Caught

It was dark by the time that Will managed to regain consciousness, so dark in fact, that he thought for a moment that he was back in the closet. But something was different. The closet was a bad place to spend the night, that was the truth. But he was pretty sure that the floor wasn’t made of stone, and it wasn’t as cold as it was now.

Slowly opening his eyes, Will saw that he seemed to have found a far worse place to sleep than the closet.

He was lying down in an awkward position, on the hard, cold stone ground of what was clearly a prison cell. Directly in front of him, was a set of steel bars and a door, on his other three sides were nothing but stone walls, he didn’t even have a window to look out of.

Inside his cell there was nothing but a small hole in the corner.

Well, he’d found the toilet at least. But that was it. There wasn’t even a bed.

He was in The Cliff prison. The end of the line for all of Harthpoint’s worst.

Groaning slightly, Will began to move, or at least tried too. As the second he had tried to move his arms and legs, he met sudden resistance.

Looking down, Will saw why, and the whole danger of his new position came rushing at him like a volven. Around his neck, a thin piece of metal with a gemstone embedded into the front had been locked around his throat. As he made to try and grab the metal band to rip it off, his arms met that sudden resistance again. His wrists had been chained together, as were his ankles, and those two chains had also been linked to one another, giving him only about a foot of movement. It at least explained the position he had woken up in, but did nothing to calm him down.

Will sat there, thinking. He had been able to get out of his locked closet, something that had probably indirectly led to this mess. So, he’d just do the same thing again, and go and explain what had happened.

“I want you to open. I want you to open.” Will mumbled to himself, focusing all his energy on the locks to the cuffs around his wrists and ankles.

Far worse than nothing happened however, as at the attempt to remove his bindings with magic, a hot burning sensation came around his neck. The metal around his neck had gone white hot at his attempt to use what little magic he had. As for the chains around his wrists and ankles, they remained as rigid as ever.

“HELP!” Will screamed into the darkness outside of the bars of his cell. “HELP ME!” He continued to scream and for added noise, he began to rattle the chains that were connecting his wrists and ankles together. But for all his screaming did, he may as well have said absolutely nothing. “Help.” That was the last call, and it was more of a whimper than a scream.

But still, neither nothing nor no-one came. And Will curled up once more, tears streaking his face dust covered face. He was well and truly alone in here. The best he could hope for was for Alice to pulls some serious strings to get him out of this place.

Will didn’t know for how long he slept. Maybe it was a week. Maybe only a few seconds. Time seemed to not exist in this place. Like the prison itself was conspiring to make him mad.

What he did realise though, was that he was no longer alone. And looking up, he saw who had come to visit him.

It was Oscar. But something was wrong. Will could immediately that his friend was different than before. He seemed harder, colder towards him. Like he really didn’t want to be in this place, whilst also glad that Will was.

“Oscar.” Will said and smiled for the first time in what felt like ages. It was a smile that was not returned.

Slowly manoeuvring himself so that he could shuffle along the ground. His restraints making walking an impossibility, Will began to move closer to the bars.

Oscar stood still, his gaze fixed on Will like he was some rabid dog, shuffling and half crawling towards him.

“What happened Oscar?” Will asked after he finally managed to reach his friend. But as he approached, Oscar seemed to instinctively back up, staring wide eyed at Will in pure fear. “What?” Will said, wanting answers to why he was locked up like some wild animal.

Oscar began rocking, seeming to try and find the best way to say what he had come down to say. Then.

“Will. Why didn’t you tell me that you have magic?” Oscar asked seriously. So seriously in fact that it took Will aback for a moment. He had never before heard his friend so uptight and almost adult.

“I only had it for like a day, and that was obviously some kind of fluke, as last time I only managed to open my stepparent’s door, and I can’t do it now.” Will said back. Trying to grasp what had just been said to him. He was starting to doubt if he even had magic. Yeah he had been able to open the door, but that was even now seeming to be nothing more than his stepparent’s failure to lock the door properly rather than anything he’d done. If he did, then how come his stepparents had been able to lock him in the closet so many times that he had taken to living out in the open as an escape. If he had magic, he would have just turned them both into Dragameres or something.

“Will.” Oscar said walking forwards with determined confidence, despite the way his knees were visibly shaking. “You caused an explosion right in the middle of the town square and came out of it completely unhurt.”

“I didn’t.” Will replied, trying to back up until being reminded of the chains on his wrists and ankles when they tugged.

