Welcome to Gaia! ::

The place Black Lady teleported him to was -- a living room. It had four walls. It was a fairly bare living room, whoever lived there, if anyone really did live there: there was a TV, a DVD rack, a sofa, and not a lot else that Hector laid eyes on before the wizard stepped into the room from behind him, Hector whirling around to see him, and took in both of them with a blink of his blue eyes.

There wasn't time to think, so Hector didn't, just lunged for him in the doorway over Chibiusa's unconscious body, Devourer held poised to run him through. The wizard was fast, he was very fast -- he moved aside, dodging like he knew footwork he shouldn't've -- but he wasn't quite fast enough. Devourer grazed Wiseman's arm before Hector's momentum carried him past him through the doorway, knocking him into a dining room table and a set of hardwood chairs: and then Devourer wrenched itself out of his hand and went clattering across the floor, and then a hand that wasn't there seized him by the throat and pulled him to sprawl backwards on the dining room floor, and then he was pinned there by an invisible force, next to the table and the bowled-over chairs.

A pair of boots walked up to him and, after some consideration, nudged him with one pointed toe. The man they called Dale Cooper was standing over him. He'd never seen him before, save through Nehelenia's descriptions, who always called him -- tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed, grinned like a demon. He wasn't grinning now, but he was the rest; it was hard to tell how old he was, as always, but he was a grown man, probably no younger than twenty-five, probably no older than thirty-five. He was --

Hector was pinned flat. The man regarded him for another moment, his hand pressed absently over the wound on his arm, and then he dropped to one knee next to him.

The air around them was crackling. When he spoke, he had a voice like a radio host or a '40s silver-screen star.

"What did you give her?"

Dale Cooper clucked his tongue, tsk, and reached down -- Hector turned his face away -- to wipe the sweat away from his forehead with one hand. His cloak was draped out on the ground behind him and his hood was pushed down. He shook his head.

"That's better, son," he said, and lay his palm flat on Hector's forehead. "Let's try and do it like civilized folk from now on, what do you say?"

He picked up Hector's hand carefully with his other hand and inspected it and tsked again. "Broken clean through," he said with a sigh. "We're gonna have to get this looked at. Well. Somebody's gonna have to get this looked at. I'm not sure our providers carry your insurance, Prince Hector -- or do I mistake your title, Your Highness?"

Silence. Enough silence that Hector was about ready to start up with, My name is Hector of the Imperium, but then:

Wiseman smiled at him. "But I don't think I do," he said. "You see, I read Burke's Peerage back to front. Front to back and back to front."

"Do what to her?" Wiseman sprung, lightly, to his feet again and walked into -- what had to be an attached kitchen, or something, because there was the brief hum of a refrigerator or freezer as he opened and closed another drawer and started to empty something into a bag. "Steal her candy?" The refrigerator swung shut. "Tell her there's no Santa Claus?" There was a brief rrip noise, whatever that was. "Show her the beginning of Bambi?"

Footsteps, and then the cowboy boots were standing next to Hector again. He knelt again and dropped a paper-towel-wrapped bag of ice on the fingers of Hector's wounded hand, which was another stab of pain, and then the pain of cold, slowly dulling to numbness.

Wiseman sat back on his hands and crossed his legs. The blood from his own arm was leaking all over the white bandages that ran under his bracers, but apparently that was a secondary concern. Nevertheless he pressed his hand to the wound again. "Oh, you mean <********> her," he said, like he was talking about the weather. "I dunno. She might, but usually I don't look at her face for that."

Wiseman sighed. It wasn't an annoyed sigh, just the tired sigh of someone corraling a squalling child, and he looked at Hector like he was just that: a squalling child. The cut on his arm must have been shallow, as he'd staunched it with little trouble and now was absently unwinding one of the bandages on his forearm to replace it further up on his arm. Even so, it had been made by Devourer -- even so.

"Son," he said. "Let it go. You're making me a little embarrassed for you when you try."

If only Dale Cooper had been just a moment slower.

The invisible pressure on Hector hadn't abated any, and it didn't look to be taxing his captor at all. His captor was what he was, after all, now that it was clear he wasn't going to kill him, and the possibilities were looming wildly as to what he might do with him otherwise: torture him for information? Corrupt him somehow, brainwash him? Every way he could think came down to one conclusion and one conclusion only, use him against Alex, and that was the ice that was freezing in the pit in his stomach. His fingers were going numb. He wished that he could move his hand enough to shake the ice off, to bring the pain back, because that would be a distraction at least from the maelstrom of worry.

Next to him, Wiseman had gotten up and walked across the room. "So this is your sword," he said aloud. "A Cavalier's pride and joy. I hate to take it away, but I've got no guarantee of you being a good boy, you understand. I wonder what it does."

Hector said nothing.

The wizard was silent for a moment or two, maybe turning Devourer this way and that. "Well," he said. "I suppose we'll find out soon enough."

More nothing. The man walked over and pulled out a chair where Hector could see him, Devourer laid out over his lap. He rested his hand on the hilt.

