Chapter Text
Sand.
Sand that stretches endless, smooth and pale as the horizon it meets. Sand that sweeps from the dunes in the hot, callous wind, stinging where it strikes.
A sumpter beat bellows.
Trussed upon its back, a figure stirs, groaning. Her head aches, as do her limbs, from the tightness of their bindings and from their forcibly fixed position.
Sand below her, and sand crusting the coarse animal fur beneath her, and sand pelting pinprick needles against bare skin.
She cranes her neck to see, and sees only sky, and more sand, beyond the fringes of the beast’s pelt. The beast is moving, jostling her so that the dunes- which appear to her to be upside down- sweep back and forth across her vision. She tenses against her bindings, grimacing as coarse rope abrades the skin at her wrists and elbows and ankles. She kicks, but can only manage a wormlike wriggle. Her skin feels scorched; the sun is high and fierce, and mercilessly scalds at one shoulder and at her face. She is thirsty, and dizzy, and her head aches.
She remembers a voice. ‘…listen… observe…’
But she can see nothing but sand, and sun, and sky, and the matted coat of the beast to which she is bound. There are no voices but the voice of the wind. She does not recognize the dunes- but then, the dunes are ever shifting.
"hh--hey!" she croaks, not recognizing her own voice.
No one answers.
She cranes her neck the other way, to look at herself. She is dusty, her sweat long dry, the sand clinging to her skin where it must have been. She is barefoot and burned. Her boots have been taken, and her belts, and her gloves and gauntlet and spaulder. She can feel her Vision, somewhere, dimly, but the frail connection is thready and weak and she cannot draw upon it when she tries.
She allows her head to fall back again. The sun is hot upon her face. She thinks that if she knew the time of day or the direction of the wind, she could determine the direction in which they are traveling- but the sun is too high, and the wind is whipping in too many restless directions, and the blood that rushes to her head leaves her dizzy in the plodding, sloshing motion of the beast, until the bright dunes fade again to a shapeless dark.
——
As the sun sinks, the air chills. The surly sky turns the color of bruised henna fruit, murky in the haze of sand that fills the air and smudges the horizon. The sumpter beasts are stopped, huddled in a tight circle, lowing as they chew their evening feed.
A pair of men sling a trussed body to the ground, with little enough care that the thud of flesh colliding with sand is audible. The body remains as it falls- still, and limp. One of the men approaches, and seizes it by the hair, lifting the head. He brings a flask to its mouth, and tips it back.
Water. The woman- the body- sputters, and spits, gasping.
“That’s all you get.” the man growls. “Maybe don’t spit it out next time.”
He rises and walks away, following his partner to where a low fire is burning.
Dehya curses, writhing in the sand, and only succeeds in drawing her bindings tighter. Then she stops fighting. She listens, and looks. The low murmur of voices from the fire is unintelligible from where she lays bound, and is not within range of her sight- which is mostly an intimate view of the sand beneath her face- but she can smell the smoke. The evening sky traces a horizon that is composed of both smooth dunes, and outcroppings of stone. She shivers, cold now despite the rampant heat in her skin- perhaps colder for it.
“Dehya,” rasps a voice she doesn’t immediately recognize. “…here.”
She turns her head the other way, shuffling her body over, and sees two other forms- also trussed, also cast irreverently onto the flat place in the sand. A lizard skitters by between them.
Well this is ridiculous, she thinks. But at least they are together in it.
“Cyno,” she breathes, grimacing at the grit in her throat and the croak in her voice. “Where…”
“Somewhere in Hadravameth, or near it.” Cyno sounds exhausted; he’s slurring. “I… couldn’t stay conscious for very long. But whenever I woke, we seemed to be traveling north.”
Dehya wants to ask how he could glean that, but her throat is sandpaper and wire.
“Haitham?” she croaks instead.
“...still out.”
“Oy!” a rough voice shouts at them from where the fire burns. “Shut up. No talking.”
Dehya bares her teeth at it, wrestling again with her bindings.
“Careful,” Cyno murmurs, lower than a whisper. “Slipknots. Small movements- fingers and wrists.”
