounded like it was underwater. Nothing he could clearly pinpoint.
And then the sharp jangle of keys cut through the murkiness nearby, accompanied by a jerk of his cage. He shoved himself back with muscles like gelatine, crowding away from the movement. His eyes landed on a new figure, still dim and fuzzy at the edges, but very clearly-
“Minsc?” He rasped, equally surprised and relieved.
The man in question beamed as he struggled with the ring of keys, although there were only two of them.
“My wizardly friend, how good it is to see you in one piece! Boo has been so worried.”
As blithe as ever, Minsc continued to chat with his hamster loudly while working to set him free, though Gale was too tired to listen to what he was saying. Some sort of one-sided conversation with the hamster in question, and a denial about who exactly was the worried party. It turned to mush in his brain as he felt his consciousness fading fast, his body long past its limits.
He heard several concerned voices past the din of the ranger’s chatter, but had no energy to respond. Within moments, he let himself drift off, feeling through their shared worms that he was safe.