“It’s never good, Quinn. I know as much.”
Renzus puts his head back against the wall, slowly realizing that he was getting a little better each time at filtering out the petricite buzz that the mineral was inducing in his mind. It gnawed at his sanity less, but in doing so, he wondered just what it was like for Sylas to have been chained and practically buried in the stuff.
No wonder his rebellion was so wantonly violent.
“Quinn…do you know what it’s like, to be a mage surrounded by petricite?” He whispered, looking up at her with his grey eyes strained with effort. “Do any of your leaders? It fits the definition of torture. It’s a needling, incessant pain. It’s like one of your senses being set aflame. I can’t explain it with words, to someone who’s never touched the arcane before. But it is a profound kind of pain. The kind that torture of the body could never replicate, and I’ve been on the receiving end of even Noxus’ greatest torturers before.”
He touches his shoulder, and it still came away red and damp, despite the poultice. On a practical note, the pain was affecting his body’s ability to heal, even naturally. The petricite buzz was keeping his fight-or-flight instincts constantly on edge, and that precluded any attempt to close the wound.
“Has anyone in Demacia ever asked themselves if they were okay with inflicting this kind of pain on others, in the name of security? Have your rulers? Your courts? I don’t know which is worse, Quinn. That your leaders have either been blithely ignorant of this question, or that they have long ago resolved that the answer to it is that they simply do not care.”
Then again, perhaps he was preaching to the choir. He knew that Quinn wanted better for her country. He knew he could count on her when it matters. Renzus just hoped that her efforts would be enough.
He slumped against the wall, closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing. It was going to be a long few weeks, before the reckoning with the courts came.
He just hoped that he would survive to get there.
Quinn hesitates, just before the door, her hand lifted slightly to unlock it, when she stops. This pain Renzus describes is familiar, though. It’s like a load of bricks perched on her chest so she cannot draw a full breath, a tiny splinter caught in her foot that she can’t pull out, and cotton filling her head as a fever might. All of that, all at once. She’d never thought of herself to be inclined to the arcane, but it would make a bit of sense regarding certain quirks. The way she just understands Valor, the intuition she has within her forests... the fact she avoids the city against all orders.
“I can only imagine,” she says, though she’s half-lying. Renzus is smart enough he might pick up on it, she thinks. “Our kingdom was meant to be safe, but in the effort to ensure that, we took measures that only served to harm our people further.”
The ranger-knight isn’t one to show her hand to people who are on a need-to-know basis, and she doesn’t want to tell Renzus he’s just earned himself a place on that list in the most explicit terms.
“Here’s what I can do.” She turns to him, the door propped against her hip. “I’ll see what I can do to get you out of here until your trial. It will be one step. The people may not like it, but I think I have a place for you. I know the city is still smothered in Petricite from the flagstones to the walls, but it’ll be better than being stuck in a box of it. I can’t promise anything, but if you’re placed under my watch, things will be easier to solve on my end.”
