One of the men approached and crouched in front of Iris, tilting his head at her like a curious dog. It was too dark for her to see him even now, but her awareness told her where he was and how he moved. She could sense his robes and the flesh beneath them, and the metal mask with a carved frown and empty eye sockets. The space behind his mask, however, felt empty. Her awareness detected no flesh or even air where his head should be, instead she felt only his neck as it extended upwards into nothingness -- into void.
"You're not as afraid as I expected," the man observed in a monotonous voice.
"I have a dysfunctional sense of danger," Iris said nonchalantly.
"How about your sense of pain?"
He moved fast. Her instincts tried to blip but the handcuffs anchored her to physical reality and her mana drained for nothing as the man's fist crashed into her jaw and knocked her to the ground. He stood and kicked her in the gut, forcing a wheezing grunt from her lungs. Abby's birdcage rattled as the flailing of her tentacle grew more violent. Iris braced for the next strike, but it didn't come.
"Where is the wyvern egg?" the man asked as he used the toe of his boot to push her over onto her back.
It filled her with momentary panic to learn this was about Littletooth, launching her mind into a battle between worries and logical thoughts. The good news was that the man's strength told her he couldn't be more than a low level champion, and she tried to push away the thoughts of what might happen to Littletooth if she couldn't escape to instead focus on thoughts about how she was going to fight back.
"We know you have the egg," he kicked her again, and she was pretty sure a rib cracked, "Morose demands their property."
Iris said nothing as the shrouded man loomed over her. She wanted to reply with a quip or somehow stall for time, but her thoughts were racing too quickly to compile a plan.
He crouched over her, "this is your last chance to produce the egg."
"Or what?" she spat. An idea occurred to her -- not quite a plan, but at least an action.
He half-glanced over his shoulder to speak to one of the other men, "cut your way through the aberration and search the bag."
The figure closest to Abby's cage drew a dagger so long it was almost a short sword, and turned his attention to the flailing tentacle.
"Wait!" she shouted, "you heard the man, Abby. Hit him with an egg."
The tentacle paused for a moment, then rapidly withdrew into the void. A second later it returned clutching a medium sized egg, one of many that Autumn had Iris keep in stock for omelets, and threw it at the crouched man's head. He reached back and caught it, but it shattered on impact and splattered him with goop. Iris twisted on the floor until her cuffed hands were facing Abby. As she hoped, the handcuffs kept her anchored and unable to enter the void, but didn't stop her from blipping other objects or entities. The bottomless bag blipped out of the cage and appeared amongst the trio of men at the back of the room. The tentacle whipped around and struck one of the men in the face, staggering him backwards as the bag dropped to the floor. Abby swept her tentacle across the floor and knocked his feet out from under him, toppling him to his back.
The man closest to Iris, presumably the leader, reached out for her neck. She rolled away and twisted onto her feet, stumbling back until she hit the wall behind her. He was already upon her, fist reared back to strike. The wooden wall buckled under the strike as she ducked under it and dove forward, kicking off the wall for extra force. Her shoulder caught the man hard in the center of his abdomen, but he responded by reaching down to grab her by the throat and shove her back against the wall.
"Stick!" she wheezed as loud as she could.
The tentacle withdrew into the bag as two of the men converged on it. It returned wielding Iris's enchanted walking stick, which it whipped around and slapped against the mask of the dagger wielding man. An eruption of force exploded from the stick and flung the man backwards, driving him head first into a wall that splintered from the impact. The dagger flew from his hand and landed within reach of the tentacle. Abby tossed the walking stick into the air and reached out to curl her tentacle around the handle of the dagger.
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Iris twisted just enough extend her cuffed hands around the small of her back and blip the stick into her grasp. She had no leverage for an attack on the man who was choking her, but she didn't need it. A careful positioning of the staff pointed one end at the chain connecting her cuffs, and a pump of mana exploded force from it that shattered the chain and shoved her forward. The pressure of being pushed against the man's hand threatened to crush her throat, but he faltered in shock and his elbow buckled. She was thrown forward into him and they both toppled to the ground.
