The sound of food being eaten filled the silence, only interrupted by a rhythmic tapping.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Eli stared at the boy before him. William had held steady for five days.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

A bead of sweat dripped down William’s forehead, trickling across his temple and wrapping around his neck. His eyes were glued on Eli’s finger as it pressed against the table.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The captor didn’t speak. His ever-present smile deepened at the boy’s worry. William stopped eating, and there was one sound left.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Then a hand grabbed William’s arm, pulling him out of his daze.

I held on tightly. “That was a delicious lunch. Thank you.”

I led William back to his room under the watch of Eli’s gaze. I opened the door but didn’t step inside with him. Eli’s pressure was ever present in our minds and in every action we took.

I glanced at William. The boy had been through a lot. It wasn’t just five days of time. It was five days of isolation in a hostile environment.

It was starting to get to him.

His movements worried me. His eyes were dull, and his chains barely rattled. He had lost his energy. His will.

“I'll let you know when dinner is ready.” Eli’s voice fluttered towards me.

I took the hint and made my way to my room.

“You always do.” I shut the door behind me.

He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing me shiver. Eli was wearing us down. He didn’t give threats. He didn’t use force. His actions were a stream of water bearing down on a stone, drop after drop tapped against our spirits.

And now a hole was forming.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to act today.

I climbed onto the bed and crossed my legs. My breathing slowed, and my mind expanded.

William needed help. I was there for him, but he needed more.

He needed hope.

My body hovered beside the earth symbol in my mind. I was detached from my emotions, and above my thoughts. That did not mean they stopped existing.

William knew Eli wanted to save his son.

I’m not sure when he figured it out. I’d thought he would’ve given in then and there. I wouldn’t have blamed him.

Eli had chuckled knowingly, but William had held firm.

Our captor was a creature created through grief and anger, and also through love. He had lost children.

Every time we approached the abandoned room, he would lose his composure. When William had brushed against the cot in his room Eli had barely resisted flying off the rails. He was a ticking time bomb.

Eli wanted to save his only remaining son.

Two figures appeared in the blank space below me. One was Eli as I had first known him, A kind and gentle man that had guided me in a time of need despite being a stranger. The second was Eli as I knew him now. Emotional, a kidnapper, and mentally unsound.

Was it right for me to prevent his son’s future?

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t my choice.

Eli had already made the decision when he had kidnapped us. William only cemented it.

There had to be away for me to-

A familiar rumbling interrupted my thoughts, and my body tensed. It came every day. From the depths of my body, it erupted.

Pain.

The earth symbol shook and I gazed upwards towards the sky of darkness in my mental construct. An intruder spread across my mind and waves of purple flooded every inch of my vision. My physical form shook, and my chest was engulfed in agony.

I stayed within my mind throughout the pain. It was only a symptom, the cause was a figure in the distance, beyond the darkness of the blank space. It strode on a tidal wave of purple, heading towards me.

Their counterpart in my space responded to it. A plume of purple flew into the air and tried to connect to the figure across the vast expanse. It failed.

They receded, and the purple figure disappeared. The pain stopped as suddenly as it had come. Just like it did every day.

I had spent days studying the intruder. The figure was familiar to me. Not because I recognised them, they were too far for me to see. It was a deeper connection than that, like seeing a family member.

It was Gerial.

I became sure of it on the third day. The pain had come during breakfast, and I had barely managed to hide it.

He was using me as a beacon to guide a teleport spell.

It was the hope I clung to as I planned our escape. Eli kept William and I separated, But that wasn’t a bad thing. It meant that his attention was focused on obtaining [wisdom].

I had fallen under the radar.

Magic was impossible here. Eli had said so, and William’s hopelessness had confirmed it for me. That fact had led to overconfidence. There was a loophole, one that wasn’t easy to exploit.

My bloodline wasn’t magic.

It was a symbol, and the first lesson my dad had taught me was that symbols and magic were separate from each other. My hope receded into the depths of my heart. There were still problems to overcome.

Could Gerial be stopped from teleporting?

Eli had plans, and he wasn’t going to let anyone interfere with them. His slow pace was meticulously breaking William down piece by piece. His kind words, mixed with the constant surveillance, caused anxiety and fear.

There was also our knowledge that he was Zodiac’s premier spatial mage. It weighed on our minds and forced us to consider every move we made.