Cyno does not tell her that he had succeeded once in slipping his bindings, and that the men who have taken them had kicked him for it and then bound him again. He thinks that his ribs may be cracked. It hasn’t stopped him from repeating the small rebellion, but he’s been careful to leave them in place this time, more or less, to allow for plausible deniability that they had simply loosened on their own. He, at least, can feel the blood flow to his hands and feet now. His headdress is gone, and his belt and footwear. Like Dehya, he looks a bit scalded.
Near them, the third member of their party lies like a dead man. He too is barefoot, coatless, beltless. His sleeves have been taken and the arm that is not beneath him is livid- nearly purple- from forearm to shoulder. Dehya cranes her neck to look at him. Cyno sees the expression on her face from where he is resting with his own face in the sand, and sighs.
“He isn’t made for the desert,” he muses. “...but he’s alive.”
Not good enough for Dehya.
“Hey!” she shouts, her voice cracking. “If you want us alive, you should probably act like it!”
The low conversation by the fire pauses. A man stands and approaches. He is dressed in simple robes, nondescript. His skin- as far as it can be seen because he is masked and hooded, with only his forehead, eyes and hands visible- is pale in the remaining light. His eyes are greenish and narrowed, the brows above them almost blonde.
He looms over Dehya, who glares back at him. She’s considering throwing herself at his legs, bindings be damned, using her teeth to draw blood.
He smirks- they can see it around his eyes.
“You worried about that one, are you?” he takes the flask from his belt. “Fine.”
The man crosses to the unconscious body in three quick strides. As with Dehya before, he seizes the head by the hair, levering the man off the ground, and slaps his face- which is also badly burned, especially along one cheekbone.
Alhaitham jolts and sucks air, twisting and trying to kick, thwarted by the ropes and by the leverage the man has on him. But then his eyes clear to impossible calmness- though his companions, who know him, can see the murder in their reddened depths. Nevertheless, when the flask is brought un-gently to his mouth, he drinks at once- gulping as much life as he can before their captor flings him back into the sand.
“Now shut up,” the thug growls, then stalks away again.
Dehya glares at him as he steps over her. Cyno watches him go, still, his eyes like those of a predator in the sunset. Alhaitham is gasping, squirming into a better position in the sand so that his face won’t be buried it, his breath rasping.
“…you alright?” Cyno murmurs in his almost inaudible way, when the thug is far enough away.
“…not …my favorite way to wake up…”
“We’re somewhere in Hadravameth,” Cyno tells him. “I’d guess it’s been ten or twelve hours since we were taken.”
“..hmm.”
“So what now?” Dehya asks. She is hoping that the low howl of the wind is enough to mask their voices, if they keep as quiet as they can.
“I need a minute…” Alhaitham grits. He’s trying not to pass out again. His skin is on fire, his head reeling and aching badly. The encroaching desert night is cold, and he’s starting to shiver.
“There are only three of them,” Cyno provides. “There were more of them, earlier, but they split off last time… last time I came to, on the way.”
“So we just have to wait until one goes to sleep.” Dehya is trying to work her wrists loose- slowly, carefully, like Cyno said. “Punks like this… even if they keep a watch of two, we’ll be able to take them down.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Cyno says.
“Haitham?”
The scribe groans but twists his head toward the fire, considering for a long moment.
“…I suppose that’s an option. If they're careless. But I doubt they'll give us the opportunity.”
“…care to explain why?” Cyno asks him.
“…they haven’t asked us anything yet.”
“So?” Dehya asks.
“Either they’re biding their time, or we’re just the ransom.” Alhaitham sighs, and closes his eyes. “They planned this out. Maybe if we could move now, but-“
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up if you know what’s good for you?!”
Alhaitham slides an unimpressed glance toward the approaching voice. “No man can be wise on an empty stomach,” he calls.
The thug strides over, a sillohuette against the dim red of the fire in the last evening light.
When the boot connects with Alhaitham’s gut, the scribe gasps a mouthful of sand and chokes on it, unable to curl around himself because their hands are bound to their own feet, behind them.
“There’s something for your stomach. Now shut it. Last warning before I start taking fingernails,” the man promises, and stalks back to the fire.
