He felt like a misbehaving pet on a leash. Being pulled along a tug at a time, each sharp jerk of the rope telling him to walk, and not hesitate. But it was so horribly uncomfortable to walk, to move at all unless it was to get out of his clothes, and yet he couldn't do that yet. He had to endure a difficult trek outside and away from the cave, to the gentle river nearby. At least now his tail did move freely, but he kept it away from his captor as he moved, and eventually, stopped at the bank of the river. Felix bit his lip, glancing at the taller man to his left. He'd have to be watched... This man would keep a very close eye on him, no doubt about that.

Shifting slightly, Felix grimaced. "Would it be so bad to untie my hands?" He asked, holding out his limp arms. He'd be hard-pressed to do much of anything if he didn't have what was left of his freedom to move.

Felix studied his wrists---they were chafed a little, but otherwise fine, but he didn't have time to focus on them, as a handheld weapon was produced and pointed very threateningly at him. It didn't quite terrify him as much as it should have---how would it feel to be shot by one of those sleek arrows? Felix caught himself, looking up and nodding once, curtly, and turned, awkwardly sitting on the grassy bank and quickly disrobing. Setting his clothes on the bank in a small pile, Felix slipped into the water and felt a shock assault his senses, wake him up. He would have normally waited a little while for some warming stones to heat the water a little, but he didn't have such luxuries here. Still, at least the cold water brought him back to a logical state of mind. If he didn't somehow give this... assassin... what he wanted, he may well get killed...

Felix breathed shallowly, ducking below the water and running his hands through his hair, cleaning it of that small bit of blood and the overabundance of sweat that had accumulated over a short amount of time. His tail floated atop the water until a fish surfaced and bit its tip, making Felix yelp and lift it protectively. He sighed, sidling toward the bank and pulling his clothes into the water, rubbing them against a rough rock. It was crude, but good enough.

Felix glared in his captor's direction, red-faced yet again and feeling as if he were a furnace, glowing with heat. No, he hadn't necessarily... minded. But the man was a human, a human! Whatever had bitten him had fins, scales. A fish with sharp teeth. And that was actual pain. Whatever it was about humans, if they inflicted it, the sensation was not of pain or anguish. If some wild animal did, however, attack him, or claw or bite him, it was more oriented toward pain. It wasn't as though Felix would tell him that, of course. "It just... s-surprised me." He growled, rubbing his clothes together. They seemed clean enough, and though he wrung them out tightly above the river's bubbling water, they still felt heavy and cool. He'd really need those replacement clothes if he had nothing else while they dried.

But really, why bother preserving what little modesty he still had? The river water, while somewhat swift, was clear as a bell. And besides, if he wanted whatever he thought Felix had locked away in his head, he'd have to deal with the more obvious issues of having taken someone without the thought of extra clothes. Felix bit back his lingering embarrassment and tossed his clothes onto the dry part of the bank, following them as confidently as he could, head and tail held high, hair wild on his head and down his back. Stepping to the rock his captor sat on, he offered his hands again. "I don't guess anyone will be seeing us, as it is." He offered, a bit of a thin reasoning, but good enough.

He hadn't expected more cold water, and definitely not the way it was forced into his mouth, rushing by his ears. Drowning? Would he drown? Felix could hold his breath for a very long time, that had been demonstrated one day when he'd fallen through a rickety bridge and into a deep rapids. He spat the water out before he was able to speak again, biting down what he might have said if the man had only been grasping his hair.

"I write many things in many different languages." He huffed, grabbing onto the man's shirt for balance. "I don't know most of them, I just repeat what I see, the way it's supposed to be." He was feeling... angry now. Or maybe he was misinterpreting other emotions for anger. "If there's a code in the Indoctrination of Salazar, I wouldn't know. If there's a code in the Manuscript of Human Anatomy, I wouldn't know. I just copy what I see and if it's a language I know, all the better! I'm an artist! An artist of words, any scribe would say so. It takes a powerful eye to see what I see, to replicate it so perfectly. If some... spy came to get some coded documents duplicated, I wouldn't have known. I don't ask questions! And whatever you want from me, I don't have it!"

Felix grimaced. It wasn't in pain, though, as his head was wrenched back so he stared at what little sky he could see through the trees. "And if I fail?" He egged. "What then? You'll... kill me? Drown me?" Then he thought of something---This man couldn't go back to his cottage to get the documents---they were probably burned. Just like the rest of his home. "You'll never find the documents now. When you brought me here you left the candles on my desk burning. They've probably already burned down so far they've eaten away everything I've ever had."

He breathed in quickly, pursing his lips so he didn't openly cry. Everything he had, gone. Gone because he left his candles untended. So many works he'd had finished for others, up in smoke... All his simple clothes, hand-made and plain furniture, everything he'd worked to gather over so long on what he was given for his work, which wasn't quite as much as he'd like. "It's... all gone." He breathed, as if it were an afterthought. Felix just couldn't believe the spot he was in...

