After going through the portal, Annabelle saw nothing but darkness. At first, she thought it was just a delay in travel, but it failed to clear up. Was this some sort of void between worlds? Well, given that she was still breathing, not likely.

Behind her, a light source manifested. She turned around, and saw Lorso being carried by Silence and manifesting a small fire in her palm. Silence had focused his regenerative effort on regenerating a single eye, but the rest of his face was still unrecognizable, and Lorso was still unable to fight.

Out of the corner of her eye, she also spotted Darius. Whatever this mess was, their whole group was here to face it.

Around them was a cave, formed out of some sort of pitch-black stone. There was only one exit ahead of them, leading into more black stone. At first, Annabelle thought this was another instance of random teleportation, but then realized it was improbable. After all, 'random' teleportation from an error would be far more likely to teleport them into a rock than into an open cavern.

"Where are we?" Lorso whispered.

"I don’t know."

Darius shushed them. "I hear something." He crept forward, potentially to take any opponent by surprise.

"We can’t win a fight," Annabelle said. "But if we surrender, I’ll tear down the threat from the inside once my powers return." Although, they might not keep her alive for long enough, or they might put her in a null-magic field that could potentially prevent her from regenerating.

Even as she said that, she drew her sword, in case their opponent was someone they could beat.

Then, their opponent materialized. Annabelle couldn’t make out much of their form at a distance,

"We surrender!" She cried out. It was a single individual, but their advance was confident, as if they didn’t consider their foes a threat.

The individual stepped closer. He was covered in metal armor. and Annabelle initially recognized it as powered armor, the sort that was eventually developed to turn the tide against the aliens. But his weapon was a staff, not a gun, and Annabelle noticed several significant differences in the armor's design.

"I'm not the threat here. You don’t have much time. Come with me."

"Who are you?" Annabelle asked. "And what is going on here?"

"You can call me Varos," he replied. "We are being hunted. We need to move."

"Hunted? By what?"

Varos didn't reply, only urging them along. They followed behind him at a brisk pace, continuing the conversation as they moved.

"Look, if we can hide somewhere safe for a few days, I should be able to recover enough to take out whatever foe we're facing," Annabelle claimed.

"Doubtful, " Varos replied.

"I just beat the strongest archmage known on my world. It took all of my energy to do it, but once I have enough time to regain it, I can and will do it again."

Varos changed his mind, slightly. "If you're telling the truth, you could possibly have a chance. Not much of one, but a chance nonetheless."

Annabelle thought she heard noises in the distance. Darius confirmed it. "There’s others nearby. Several sets of footsteps."

"Do you have a plan?" Annabelle whispered to Varos.

"We have a hideout. If you reach it, you should be safe for a few days."

The caverns rumbled and shifted, with a strange series of echoes. Varos stopped abruptly.

"They aren't supposed to do this. Not now." He pulled something from his belt that quickly expanded and transformed into some sort of magical hovering drone. "Maybe you are a threat to them. Follow this. It will lead you to safety. I'll hold them off. Don't wait for me."

They didn't hesitate. The drone rushed down a winding path, staying just ahead of them. Annabelle glanced behind and saw several flashes of blue light reflected off the cavern walls, followed a split-second after by something that sounded like a dozen lightning strikes in quick succession. She continued to hear the rumbling for some time, before it went silent. Hopefully, the individual they had never met before had bought them enough time to survive.

They heard nothing following them for the rest of their journey. Annabelle could barely keep track of where they were going, and swore that they should have crossed over their previous path at some points. At one point, they made four consecutive left turns with no change in elevation, but the caves didn’t form a loop as anticipated.

After what seemed to be an eternity, the drone finally arrived at its destination, stopping in the middle of a large cavern. The drone didn’t move, but there seemed to be nothing around. Had they been tricked?

Then, a section of the cavern faded away, revealing a hidden entrance. A person stepped out. He was wielding a spear defensively, extremely wary of them.

"Identify yourself. Now."

Lorso decided to take the lead. "I'm Lorso, and these are Silence, Annabelle, and Darius. Varos sent us ahead."

"That would explain his drone…" the person said. "But why isn't he with you?"

"He stayed behind to create a diversion to give us the time to get to safety."

"That's an uncharacteristic behavior for the Shades. They normally let new arrivals get to safety."

"Maybe we intimidated them," Annabelle proposed. "And they wanted to kill us off while we were wounded."

"I doubt it. The Shades are an overwhelming enemy. Every mage who thought he could take them on so far has failed."

"Tell me about them, then. Explain what makes them overwhelming."

