“Ah, what a beautiful day!”

Bel’s jaw tightened as she looked at Nebamon. Her snakes wriggled while she did her best to suppress the impotent feelings of rage that surged at the insufferable man’s constant fake cheer.

Nebamon simply twirled his mustache in her direction and sauntered away, his tail wagging smugly. The act of antagonizing her seemed to be his only motivation, although she knew that there had to be more to the group of not-quite-humans than bad attitudes.

She and James were prisoners in every practical sense of the word. Their complaints about the brutal pace set over the last dozen days were ignored, their belongings had been searched, their weapons taken, and Nebamon’s group refused to say where they were going. They weren’t even allowed to relieve themselves alone, a humiliating experience that their mustached captor insisted was only for their own safety.

After killing the enforcer that lead them away, Bel had reached twenty free strokes. She’d hoped that one of the abilities now within her reach would give her a chance at escape, but if the world worked on hopes and dreams then she wouldn’t be in her current situation. Instead of something useful, the gorgon constellation yielded an ability that would grow sharp tusks from her face while Lempo offered a probably-fatal strength modifier and something that would deaden her mind to mental anguish. Shockingly, that made Dutcha’s ability to chaotically – but temporarily – alter her body the best option for her, but unless she could grow wings, grab her brother, and fly away faster than the speed of a fireball it wouldn’t get her out of their current situation.

Basically, they were screwed, and some lame ability that she didn’t even know how to use properly wasn’t going to save them.

The only bright spot was that Nebamon’s group couldn’t read Satrapian writing. James had convinced them that the scroll with the abilities Ventas recommended was a list of local herbs for cooking instead. That shook of interest from most of the group, but Crystal had spent the last day asking James to translate it.

Bel felt a knot in her gut whenever she thought about Ventas. She had felt safe and happy with the kindly uncle. Beyond just feeding and clothing her, he’d also been kind and patient and had taken the time to fully answer all of her nonsense question. She reached up a hand to rub at one of her earrings; they were possibly the only things she would have to remember the kindly priest.

It started as a joke, but once they’d been separated she realized that she had truly thought of the cheerful priest as family. She felt like throwing up when she realized that she’d barely thanked him for for all the time and effort he put into helping them, and now she didn’t even know if he had lived through whatever happened in Clearbrook. And then that reminded her of Beth.

Why didn’t we go looking for Beth? Why did we assume that she was fine? What if she’s still down in the tunnels, slowly running out of food as she searches for us?

“You doing okay, Bel?” James asked in a hushed tone. His constant concern for her was almost getting on her nerves, but she knew that was just her frustration looking for an outlet. Her otherworldly brother was being nothing but helpful.

He had even figured out a way to put his recently learned medical knowledge and abilities to use by administering some kind of weird pressure point therapy to their aching muscles at the end of every day. If it hadn’t been for that, Bel doubted that she’d be able to stand in the mornings.

“I’m okay,” she replied. She put on a smile to make it more convincing.

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but his shaggy hair hanging over his face ruined the serious expression. She patted her brother on the head, tousling his shaggy red hair. “You should do something about your hair.”

Beth was gone, Ventas was gone, and Bel couldn’t help fearing that James would be taken from her as well. She absently smoothed out some of the errant strands of his free flowing mane while he tried to duck out of her reach. She took in his general appearance as he shoved his hair back into disarray. “You should really shave too,” she chided him. “The women will take one look at this and run away.”

James’ formerly clean-shaven face was forming a straggly beard. For all that she and Beth had criticized his obsession with shaving, Bel didn’t like it. It was reminding her of Baytown’s scraggly bearded sailors.

James ran a hand through his hair and tilted his chin towards the sky. “Some women like a wild man,” he proclaimed with a slight grin. Bel snickered at his mock confidence, but scowled when he held out a tiny brush to her. Somehow he’d managed to hold on to his toothbrushes – apparently Nebamon didn’t recognize how terrifying the tiny instruments could be.

He shoved it into her hand. “Speaking of personal grooming, you should really do something about your morning breath.”

