Thus far, Aida's experience of travel via Thorns consisted mostly of subtraction.

From Earth to the Vale, they lost all but a few shades at the extremes of light and dark, but wherever they were now they lost light entirely. Darkness as absolute as she could imagine replaced it though her other senses felt at ease after the contortions the Vale inflicted. Her eyes felt the void of light as an emptiness so deep it tugged her after it. Breathing also presented a strange challenge, the air thick, cloying, heavy and tasting somewhere between ink and rust.

In absence of vision, Feral's hard breathing and the Valeer's quiet muttering amplified.

She carefully felt about her. "Are we there?"

Here the ground felt cold, polished. Marble? How could anyone see to polish and what was the point if no one could see it? When she bumped her toiletry kit, she clutched it tightly like her daughter with her childhood 'binky'. Thinking of her daughter brought sudden, unexpected pain to her chest. She gasped and shook her head, unbidden guilt at arriving too late at the hospital suddenly flooding her.

"The Black Court. What the name lacks in creativity it makes up for in accuracy," Fallon said somewhere nearby. The darkness swallowed his voice, indicating a space both vast and empty.

A hand touched her arm. Someone snapped their fingers. A pair of hands fumbled at Aida before pushing away roughly.

Fallon yelled. Bodies shuffled, jostling, kicking, and bumping Aida. She crawled away in literally blind terror, repeatedly stepped on and tripped over as the loud struggle continued. Fallon finally prevailed over whoever or whatever attacked him and shouted Aida's name.

"I'm here." Aida voice sounded small and creaky. Her whole body shook. "What was that?"

"Damned Ferals. If they weren't such useful tools no one would suffer them." Something leathery flopped nearby. A moment later the stirring-teacup sound rattled above and beside her. "If that Feral is to live, she must drink this concoction bearing your essence. Prop up her head."

A fizzing sound like fresh-opened Coke. His shoulder bumped hers.

"Where is she?" he muttered.

"Here." Aida reached into the darkness, found Feral's limp arm, and followed it up her shallowly breathing chest to her face. "I've got her."

Fallon's hands grazed her shoulder, tracing down towards Feral's head. "Hopefully its non-function when we collected you did not ruin it or you may find ourselves without a Feral to your name by the time we are summoned. There we go."

Faint sipping. Almost immediately Feral's breathing grew stronger.

"You talk about them like objects. Like slaves."

"I wish." Fallon bumped against her. "Slaves at least may be sold; you are stuck with these Ferals forever."

Aida took a deep breath, ready to tear into Fallon, but something knocked her sprawling. Fallon yelped. Feral's snorting, huffing breaths intermixed with sounds struggle. Fallon cried out.

Someone tripped over Aida and she began to crawl away again, moving towards her only other beacon for direction in this place; the Valeer's voice. Slaps, thuds, grunts, ripping, and occasional fast, short sipping sounds continued for several minutes while Fallon shouted and fought. Contrasted to all that, Aida found comfort in the Valeer's ramble even if an undertone of distress tinged his singsong nonsense.

Fallon panted when he spoke again. "Your Ferals are likely bruised but I think each got a few tastes in all that. I was going to give them each a chance so if any of them failed to get a sip, it is on them. Whatever else comes of this, they are bound to you fully now."

"You already told me that." Aida crawled towards his voice, sweeping a hand out to keep from crashing into anything. "Ferals, plural? It's a job or slang or..."

"Yes. Ferals. Many. They will die without regularly imbibing your essence stirred into water." He said that word strangely again, as if it carried another meaning beyond the one she knew. "That is how Ferals work. They would not be nearly so useful or effective otherwise."

Her gut sank with his words, but the rational part of her mind refused to believe it. "So you're saying the masks bound... fused to their faces, those are there to keep them from eating so they have to... to drink my sweat or whatever to stay alive?"

"Your essence mixed with pure, current-rich water," he said, almost directly in front of her now. "Every Dynast uses them. What better bodyguards could you hope for? If you are feeling some sense of pity for them, save it for someone more deserving. Being allowed to have purpose and meaning, to even be allowed to live is a gift to them after what they have done."

One of the Ferals found Aida by her voice and helped her to stand. By the callus on her hands she guessed the one she still thought of as 'Feral'.

"What they've done? What did they do to deserve this?"

"I know not, but were it not despicable the Black Court would not have damned them to this life."

Aida mulled that over, wondering what crime might lead to this bizarre and horrific sentence of permanent slavery. No one spoke for a while.

They stood close, some human instinct pressing them against one another to ward off any dangers lurking in the dark. Cold seeped in, the others' body-heat welcome as she shivered in her thin nightgown. Aida held her hand out and moved it gradually towards her face, bopping herself lightly in the nose without even the slightest hint of silhouette.

