Muttonhawk

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

The hostilities that broke out left Sabine despondent. She moved, mentally exhausted, to point a palm to the melee. She ignored the efforts of the atronach and murmured sadly. "I want to go home..." Power gathered in her palm. "I just...want to go home." A ball of red, cloudy magic launched out and struck one of the Orc twins.

The external effects were not immediate, though the struck twin felt all his energy drain away until he blacked out.

"I just want to go home..." Sabine launched the same spell at the second Orc twin. She repeated her words over and again.

"I just want to go home..." The Redguard conjurer was hit and fell. Then Arinette, helpless to defend herself as she was. The rest of the team fell, one by one. Even the Argonian, if he was still conscious. All but Do'Rhajul and the atronach remained standing. The Breton was long gone running by now.

Sabine gripped the staff in both hands and tiredly launched a different spell at the atronach. It impacted with a chest-beating thud, and its stony components exploded out behind its vague bodily shape, before fading back to Oblivion.

None of those struck by Sabine's spells were dead. They had merely been knocked unconscious, even if the suddenness of the spells made it look otherwise. Each softly breathed on.

Sabine walked with poor balance in Do'Rhajul's direction. It was not until she approached close that he realised she was walking past him to Yerig. She extended a hand towards him along the way to try and detect if he still lived. Do'Rhajul was all but ignored.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine growled into a berserk shriek and threw her arm towards Arinette. Once again, Arinette's joints locked up, though not for any paralysing effect on her muscles, but for external force pressing against every inch of her skin. She could not breathe, let alone speak. Like digging worms, tendrils of magic wriggled into her skin without breaking it, covering her with crawling itches that kissed at every nerve.

Sabine stood slouched, glowering from behind her blood-encrusted hair with her arm shining with green and gold whorls of power extending out. Arinette lifted up off the ground.

"I CAN FEEL ALL OF YOUR BLOOD!" Sabine screeched. "I CAN FEEL EVERYWHERE PAIN IS FELT IN YOUR BODY!" She took two unsteady steps forward. "I CAN TEAR IT ALL OUT LIKE ROOTS! ALL OF IT! ALL OF IT AT ONCE!"

The little tendrils of magic tugged just enough under Arinette's skin to make her feel a jarring numbness akin to striking the ulnar nerve under the elbow, though across every bone in her body. Arinette knew that Sabine was capable of making good on her claim by making the tendrils tug just a little harder.

The crawling sensation was its own kind of torture. Just enough movement was visible on Arinette's face to hint at what it was to experience it.

But just as fast as Sabine lashed out, she slumped and let her arm fall limp. The magic disappeared. Arinette collapsed to the ground, completely free and drained of magicka and breath.

"Please..." Sabine sobbed. Her screaming made her throat gravely, even at her pitiful high pitch. "Stop...I want to go home..."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

The yellow halo around Sabine faded to reveal her healed, if still bloodstained body. However, no amount of restoration magic took away the terror in her face. She was struggling to breathe evenly, and she looked on at the enemies around her as they tried to find a way around her.

She tried to charge a spell. She yelled in frustration and directed magic to her manacles. She did not break them with physical strength. They simply burst apart. The steaming metal shards bounced to a stop on the ground around her. If that was not a great enough display of magical might, she directed the staff towards the flanking Argonian in turn. "Stay AWAY!"

With each word respectively, the Argonian was pulled up off the ground as if an invisible force had taken hold of his body before he was thrown tumbling across behind the shield bearer. With another scream, Sabine swung around and gave the Breton mage the same treatment.

It was in that moment that Sabine peered down at the staff and started breathing regularly, if still at a fast pace. All her limbs set off in tremors. In an effort to stay balanced, she planted the butt of staff into the earth and willed a powerful ward to bloom from its top. The ward curled all the way around Sabine and grew to form an impenetrable ovoid cocoon. The wavy and distorted surface was transparent enough to see her fall to her knees, holding onto the staff. The ward did little to muffle her heaving crying and weeping.

"We just wanted to show you the truth," She moaned between her sobbing, almost pleading. "We found the book in the Elsweyr fortress when we stormed it. We do not want to turn anyone into lycans. It just..." Sabine lowered her voice. "I am tired...Everything hurts...I cannot stop the pain...It hurts..."

