Keighleigh awoke to the beautiful night sky filling her vision. Hundreds of stars twinkled and flashed above her. The back of her head throbbed.

She frowned. The dark sky was smothering her. The stars formed unfamiliar constellations. Some twinkled too close by, tiny bright nexuses she could almost reach out and touch. She drifted amongst them, amongst the enveloping night.

She tried to sit up but something held her down. Cold chains dug into the skin around her wrists, elbows, ankles, neck. She couldn't even lift her head off the ground.

She started panicking, eyes rolling around like a crazed horse's, searching for something, anything to tell her where she was.

She was in a room, but the walls were translucent. Vague, shimmering outlines against the blanket of night. The room rushed through the dark cosmos, those tiny stars flashing through the walls. No, the room wasn't moving. It was anchored to something she couldn't see, and the infinite void spilled through it, around it.

The ground beneath her was rough. It oddly reminded her of the floor of the training rooms. She felt around with her fingers and the sensation in her back and undersides of her legs. Grooves covered the floor.

Keighleigh threw herself against her bonds, to no avail. Her heart fluttered in her breast. This was some joke, right? Something that goofball Stephen had concocted for some reason. But then why was her head hurting, and why was she in this creepy place?

She desperately tried to remember the last thing before she'd woken up. She'd had a dream she was rushing down an endless, dark tunnel. Before that, she had been in one of the classrooms in the Richter Building, alone, doing her readings for Intro. Her roommate, Alyssa, had been too loud in their dorm room, as usual.

A noise interrupted her reverie. A door opened in the translucent wall. A figure in a ruddy, hooded cloak stepped through. Through the open doorway Keighleigh could see another space with translucent walls. Then the door closed.

"You're awake?" The hooded figure said. It sounded like two voices speaking at once. The first an inhuman drawl, the second a deeper vibration from the room itself, too massive and spacious to emanate from a terrestrial throat.

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The moment that voice shuddered through her ribcage the surreal, dreamlike quality of what was happening to her dissipated.

Keighleigh whimpered. "Who are you? What do you want with me?"

"Don't worry about that." The cloak's cowl was a black pit.

The hooded figure stooped down and lit a candle that rested on the ground. The harsh light fought back the flowing cosmos. The figure lit another candle, then another, moving in a circle around Keighleigh.

Keighleigh screamed.

This made the figure chuckle.

She screamed again and thrashed against her bonds.

"This will go easier for you if you relax."

"Fuck you! Let me go!" Keighleigh screeched again. She twisted her arms until her skin tore against the chains, drawing blood.

"Stop that!" The figure barked.

Keighleigh screeched in defiance. The chains became slick with blood. Her left wrist inched up into the chain. She just needed another inch or two, and-

The figure knelt down over her. From within its cloak it produced a gleaming, needle-tipped syringe filled with a clear liquid. The figure held aloft the syringe in one gloved hand, and used its other hand to pin down her left arm.

"This will only sting a bit."

Keighleigh laughed hysterically at the satanic voice uttering something she'd heard countless times in clean, well-lighted doctor's offices.

She barely felt the needle slide into her shoulder. The figure stood, brushed its gloved hands off, and began lighting the candles again, completing the circle around her.

"You understand that I want this to be as comfortable a process as possible."

Keighleigh bucked against her binds, screaming.

"There's no need for unnecessary suffering."

Something was making her dizzy. Her head rolled back against the stone floor, the throbbing pain reduced to a dull, half-acknowledged sensation. The burning in her freshly cut wrists faded to a warm tickle. The grooved, rough stone floor was the most comfortable place in the world.

Keighleigh looked up at the rushing cosmos in gaping awe.

The figure completed the circle, then stood up. It said something, but its voice was just a pleasant vibration in her body. It brought out a burnished knife from its cloak. Keighleigh ogled the bright, polished surface.

Magic burst out from the figure. Normally, this was accompanied by a sensation of unseen colour, but this time Keighleigh was blinded by a synesthesia. There was bright, pungent vermillion on her tongue, in her nose, along the tips of her fingers.

The figure knelt down over her and drew the knife down the length of her left forearm. She looked down at the cut. Blood pumped out of it. Tingly, warm, vermillion. The blood trickled down in structured rivulets into the ground. Beneath her, the ground began to glow.

The figure did the other arm too.

Keighleigh sighed, let her head rest against the floor, and let the warmth envelop her.