A painful crack resounds deep within the military barracks, one that can only be heard by the two guards whose unlucky assignment has them standing guard by a thick, reinforced door. All the guards know about their assignment is that they must not move from this spot; and they must not let in anyone unauthorized. And if anyone without authorization tried to leave, they must be cut down on the spot with great impunity.

  Another painful crack escapes through the cracks around the door, followed by an agonized cry. The two guards glance at each other, their eyes - hidden beneath the visor of their helmets - locking for a moment, before they go back to diligently surveying ahead of them.

  Another thing they were instructed to do:

  Forget everything they hear coming from the door behind them. Never react to the sounds coming from the other side of the door. No matter how much pleading they hear.

  A fist rears back for a moment, before it crashes into bruised and yielding flesh with a sickening smack. The breath is knocked out of the helpless victim, as they slump forwards in their binding, held up by the rope digging painfully into their wrists and hung from the ceiling.

  The assailant takes a breath, shaking out their hand for a moment before casually slicking back a wayward strand of hair.

  “How far is your army?”

  “We’ll never tell you, Wrendale dog!” replies Nora, with a cry of defiance.

  The man winds his hand back before bringing it forwards into a violent backhand. It lands with a painful crack and a groan, spittle falling from swollen lips and mingling with blood on the way down.

  “How many troops does your king have?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree! We’ll never crack!”

  The man lets out a disappointed sigh, before suddenly exploding into motion, his leg kicking out and connecting solidly with the still form in front of him.

  “What’s your general army composition?”

  “No matter how many times you beat us, you’ll never break us!”

  Alastair sputters and wheezes, spitting bile to the side as he tries to take a whistling breath through his broken nose.

  “For fuck’s sake, Nora. Just… Give the man what he wants already! You’re not the one getting beaten!”

  Nora rolls her eyes at her partner’s outburst. It’s not like she likes watching Alastair getting beaten. She just refuses to give the enemy any more information than they already have. Surely Alastair understands that, right? It’s better to hold out against evil than it is to give in to temptation, and all that.

  The man currently assigned to wallop on the prisoners crouches down on the bloody floor and lifts Alastair’s bruised head up in order to look him in the eyes. Piercing blue meets with a swollen and bruised brown, and the man seems to judge Alastair’s very soul in that gaze. The cold, calculating blue seems to promise Alastair more of the same if he doesn’t give in to his demands.

  “Are you ready to talk, then?”

  He cocks his head to the side, observing Alastair closely.

  “Or do you wish for more?”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Alastair lets out a chuckle, starting low before becoming more and more manic. He lets out a wheeze, before a coughing fit takes over, racking his body with pain.

  “I’ve been trying to answer you for the last few days, fuckhead. You just… Kept on wailing on me.”

  The man stands still for a moment, disbelief on his face.

  “You’re lying.”

  Alastair spits to the side, running his tongue over his teeth and checking which ones were loose and which ones were still intact.

  “Go ahead. Try asking me something without beating me before I can answer, for a change.”

  Tied behind Alastair, her back to him, Nora thrashes in place, twisting this way and that in an attempt to look at Alastair and what the man’s doing to him.

  “Don’t give in, Alastair! You’re stronger than this!”

  Alastair lifts an unamused eyebrow in Nora’s direction.

  “Maybe two days ago. How about you take a turn getting your ass handed to you?”

  He turns back to the blue-eyed beater, his head spinning from the sudden motion as bile rises up in his throat.

  “Fuck if I know, fuck if I know… And fuck if I know. We're just scouts, man. Low-rank Adventurers. We don’t know jack diddly squat about jack diddly squat.”

  He chuckles for a moment.

  “You captured the wrong people if you wanted information.”

  The blue-eyed man stares at Alastair for a moment, still crouched down in front of him, weighing his words and judging the truth in them. He lets out a disappointed sigh and stands up again, stretching out his shoulders and cracking his knuckles.

  “And yet I don't believe you, Alastair. You do know something. Something that can greatly help us out in the war to come. There must have been a reason as to why you were in one of our villages. So until you tell me what you know… I'll be forced to carry on with this.”

  His fist shoots out and connects across Alastair's chin, knocking him to the side far enough to wrench his shoulders painfully against his binding. For a moment, Alastair blacks out into blissful unconsciousness, before he wakes up again to the searing agony in his jaw.

  Faintly, as if on the other side of a tunnel, he hears Nora laying into their assailant with her words.

  “You're all just vile, horrible, no-good baby snatchers and woman killers! We'll never talk! We'll never help you! You're nothing but vile, disgusting barbarians!”

  Alastair flinches against the inevitable hit that's coming his way after that outburst, screwing his eyes shut and hoping that it at least won't knock his teeth out. He's always had strong teeth; he's never lost a single one so far, never had a cavity. He's gonna miss them when their torturers inevitably start yanking them out one by one in order to get information that Alastair doesn't have out of them.

  But the hit never comes.

  Alastair waits and waits, but after holding his breath and keeping his eyes shut for a few seconds with nothing happening, he risks opening them and finds the blue-eyed bastard frozen in place, his hands hanging loosely to his side, the knuckles cracked and bleeding from how hard he's beaten Alastair so far.

  “Wait… That's what you guys think of us? That's what you're told we do?”

  Nora scoffs. “Everyone knows it. There's no reason to deny it. You're nothing but a kingdom of corrupt, violent fools.”

  The man lets out a chuckle, walking around to Nora's side and crouching down in front of her.

  “Funny. They say the same thing about Greenbarrow.”

  The man shakes his head in amusement, before cracking his knuckles and walking back to Alastair.

  “Now… Where were we? Oh, yes. Number of troops, general composition, and how many days out they are from us, please.”

  Alastair takes a moment to sigh, knowing just what's coming his way, before bracing himself for the inevitable retaliation.

  “Don’t know, don't know, and don't–”

  The sounds of beating continues into the day, as the two guards are eventually replaced by two more. The four share a look, not saying a word to each other, but just sharing in the knowledge that while the assignment is crap, at least it's not done alone.