“Why’d you do that?!” Dehya hisses anyway.
“…better-" he coughs "...me… than you…”
Dehya huffs. “You’re an idiot.”
“He’s right, Dehya. They’ll try to use you against us,” Cyno murmurs.
Dehya glares at both of them, craning her neck to do it. “If you’re gonna be damned fools, I’ll beat you myself.”
The two men have the grace to look contrite.
Dehya starts scraping her heels against the ground, digging into the cooler sand beneath the surface layer.
"What are you doing," Cyno asks her.
"He said," she grunts, kicking a stone out of the ground, "to leave a mark."
Cyno looks at Alhaitham, who shrugs as best as one can shrug while trussed like a boar. Then Cyno, too, begins to writhe a scrape into the ground, somewhat more delicately. Alhaitham watches them for a moment and then follows suit, slowly and methodically, with an air that is either blasé or deferential to the burns on his skin... or perhaps both.
After a while, Alhaitham hums a wordless noise and goes still. The other two look at him. He gestures with his jaw at the approaching shape.
It's a different thug this time, and they all tense in anticipation of their beating. But the man does not speak, nor seem to notice the grooves that they've scored into the patchy sand. He does, however, drop a scrap of bread on each of them.
Cyno dares the question. “How are we supposed to eat with our hands tied?”
“Figure it out.” The man shrugs, and leaves.
None of them are sure if they consume more bread than sand in the process of trying, but they know they won’t last without sustenance.
So… they figure it out.
——
When the sun breaks the horizon, Alhaitham does not say: “I told you so.”
It’s less a credit to his modesty than an indicator of how he’s conserving what remains of his strength.
The thugs have not taken shifts at all. They had stayed up around the fire through the night, periodically taking turns to patrol a circle around the camp and check their captive’s bindings, brusquely cinching them back down wherever they had been loosened. None of the trio have gotten more than a token resemblance of sleep, waiting fruitlessly for an opportunity for escape to present itself, shivering in the desert night, the ability of their scalded skins to help them thermoregulate compromised. Alhaitham, predictably, had been worst of all- shaking until his muscles had cramped painfully, huffing tiny noises of distress through the night. He is silent and drowsy now that the sun has begun to warm the air.
The reasoning for their guard's continual vigilance becomes clear when a group of different men- five of them this time- makes its way down a dune from the north; they’re to be handed off. It’s a relay, then. They are not to be tied up on the sumpter beasts again. The three captives watch as the creatures are loaded and turned nose to tail, and as the original party of thugs leads the beasts away to the west.
Cyno looks at Dehya. If you knew him well, you would see through the cold certainty in his eyes to the concerned confusion underneath them. Alhaitham quietly watches the beasts move off, and then looks at the sunrise. His eyes are unreadable, but the angry blisters that have formed overnight on the skin of his face and shoulders speak to his thoughts.
A man- robed and masked as nondescriptly as those in the other group- approaches each captive in turn and cuts the bindings between their hands and feet, pulling the pieces of rope away from their ankles and knees, freeing their legs. Each time, he secures their hands behind their back, securely, expertly.
Dehya groans with pain and relief as she moves her legs, pins and needles running through her flesh. The sand is coarse and abrasive against her sun-tender skin, but to be able to move is almost overwhelming.
Cyno curses but almost immediately gets himself to one knee, watching from under his lowered brow as the man moves on.
“Think about it and they’ll shoot you,” the thug murmurs nonchalantly, reading Cyno’s intent. ”And they won’t hesitate for fear of my fate.”
Three of the other four men have crossbows fixed on them; the last has a rifle that oozes an oily red corruption of energy. Cyno knows that it is of Fatui make- a Delusion. He decides to bide his time.
Alhaitham hisses when his bindings are cut. His exposed skin is red, almost purple in places; the fine blistering that has erupted along one arm and on his face glistens, yellowish, in the cool morning sun. He moves stiffly, easing his limbs with treacle-slow caution. When he starts to rise, he sways, one knee splaying into the sand before he can gain his feet. One of their captors seizes him by the armpit to pull him up the rest of the way.