His captor was looking at Hector a little quizzically, like a scientist looking at a specimen under glass. "By now," he said, "I'd wager that Aphrodite's reported that fingersnap to her Queen. And unless there is some very serious trouble in Paradise, she's reported that to her handsome beau, your brother. And if I'm not mistaken, you wouldn't enact such a harebrained plan on my little girl without his greenlight, so," he patted Devourer again, "he's probably wondering where you are too."

He stood up and paced to the other side of the dining room table, where it was a little harder to see him. He brought Devourer up into a guard and then struck down with it like it was a saber or a longsword, meeting an invisible shield and locking with it for a moment or two before disentangling himself and finishing his imaginary opponent with a cleaving strike from above.

"They call that strike the vom Tag in Germany." Wiseman came back to the chair, sat down, crossed a leg over another, lay the rapier flat on his lap again. "Or called, anyway. I'm pretty sure German military technology has advanced a bit. I suppose they teach you to fence like a gentleman, wherever you come from?"

"The Zomhau goes like this." Wiseman drew a little line in the air with his index finger, like it was an imaginary sword. "The Krumphau like this. Ochs is the stupidest guard, I've always thought, sword on one side of your head like you're, well, an ox -- would not terrify me, and I'm a magician, not a Cavalier. Of course, I only know this from Liechtenauer's manual," he shrugged and folded his fingers back into the palm of his hand, "which means I don't really know it at all. And I'm speaking to -- what I've been led to believe is -- a master. Captain of the Prince's Guard. I do wonder, how many of your men have you brought over? What is left of the Prince's Guard? Who will come for you?"

Silence. Someone started a car somewhere outside. That was, in an odd way, relieving; and at the same time, a little awful. They were in a place, they were somewhere. They were a wall away from freedom. But Cavaliers didn't scream, and there was no guarantee he'd even get that far before the wizard -- closed his mouth with an invisible hand, or whatever other conjurer's tricks he had up his sleeve. It was worst to see him just sitting there talking. The man in his nightmares was always laughing at things. This one had barely even smiled.

"I could torture you for that information," said Wiseman, peering down at him.

He could.

"I could take an interest in prying that out of your stubborn little head," he moved Devourer to tap Hector's forehead with the tip, "because it's all bundled up in there, ain't it now?"

He could, it was.

"I won't."

Devourer was pulled up again and poised on the ground, point down, hand rested idly on the hilt.

"Because I don't have to," he said. "Bring all your Cavaliers, Captain. Bring all your men. The Pyrite Crystal is mine," he laid his hand flat on his chest, "and do you honestly believe that you can stop me from taking what belongs to me?"

The magician shifted position in his chair, then shifted position again. His eyes kept flickering around, always keeping Hector in the corner of his vision, but he looked like a bored ten-year-old in a dentist's waiting room. He looked like he'd very quickly bored of Hector and was distracted thinking of something else to amuse himself, which was a strange thing indeed, and one he might've put down to theatrics if he wasn't being so fundamentally untheatrical about it. If nothing else, Dale Cooper knew how to put on a show.

He snapped his fingers. "Never mind that," he said with his hand flung to one side as if to clear the topic off an imaginary table. "I should like to see your Queen again. She's a lovely lady, made quite the impression. Though going by you I reckon she might be a little too young for me now. It's a tragedy when age gets in the way of a relationship, I know, but propriety must be observed. If we don't, who will? And then civilization will crash down around our ears and that simply won't do, not at all."

Devourer was thrown aside, or rather tossed into the air and then floated aside while Wiseman got to his feet and paced around his chair at an almost feverish rate. He had a predatory grin on his face when he addressed Hector again. "I've got to hand it to you in advance, Captain," he said. "The Pyrite Crystal's going to be mine in the next twenty-four hours -- and do you know, I just couldn't have done it alone."

And without waiting for him to respond, his captor grinned even wider and gestured with one hand like he was conducting the briefest of all symphonies. "Chains," he said, and out of nowhere they sprung to lock Hector's arms and legs together.

It hadn't been boredom. Hector had been wrong.

Whatever else the wizard was, he was mortal enough for Devourer.

Devourer drove animals frothing and men mad. For this one, madness came in the form of a tug upwards on Hector's hands and shoulders, and then the chains yanking themselves forward of their own volition, dragging him with them. None of that was a surprise. He was a telekinetic, and probably found it an indignity to drag his prisoners around himself -- nearly as much of an indignity as it was to be dragged through the living room by invisible hands. The wizard walked behind him, a little glazed-over in the eyes. They passed Black Lady, slumped on the floor, and Wiseman spared her only a glance -- and then he took Hector into yet the next room over.

That was three rooms he'd seen of this place. It still wasn't very informative. He could try to memorize the dimensions but it was all white-painted walls at this point, a TV, a sofa -- now a queen-sized bed with a full-length mirror on the wall, as they were in the bedroom now. Not much to be told about that either.

Hector was dumped unceremoniously on the floor in front of the mirror. Next to him, Wiseman hopped up to sit on the edge of the bed, which was outfitted with nondescript blue sheets and two pillows.

"So," he said.

Hector said nothing.

"I don't reckon you're wondering what the mirror's for, as they make you slavishly obedient in the cavalier factory, not stupid."

Still nothing.

"But I do reckon you're wondering how I think I'm going to get you to contact your brother. Am I right?"