He was drifting in and out of consciousness and could not tell how long this had been the case. Sometimes when he surfaced there were voices, one deep and gruff, the other meek and cowardly, always apologizing. Sometimes the meek voice would whisper apologies and regrets to him. He had never been able to respond to any of it.

His dreams were erratic, sometimes about Barth, but he knew that Barth wasn’t here and he wasn’t at home. When he woke enough he’d become aware of cobbles under him and of heavy shackles about all of his extremities, trapped in his pinned form and weakened by something he could not define.

It smelled and tasted like musty crates, void of life with only the lingering scent of food – long gone -, which might at one time have been housed in them. It was the first time in ages that he had been awake even long enough to take stock of this much and he was careful not to open his eyes or stir lest he provoke his captors into once again knocking him out.

Captors. He couldn’t remember at first how he knew it but it was true, he had been captured and all he could do was reach back and try to piece together how it had happened.

He had been out, as he so often was, shopping in town for the various things the castle needed in a month, a task they likely could have asked someone else to do but one he preferred to do himself. He had intended to stop by Spindle Lane also to file some papers to re-order drinks and pay the wages of the cleaning staff but had never reached the lane.

There had been a flash of colour, magenta, yellow green, and before he could turn to face the body heat, something had been thrown and he had felt the nauseous vertigo of falling. Beyond that he couldn’t be sure, his dreams were unreliable, sometimes wandering through the halls of the castle looking for Barth, other times walking alone through a hellscape forged of twisted human bodies reaching up like trees. The basement he’d come to realize couldn’t have been a dream in the same way, the gruff voice and the timid one having to be real.

Shivering, he realized he was cold and likely had been for a long time, knowing that even if he was not drained that movement would be sluggish and clumsy.

He was hungry and thirsty too, a state he had not felt since living with Barth and Calder, always vibrant and fed, flush with FEAR and potent energy. He felt like a shadow of himself and in a grim sort of way wondered if this was where he would be forever, trapped in his own unimaginative dreams without comfort or company.

He tried to speak and say Barth’s name but was tightly muzzled, the muzzle brutally stitched into his flesh, each stitch screaming in pain as he strained against it.

“Oh no.” the timid voice said “You are awake again. Shhh shh. Stay still, don’t wriggle, you’ll only hurt yourself.” A scuffle and then a clatter of things falling over. He couldn’t see well in the dim dark and with the muzzle he couldn’t flick his tongue to see, his heat pits not facing the right direction to give him anything but confusion.

“What’s GOING ON DOWN THERE?” a paranoid, gruff bark echoed down from far away.

“N..n…nothing.” the timid voice crooned back. “I j…just..just knocked over my ink!”

“Keep the jacking noise down then or you’ll WAKE THE WHOLE TOWN.”

There was a rustle of papers, nearer to him and something was pressed to his chest, up against a painful and raw injury where his mark was. He gasped sharply as whatever it was seemed to sap the spark of warmth from him which had been flutteringly keeping him awake. He didn’t want to go back to the dreams, void as they were of Calder’s daily domesticity and Barth’s closeness and relaxation.

It wasn’t sleep, not the sort he had come to embrace and crave, it took from him rather than restored and left him more alone than he had been since those days in the fog where he’d helplessly done anything he could to look for Home.