After a time, Aida spoke again to fight off another wave of drowsiness. "I assume there's some purpose to this darkness? Do we wait until someone brings a light or is it forbidden?"

"Forbidding is irrelevant," Fallon said curtly. "There is no light here."

Aida snorted, wishing she'd brought a flashlight. "That's absurd."

"Yet true. Light does not work here nor has it ever since Ebon first discovered it."

"Ebon?"

"Of course you would not know who..." A pause.

"Ebon-explored,

the Subterrane.

Ebon-conquered,

the Pale.

Ebon-birthed,

the Dynasty.

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Ebon-founded,

the Court.

Ebon-opened,

the Gates.

Ebon-found

the Vale.

Ebon taken,

the Ascen."

Aida repeated it in her head. "You were talking about verses before. Was that the verse of the Black Court?"

"In a sense, yes. In another they are mere words since we actually reached the verse of the Black Court."

"That makes no sense at all," Aida said, annoyed at the frequency of her refrain. "We'll be part of some epic poem or something?"

"Many Dynasts commission one to tell their story at some point. If this proves worth all I sacrificed to get you here, such will be up to you."

He made her feel like an idiot. "Up to me? What do you mean?"

He sighed. "Absolutely right, I spoke too soon. The Court will probably find you wanting."

"Wanting for what? Am I supposed to be a long-lost royal princess or something? Is that what a Dynast is? Was the dad I never met the emperor?" She touched the crescent amulet about her throat. "If so, this is the most absurd fairy tale I've ever heard of."

"I would never presume to question why the Black Court ordered me to fetch you, but why else send a master-less Seneschal after you?"

"So you're saying they are going to make me Queen of someplace?" She shook her head, stifling a sense of panic. "Why me? I could never be Queen; I'd just screw it up! Did you not learn anything about my life before you swooped in? I'm practically a walking disaster! And why go through all this work for a feeble, sick old woman with a few years left to live at best?"

On some unspoken cue they all slowly lowered to the ground, backs together in a huddle against the chill.

"No one questions the Dynasty when the Court gives an order, not more than once anyway." By the sound of his voice, Fallon still stood. "If they find your blood is weak, then what they did to me will have been for nothing."

"Better hope whatever it is works out then."

It all filled her with foreboding. She'd survived segregation, run from a lynch-mob, faced jail time twice during the Civil Rights Movement and twice more for unrelated misadventures. Beyond that, she'd withstood multiple bouts of chemo, endured two difficult pregnancies, two more difficult childhoods, and two unbearably difficult funerals. Surviving three tumultuous marriages with the first proving a violently abusive specimen rounded out her mental resume.

In her day she'd have stared down whatever this Court was and dared them to find her wanting, but now just thinking about it left her exhausted. She might still be alive, but the old Aida was long-dead; time's relentless march leaving her too old, too brittle, too worn out.

"And if I'm wanting they what? Kill me?"

"I would not pretend to know Dynast business beyond that which I have been taught, but I doubt it. If you fail you would simply prove yourself just another menial; an ancient, ignorant, and especially useless one at that. Hardly worth killing."

"Wow, thanks for cheering me up."

They sat in near-silence for a while, the Valeer's endless nonsense echoing the fragmented meander of her thoughts.

To keep from drifting off, she started talking again. "Since you seem to know everything, how long do we wait?"

"We wait until a Thrum comes to direct us." Another word his intonation marked as a proper noun.

"Called a Thrum because?" she asked, feeling peevish. He didn't dignify her with an answer and they lapsed into silence again. Beyond the dark and cold, this place held nothing of interest. Without conversation to keep her awake, Aida dozed.

Movement stirred her awake to awareness of a low, throaty sound growing louder as she listened. "I'm assuming that's our Thrum?"

Arms reached under hers on either side to pull her up.

The basso hum drew closer and closer, never ceasing even for a breath. A shuffling scrape told her the whoever or whatever it was halted close enough to spit on them. Pitch down, up, up, down, up, a fluctuating rhythm suggesting some form of communication. Fallon's reply sounded formal.

After a moment the hum began to drift away.

"We go, hopefully directly to the Partaking that we may find resolution to this."

"Amen to resolution, whatever Partaking is."

They followed Thrum-sound in a slow, shuffling knot. The process proved an agony as the Ferals half-carried, half-dragged her, her arms slung over their shoulders wounded-soldier style. The instinctive, cringing fear of walking into or off of something didn't help anything.

