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[member=3615]JERVIS[/member]
He doesn’t struggle; it isn’t worth it.
Silently Red slumps his back against the wall, arms bound over his head by the same chains that likely kept Beck and Sam shackled at the hands of their enemies. Half crouching, half kneeling, his limbs burn with an intensity he never knew before; his ankle, brutally twisted by the child Aine and her vines, sends agonizing pangs through his core with every shift of his weight. It’s this slow torture, a breaking down of the spirit, that leaves him exhausted where he stands. There’s little emotion left to scrounge up from the depths. His own rage had been a fiery explosion of fury that he’d expelled from his system in the midst of battle. It had drained out through every pore, spending him until there was nothing left. He cannot will himself to be angry.
He’s beaten. He cannot be upset because this punishment was self-wrought, brought on by blind emotions and poor decisions made on an adrenaline high. Perhaps it’s his own fault for losing control. He wonders what the others thought, looking upon his twisted face and curling horns; did they see man, or beast? Was he the same to them when he was drenched in blood as when he smiled, when he sat beside the midsummer bonfire and spoke easy with his peers, his family?
If he feels something, something beyond the ache that settles deep in his bones, it’s guilt. Beck’s blackened blood still stains the dirt somewhere in these caverns, and even though Red tried to seek vengeance for him, for Sam, for Kiira, he still failed like all the rest. In a fit, he tries to pull on the chains that keep him standing, a last endeavor to break free, but the mass of chains around flesh and stone keep him bound in place.
Red closes his eyes and thinks of absolution. Where there was anger, where there was a creature in his chest that wanted to see Pittian blood hit the ground, he finds nothing. Spent. All that was left in him was the man that could not win.
Silently Red slumps his back against the wall, arms bound over his head by the same chains that likely kept Beck and Sam shackled at the hands of their enemies. Half crouching, half kneeling, his limbs burn with an intensity he never knew before; his ankle, brutally twisted by the child Aine and her vines, sends agonizing pangs through his core with every shift of his weight. It’s this slow torture, a breaking down of the spirit, that leaves him exhausted where he stands. There’s little emotion left to scrounge up from the depths. His own rage had been a fiery explosion of fury that he’d expelled from his system in the midst of battle. It had drained out through every pore, spending him until there was nothing left. He cannot will himself to be angry.
He’s beaten. He cannot be upset because this punishment was self-wrought, brought on by blind emotions and poor decisions made on an adrenaline high. Perhaps it’s his own fault for losing control. He wonders what the others thought, looking upon his twisted face and curling horns; did they see man, or beast? Was he the same to them when he was drenched in blood as when he smiled, when he sat beside the midsummer bonfire and spoke easy with his peers, his family?
If he feels something, something beyond the ache that settles deep in his bones, it’s guilt. Beck’s blackened blood still stains the dirt somewhere in these caverns, and even though Red tried to seek vengeance for him, for Sam, for Kiira, he still failed like all the rest. In a fit, he tries to pull on the chains that keep him standing, a last endeavor to break free, but the mass of chains around flesh and stone keep him bound in place.
Red closes his eyes and thinks of absolution. Where there was anger, where there was a creature in his chest that wanted to see Pittian blood hit the ground, he finds nothing. Spent. All that was left in him was the man that could not win.
[member=3615]JERVIS[/member]