"I'm not the person you should ask." He considered the situation. "I'm going to let you through, but we'll be keeping an eye on you. The Shades have used illusion before."

"You also claim the Shades are an overwhelming threat," Darius said, after they were let through. "If we were such an 'overwhelming threat', you would have lost the instant you revealed yourself."

The door guard was not reassured.

Behind them, the secret entrance closed shut. They walked through a narrow cavern (so narrow that Silence barely had room), and after a few turns, reached the center of the hideout, a large open cavern with few distinguishing artificial features, lit by several glowing orbs attached to the walls. There were three other passageways, likely leading out to other parts of the cavern. There were a few dozen individuals present, of various races. Most of them were wearing old, worn-out clothing, and several of them looked like stereotypical wizards.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

As soon as Silence, walked in, two of the wizards reacted to his and Lorso's injuries with a bit of shock. They rushed forwards and immediately began employing some form of magic. Annabelle wasn't sure if what the wizards were doing was actually going to be useful, but she had a more important priority of figuring out where the hell they were and what they were up against."

A leader stepped forward. She had purple scales instead of skin, horns on her head, and a long tail.

"So are you a-" Annabelle found herself asking.

"Demon? No. This is normal, on my home world. I'm Diedre, by the way."

"Varos implied that we could potentially beat these enemies, the ‘Shades’," Annabelle asked. "But your greeter said that it was suicide to attack them. I’m looking for an explanation."

"I'm the second-in-command here," Diedre replied. "Varos knows more about them than I do, but he isn't here right now. And, if he's gone to stall the Shades himself, there's good odds that he might not return."

"Shouldn't he have passed the information to you?" Darius asked. "In case he met an untimely end?'

"Yeah, what’s with the runaround?" Annabelle added, slightly annoyed. "Can you at least tell me what they are?"

"I suppose I can, " Diedre said, after a bit of hesitation. "I guess Varos was too rushed to give you a full explanation. First off, you're all here as the result of a teleportation mishap, right?"

"Teleportation mishap?"

"You went through a portal of some sort, but instead of arriving at your actual destination, you were dropped into this realm. Right?"

"We had completed a mission against a wizard, and were returning to base through a portal. Something must have happened to that portal, " Annabelle realized.

Darius considered that. "Yeah, it seems that if Daraken had the capability to sabotage the portal, he would have. In fact, it was almost certainly part of his trap."

Annabelle realized that it was a logical trap card to utilize,

"Whatever the reason," Diedre continued," the Shades intercepted the botched teleportation and sent you here, to the lower sections of the Shaderealm. Here, they hunt us for sport."

"Hunt?" Something about this smelled like the Shades were a race of horrible bastards.

"The only thing we are to them is prey. Their favored weapons are non-lethal stunners, but that's not a good thing. If you're lucky, they may let you go after tormenting you for hours, But if you're not, they drag you back to their city."

"Then what?" Annabelle asked. She suspected she wouldn’t like the answer.

"There, they torture their captives to death. We don’t know what methods they use, but according to Varos, it sometimes takes months before their victims finally die."

"They're dead, " Annabelle said. "They. Are. DEAD." Annabelle no longer cared what happened to her, to the Resistance, or to anyone, as long as these Shades met their ends by her hand.

"Wait, why are you glowing?" Diedre suddenly said, taking a step back.

Annabelle realized that she was creating a spontaneous psychic manifestation, and suppressed it, mostly. It seemed that she had recovered a small amount of energy from rage alone. "I have some unique abilities that they can't fight against. They're not going to receive any mercy when I destroy their whole society."

"I don't have to know what your abilities are to know that it will fail, " Diedre replied. "You might be able to bring down a few of them, but they can still take you out with just one hit. And those Shades that you do kill will just be brought back from the afterlife."

Annabelle was about to counter Diedre’s statement, before Lorso stopped her with a telepathic message relayed through Silence. I'd strongly advise against disclosing your abilities here. Being underestimated might be exactly what you need to win, but spreading your capabilities around just means that the Shades are likely to find out about them beforehand. And then they might get the help of whatever sick god they believe in.

Annabelle stopped herself from disclosing her abilities. "Varos sacrificed himself to help me get here. I think it might be because I might be able to end this."

"I recommend that you rest," Diedre proposed. "The beds are in that chamber over there." She pointed towards an entrance to a secondary cavern.

Annabelle walked into the bedchamber, and eventually attempted to get some sleep. But she couldn't rest, for several reasons. Firstly, it had still been mid-afternoon on Garnoth when she had arrived here. Secondly, the ‘beds’ seemed to be little more than stone slabs. And thirdly, she was too busy attempting to think of ways to end the Shades to get any rest.

