Chapter Text
They didn’t come to this section of the Ossuary very often, not unless it was to bring food or transfer through a new prisoner also deemed a failure to cultivate. When she heard the doors open from the end of the hall she cracked an eye open to watch from the small shadowy section of her cell as they brought a prisoner in. Normally the types of failures they brought through to this level didn’t last out the week and it was sad to say she felt the same way about this poor soul.
Rhaenyra Mercar studied the unconscious form of the man two venatori guards brought in between them. He’d been stripped of everything aside from a pair of pants and bore the signs of a recent fight. Maybe he wasn’t a failure, maybe this new neighbour of hers was a product of the recent escape attempt she’d heard all about. One of the slaves had explained to Rhaenyra that several prisoners had managed to escape three days ago but two of them had been recaptured.
The idea was preposterous. Rhaenyra had three escape attempts under her belt and with each one she’d managed to get further and further away before they caught her. It was impossible to escape the Ossuary when their prison warden had vials of the blood to track them down. She learned that lesson the hard way and had the scars to prove it. Although if she ever did escape, the first place they’d be able to find her would be Minrathous when she burnt the Shadow Dragons headquarters down to the ground.
That’s what kept her going, the idea of revenge on the assholes who left her here to die.
When the red barrier to her cell flickered and died, Rhaenyra remained exactly where she was, sitting on her cot utterly relaxed like she was on a beach vacation or something. The fact that the guards had stopped scaring her a long time ago meant she was boring to them now. Rhaenyra knew that pissed them off, when a prisoner stopped being scared of them and refused to play their games. Well it probably pissed them off more that she was an elf and saw their attempts at striking fear into her as laughable.
Calivan kept her alive, he had to, the fact she was immune to demon and spirit possession was of great interest to the venatori. It meant he was forced to feed her and keep her in a somewhat pristine condition. A beating every now and then would keep her in some kind of line. The Viper did warn her that her arrogance and pride would get her beat one day…well once or twice a month anyway. She’d been trapped in this hellish place for eighteen months now and was pretty much resigned to the fact that she’d never leave it unless she was dead.
The guards took one look at Rhaenyra as she sat there, eyes closed, smile on her face and threw her new roommate into the cell with her. “Maybe he’ll kill her when he wakes up,” the taller guard sneered. “Worthless knife ear.”
Rhaenyra stuck her finger up at them. “Your wife has frequent sex with a qunari when you’re not home to make up for the lack of dick she gets from you. Finding it with a magnifying glass is practically impossible.” She opened her eyes again, the smile on her face turning into a full blown smirk when the guard took a threatening step towards her.
But it just so happened that the second of the two was a little bit smarter than the first and they held their arm out in front of them to stop an attack they knew was coming. “Don’t do it, she’s done this before. Just drop the food and leave her to the crow.”
A crow? Rhaenyra didn’t move when the first guard dropped a sack on the ground, she knew it would have bread and meat in it, water as well. She waited for the barrier to go back up and the guards to walk away before she moved to grab the bag. She sat it aside and slid over to her new friend, rolling him over to take a look at his face. “Oh, what a handsome little birdie we are,” she smiled, brushing his hair from his face.
Whoever he was, someone had gone over him with everything from fists to some kind of whip and even a blade. He had old scars and new wounds across his torso and his arms but the cut on his head was the one that could pose a problem. Rhaenyra opened the bag and took out the waterskin which she set aside and shrugged out of the shirt she wore to rip some strips off it. Using the skills her father taught her, the elf used the water to wash the drying blood from the wound and placed a folded piece of strip over it before she used the other strip to tie it around his head.
She grabbed the pitiful pillow from the cot she slept on and folded it over to prop under the man’s head, careful to roll him over on his side so he didn’t choke on his own vomit or tongue. Satisfied that he’d at least looked less bloody, Rhaenyra split the bread and meat in half, taking her portion to her cot and leaving the rest by the sleeping princess on the floor.
He was still unconscious when Rhaenyra finished her food and she was bored of watching him.