Bel’s snakes curled away in disgust. James had somehow convinced Ventas to make them a pair of these tiny brushes as upgrades to his previous devices. As if that wasn’t awful enough, he had also made a mouth tingling, gritty paste that he wanted her to use to rub her teeth. She would grudgingly admit that her brother had a good teeth, but Bel would rather find some mouth cleaning ability than shove the gritty stuff in her mouth.

James stared at her, his green eyes unblinking. Bel could feel the pressure building up.

“Fine,” she relented, “I’ll brush my teeth.”

“Great!”

James grabbed his torture paste and they began their strange ritual.

“Hey guys,” Crystal trumpeted, “I have some more – oh, hey, it’s that tooth brushing thing you were telling me about.” She watched them for a fraction of a second before her hazel eyes widened with excitement and she made a grabbing motion with her hands. “Hey, can I try it out after you?”

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Other than the occasional verbal barb, their other captors mostly ignored them. Crystal was the opposite, always distressingly interested in whatever they were doing. At first she had just pestered Bel with questions about her snakes, her interested persisting through several bites, but when she learned that James was the source of the strange new language and odd habits she began focusing on him as well.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if her brother hadn’t encourage the behavior. Bel was disgusted whenever he flirted the bizarre woman. She wasn’t even human! Bel had tried pointing to the scales that covered the back side of her body, but James had just called her biased and had claimed, without any sort of evidence, that getting along with their captors was the first step to escape.

Bel turned her head away from Crystal, hiding her expression of distaste at both the tooth brushing and the woman herself.

“Mmmf,” James replied with enthusiasm, spraying small amounts of the paste out of his mouth.

Bel elbowed him in the ribs.

“Hwat?” he yelped.

She didn’t reply until she spit out the gritty paste from her mouth. “Don’t try it Crystal, this stuff is awful.”

“But you have such nice teeth! Let me see your teeth Bel.” The bizarre woman shifted directions like a hummingbird, her hands reaching out to grab Bel’s face.

Bel quickly smacked the offending digits. “No. Absolutely not.”

“How about my teeth?” James offered, smiling wide.

“Eh, they’re just human,” Crystal monotoned. “I wanted to see if she has anything extra,” Crystal explained.

Bel glared at James. Surely Crystal wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t keep encouraging her.

“Wrap it up,” their local fire mage grumped. Rikja’s beady eyes stared angrily at the three of them. “We’re leaving.”

Rikja sneered before grabbing her own pack and stomping away. The fire mage had gotten even more hostile after James had asked if she was related to a rat. That had apparently struck a nerve, and the other-worlder had almost been burned to a crisp for suggesting it. Crystal and Nebamon had actually been forced to physically restrain the woman.

Not wanting a repeat of that disaster, Bel quickly slipped her bag over her shoulder and put on her well-worn boots. Her body still wasn’t adjusted to trudging up mountains, but augmented integument had stopped her from developing too many blisters.

Her brother was pretty miserable though. She felt a sympathetic pang as he groaned and winced with every step. He tried to put on a brave face, saying that it gave him a good way to practice his healing every night. Seeing as it was morning and he was already complaining Bel surmised that his abilities weren’t quite up to the task.

“Friends,” Nebamon called, “we just need to ascend this ridge and then we’ll be a day’s walk from our home base. We do have a small outpost that’s closer, but there’s no reason to stop there.”

“Not unless we wanted to eat something other than bricks,” her brother mumbled.

Bel sighed in agreement. Nebamon’s group had been giving them some kind of compressed food when they rested. The taste was bland and she could barely break them with her teeth. It made Bel wonder if they all had jaw and tooth strengthening abilities.

They trudged onwards in silence, the only conversation the occasional out-of-nowhere questions that Crystal came up with from time to time. Soon though, they were going up and down rocky footholds as they squeezed their way through cracks in the mountain. They were forced to walk single-file, making conversation nearly impossible. Bel preferred to keep her attention on her feet anyway; each drop was at least a few strides down onto hard rock. Not fatal, but certainly not healthy.