They are herded together and unceremoniously given a mouthful of water each. Then they are directed into a single file line- captor, then captive, then captor, and so on, evenly spaced, ten feet between each body, with the scribe toward the front and Dehya near the rear. And the walking caravan begins to move as the sun rises higher.
——
“Why are you moving us during the day?” Cyno calls. “We would be faster at night.”
No one answers him.
For a while, they’d tried to play obnoxious games. Stopping abruptly. Veering off course. Shouting to each other. Then Dehya had taken a rifle butt to the chin for it, and they’d laid off for a little while.
To call the heat intense would be a trivialization. Even the pale sand is a mirror for it, casting heat back up onto their legs. They have, at least, been given simple hooded robes and sandals. Ill fitting, but at least their skin and and the soles of their feet will not be further scorched. Cyno’s feet are more inured to the scalding sands than most, but even he can feel the heat through the thin leather.
Cyno and Dehya are both creatures of the desert. They both know that even they are tired, thirsty, hungry, and burned. They both know, too, that the third of their number is no desert creature. His strength works against him in these conditions; they know they can run without food and water longer than him. Yet, he continues on, as they do, with no sign of flagging. As far as they can tell.
So they walk on, keeping the pace, which is slowed by the sugar-fine powder of the dunes.
But Cyno is breathing painfully against ribs that he has decided are definitely cracked, and with his arms bound behind him he cannot adjust the position of his shoulders to be assuage the insistent pain, which grows to agony as the day sweeps on. Dehya is nursing a sore jaw and bridling under the forced restraint, itching to fight, glaring murder at back of the thug in front of her. And Alhaitham... Alhaitham is making his feet move, but he is reeling, his skin a constant torment, his head splitting. His pulse is rapid and thready. He knows this is heat exhaustion, and is glad for the robe and the moderate pace they have set. He does not know when his legs are going to give up on him, but he’s beginning to think that they will. In fact… he’s beginning to wonder what their captors will do about it.
They clearly want them alive, after all.
The sun looms. There is no sound, save the occasional whip of wind, and their footsteps, and their breath.
And then Alhaitham staggers, and drops to a knee. He does not have to pretend that the world is spinning- because it is- but he isn’t above playing it up. The rifle butt to his back puts him into the sand- which hurts quite a bit because he lands on the arm with the worst burns, so he shouts about it.
When someone hauls him up by the same arm, he cries out rather more authentically.
“You keep walking. One more kilo. That’s all. I’m sure you can make it, Scribe. Or do you want your friends to have to carry you that far, in their state? Not to mention… maybe we don’t really need the mercenary. I’m sure the Scribe and his General will be quite sufficient.”
His arm is abruptly released, and he almost goes down again without meaning to, staggering.
Well… he thinks, it was worth testing. Information is information.
It's still unclear what they'd have to do to make it worth their captors' while to kill them- the line in the sand is hazy, undefined- but the claim that Dehya might be considered expendable is plausible enough.
So they walk on.
—
By the time they reach the oasis, the scent of water is maddening.
They are herded into what is, for lack of any other applicable descriptor, a pen. Four sides and a roof, all a grid of iron bars. There are palm trees above it, and though the shade they provide is minimal, it’s something.
Dehya crosses her arms and faces the man who is locking them into it. “Cowards,” she tells him, and spits. “Couldn’t take us in a fair fight, not even eight to three. No… almost twenty to three, if you all had shown up to jump us. Pathetic.”
Cyno is carefully stretching out his arms, rubbing life back into his wrists. He looks up and around as he does so, noting the landscape; the subspecies of the shrubs; the ripeness of their fruit. Cyno knows the desert; he does not know this part of it, but he thinks he knows the general vicinity in which it lies, and confirms his suspicion that they have been taken deep into Hadramaveth.
Alhaitham has lowered himself to the ground in a scrap of shade, and is sitting with one hand on the earth and one knee in the air, his elbow resting upon his knee, watching the activity at the gate with dry interest.
The thug doesn’t bother to answer Dehya's demands- he just turns, and walks away.