With Sabine hanging her head and weeping so heavily, Arinette could recover from her paralysis with a few moments longer. Though unless she had a trick up her sleeve, nothing could get through Sabine's encompassing ward. And even if Arinette tried to destroy or take the book from Do'Rhajul, the damage had been done.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine arced her back and whimpered the rest of her breath out from the renewed burning. She might have tried to block out more, but just as those around her were talking, the sound of turning paper caught her attention. She peered her tear-soaked eyes up and slowly lifted her brow. She recognised the book in Do'Rhajul's hands. Ahnasha had succeeded after all. She had to do something now. She could not leave her magic to some impossible point where they would hypothetically stop torturing her.

She turned her swollen eyes left and right. A movement from Arinette nudged the end of the staff to push against her. Her gaze went to the Staff of Magnus. Her arms were asleep, but her magic was not. All she needed to do was touch it. And touch Arinette. It was now or never.

Sabine's face turned from fear to a clenched strain. She pressed her lips together. Her brow pushed down on her eyes. She wrinkled her nose. Her arm muscles bulged. She had intended to try and wrench the stake from its place in the tree. Instead, she felt her palms stinging. They were sliding up the stake. She clenched her eyes and teeth and pushed further. Tiny sounds of pain came out of her throat. Blood flowed down her arms to coat the dry brown marks that the previous bleeding had already left.

She just needed a few moments. The splinters dug into her hands, piece by piece. Near the end of it, she could not hold back a scream akin to the other pain she had been feeling. Then again, this was far less in comparison.

Her hands glowed a bright green. Swirling motes gathered around the stake and Sabine's fingers. With a spatter of bright blood, Sabine all but fell onto Arinette, barely landing her bloody hands on her shoulder and thoroughly staining her clothing. Her spell discharged. Arinette felt her joints lock up with a paralysis spell twelve hours in the making.

For lack of any manual dexterity, Sabine slung her arms around the Staff of Magnus and threw the helpless Arinette from its grip onto the earth below. Sabine stumbled, nude, scarred, and burnt, into a wide stance. She threatened away any advances from the rest of the team by pointing the staff at them. She drew from the staff and felt its power. She immediately put it to use.

Sabine's entire body shimmered with a solar light. The world darkened in her corona until she resembled Meridia herself. To Sabine, it was merely a restoration spell wrought of brute magical power. Feeling returned to her arms. Her wounds had closed to perfection. She gripped the staff properly with her hands. However, only her physical pain had melted in the light. She looked across the team with her previous pain mixed with growing fury.

What she shouted at the top of her lungs was perhaps not what the others might have expected. Sabine screamed at Do'Rhajul. "KEEP READING!"

Arinette was not going to be moving for a while yet. And she was in no position to stop Sabine paralysing her over and again until they were done.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Hmm, I think you're right.

G'night!

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine's continued screaming only lasted until the last hour and a half of her sustained torture. From then on, she hardly seemed present in the world. She hung from her wooden stake with eyes glazed and barely enough life in her. The cuts and burns from the last two tortures still marred her skin. She struggled to even keep breathing beyond the sobbing moans of pain she elicited upon being struck. She wanted to die.

The same pitiful moan sounded when Arinette resumed her method.

Sabine did not even look up when Yerig interrupted proceedings. She was concentrating on dulling every sense she could. But nothing she could do stopped her hearing them.

Some automatic response make her squeak out familiar words. She could not be heard over the raised voices but she kept repeating her words. "We are not the ones spreading the curse...We are not...the ones...spreading the curse..."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sounds good to me.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

With the current angles Arinette is taking, Sabine is probably not going to talk today, no. We don't have to play out every single torture Arinette has. I'll let you skip to whatever scene you feel is appropriate, but Sabine is going to try and talk to Yerig when and if he has a watch shift during the night and while the others sleep.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine was convinced by the time the third stab was healed that Arinette was not causing her suffering to convince her of anything. She was attacking. Sabine could not do anything.

The lashes were in some ways more cruel than the knife, for their wounds stung sharper with every stroke. The slower pace drew out the pain. Each made Sabine yell and whimper between.

Having her forced to face Arinette made Sabine at first darting her eyes, fearful of what would happen next. But something Arinette said made her flash a hint of anger through her suffering. "You know nothing!" She shouted. Her throat was too raw from screaming to shout loudly. "Meesei already suffered worse for me! She is loving! You know nothing!"

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine was let out a short shriek when the knife entered her. The pain brought her panic to flash back to when there were silver bars all around her. She was in so much pain that her body fell into a focussed shock. Like a nightmare, she could not perceive everything around her. Only what her mind picked out for her. Hot blood poured down her front and her leg. She felt as though she was going to close her eyes and die. She closed her eyes just in case death helped her escape how much it hurt.

Breathlessly, she struggled with the few words she was continuing to say. "I cannot..." It hurt to speak. "I cannot..."