As payment for a form of her cooperation, Calivan did give Rhaenyra little things to occupy herself with. If she agreed to an experiment here and there, the prison warden would give her certain privileges but would also take them away if he saw fit. Her latest amusement was the notebook he’d given her along with a quill that seemed to never run out of ink. Calivan seemed to get a kick out of the little drawings she made of her hunting down the Shadow Dragon higher ups and setting them on fire. Honestly it was the little things that made her happy and it was all she needed.
Rhaenyra sat there and sketched her new friend, her ears twitching when she heard him begin to wake up. It was only there that she managed to feel the presence of the demon inside the man. Her magic wasn’t what it used to be after being locked up for so long and occasionally dosed with magical suppression potions but Rhaenyra recognised an abomination when she saw one. This was certainly going to be interesting, that’s for sure.
Slowly she sat the notebook down and moved to the edge of the cot. “Hey, hey, slowly, you took a bit of a beating there new friend.” Rhaenyra got on the ground and shuffled over, picking up the waterskin to offer to him. “Before you ask, I’m Rhaenyra, what's your name?”
He stared at her silently, dark eyes searching her for something she was unsure of. His body was tense and his posture screamed distrust so Rhaenyra opened the waterskin to pour some in her mouth. “Lucanis Dellamorte,” he answered eventually, taking the water.
Rhaenyra’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “Oh the Demon of Vyrantium himself, I'm honoured if I'm being honest. Seen a lot of your work after you're done.” She glared at the crystal powering the barrier as if an angry stare would do some damage. “Only good venatori is a dead venatori if you ask me. They're goddamn rats.”
Lucanis Dellamorte stared at her with all the intensity of a man who wanted to kill but there was an internal conflict inside of him. The elf sitting in front of him was far too composed for someone who happened to be a prisoner. He didn't move as he studied her, he recalled the guards joke about putting him in the cell with Her so this had to be the one they spoke of.
When he lashed out at her it was almost like she was expecting it. Rhaenyra didn't fight back or struggle when he got her into a far too easy chokehold. “Zara planted you didn't she?” he growled in her ear. “What does she want? To anger me? She wants the demon inside me to kill me! Can't she do it herself?” Lucanis hissed angrily.
Rhaenyra gently put a hand on Lucanis's biceps, the one pressed against her throat. “I'm not a plant for Zara,” she assured him. When he put more pressure on her throat Rhaenyra held her hands up to show him she was harmless. “Zara has Calivan keep me around because I am-I was a Shadow Dragon and I'm immune to demonic and spirit possession despite being a mage. She’s curious, I’m like a back project she keeps coming back to when she’s bored. Apparently I’m of an interest to the venatori.”
There was a part of her that would always be consumed with shame for agreeing to be experimented on but it did get her some comforts. Rhaenyra held no doubts over the fact she was a prisoner but she was still a person who occasionally missed a hot meal or a bloody blanket. “I use what I have Lucanis and after eighteen months in this place I'm pretty sure I'd kill a God to just see the fucking sky again. How long have you been here?”
The hold around her neck lessened and Lucanis released her.
“You're a Shadow Dragon?” Like most people outside of Tevinter, Lucanis knew of the underground movement geared against fighting the venatori and slavery. He'd met several over the years from humans, to qunari, elves and dwarves but none of them seemed to have such hatred in their eyes when they spoke about the movement. They pretty much waxed poetry over how great the organisation was fighting for the underdog.
Rhaenyra shifted her position on the floor so she was sitting next to him, both their backs against the wall. “Was. I got sent to infiltrate this shithole eighteen months ago. I was here two weeks before they found me, I sent for help before getting captured but its been fucking crickets. Calivan loves to boast how I was set up by my precious dragons. Safe to say if I ever get out of here I need to find out why I was left here to die.” Judging by the silence, Lucanis had a very similar story to hers.
Whoever had sold her out knew all her plans, all her schedules and dead drop locations. They’d given it to the venatori and the bastards used it all against her when they finally captured her. Hell, they even knew the situation around her life growing up; her adoption into a highly respected military family, her childhood in Ventus, her penchant for setting fires, her brother’s status as a warden, her niece…Maker when they mention her niece it took three guards to knock her out.
Rhaenyra didn’t want to think of Atria, the baby would be three now and her family probably thought she was dead. She pushed the thought out of her mind, she could think about it later. “So cell buddy, how long have you been here?”