The five men who’d led them here are not the only inhabitants of the austere oasis. There as just as many more, guarding the perimeter of the oasis, all armed, all more or less silent. The murmurs they do make are quiet, nearly impossible to hear. Even Cyno can barely make out a snatch of a word here and there: ‘tomorrow- ‘-if those three-’ ‘Azar-'
Azar, huh, Cyno thinks.
“Hey! How bout some water?! Food?! Do you have any kind of decency?!”
Cyno decides she’s doing a fine enough job without his help and turns his attention to the scribe. Alhaitham’s breath is shallow and rapid, his skin flushed even where it isn’t burned.
“That looks like it hurts,” Cyno observes dryly.
Alhaitham shivers, and then winces when the fabric of the robe catches along his arm. “It isn’t great.”
Dehya, having given up on her increasingly unflattering exhortations, sluffs to the ground beside them. She huffs, and then looks at Alhaitham as if she’s just noticed him.
“You okay?” she asks him.
“I’m as okay as any of us.”
She snorts. “Tell that to your face.”
His gaze slides toward her, glinting aquamarine. He eyes the mottling of livid bruises along her jawline.
“Have you,” he suggests, “seen your own?”
She looks startled. She reaches for her belt, and then curses. “Bastards took my makeup box.”
“…and he has at least one broken rib,” Alhaitham adds.
Cyno slow blinks at him, surprised. “What makes you say that?”
“I know how you move, Cyno.”
Dehya hums. Her eyes are very blue in the afternoon light, and against the dust on her face. “You are favoring your left side.”
“…they’re probably only bruised.”
"If you say so."
Alhaitham adjusts his arm, and then hisses and starts to peel the robe off partway, peering at his shoulder as he does so. He makes a face at what he sees there, and lets the fabric fall carefully back into place.
There’s a clanging sound at the gate.
“FINALLY,” Dehya drawls. “I got it, you two sit.”
She retrieves the satchel that a wordless thug pushes through the slotted bars. Within it are a pair of water skins; a stale packet of candied ajilenakh nut; and a small paper sack of something like panipuri- though baked instead of fried, dried out and with only a suggestion of filling, as if they have seen better days.
“Oh my god,” Dehya moans around a mouthful after they pass the items around, “I’ve never had better stale ajilenakh candies in my life.”
Alhaitham is sipping water, clearly restraining himself from guzzling it, his breath quickening with the endorphin rush that they all are experiencing as sugar and hydration flow back into their bloodstreams.
“I’ve had worse rations before,” Cyno agrees. “But we need to figure out what we’re going to do about the situation.”
“Wait.” Alhaitham says. “Watch. We’ll find our opportunity. We can’t be too hasty.”
There’s enough panipuri to divide equally, plus an extra.
“You need it more,” Cyno points out matter of factly, handing it to Alhaitham. “We’re smaller, and we’re used to this.”
The scribe sighs, but accepts it.
“We should compare notes on what we’ve seen,” Cyno points out. “Make sure we understand this to our best ability.”
“They aren’t giving us a lot to go off,” Dehya gripes.
“There are Fatui weapons out there,” Cyno points out. “They were careful to move us in turns- getting rid of the sumpter beasts was a way to throw any rescuers off the trail.”
Dehya sighs. “They also seem pretty reluctant to kill us, for all their talk. What are they, holding us for ransom?”
“That seems to be the case,” Cyno says, “but I can’t imagine who would pay it.”
“Politics,” Alhaitham sighs.
“Huh?”
“There are more valuable targets if all they wanted was mora. This is ideology.”
“…how do you know that?”
“Because it isn’t just you and I- the fact that Dehya’s here too says it all. We just overthrew a government. We believed that government was illegitimate and corrupt, and that we were restoring the order of things, but… that doesn’t mean it wasn’t essentially a coup. Depending on who you ask. Perception is reality, for some people.... everyone, really, even us. And there are always those, after a coup, who will seek opportunity for their own ends.” He sips at the water skin, then hands it off to Dehya. “Or restitution. I figured something like this would happen.”
“If you figured something like this would happen, why did you follow a vague memorandum to a creepy desert ruin?”
