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The world was a blur as Roan hurtled through the air, but he finally caught his bearings when something else - no, some[i]one[/i] else - caught him. Although “caught” was a strong word; rather, he bowled someone over, knees and elbows colliding unceremoniously on the threshold of the execution chamber. Roan’s first instinct was to flee, but whatever spell had sent him hurtling toward the ceiling and out the door had yet to release its hold, and he floated at a weird and nauseating angle just above the floor, unable to find purchase. Not that it would have mattered - he could get a fair distance with his arms behind his back, but his ankles were still shackled tight.

A hand gripped his shirt, stopping any further effort to escape, and for a moment panic shot through Roan again, thinking for sure it was a guard here to drag him back inside to his agonizing death. But when he finally got enough sense about him to see the person in front of him, she was missing the gaudy regalia of his usual tormentors. In fact, with the fighting inside and the patchwork assembly of strangers on the attack, it almost looked like a rescue party. 

[color=crimson]“Calm down and stay still.”[/color] A shield popped up in a cube around them as the girl pulled herself out from under Roan, and the noise outside grew muffled, making Roan once again mourn the loss of his magic. He couldn’t do much to fight, but he kept his guard squarely up nonetheless; it wouldn’t be the first time that his captors staged a rescue, getting their hopes up only to thrust them into a nightmare and make them regret ever begging for help.

He squirmed nervously as the girl maneuvered him around, focusing on the shackles around his ankles. Until then, a combination of hunger, exhaustion, confusion, and leftover drugs kept him too confused to form any proper words, but the girl’s stern warning - and the fire that came to life in her hands - was finally enough to help Roan break his silence. 

[color=396BD4]“Oh, no no no--”[/color] he groaned weakly like a frightened child, shaking his head fervently but too scared to move anything else. He was reminded of his tormentors, who would only get more insistent the more he struggled, training their prisoners to accept and endure whatever torment awaited them. And, much like with them, his pleadings fell on deaf ears; his legs trembled in his shackles as the girl burned through the chain between them, heat radiating dangerously close to his skin. But while Roan fully expected her to lop off his feet along with the shackles, to his surprise, his legs were intact by the time the metal gave way. Roan didn’t notice until she was done that she seemed to have put some sort of shield around his legs. Was she [i]really[/i] here to help him?

The girl wasted no time, whirling Roan around with disorienting ease, aided both by his continuing weightlessness and his awestruck stillness. No, he refused to believe it; nobody was coming for him, nobody even knew he was alive! And there was no way the lunatic that ran this asylum was letting any intruder into his compound - his fragile ego could never take it. It was a trick, a dirty trick played by dirty Sinnenodels who got tired of breaking his body and went for his spirit instead. 

Roan squeezed his eyes shut, any fight long gone from him as he curled in on himself and waited for whatever horrific final blow would herald the end of this cruel illusion. His tormentors were smart, they knew this would spell the end for him. After however long he’d been down there, living in filth and hunger and pain and long having abandoned any dream of getting out alive, he couldn’t handle having his last tiny, resurrected spark of hope crushed again. As he drew what he was sure would be his final breath, he wondered if the world - even the small, miserable world his captors occupied - would be any different for his absence. 

And then his hands came free, and the girl spoke. 

[color=crimson]“Okay, done. Careful, metal could still be hot.”[/color]

Roan’s eyes snapped open, his dumb, foolish heart leaping like an idiot at the concept that what he was experiencing might not actually be an illusion. Drawing his hands in front of him, he stared at them in mute disbelief, having fully expected to see a set of blackened stumps as punishment for his foolish hope. Briefly ignorant to his surroundings, he swung his arms at his sides, reveling in the sore, [i]fantastic[/i] feeling of moving freely for the first time since… well, he couldn’t even remember. 

But his celebration was short; the shield encapsulating them fell shortly after, and with it came rushing back the litany of chaos from inside the execution chamber. 

Roan gasped, the reality of the situation finally dawning on him. This was real - this was a rescue! A party sent from Dawn Rising, right? Hadn’t someone just mentioned Lilie Luscin? A sharp contrast to his former despair, hope - real, genuine hope - sparked up in Roan for the first time in ages. He made a gamble: If this was still an illusion, it was too complex for him to crack, and if it was real, he’d be an idiot not to cooperate. 

[color=396BD4]“Sun and stars, sun and stars,”[/color] he muttered dumbly, his brain moving slow as he tried to revive his long-rusted reconnaissance habits and actually assess the situation. Okay, execution chamber, two guards down, one fighting, the Inquisitor - two vampires and two-- three mages? Was that everyone? He couldn’t trust his senses, dulled as they were, and least of all his hearing, but there was no time to seek confirmation. 

[color=396BD4]“Are there more of you?!”[/color] he asked urgently, grabbing the girl’s shoulder to steady himself as his weightlessness and sudden enthusiasm pitched him forward. [color=396BD4]“Quick, let me down!”[/color]
[right][sub][@Hero][/sub][/right]