The Chained Watcher

Backstory

This is from Grian's past, before his unfortunate imprisonment.

~~~

The night was supposed to be a normal one. 

Having been originally assigned to gather new test subjects for a superior, he had found one of his unfortunate colleagues saddled with guard duty and offered to swap jobs. Naturally, they were ecstatic to be able to get away from the monotonous shift, and had taken him up on the offer with such speed one would think they had been offered an escape from the brink of death. After all, why would someone willingly choose the least exciting duty in the whole compound?

He didn't like it either, but gathering new test subjects always left a foul taste in his mouth.

Honestly, why did this location even need guarding in the first place? The only ground access to and from the outside is locked, and if something can guess a seven digit code without messing up three times and triggering the alarm, its level of luck wasn't something he wanted to trifle with. Maybe it's the fact that the lock was still code based, instead of the better -and more expensive- magic alternative.

Some overenthusiastic engineer had tried to install their newest experimental observation system, and the entire thing had exploded quite spectacularly, leaving the facility lacking all but the most bare-bones camera network. No sound reception, no aura detectors, no magic sensors... If it weren't for this event, he was pretty sure the cameras would have remained forgotten until they decayed due to lack of maintenance. Those things were seriously ancient, probably dating back to when the facility was first being built.

Whoever had designed them had also failed to place them in optimal positions, and the working ones had been moved to cover key areas, such as the door he was responsible for guarding. But of course, they couldn't have just put them in front of the door and been done with it. No, they had to put the one camera responsible for watching the door a good ways down the hall, so they could make sure the guard wasn't slacking either.

Giving the camera behind him a sour look, despite knowing his mask hid most of his expression, he let his gaze wander over the room he was stuck guarding.

The walls were a dusty brownish grey, with no interesting embellishments or patterns to trace with his eyes when bored. Why the guard post was at the end of a T-shaped intersection instead of in front of the door, he would never know. The hallway in front of him didn't even end at the exit, with several low-security storage rooms scattered on either side.

If this facility was one of the public ones that often got sieged, the entrance would have at the very least been something interesting to look at. Those places were always carefully decorated to maximize the level of intimidation inflicted upon invading armies. Funnily enough, most kingdoms didn't appreciate the occasional gathering of new test subjects from their rural villages.

To his left, there was nothing but a boring hallway. The most engaging visual stimuli from that end was the magical scorch marks marring the former locations of the recently-destructed surveillance system. Maybe he could recommend some kind of statue be placed over at the end of it. His authority level was too low to actually order it done, but an offhand remark about the effectiveness of a well-placed golem statue should do the trick.

Luckily, this post had the luxury of a desk and chair to sit at, which was not something all guard posts had. The bigger facilities would usually have guards standing at the entrance, and with the general lack of most of the discomforts experienced by the mortal races, this sort of assignment could last for days on end. At least he's not one of the poor souls who managed to get themselves guard duty as a punishment. They're sometimes stuck at their posts for weeks, depending on who they offended.