“Will. People died. About twenty. And you were right in the centre of that explosion, yet you didn’t so much as loose a hair.” Oscar said.

Will just stared as everything started to come back to him. The encounter with his stepfather as he’d tried to find a way out of the town. How Edwards Shephard had cornered him in the marketplace, and then proceeded to yell at him drawing in the crowd.

“What’s going to happen?” Will asked, tentatively; not wanting to know the answer to that question.

Oscar shifted nervously.

“Mayor Harth sentenced you to death yesterday.” Oscar said after a moment. Will watched in horror, the worst thing though, was that his friend didn’t seem that upset with that fact. “So, unless you can magic your way out of this then you burn in two days.”

“Can’t Alice do something to get me out of this? Where is she anyway, hopefully she can get her Father to change his mind, reverse the decision, get me outa here.” Will said smiling, he knew that it would be difficult, and he would seriously owe her for getting him out of this mess. But it wouldn’t be the first time she had managed to use her family connections to get them out of trouble. There was the time when they had been caught stealing sweets from the market and had been chased into the river, nearly drowning Oscar in the process. Or the time when they set off the fireworks for midsummer five minutes early; setting fire to the inn and several shops in an instant. He smiled at these memories, and how quickly Alice had been able to get them out of trouble.

That was until he saw the look on Oscar’s face.

“Will. Alice died in the explosion.” Oscar said after a moment of trying to clear the lump in the back of his throat. “Your stepfather also died. Along with those that were closest to you when it happened, including Sir Gwaine and the men that tried to stop your stepfather. It’s only because of the Witchfinder that you’re still alive, after the dust cleared, and Mayor Harth saw what remained of Alice, he wanted to string you up right then and there. He only agreed to delay so that they can burn you when the Witchfinder returns in two days. He put that thing on your neck, said it would stop you performing any more magic.”

Will couldn’t say anything else. He turned away and began to sob, completely unaware of Oscar’s quiet departure.

It took much longer to return to the back wall than it had to reach the bars. His legs had completely shut down, from the shock of the news he had just received, he was certain of that. Once he had arrived at the back of the cell, Will continued to cry. Partly because of the fact that he was now coming to terms with his own rapidly approaching death, but mostly because he had lost one of the only two people that he loved.

Curling up, Will began fumbling with the inside of his tunic. It took a while to find what he had been looking for and get enough slack in his chains to allow him to grab it. But eventually he managed to extract the small necklace.

Will was initially surprised that it hadn’t been taken away from him. He supposed though that the townspeople would take it off his burnt corpse in a few days’ time. And thus saw no reason to take it right at the current moment.

The necklace was the last thing that he had from his family, his real family, whoever they were, he had been wearing it the day that he had been delivered to Harthpoint. But whenever he had asked about it to his stepparents, they had always gotten angry and told him to shut up about it, or loose a couple of teeth.

“Help me.” Will whispered into the metal, so close that his mouth was almost touching the ornate silver. “Either that. Or let my death be quick.”

Will couldn’t explain, even too himself, why he had asked the piece of metal for help. All he knew, was that that plea had been, and would be, his last chance for any sort of help.

With that, his thoughts returned to the dark cloud that was gripping his mind. The fact that he had killed his best friend. At which point, the tears returned, crossing down his dust covered face and landing on the ground.

Eventually and after seeming to cry himself dry, Will curled up into a ball, the only position that allowed some slack in his chains, and eventually fell into an uneasy sleep once more.

The nightmare that Will suffered through that night was the worst he could remember ever happening. Consisting of voices of everyone he knew, the citizens of Harthpoint, alive, and more recently dead, cast judgement over him. Pain shot through Will as each took turns denouncing him as a murder and sorcerer, followed by the silky voice of the Witchfinder, telling him how he would burn for his crimes.

Will wanted to scream, to tell them that it was an accident, that he could make everything alright, to take it back to the way that it was. But he couldn’t, his tongue was gone, and all that came out was a gagging sound.

That was until a new, and completely unfamiliar voice came to the forefront.

“William Sharp.” The new voice said. It was deep, and seemed like it had the power to shake the very mountains.

Hesitantly, Will looked up in this dreamland; wondering what crime this new voice would cause him off. then he felt a burning in his mouth and realised that his tongue was back.

“H-Hello?” Will asked the voice, waiting for a response.

But none came, instead silence filled the void of this nightmare plain.

“Who’s there!?” Will shouted.

The silence continued and Will was left to the judging silences.