Felix screamed, not out of fear, though. Such a painful action to anything else only excited him, even at the threat growled out by his captor. "It g-grows back." He muttered. What use would such a thing be, after all, if it didn't regenerate? He breathed, shakily regaining himself. That yank had been far, far more intense than the first time the man had touched it, perhaps just out of curiosity. "Besides... I don't see why I should do anything. I don't even know your name and you're threatening me with a... a type of castration. Temporary though it may be. I don't work for you. I don't work for whomever you're running after! I'm caught in the middle and you won't admit you've made a mistake---and if I did know anything... how do you know I know so much?"

Really, Felix had taken many documents from people in dark overcoats or hats, with sour faces and ugly expressions. He might have memorized a lot of codes... He might have circulated a lot of classified, serious documents...

Felix managed to clamp his mouth shut when the newly-named 'Darren' pulled his tail again. Why did he do that!? Did he secretly enjoy doing what he did to Felix? More than the pain? What was that about? "So what use am I?" He demanded brokenly, feeling his throat constricted. "If you kill me you've got nothing." He almost looked forward to it, really. If Darren's idea of torture was the use of a knife, water, the pulling of his tail? While it felt almost impossible to sit bottled up, with no form of relief otherwise, it was anything but truly painful.

His words were almost a compromise. It had that ring to it. Darren would have to think if he wanted Felix to replicate what documents he could clearly remember---and those documents were many, if not all.

Felix yelped, scraping his back on the rough ground behind him as he fell and then startling at the sudden explosion along his right shoulder. The threat the sensation brought with it brought Felix's legs up and into a protective stance as he sat up shakily. "I don't know." He barked, swallowing quickly to avoid drooling. "I thought you had all the answers!" True, Darren had seemed so sure of himself before. Now he just seemed to be flailing and waiting for Felix to fill in the blanks. Felix, who didn't even know one side from the other. Was he kidnapped by the 'good guys', or not? Who had he been helping all this time?

Felix twitched back out of nature than fear of pain, watching the dart bury its metal head in the earth in front of him. Really? He thought he could bring all that back? All his work? His years of work!? Felix shook his head hard, gritting his teeth. "I had so much!" He yelled. "Not my home, not only all my clothes, my pictures, my... my things from home and school... All my work. All my replications. All the things I'd finished for priests and scholars and teachers and the king's archives. All that..." He growled as he breathed out. "All that, the original works and their copies. All gone. And you think you can snap your pretty little fingers and make all that better!?"

He shook his head hard, sending his pale hair flying wildly. "That's impossible. I can't bring any of it back. I've lost decades of history in a matter of hours." Felix's face broke into a small smile. "What do you think you can do that'll hurt worse than that?" Nothing, for sure. Even the threat of drowning didn't faze Felix. The way his head was held under water, moments from filling his lungs, his struggles almost fruitless... it sent his heart into a frenzy... Did fear and pain in general do that to him....? He'd never thought to answer that question.

Felix couldn't help but cry out, but that was followed by an almost involuntary smile. "Ooooh, gods..." He twitched, feeling the pain work its way down his arm and torso in little prickles of lightening. "I work for anyone, I have no si-ides!" He felt reckless now, the object of so much influence on his body, the way Darren probably didn't realize he was making him feel. He gasped, and chuckled brokenly. "S-so, Darren... How long have you watched me? Months? How many times did you watch me bathe?" He laughed a bit more then, and shifted so Darren inadvertently twisted his arm a little more. Gods, the way it made him feel! Maybe he was a freak, but that was how he was, it was in his blood. The feeling itself made him just want to explode---again. And Darren was in such a precarious position.

Felix bit his lip hard, fighting the urge to cry out again. "Aaah... You can... i-if you like... it'll gr-grow back in a day or two." He wouldn't utter a word. Not a word. If Darren hadn't figured it out by now, he probably wouldn't until Felix made it overly clear. The knife's blade disappearing further into his arm, sliding beside bone, was almost too much to take. He let his head fall back. "Oooh, maybe I am a demon..." He moaned. "I might find... Uh... I might find it simpler to just cut my horns off..." He did have horns---they were very small, so it was hard to tell unless one actually made an effort to move his hair. He sighed. "Aah... And you might like to stop pressing on that kn-knife unless you want to be washing your clothes too." Was that clue enough? For a spy Darren seemed blissfully unaware of his emotions, even the blatant pleasure Felix couldn't exactly bite back.

Felix felt himself squeak as the weight was suddenly lifted, his arm freed and the blade wrenched out of him. Instinctively, he curled in on himself to hide what little bit he could, but still felt so frustrated that he couldn't get there as he had before. With just that little touch of his tail, which now swung left and right wildly, showing his energy level. He was wide awake and buzzing, something that was common with his kind and their levels of excitement. But it seemed he'd unnerved Darren.

Was it that easy? Surely this man was used to being in control, fighting over unexpected situations or getting through something he'd never encountered before. But a big part of Felix wanted to know how far Darren's curiosity would span. If he were going to be kept here, anyway, why not keep things as interesting as possible? Maybe it'd calm the spy down a little, because he seemed so tightly-wound...