Motley (#Wattys2016)

19: Copper Bands

PRESENT DAY

Nori opened her eyes. She was lying in a moldy stone jail cell. There were no windows, just a door made of metal bars and three stone walls caked in dirt. Straw was scattered aimlessly on the ground.

She got up from the ground and tried to stand up. In doing so, she found her wrists handcuffed to the wall. She growled in frustration, trying to yank the cuffs off.

"Oh good, you're awake!"

Nori looked around. Kei was standing outside, looking slightly relieved. "I thought you were dead," he said. "I think you used too much magic and you lost all your energy."

"Where am I?" Nori demanded.

"You're in a dungeon. In Colla Voce castle."

"Shit," Nori said in spite of herself. She sat back down and sighed. "Nothing's going right."

"Yeah, I know," said Kei gloomily.

"Kei, the Ivory Prince told me you've got-"

"A demon planted on me? Yeah. He told me too." Kei held up his left fist. A black shape was on his hand, like an ink spill. "This is it."

"And it turns out Ryota lied," Nori said. "He lied to all of us. I can't believe I... believed him."

"You shouldn't take it so hard on yourself," Kei said. "Be mad at the Ivory Prince, if anybody."

"Do you know what happened to the rest of my crew?"

"I saw Masa and Reiko taken to a different part of the dungeon. I didn't see Satoru anywhere."

"Then he's probably dead," Nori said in defeat. "He tried to escape the city. The Rose Marquis would have caught him at the border."

"Nori, I don't have a lot of time down here. I want to try and help."

Nori looked up at him. "How can you help?"

"I can get you out of here," Kei said. "I can help you escape. The Ivory Prince wants to put you on trial in the morning, and that's in a couple of hours."

Nori shook her head sadly. Her whole body ached with fatigue. "I don't want to leave without my crew." Suddenly, she had an idea. "Listen! I know this would be difficult, but since you're so close to the Ivory Prince, you could probably convince him to let me go!"

"I can't do that, Nori. He wouldn't listen."

"Sure he would!"

"You don't understand. If I did anything to defy him, I would die!"

"I know that," said Nori. Kei looked surprised at her heartlessness, but she said, "no, no! Just say that you have some kind of secret about me so if he kills you, he'll never know it! And you can say that if he goes through with the trial, bad things will happen because of my secret!"

Kei raised his eyebrows. "What secret?"

"Um... I use fire magic!"

"He knows that."

"I have a backup that I can telepathically call to if I'm in trouble!"

"That isn't even true."

"Well, what do you want to say about me?" Nori said, annoyed.

"I'm not going to say anything about you. I'm not going to risk my life for this, and not my job. The Ivory Prince could take away my position as general! I won't be able to spy on him anymore, and again there would be no inside news on the Rose Marquis!"

"But he's probably going to kill you anyways!"

"I'm still important to him," Kei said. "Because of this demon curse on me, he knows I won't do anything to fight him, so he trusts me."

"So you won't help?"

Kei looked a bit ashamed, but it was gone in an instant. "I can help you escape or let you be tried by the Ivory Prince and his court. Your choice."

"I'm not leaving without my friends!" Nori said through gritted teeth.

"Nori, I want to help, I really do, but you've got to-"

"No! If you really want to help, idiot, stop being the prince's puppet and help my crew escape!"

Kei's expression was stony. "I see... You'd rather die than abandon your friends."

"I've been abandoned many times. I know how it feels and I don't want it to happen to people I care about."

He nodded to her curtly and walked out of the dungeon. Nori watched him leave with apprehension; he was her last hope. He could have helped if he really wanted to, Nori thought furiously.

She was trying to fight back tears. She would probably be killed at this trial. Now that the Ivory Prince had taken Colla Voce, he could probably do whatever he wanted. And whoever was on this council that Kei talked about were probably the prince's other military generals, so they didn't matter.

It seemed like she was completely alone again. It was like her life before she met Amaya and Satoru, except that she would be dead in a few hours. I shouldn't have used fire magic. Ryota was right, I drained all of my energy. She tried to conjure some fire, when she realized that the bands on her wrist were copper; the nullifier for elemental magic. She tugged on her wrists frantically, so hard that the copper cut into her skin and let blood trickle down.

Nori gave up. She let her tears come, hot and heavy in her despair. She cried for Satoru, and Reiko and Masa. She cried for Ryota, and for Kei and Amaya. Her weeping didn't stop until two guards in white came for her. They unlocked her prison cell and dragged her upstairs to the courtroom. Nori didn't bother trying to struggle.

*x's song: Angels on the Moon by Thriving Ivory*