If anyone knew how to block Gerial’s attempts to contact me then it would be Eli.

Emotions were once again threatening to overwhelm me, and thoughts were rushing through my mind. I took a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. I went through my plan in my head and repeated it several more times.

There was a hope of escape.

Eli was an enemy. I couldn’t count on him to keep playing the gentle host. He had been in control since the beginning. That needed to change.

Eli had to be taken out of the picture. Then I could focus on solidifying my connection with Gerial.

Inside my mental construct my adult body sat across from the earth symbol. It’s waves of energy lapped about me like ripples in a pond. Every second of every day I sat by it, studying it, feeling it, and simply taking it in.

The world around me disappeared, and all that was left was the beating of the earth symbol. My eyes were closed, but I could see beyond them. Mana floated in the air around me and stood stoutly within the walls. Magic had been nullified, but it could never be erased.

My concentration shifted, focusing on my chains. They had become one with me. I couldn’t leave the room without them, and I was in contact with them every moment of every day. My skin was never damaged by their touch and their weight never pressed against me.

The illusion of reality peeled back, and their true form revealed itself to me.

Mana.

It wiggled across my arms playfully, comfortable in my embrace and warmth. I could see the mana waving at me.

It waited in anticipation for my response.

It wasn’t the right time. One more push, one simple acknowledgement, and then I would have the final ally I needed, when I needed them.

Eli cared greatly about this place. He was tied to emotionally, and even more important to him were his children. His son, and the ones that had passed.

I had one skill I could use, so I had to use it properly. My earth creation skill would likely last as long as my earth manipulation skill had.

Approximately five seconds.

I’d tested this theory with mana manipulation and had confirmed the time.

William had gotten a single message to me before he’d lost hope. Eli was under the same restrictions we were. His magic was limited, and able to be taken away from him.

I opened my eyes and clenched my fingers. I would have one shot at this, I had to make sure it worked.

The mana stayed in my vision. I had experimented and determined that it was impossible to nullify my connection with magic. My mana sense was activated at all times, focusing on my restraints.

I stepped onto the floor and made my way towards the door. My hands had grown practised at acting without moving my chains. The door slid open silently. A feat I’d practiced in secret.

Eli was no longer in the main room. When William left, he left, but when he arrived, he made sure William knew it. He had been one move ahead of us the entire time. In control.

Now, I would make the first move.

My eyes slid over William’s door and stopped at the abandoned room. We hadn’t gone near it since Eli had thrown his fit. It had seemed unwise to provoke him at the time, and we both felt it would’ve been worse than the slow and methodical cracking of our spirits.

He’d only grown more protective of the room as time passed. If we stepped near it, his entire demeanour would shift.

It held the only remains of his second son’s existence.

My bare feet pressed against the floorboards cautiously. The dust had been disturbed, but the survivors clung to my pants as I stopped in front of the door to the abandoned room.

I raised my hands carefully, and gently nudged the door open. One bit at a time. The first thing to enter my vision was glass. The shards had spread across the floor because of Eli’s rampage.

I knelt down and picked up the toy teddy bear, and the remaining picture of his child.

Then I opened the door fully, careful not to make a sound. I gazed at the cot. It was unharmed. Eli hadn’t touched it, even in his rage.

Good.

I checked the floor and then carefully placed the picture of his son onto the cushion on the cot.

Then I made my way back to the table and placed the object from the room onto it. I sat down, and took a deep breath in. Then I let it out. My emotions were calm, and I was in control.

I raised my arms up and then down.

The chains rattled faintly.

That was all that was needed.

The sound of footsteps reached me first. Steady and unrelenting. Then his shadow crossed over the doorway, regarding me curiously. A head popped out, two eyes staring down at me.

Eli.

“Hello youngling.” His voice was sickeningly sweet. “Would you like to go to the bath-”

He stopped. A single hand grasped at the table. At the object I’d placed there.

His child’s teddy bear.

Anger. Grief. Sorrow. I could see it in his eyes. His hand trembled, and his mind wavered. His mouth opened…

“Hello Eli. Let’s have a talk about your children.” I spoke.

A wave of pressure crept over me. Compared to it I was a bug. No. I was less than an ant. There was no way for me to contend. A bead of sweat dripped over my eye, stinging it.

“The first one died during the first night, didn’t he?”

