His face, the only part of him he seemed able to move, went very stilclass="underline" a statue of a starving man, covered in ivy. This was not a small decision: Eferum-Get were killers at their very core, hungry for the lives of others. Being bound against killing would diminish him, force him to adapt to the living world, if a month bound to a wall in this sunlit room had not already done so.
It seemed silence was to be the whole of her Wicked Uncle’s answer. Sunlight shimmered as Rennyn began to draw power. Only a Symbolic casting had any chance of producing a binding he could not break—especially with her limited energy stores. There was little enough at hand that she could choose to represent her intent, but what she wanted was simple enough.
The shard of glass was hot between her fingers as she lifted it and drew it across the scar that she hated, and could not erase. A representation not just of death, but of blood, and all the pain, the multiple injuries her Wicked Uncle had dealt her. Then she stepped forward, and cut his throat.
"Well, at least you didn’t fall over."
Rennyn, leaning temporarily against the nearest wall, didn’t look at him. Her body was already crying for sleep, and it seemed particularly cruel to be in a place where she could not risk sitting down. She was at least fairly certain that the casting had taken, despite the presence of those vines. She had chosen "do no harm" rather than "do not kill", weakening the injunction by broadening it, but given her Wicked Uncle’s apparent enjoyment of inflicting pain, it would not have been enough to bind him only from death.
"How much damage will taking you off that wall do?" she asked, forcing herself to shift a few feet. "Are you going to start dying if I get you down?"
"I shouldn’t think so. I don’t need to breathe."
Rennyn blinked, and glanced at the nearest unconscious mage. "It’s in your lungs?"
"That seems the major focus of the infestation. From this angle. Are you ready to leave now? Am I sufficiently diminished?"
His voice was dry, all hint of his reaction to her casting locked under a surface layer of sarcasm. The diagonal slash she’d made across his throat had already healed, leaving a thin white line. Her own neck stung, not so easily mended, though at least she’d managed only a shallow wound.
"I get you down, you get me outside this shield?"
"That’s the idea. Or do you feel a need for another layer or two of injunctions?"
"I don’t have the energy for that. I shall have to discover the value of your word."
He made a noise she did not mistake for laughter. "This is going to be educational for both of us, then."
She surveyed him flatly. "I presume you have some semblance of a plan."
"A sketch. The guards are the problem. When you get me down, they will come. I won’t be able to move immediately, and you have as much chance of fighting them as of developing a sense of humour. You need to get me off the wall, then hobble to where they put you up, and look suitably bag-like until they’re gone. If they follow the previous pattern they’ll knock me out and string me back up. Get me down again, before the infestation is re-established."
"How intelligent are these guards?"
"Well, they’ve not treated me to any sparkling repartee. Functional."
Few constructs—golems—were as capable of decision-making as the Kellian: one of the reasons constructs were not in more common use. They would not necessarily make a connection between her introduction to the room, and a near-escape of an older captive. But they might check her.
"I am very tired of limited options," Rennyn said, and pulled away from the white strands that were reaching to bind her to the wall.
Blocking out distaste, she first approached the problem of freeing her Wicked Uncle by moving anything not firmly stuck to him. Then she studied the major points of connection, the sections she would have to pull aside when she switched to fast movement. And that could not begin until she had dealt with those two thick spikes into the back.
She could not pull him forward as far as the woman, and barely managed to crane up far enough to catch a glimpse and confirm the spikes were there. Her legs trembled, and she moved away a few feet to break the ever-eager roots that had taken the opportunity to fasten to her ankles.
"One chance," her Wicked Uncle murmured. "And you are not filling me with confidence."
Leaning against the wall, Rennyn took slow deep breaths in preparation and reflected that, if she failed, she at least would not have to listen to him. It was bad enough that she was going to have to touch him. Best to do that without looking at his face.
Gripping her useful piece of glass, she wished she could trade it for intact feet, and started forward.
The narrow gap between his back and the wall would only just fit her hand. Rennyn felt for the first of the spikes, plotted once again every move necessary, and then sawed. Her main fear had been that the spikes would be too tough, tree roots in comparison to the tendrils, but the first parted like butter, surprising her into nearly jerking back. She cut her palm in her effort to keep hold of the glass, then poked the shard wildly to where the second spike was barely within her reach. There…no. She jabbed again, urgently.
Her Wicked Uncle sagged several inches, and she dropped the glass, tearing at the vines that crossed his chest, lifting the largest above his head. Then she pulled his arms inward, as if she were trying to remove a shirt. When most of his upper body was exposed, she grasped him by the shoulders and used her weight to drag him forward.
Numb feet stole her balance and she fell, thumping down onto her back. Her Wicked Uncle had sprawled face down, no longer attached, though bleeding from a cut across his back between the stubs of the two spikes. He was only inches short of the nearest beam of sunlight, but did not so much as twitch—or sizzle.
The thought of getting up again was almost unbearable. Rennyn groaned, and compromised by twisting onto to her hands and knees. She had to move. Move!
The weight of the stone door worked in her favour. A low grating noise gave her bare warning, and she flung herself upright, well short of her original position, but at least in a patch without other occupants, where she could twine her arms through vine. Trying to control her breathing, she dropped her head, closed her eyes, and went limp.
Rustling. Rennyn’s shoulders tensed, and she worked on relaxing them, on being unconscious and uninteresting and nothing that needed attending to. This was not the kind of thing she was good at: she had too much curiosity, and was far from a natural actress. But, though the faint noises scraped along her nerves, she would not risk even a glance to see what she was up against.
More than one. They were not loud, these glass guards, but she was able to track their swift progress across the room to where her Wicked Uncle lay. A faint Efera discharge followed, accompanied by a muted grunt, as if someone had been struck hard enough to hurt. And then…yes, they were lifting him now, the noise increasing, leaves shaking.
Something touched her head. Rennyn did not flinch, not quite, but she could not help clenching her jaw and screwing her eyes more tightly closed. The touch came again, cool against her cheek, and then multiple…fingers lifted her.
The way she stiffened would be obvious to any half-competent observer, but the guards simply raised her higher on the wall, tucking more of the vines around her. And then the contact was gone.
They could not be overly intelligent. Almost, Rennyn risked a slit-lidded glance as the faint sounds suggested movement toward the door, but she held the impulse back, waiting for the grating that signalled the door had been closed.