Alhaitham looks at her and somehow manages to exude the demeanor of someone who is rolling their eyes without actually doing so. “...obviously I wasn’t thinking of this specific scenario,” he mutters.
“I thought I heard one of the guards mention Azar. Who do you think is responsible?” Cyno asks.
“Hard to say. Depends on what their demands are. And it doesn’t seem like they’re going to tell us those... yet. Those Delusions out there are the only hint on that count.”
“Dottore,” Dehya muses.
“…possibly, but again… hard to say.”
"I can feel my Vision," Dehya says, "but I can't draw on it."
"The same," Cyno says, surly. "Though... they'll find I don't need it, if they give me an opportunity."
Alhaitham doesn't remark upon his feelings on the matter. He looks exhausted and annoyed. They chew the rest of their meager meal in thoughtful silence. Alhaitham, still working on his bonus panipuri, glances at the ground around him and picks up a stone. He slides himself backward, sitting along the iron bars, and starts to scratch shapes onto them.
"What are those?" Dehya asks.
"Runes," he answers flatly.
She squints. "Why runes?"
"Because no one outside of Haravatat is likely to know them. Unleesss you’re a supposedly extinct long lost member of a long dead tribe."
Cyno's eyes flick over while he takes a draught from the flask. "I know them."
"Well... I suppose that makes you well read."
Cyno, for his part, waits until Alhaitham has finished his addition to the decor before holding a hand out for the stone. He leaves his own mark in a different section- a brief outline reminiscent of an eye- before handing the stone off to Dehya. She casts a glance over her shoulder to see that the guards are still making their aimless rounds before she scrapes a curving impression of a lion's mane onto one of the wide bars.
They finish off the first waterskin, passing it around until it's drained. They save the second, for now.
The sun is lowering in the sky, casting a golden aura over the nearby pool of water and its greenery. Their pen is an uneven floor of sand, marked with patchy low shrubs and coarse, dry grass. Their guards demonstrate no interest in them whatsoever, and do not approach. Dehya is slouching against the bars at the back of the enclosure, one leg sprawled out in front of her. Cyno sits crosslegged and crossarmed, with a narrowing around his eyes that gives him a dangerous impression. Alhaitham has returned his elbow to his knee, leaning on one hand on the ground, and is watching the patterns that the guards weave about the oasis in his calm, penetrating way.
Then he shivers, and brings up his other knee, his other elbow. Dehya looks at him, hearing the low noise he makes, almost inaudible.
“You good?” she asks.
“Yeah… I’m… pretty beat.”
“Sunstroke’ll do that. Those burns looked bad. You dizzy?”
“…unbelievably.” He closes his eyes and rests his head on his arms, turning it to avoid the burned side of his face. “…it’ll pass.”
They both watch him for a moment, and then glance across him at each other.
“You?” Dehya asks Cyno.
“My ribs hurt when I move, and I’m a bit scorched but otherwise… yes, I’m alright. How about yourself?”
She shifts her jaw, feels it with one hand, and makes a face.
“They aren’t gonna like me when I get out of here. I’ll tell you that much.”
As adrenaline and its complements fade, and the endorphin rush of the scant nourishment sitting in their bellies diminishes, their various aches, burns, and weariness are making themselves known. Only Alhaitham is blistered and shivering visibly, but all of them are burned and feeling shaky.
Cyno is watching the guards intently. "So what do we propose to do?" he growls.
"...there's nothing to do right now," Alhaitham grumbles into his arm. He’s trying to keep his scant nutrition down. "...we should rest while we can."
“Naptime while we can get it, then,” Dehya says, and stretches languidly, sliding herself to the sand. Cyno follows suit, partway, extending his legs and leaning back, propped on his elbows, watching the oasis and its guards, his pupils slit in the gleam of bright evening sun.
Alhaitham lifts his head and gazes, too, upon the oasis for a moment, his own eyes twin pools that match its turquoise waters. Then he eases himself gingerly to his right side, which is less burned, and curls into a loose semicircle.
They know that the scribe is right. They need opportunity. They need to rest. But they linger in waking; one in watchful vigilance, one in anticipation, one in the restless tremor of ramping fever that the other two can sense, but can do nothing to ameliorate.