Prison

According to Leia, a team of contractors has been dispatched out to my chosen new house to carry out repairs; all paid for by the College. I don’t ask any questions – never look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s not my money. The two of us hitch a ride over to the station to check in on their progress.

I’m happy to report that the grounds have been entirely cleaned up; the shattered windows have been repaired, and the dwarves are busily scraping and washing the exterior of the building, suspended up on crude scaffolds with harnesses. They really do a great job. I could get these guys to moonlight as construction workers if I was corrupt enough. As I’m traipsing around the facility, I see the front gate swing open. Four completely bald human mages shuffle in, staring at me. Their eyes, or rather their pupils are glowing. They don’t blink. One of them approaches.

“We are here to give you a guided tour of the Royal College of Magic’s prison facility. You are to come with us at once.”

Very serious people! Looks like there’s no putting this off. Leia and I follow them out to the street, expecting to climb in the carriage. They stop us.

“Step here.”

A glowing circle, about 10 feet in diameter, projecting an incredibly bright light around its perimeter appears in front of us. Squinting my eyes as I cross its threshold, we step inside it, and we’re teleported into a vast, empty concrete hall. More of a chamber than a hall, really. It has completely smooth, sloping walls with a ceiling apex of about 40 feet, completely featureless and gray. The floor is polished, smooth, gray, and has a strange slope to it towards the center, leading to a blackened archway.

We slowly make our way towards this spooky-looking entranceway, our footsteps ringing on the pavement. As we approach the doorway, it cracks open, revealing a magnificent multi-story open area, the walkway continuing into the air ahead of us. All around us, from floor to ceiling are prison cells. Square shaped cutouts in the exterior wall, with that same type of magical barrier gate that I saw at the entrance to the College.

Imprisoned within these tiny rooms are all sorts of people. Lizards, humans, a few snakes, a couple slimes. I spy one Dwarf doing pull-ups. They let him keep his helmet.

“This is the minimum security ward, where petty criminals are held.”, one of the creepy bald tour guides explains.

Minimum security? How are they supposed to get out in the first place? There’s not even a stairway to the surface. We must be underground, but this is overkill. Total overkill. I continue peering at the prisoners as we stroll along this seemingly endless, straight observation walkway. There’s a bright flashing light from one of the cells. It’s a young man, a human, repeatedly casting some sort of fire spell at his door. His spells slow down, then he collapses to the floor in his cell.

“One of the magnificent qualities of our barrier magic is its ability to rob the mana of those who try to break it. That young man discovered that first-hand.” They seem to hardly care about the consequences; he’s barely breathing.

“It’s impossible for prisoners here to end their own lives, as the barrier captures their mana and heals them with it. Some of the more powerful prisoners have actually extended their lives, and therefore their sentences, by doing this.” Brutal.

“We now come to the medium security ward. Here, the majority of the prisoners are mages, though some are skilled in poisons, as well as other types of rogue magic.” Some of the cells are completely blocked off with a black, visibly impenetrable veil. As with the previous ward, there’s no access to the cells, just an endless floor-to-ceiling kaleidoscope of squares.

“Those covered cells harbor criminals with hypnosis, mind control or mind-robbing abilities. If they were to make eye contact with you, they’d be able to fully co-opt your mental faculties and bend you to their will. They’d probably try and make you escape the prison with them.” I quickly pull out my notepad and jot this down.

Ahead, one of the cells has dark, tendril-like protrusions swinging around violently beyond the barrier.

“What on earth is that?” I ask, incredulously.

“That is a void mage.” His face comes into view, a twisted, hideous countenance, like an old man with purple, pupil-less eyes. He’s clearly consumed with rage. As I look closer, I see his tendrils, jutting from his back, are neatly encased by the same barrier that forms the door, just extending outwards into the air.

“Void mages utilize some sort of unknown state of matter to exercise their blasphemy. Inevitably, they commit crimes and are held here. We had to develop special countermeasures for them, as you can see.” The poor guy is foaming at the mouth. It occurs to me that this entire walk we’ve gone on has been totally silent; not a peep, except for our footsteps and the droll explanations of our guide.

“Can they hear us?” I ask.

“No, they are hermetically contained.”

Yikes. I glance at Leia, who has a disconcertingly dour expression on her face. I take it she’s never been inside a prison before.

We arrive at a circular platform with another ring embossed into the floor. We step onto it, pause for a second, and a new room snaps into view. This was unlike the previous teleports – it was instantaneous and jarring, with no fanfare. We’re met with an even larger, oval-shaped chasm of a room, so large that the extents of it are obscured by shadowy darkness.

In front of us, stretching the length of a football field, is a series of circular magical domes, each with a freakish looking prisoner within, dimly illuminated. Notably, the first one I see is a goblin, tattooed all over, squatted down. The floor of his cell is marred with deep gouges throughout. Next, an old man with a beard that stretches along the floor of his cell a good 5 feet. Then, a massive dog, sleeping peacefully, a torrent of energy swirling around him within the dome.

I see an elf in the next cell, tall, lanky, pointy ears. He’s just floating mid-air, humming to himself. I peer up at the ceiling. A striking, angular set of glowing pulses shoots through the air, brightening the room somewhat, like one of those old halogen lights. This stirs the other prisoners.

“Housed here are our high-security prisoners. You will not see the maximum security ward, as not even the Elder Mages are allowed there. Only a select few are capable of monitoring it, due to the danger involved. Those imprisoned here have committed atrocities beyond imagination.”, states our tour guide.

Ahead, I see a dome that appears completely filled with ice, cloudy and impenetrable. One of the 4 bald mages, not the one that has been speaking, stops in front of it, sizing it up. He snaps his fingers. Instantly, the ice vanishes, and I’m met with the sight of a young boy, who couldn’t be more than 7 years old, with angry, glowing, ice-blue eyes. A thin, razor sharp pillar of ice materializes and crashes against the barrier, causing Leia to jump a bit. Then, a few more, before the entire dome re-fills with ice.

“Unfortunately, that boy was a candidate to become one of the Elder Mages. He was stricken by an inability to control his power. More than half a million people perished in his country, which is to this day an icy wasteland, transformed overnight.” Well, he sure looks like he can control it now. Poor kid.

Our path arrives at a seemingly bottomless, circular pit that stretches far beyond imagination. It’s the pure embodiment of emptiness. A pit to Hell. I steal a glance at Leia, who is now the very embodiment of anxiety. She’s not having fun whatsoever.

A green, glowing doorway appears off to the side, next to us.

“We will now show you our lab.”

Our lab? You people conduct research here too?

We step through the threshold to find a refreshingly brightly-lit, spotless, magical lab. Clean, white consoles with floating magical screens, and about twenty eggheads busily typing away and poring over data. A massive projection readout of a circular barrier dominates the room, with a map, cell-by-cell of the prison within. One of our tour guides hastily shakes hands with a senior-looking scientist.

Leia perks up a bit. She takes the opportunity to delve into her magic-oriented questions pertaining to barriers with a scientist she pulls aside, while we’re shown the bird’s-eye-view of the facility from the de-facto control room. Almost as soon as it begins, we’re shepherded aside, thanked for our time, and teleported (the traditional way) right back outside the Order of Police station, without our guides.

Needless to say, we’re both left with an indelible impression of unease from the experience. I understand the need to house these kinds of people, but this is something else. I can’t shake the impression it had on me. The rest of the day passes in a blur and I’m left to ponder the ethics of this Lovecraftian horror I’d just witnessed.