Her standby plan was to undermine them from within their own torture pits. She had long since grown the ability to completely ignore any torturer's efforts to break her or even get much of a reaction out of her, and her abilities were perfectly suited to stealthy subversion. Strategic use of mind control could potentially result in a rebellion or even a civil war to bring down Shade society. However, the problem was that even if she could ignore the mental trauma of the torture, the physical trauma would still likely kill her eventually, giving her a timetable of a few months to bring down what was potentially a massive empire, maybe a bit more if her faster healing held up. Thus, that was a backup plan at best, and even the Shades might consider just executing her the instant they knew of her abilities.

What if she used personality overwriting? She was only able to control one individual at a time, but if she controlled someone for long enough, she could probably overwrite their existing personality, traits, and identity, replacing them with a copy of her own mind, or at least turn them into someone fully willing to fight them. She hadn't had a reason to do it, yet, but she knew it could be done. When they launched an attack, she could use the opportunity to subvert as many of their underlings as possible, creating spies and agents where none existed previously.

She briefly remembered Raiks ordering her to never utilize permanent mind control without permission, but ignored it. Raiks wasn’t available to ask permission, and even if he said no, Annabelle would do it anyways against a foe this evil.

Of course, a direct attack wasn't completely out of the picture. She might need to practice a bit and build up an energy reserve, but a vortex or distortion beam would probably cut through almost any foe. And, if they were relying on paralysis weapons, they would have no way to truly stop her. They could render her body nonfunctional, but as long as she had a brain, she could fight. Of course, the effectiveness of such a strategy depended on their true capabilities, something that Diedre had refused to disclose.

**********

There wasn't exactly a morning, with no sun. But at some point, Annabelle was roused by a commotion in the main chamber. When she exited the sleeping chamber, she saw Varos, without his helmet. His armor was the same, but his face looked alien. It was shaped like a human head, but with pitch-black skin, white hair, red catlike eyes, and pointed ears. According to Earth fiction, he was a dark elf, a member of a predominantly-evil race.

Annabelle immediately leaped into the discussion.

"Are you a Shade?" Annabelle asked.

Varos seemed surprised by her arrival. "You’ve made it."

"Are. You. A. Shade?" Annabelle focused her psychic energy, preparing for a fight. She didn’t have enough energy back to obliterate Varos where he stood, but she could likely still overwhelm his mind.

"No. Not anymore." Varos replied.

"Not anymore?" Annabelle remained tense, giving no indication that she was about to invade his mind and find out the hard way.

"I am a member of the Shade race, but I am aligned against them. I was banished here because I was unfortunate enough to realize their actions were wrong."

That was slightly reassuring.

"I was an Artificer, an engineer working on the Shaderealm's infrastructure. We were taught from birth to see those that we captured as nothing more than fuel, with their souls as a power source that needed ‘processing’ before being given to our god. But at some point, I gained a bit of empathy, and decided to attempt to switch sides. Maybe, if I sabotaged their infrastructure, I could save some lives, or at least let some of them die a quick death. They found out about my change in loyalties, and punished me by banishing me to the depths of the Shaderealm."

Annabelle was still considering attacking Varos, but she was starting to believe his story.

"Why would they punish you by giving you the chance to save more people from their wrath?"

"They wanted to change up the game, let their prey survive longer. I suspect I’m just playing into their hands, but I keep fighting, hoping for even the smallest chance that we find a way to escape this hell."

Annabelle had to agree with his stance. "With my arrival, I think you just might have that chance."

Varos paused for a bit before replying. "A small chance, but a chance nonetheless."

Annabelle had a bit of inspiration. "You said you were an Artificer. You’re wearing some heavy armor, and I think you employed some sort of lightning weapon when you fought off the Shades. What, exactly are you capable of?"

"I can build almost anything, given enough time." Varos claimed. "But my focus is lightning." He had the ends of his staff crackle with electricity for effect.

That gave Annabelle an idea. A month into the war with the aliens, the Alien Combat Patrol had found a way to use alien materials and power sources to construct powerful electromagnetic weapons, weapons that gave them a fighting chance when the aliens started their heavier invasions. Maybe, with the right mix of magic and science, Varos could replicate that. If the amount of energy in a bolt of lightning (such as those shot out by mages) was used to magnetically accelerate a projectile instead, it would theoretically be able to deal massive damage.

The problem would be finding the necessary raw materials for such a weapon.

Wait. How were they even getting food?