The Serpent's Coil (Tsukkiyama)

Birds and Bugs and Tigers, oh my!

Yamaguchi didn't really expect luxury from the palace dungeons, but this was far worse than anything he had imagined beforehand. He had figured they would have been like what he had seen in the Firefly empire, barren, primitive, and a little dirty but livable and humane at the very least. The Firefly palace, it seemed, had exceptionally lavish dungeons; either that or the Slithering Isles treated their prisoners with notable lack of care. Perhaps, it was a little bit of both, or maybe Daishou had deliberately given Yamaguchi the worst of the worst cells.

Regardless of the reason, Yamaguchi's prison cell was absolutely miserable. It was less a cell and more of a subterranean room of packed soil with iron bars across the one entrance. Yamaguchi had no cot, blanket, or other basic amenities, nothing at all. Whenever it rained heavily, the water seeped in through the roof and walls of dirt and turned the whole place into a muddy mess; it, of course, always rained, so Yamaguchi was always coated in a substantial layer of grime. On the dryer times of day, when the ceiling didn't look like it was at risk of caving in under water weight, Bugs crawled out of the hidden nooks and crannies and infested any slightly dry space. Between the constant dampness and the cool underground air, the prison cell was far colder than anywhere in the palace proper. It was a temperature that Yamaguchi would have probably once equated with summers up north, but it was a drastic change from the constant humid heat of above.

To make matters worse, Yamaguchi was treated atrociously by the guards. His meals, if one could even call them that, consisted of one meagre slice of bread a day and no water to speak of. To keep himself from dehydration, Yamaguchi had to drink the rain that seeped through the walls and ceiling and hope he wouldn't catch some kind of jungle-illness from the sullied water. He had even considered licking the condensation off the iron bars that kept him caged but decided that he needed to keep at least some shred of his dignity intact. Not that he had much to preserve in the first place, not while he sat, mud-covered and shivering, in what barely constituted as undergarments. As restrictive and insufferable as they were, Yamaguchi missed the fine garments of the upper palace.

Daishou, paranoid and angry, made sure to visit Yamaguchi at least twice daily. The serpentine man was short with his temper and constantly pressed Yamaguchi for information with questions he had no answer to. Daishou had come to believe that Yamaguchi was part of some secret underground resistance movement, more specifically one that tampered with his war machines. Yamaguchi, of course, knew nothing of such topics besides his own minor tampering, which he did not divulge to the prince. Yamaguchi didn't even know why Daishou would think he had involved himself in some mind of pseudo-revolution; he had never once made a public appearance or travelled outside castle bounds.

Even with nothing to substantiate his claims, Daishou continuously blamed Yamaguchi for the, apparently frequent, failures in his plans. Yamaguchi listened if only to gain useful information. Construction efforts on the islands had been interfered with, a boat mysteriously sunk here, a building crumbled there. Animal attacks had seen a sudden and unexplained uptick in frequency, especially to foremen and military contractors. Nobles had started to find poisonous snakes and other reptiles in their homes, and Daishou was convinced someone had planted them. To Yamaguchi it simply sounded like the animals of the jungle were fighting back. After all, Daisou had started to industrialize and deforest the islands. Any time Yamaguchi denied involvement, though, Daishou would hit him and storm out in a rage before he returned later to start the cycle again.

Escape, of course, was constantly on Yamaguchi's mind. He was no damsel in distress, and he had rather lost hope in the mysterious letter senders. In any other scenario, he could simply use his synergy to pick the lock mechanism on the cell door, but as it was, his synergy was thwarted. His cell was largely unguarded, yes, but that was because the guards had no reason to believe Yamaguchi could escape. Daishou, for all his malicious arrogance, was a smart man, and he knew better than to leave a synergist with their powers. There was a potion, lukewarm and odorous, that Yamaguchi presumed could be brewed with some plant native only to the isles. To any normal person, it would likely be nothing more than a particularly unpleasant green tea, but as it was, something about it dampened a synergist's abilities. It wasn't a permanent solution; the concoction clearly had a shelf life of about twelve hours, as Daishou personally came twice a day to make sure Yamaguchi drank his share. As unfortunate as it was, Yamaguchi could not for the life of him think of a way to get out of drinking the potion, nothing that wouldn't make it obvious he was trying to escape anyway.