"How does it know where it's going?" she said after they walked several minutes. "I haven't heard a single echo, a hint of walls or ceiling or anything even after all this way."

Fallon's voice came from slightly ahead of her. "This is only my second time at Court, thankfully, but I assume it is some type of slavant shaped for this work just as they shaped our Valeer for his. Who knows what otherworldly senses they imbue Thrums with? Who knows the shape or architecture of the Court? Perhaps this space is a flat expanse without end. Maybe we walk a narrow bridge of stone over an endless void, death but a single misstep to either side. Perhaps something even more bizarre. After the Vale, anything is possible."

"Great." Overwhelming vertigo struck Aida at his description regardless of his melodramatic phrasing. Nausea accompanied a feeling of spinning in the darkness. The ache of her arms and painful pulling between her shoulder blades as they shuffled onward into the nothing finally brought her back.

"How will we know when we're-"

The Thrum fell silent, their small group immediately lurching and bumping to a halt.

"Are we there?" Aida looked around pointlessly in the absolute darkness.

"Wait a moment. If someone speaks then our Tribunal begins. If not, they might leave us to wait for-"

Booming from the darkness blasted the voice of God, so deafeningly intense it shook muscle and bone. Cowering and covering her ears did little to help, but the auditory assault left no alternative.

She felt the silence after like a physical thing, an absence of sound so complete that the thudding of her heart became for a moment loud as a fist thudding into her chest. Even the Valeer fell mute.

Compared to that terrifying sound, Fallon's voice wavered like a candle flame over a dark ocean. She couldn't understand his words, of course, so she listened intently to his tone. Given the obvious distaste with which he carried out his assignment as her whatever-a-Seneschal-was, she wondered how much she could trust him to represent her.

Not that she had any choice in the matter.

The exchange passed surprisingly quickly, Fallon's words dwarfed by the now merely-uncomfortably-loud voice of who- or whatever spoke in reply. Whenever a brief lull in the dialogue slowed the exchange, Aida tried to convince Fallon to tell her what the hell was going on, but he just shushed or talked over her.

A surreal climax to the whole strange ordeal. She'd swum against the tide for what felt like a day straight, from a Vale as disconcerting as deep water at night to the empty shores of the Black Court only to find her reluctant lifeguard debating her fate with God as she straggled onto land.

When God and Fallon stopped talking long enough for the Valeer's soft babble to resume, Aida spoke towards where she'd heard Fallon last.

"What happened? What's going to happen to me?"

Fallon barked an order.

Whoever held Aida up shifted, then after a second shout dropped her hard and withdrew. Even the now-comforting sound of the Valeer drew off, erratic footsteps and his distressed tone telling her someone dragged him away.

"What's going on?" she shouted. "Fallon, answer me. Fallon, I order you to answer me!"

"Your Partaking. They shall test to see if you are pure enough to join the Dynasty."

Something immense shifted somewhere behind her and she scooted around to face the sound, her blood chilling. "What was that? Fallon?"

It scraped against or into the marble. Dog's toenails on tile, except whatever scratched against the floor here carried longer claws, at least a hundred times the mass and, by pattern of it, several more legs. She felt it looming over her. Pure fear rushed through her and she scrabbled backwards, crablike.

"Fallon, tell them to call it off. Feral, protect me! Someone come-"

A giant vice closed about her, pinning her arms against her sides and lifting her from the ground like she weighed no more than a mouse. The rough claw or hand crushed the air from her lungs, her nightgown catching and ripping against a surface somewhere between tree bark and beetle carapace as she squirmed and fought. Futilely.

Frantic, panicking, and out of her mind with terror, she screamed wordlessly.

Heavy, warm, rubber-coated wire or a perhaps a stretch of tentacle wrapped her neck and chin to wrench her mouth open. A fleshy orifice pressed over the lower part of her face, damp and smelling of iron. A gurgling noise portended something awful then a gush of hot viscosity filled her mouth. Gagging, half-drowning in it, she gulped it down to keep from suffocating, the fluid burning and squirming as it flooded towards her stomach.

Just as the whole experience became unbearable and she prayed for death as an escape, it ceased.

She fell to the ground in a wash of sticky liquid, landing hard and curling into the fetal position. Her gut rebelled, trying to expel the hot gunk clogging her insides, but whatever she'd swallowed lodged itself solidly inside her, clinging tight against her coughing and gagging. Dry heaves wracked her until she feared she might rupture her guts.

After a seeming eternity the gagging finally stopped. A sheen of cold sweat slicked her skin, her body trembling with fever chills.

A cool hand found her forehead and she clung to it.

"Am I dying?" she gasped.

Fallon's voice drifted from a tremendous distance. "We can only hope."