“Just over a year,” Lucanis growled. “I had a target, Calivan. I took a ship from Minrathous to Treviso and I was ambushed.”
“Sounds like someone set you up,” Rhaenyra suggested. She brushed some of her hair out of her face, internally ignoring how desperately she needed a bath and how matted her hair was. “So Calivan keeps you here as a prisoner, have you thrown in here with me and for what? Waiting for your new best friend to break out like some deranged butterfly?”
Lucanis laughed bitterly. “You have a very strange way of speaking about things Rhaenyra. But yes, I think Zara grows bored and she wants the demon inside of me. If it kills us both, perhaps she gets what she wants.”
Rhaenyra rolled her eyes. “For a high ranking venatori, she really is an idiot and lazy. Just kill me yourself.”
“If you dislike the Shadow Dragons that much, why do you have a dragon tattoo?” Lucanis inquired. He’d noticed the dragon the moment he’d woken up, it sat in the middle of her forehead snaking down as though it was some kind of tear-drop tiara.
“Because I love dragons?” Rhaenyra answered, sounding like the question itself was stupid. “I have ever since I was a kid. The Abyssal High Dragon is my favorite. I got to see one when I was seven and it was the best present ever. Went dragon hunting with the Lords of Fortune three years ago and I swear I met my kindred spirit. The high you get from a dragon hunt is like nothing else I swear.”
The elf twisted in place, turning so she could face Lucanis, her new friend did not need to hear her acting like a big, dumb puppy dog over dragons. “The demon…what is it?” she asked, gripping his chin to look into his eyes. Rhaenyra could see a faint purple glow around the iris of his eyes and it intrigued her. “And why hasn't it burst out of you like some twisted jack-in-a-box?”
The assassin stared at her, confusion written all over his face. “I do not think you and I are friendly enough with each other to discuss such things, no?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t care. I’ve resigned myself to the fact I am going to die down here and any thoughts of escaping are an abject fantasy I create in my mind to distract myself from that fact. I’m fucked up Lucanis Dellamorte but what’s the point in crying about it?” Rhaenyra
“How awfully pragmatic,” the crow frowned. Lucanis reached out for the bag of food sitting on the floor, he opened it to peer inside, screwing up his nose at the meat inside. “I do not think I can ever trust meat given to me by the venatori again.”
Whatever that meant. Rhaenyra looked over the wards on the other side of the cell that kept the ocean from streaming in and crushing them. “Okay, new topic since neither of us wants to talk about the skeletons in our closets nor about our feelings I propose something else.”
Lucanis arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“I named the fish,” she informed him. “All of them.” Rhaenyra pointed to a little white and blue striped fish swimming next to a large yellow one with red splashes of colour. “That Caelus and and Vibia - don’t ask me genders, I’m just assuming that’s a lady fish and a man fish. Anyway, Caelus I think has some kind of poison in his dorsal fin because whatever attacks him usually ends up dead.”
Despite the ever pressing fear of being crushed by the water just outside the barrier, Rhaenyra found a kind of comfort in the blue-green water and the life within it. It made her very contemplative if she focused on it too much. She’d spent significant time watching the fish grow and change, seeing the weeds on the seafloor as they grew. Despite being the kind of person who disliked the cold, Rhaenyra missed the rain, she missed snow and she missed snuggling up in a blanket in front of a fire with a nice book and a hot chocolate.
“You named the fish?” Lucanis asked incredulously.
“Oh yes,” she nodded in a very serious tone. “I named the fish. Those two over there are Munia and Gilia, again I have no idea if they’re lady fish or manly fish but Munia and Gilia are in some kind of war with the eel that lives in that rock pile over there,” Rhaenyra pointed out. “There were eggs but I think the eel ate them so that’s probably why they’re waging war on the eel.”
“ Mierda ,” Lucanis muttered under his breath. “I think your time in the Ossuary has fried your brain Rhaenyra.”
Rhaenyra laughed. “Well it’s either laugh or cry and I stopped crying the second time my body forced the demon out they’d fed me.” She shrugged at the horrified expression on his face, “but don’t worry about it, alright? We’ve got a lot of fish to name.”