I heard my voice from a distance as the pressure enveloped me. My throat suffocated as it pressed against my body. It swamped me. It overpowered me.

It hesitated.

At that moment I struck.

“And then you set out to prevent it. You gathered the details of the first night. You trained your next child to know them. Then he couldn’t understand what he’d seen.”

My eyes saw a single splash. A tear. It was born from Eli’s memories and emotions.

The pressure lessened. Its wielder was losing his hold of the reins. Footsteps sounded out behind me. A figure stepped beside me. William.

He looked at me with worry, but I ignored him. My speech had been practised a thousand times in my head. I had to time it perfectly.

Eli’s head shook violently, and he opened his mouth-

“Your source was right.” I continued. “I remember the first night. I recognised the pictures straight away.”

Eli took a step forward-

I pushed the chair back, scraping it against the floor as hard as I could. My opponent flinched. My hands dug into the teddy bear, and I dragged it as I walked towards him.

“It’s a lot to take in. The terror. The knowledge of my own mortality. I feel it every day. In my mind, in my heart. Right down into the depths of my soul.”

He opened his mouth, and I threw the teddy bear at him. His eyes widened in panic as his hands flailed. A simple catch, but he failed. His tears blurred his vision, and his memories clouded his mind. The toy fell to the ground, and his eyes followed it.

The pressure withdrew.

I traced my hand across the table and gazed up at him. “It doesn’t surprise me that he gave up.“

Eli froze. His head turned slowly towards me, and his eyes were full of anger. He raised his hands and-

“Earth creation.”

I had five seconds.

5…

The walls around us exploded. Shards of stone and wood crashed against me, but I held my position.

4…

Purple mist gathered around Eli as he shouted his spells and sparks of yellow surrounded us.

A pressure beyond any I had felt exploded into existence around us. Its power threatened to wipe away this entire realm.

3…

Stones pushed through William’s room and the abandoned room. They ended at the table, dragging the remains of the two baby’s cots with them.

The pressure dropped as the cots entered his eyesight.

2…

Eli’s magic faltered as he saw the last remains of his children’s existence, tattered and destroyed. A single picture lay on one cot’s pillow, where I had placed it earlier.

My stones grew and threatened to crush him underneath their weight.

He raised his head towards the threat.

1…

His magic strengthened and he yelled with rage. My stones disappeared in a cloud of purple mana. The walls and the rooms were destroyed.

I was going to die.

William stepped in front of me, and the magic retreated. It wouldn’t kill him. Eli’s mind wouldn’t let it.

0.

My magic faltered, and the ability to create earth was pulled away from me. The yellow lights overcame Eli, and his magic disappeared.

There was silence.

Eli stared down where the cots and the picture had been. His spell had destroyed them. He grasped at the air in front of him, trying to bring the pieces back. I sensed mana gathering around him. Nothing happened.

He fell to his knees and screamed.

I raised my hands towards him.

Metal manipulation.

I spoke to the mana inside my restraints. Their thoughts resonated with my very being, overjoyed at my communication.

Five seconds.

My cuffs shimmered into liquid and flew towards the broken man. Lines of metal wrapped around his legs and arms, and another blocked his mouth and tied tightly around his head.

I gestured and Eli’s head slammed into the floor. There was no hesitation in my movements, and no chance for him to retaliate.

His body went limp, and my magic was locked in a flash of bright yellow light.

I stared at the unmoving body. Then it twitched. He was still alive. I froze, but nothing else happened. His voice was silenced, his body restrained, and his mind was damaged and unable to think.

I’d won.

I dropped to my knees.

What had I done?

I’d destroyed a man’s mind and body for a chance at freedom and I’d manipulated his emotions towards his children to get it. It was the only way, but my heart tore at the acts I’d committed.

A shadow crossed over me, and footsteps walked past me. I looked up and saw William kneeling next to Eli’s prone body.

“What are you doing?”

It hurt me to talk. Each breath I took in brought more wood and stone dust into my throat.

William raised his arms around Eli’s neck, his chains wrapping around the elderly man’s throat.

I gazed into his eyes, and they were manic. The fear and anger that had resided in him for five days gushed out. His wisdom was gone, and his emotions ran rampant. For the first time in days, I remembered the person underneath the skill.

He was just a child.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

His hands trembled as he pulled the chains tighter.

“I’m finishing the job.”