As they moved through yet another narrow crack in the stone, Bel thought that she saw a flicker of movement from behind her. Before she knew what was happening, she slipped.

“Shit–”

Her hands shot out to grab onto something, but her pack was suddenly heavier than she expected. She flailed helplessly as she tipped over backwards. Bel briefly saw Ken watching her as she spun, his gaze following her descent with all the compassion of a tree lizard.

Bel’s foot flailed as she fell, and when it finally found solid ground the force painfully twisted her ankle and she collapsed onto the rocky ground.

She – and her snakes – hissed with pain and righteous fury as she tried to stand. Someone had definitely made her fall. She glared up at Ken, her teeth bared in fury, but he stared back with the same empty expression that he’d worn as she fell.

James and, oddly enough, Crystal cried out in concern, but Rikja blocked their path back. Somehow she’d moved from leading the group to being in the middle of it when everyone else had been distracted.

Nebamon was at her side in the blink of an eye, offering platitudes and empty words, but Bel didn’t give him any attention. Ken wouldn’t have hurt her without being told to do so, she was sure. But why? Wasn’t she already their prisoner? Wasn’t that good enough?

“We’ll just have to bring you to our outpost. You won’t be able to make it to the main camp by nightfall. It is rather unfortunate,” Nebamon sighed.

Bel just caught the end of his speech, and her eye twitched at his words. Somehow she became even more angry than she’d already been, probably more angry than she’d ever been before in her life, like a fire had finally caught in her soul and was burning her up from the inside. Her face burned as blood rushed to her cheeks and her hands felt hot and sweaty as they clenched into tight fists.

“Son of a whore,” she cursed, “the shit comes from both your ends, doesn’t it? Ken pulled me down and you know it.”

“No,” Nebamon said, aghast. “He would never!”

“You–” Bel started, but the mustached liar poked her in the throat. It didn’t hurt, but his hand had moved so quickly that she couldn’t even track it. Her anger was washed away in a cold wave of fear.

“Well,” he sniffed, “since you and Ken do not seem to be getting along I shall send him ahead.”

Nebamon turned to the hulking giant of a man. “Ken, take the boy and continue to our main compound. Please let the Third Priest and Paladin Monroe know of our situation.”

Ken nodded and turned to James. The red-head backed away and held out his arms to block the hairy brute. “Whoah, hold on a moment, I have some basic healing abilities. I’m sure I could prevent the swelling and stabilize her ankle if you’d give me a moment.”

Ken ignored everything that the young healer said. He advanced like a rockfall, grabbing onto James’ pack as he strode past, literally dragging Bel’s brother away from her.

Bel stared after them, her heart hammering in her chest.

Nebamon clapped his hands in front of her face, demanding her attention. “Now then, it seems that you and the boy, although not truly related, have a close relationship, yes? He’s an oddity, but we don’t much care what happens to him. Good, bad – it doesn’t matter to me.”

Bel could feel tears welling up in her eyes. Her lip quivered. She hated being helpless. To think, her entire life had been like this until Beth had broken her out of Technis’ temple – amazing how just a short taste of freedom made capture so distasteful.

“If you behave, perhaps I’ll even forget about him,” Nebamon mused. “You’ll be coming with us either way, so why not make things easier on him?”

Nebamon twisted his mustache as he looked at her. His eyebrows shut up, making his yellow eyes big and round. “Well?”

Bel nodded meekly.

“Say it,” the man demanded.

“I’ll come quietly,” she whispered. She felt like her soul was being squeezed from her body.

Today. She would go quietly today. And tomorrow or some day after, she would slip a blade through his back. Her face darkened with her thoughts of revenge.

Nebamon, on the other hand, beamed like the sun. “Perfect! Rikja, get her up. Crystal, you’ll prepare passage the moment it is possible.” He stood up, stretching out his back and sighing with contentment. His tail swayed back and forth, mocking the young gorgon.

Bel suddenly understood her sister’s quest for vengeance. She wanted this man to die.