Abby's tentacle whipped around with the dagger and sliced the calf muscle of the man she had tripped just as he climbed to his feet, instantly dropping him back to the ground as his leg gave out beneath him. The last man on his feet reached out and caught the tentacle as it drove the dagger towards him, and then both he and Abby disappeared. Iris sensed the disappearance of matter looked up in shock to search for Abby even though she could see nothing in the darkness, distracting her from the assailant she wrestled on the floor.
"Abby!" she shouted.
The man she struggled to pin to the floor grabbed her by the hair and forced her to face him. She saw nothing, but she sensed the once hollow sockets in his mask where now small, floating spheres appeared within the void behind the mask. Her eyes refused to close, they were locked with the eyes of the man in the darkness, and a horrible sensation of helplessness washed over her.
"You will obey," he instructed.
The man Abby had thrown against a wall was recovering consciousness, he glanced around the room and shouted something at the crippled man clutching his bloody leg. The only words Iris could make out from the response were "the fool took it to the void!" The two men vanished, leaving only Iris and the assailant who now held her mind in his grasp.
"Stand," he instructed.
She climbed off of him and rose to her feet, her eyes maintaining contact with his throughout the motion. She fought with every ounce of her willpower to look away, or to raise a hand to strike, but she could do nothing. Her mind still worked, however, and questions raced through her mind. Where was Abby? Were the other men chasing after her? Why hadn't this one used his hypnotism from the start? There must be a reason.
"You will answer my questions," the man said.
That command felt different than the others.
"Does your aberration possess the egg?"
"Oooohh," Iris said, her voice monotonous as the usual mannerisms were absent from her motionless face, "so that's the catch. You can control how I move, but can't force me to answer your questions."
He grabbed her by the throat once more, "you'll find I can very much force you to answer."
"Can you, though?" she croaked as his hand clenched.
There was a flash of matter -- for only an instant, Iris sensed the room was full of tentacles originating from a bulbous mass. One of the cloaked men was slammed against the wall, while another was constricted at the waist until his bones crunched. The third man was held by a tentacle wrapped around his head, his body limp as he was whipped around. Then it all disappeared again.
"I don't think--" Iris forced out the words, "fighting Abby in the void-- was a good idea," she would smile if she had control of her own face.
The man squeezed tighter. It felt as if he might rip her throat from her neck with only his fingers.
Another flash of matter. The man with a bloody leg was slammed into the floor, crushing the planks into a crater. The man with a crushed torso was tossed aside limply, and the final man was suspended in the air with his arms and legs held by tentacles, as another tentacle rapidly drove the long dagger in and out of his gut. The corpses of the two men on the floor were left behind when the tentacles disappeared again with their remaining victim.
The man in front of Iris snapped his head towards the bodies of his allies in surprise, freeing Iris from his spell. She reached out and blipped the walking stick into her hand, pressed the tip against his extended elbow, and released as much force as she could. He shouted in agony as his bones buckled under the force, his hand releasing her neck as the mangled arm twisted limply from the blast. She hadn't even realized he was holding her off the ground, but she now dropped to her feet and blipped across the room.
The tentacles appeared again. The bloodied corpse of the man Abby had stabbed was thrown into the last man standing, knocking him back against the wall. The tentacles disappeared again, and then the bottomless bag appeared on the ground before Iris. There was no time to question it, she blipped the bag into her hand and placed it at her waist, dropped her walking stick into the void, and focused her awareness on the other side of the wall. She felt moving air -- wind. Just before she blipped to the other side, something large and fast entered her awareness and she instead blipped to the side to dodge it.
A man crashed through the thick plank walls as if they were twigs and moonlight spilled in from the outside as wind howled past the gap in the wall. They were high in a tower, higher than any building in the city other than one. What were they doing here, she wondered for an instant. The man landed deftly on his feet, folding large feathery wings behind his back. Iris recognized the distinctive scar on his face -- it was Commander Bridge, of the Adventuring Corps.