Salvation
The odds were already stacked against him by the time the carrier vessel landed. Glace had hardly any idea of what was going on, much less where he was. He just knew the place had an odd mixture of smells, like the way the air smells after a bolt of lightning crashes nearby, something thick and oily, but lacking the relative pleasantry of the Conjurers’ medicinal oils. There were other things, too, which he couldn’t describe, and things far too familiar which were the result of being contained with however many others had been taken. Scared people, many of them children. He never even bothered to look at them. Turned and facing the wall, he took the metallic coldness of whatever he was laying on to be a small comfort.
He barely recalled how he and the Conjurers, along with a handful of others, attempted to flee into the depths of the Shroud and fell into the Garleans’ path, the very thing they had hoped to evade. He was no stranger to odds so badly skewed against him, and he had reached a point in his young life where, with his constant sickness, all he could hope for was a swift end. He was tired and wanted nothing more than to sink into the deep blackness of dreamless sleep from which nothing could wake him, sure that their intended journey would have been the end of him anyway.
This had turned into more of a detour than he had imagined in his wildest of daydreams. Truly, he had no idea that this existed at all. The Garleans were but boogiemen, something parents told their children about to get them to behave, or such was his assumption. His sire had hardly spoken to him in any favorable, much less cautionary way. Why would he have? Glace wasn’t going anywhere.
The airship, or whatever it was, droned into stillness. Heavy metallic thuds broke that stillness a moment later, followed by the deep groan of a large hatch yawning open. Footsteps. Cries of fear and worry over a singular voice barking orders for the captives to get up and move. Glace remained where he was, through no fault of his own, and ended up being one of the last aboard the carrier.
“I said get up!” The force of a heavy, booted foot slammed into his ribs with enough force that he met the wall face first and was left struggling to regain his breath. He had always had enough trouble breathing without someone stomping the wind from his lungs.
“Didn’t you hear me, you pointy-eared shite?” The boot came down again. He never even heard the officer call for one of his subordinates, or the accompanying footsteps which followed. What he felt next was the wrenching grab of a gauntleted hand hauling him up by the hair on his head.
“Cladius!” The officer barked again, and Glace felt his own weight swing to one side. He cracked open an eye just enough to meet the face of a Garlean soldier. "What the ever-living-fuck were you thinking bringing this one along? Just look at him! What a waste… at the very least you should’ve skinned him and brought his hide back. Might’ve been a nice doormat for Lord van Baelsar. Get ‘im out of here.“
He never got a look at the officer. Glace felt the return of gravity, and the cold floor of the ship.
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