-CHAPTER FIVE-

This time when they put her back in the cellar, it was with a lit candle and a box of more, but no matches or flint or whatever they used. If she let the first go out, she’d have no way of lighting the next, so she very carefully dribbled some of the wax on one of the top steps and then worked the stub of a candle into it so it was secure. True to Milly’s word, she was given nothing to eat. She thought about rummaging through the crates and sacks and barrels she could now see by candlelight, but she recalled Milly’s threats about inventorying and thought maybe it was too soon to provoke them again. She’d had a big, late lunch the day before, and she’d never been gifted with the sort of metabolism that exempted her from needing a regular work-out regime. She could last until lunch.

Except lunch never came, and Karlene was left alone with the gnawing emptiness in her middle, a growing thirst, the flickering candlelight, and her own imagination. She’d never been overly bothered by vermin before, no more than anyone else, but she thought after this she might never be able to watch the one catacomb scene from Indiana Jones ever again.

At some point she managed to fall asleep, thankfully not long enough for the one lit candle to go out, though it was close. She lit the next one, noted she only had two more, and glanced down into the dim cellar nervously. She didn’t see any of them, but that was almost worse. No, it was worse. Every little noise transformed itself in her ears into the skittering of little feet and chattering of sharp teeth.

She focused on the sounds from the kitchen, instead. There had been muffled sounds of activity off an on since she’d been returned to her prison, but nothing compared to now. It almost sounded like the people on the other side had just woken up- as if they’d slept in the kitchen.

She heard voices, Milly’s among them, all animated and getting louder. Heavy, impatient footsteps gave Karlene warning enough before the cellar door was yanked open to move away.

“Get up,” the woman growled, then reached down and grabbed for her when Karlene wasn’t quick enough.

“I wasn’t done napping,” Karlene snarled without thinking. Her cheek suddenly stung and burned and her head snapped to the side. Karlene, wide eyed, looked back to the woman as Milly raised her hand again, her posture full of threat. Karlene watched Milly’s fingers contorted into the beginnings of a strange sigil.

Karlene stiffened. They’d implied the bands around her wrists could do more than that magnetic trick, but she still didn’t want to know what. If Karlene was the sort of person she wanted to be, she would be brave enough to find out, or to at least deliver some sort of clever threat like, ‘some day I won’t be wearing these,’ only less cliche. But it was just her, so she broke the staring contest and looked away first, glad the redness of her cheek would hide her flushed face. Milly gave a grunt of approval and dropped her hand, the sigil unfinished.

Milly walked away, and Karlene followed through the buzz of activity that had brought the kitchen to life. The staff still look dim-faced, but at least now they were moving. Karlene staunchly ignored the scents of baking bread and cooking meat.

Milly guided her through the what had to be the central hall. Karlene remembered, faintly, enough of her history lessons and what little ancient architecture they’d covered to know that much. The wall-to-wall hearth on the far end of the room fit with what she remembered. There were tapestries depicting hunts hung beneath crossed swords and spears. And, of course, even a goddamn suit of armor.

Nice, she thought to herself. Next on the list of explanations, time travel.

Too late, she noticed where, exactly, in the room Milly was taking her. She stopped dead, eyes going wide. It was another one of those demonic looking circles, and there was Sid and Nix and Rowe. And the knife.

“Oh hell no-” she began, but then Milly raised one hand, fingers twisting, and the bracelets did one of those things she hadn’t wanted to know about. They slammed together, jarring her wrists, and pain arched up her arms and over her shoulders, meeting at the base of her skull to stab into her spine like a white-hot needle. She fell, not even able to draw a breath to scream, to land hard on her knees on the stone floor.

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When it was gone, the sudden lack of pain was as if she’d been shot full of euphoria. Air had never tasted so sweet, and her skin had never been so sensitive. She lay where she’d collapsed, gasping.

“There won’t be any need for a second demonstration, I think.” The speaker was mister big-wings. He must have entered after her, while she’d been busy not-screaming, since there was no way she would have missed spotting him otherwise. The toes of his soft grey boots came into her line of sight.

“I would like to advise against taking her out again so soon, sire,” said Milly, and it was the most subdued Karlene had heard her sound.

“I have been made aware of your protestations, Milly.” He stepped away from Karlene, who made herself glance up, made herself ignore, just a little, the voice in her head demanding she do anything and everything to make sure she never felt that again.

The winged man was looking down at her, almost...expectant. Karlene pulled herself to her feet with less pain than she would have expected. The only things that twinged her the hurts she’d already had.

“What are you?” She breathed. “What in God’s name is going on?”

Milly hissed at her and grabbed at her arms to push her towards the circle ashen runes again. Something made Karlene dig in her heels. It wasn’t sanity. Every inch of her tingled with the memory of agony, but still she pulled back.

“Answer me!” In the mostly empty stone hall, her voice echoed as if she’d shouted. “What is going on?”

Big-wings loomed closer, and she felt the whole room hold its breath.

“Cooperate,” he said. “And you will know all you need to.” He gestured to the circle. Sid made an encouraging gesture, grinning at Karlene while tossing nervous glances at big-wings.

It dawned on her, in a vague sort of way, that they needed her. It was why she was alive and, for the most part, unhurt. She had value. Somehow- hadn’t they all thanked her after they’d kidnapped her?

Her blood. Her blood on that ring of markings. For some reason, they needed her blood specifically. They needed her specifically.

The thought made her reckless, and no amount of her mother’s voice clamoring in her head was able to dampen the impending stupidity. She took a step towards big-wings, getting deliberately inside the invisible ring all people had that determined what that person’s ‘personal space’ was. She craned her neck up at him, glaring.

“What’s your name?”

The question had an instant effect. Sid stifled a low moan, Milly gave an outraged gasp, while Rowe and Nix both took a step back.

She remembered the particular importance with which this very beast had discussed names with the tied-up captive from yesterday. Names had power to these people. Every person in the room held their breath, and for a moment she was certain she was about to die, that she’d overestimated her worth.

“You may call me what everyone else does,” he said. “Diom.”

Then he turned to the others and gave a few instructions in a mild tone that Karlene hardly heard, her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears.

No one breathed again until he left.

In a daze, she was led to the circle again. And again, she was pricked at her wrist, and made to reach out and drip red drops over all four quadrants of the circle. This time when the pillar of ash and smoke and glowing embers rose into the air she watched, her eyes aching from how hard she was peering into the swirls of shadow and trying to see something to explain it.

But there were no mirrors, no wires, and the smoke had no origin but her own sizzling blood.

Nix took her by her arm, and she was dragged into the smoke. There was a moment’s disorientation, and then a crushing weight settled over her as the smoke cleared. She gasped for air, finding it hard to force her lungs to do their job. Harder still was remaining upright; she wanted nothing more than to sink to her knees, find something to brace herself on. Beside her, she heard NIx grunt.

She thought this was what it would feel like to drown miles beneath an ocean’s surface, where the pressure would kill you before the lack of air did.

“Hurry, you idiots!” Nix said, sounding strained. She looked to the group and saw they were all bent over as if grown old, or as if they carried invisible boulders.

Then she saw the sky.

With its three suns.

Rowe and Sid were down in the dirt with large sticks wrapped in cloth, their exposed ends dark. They used them to draw hastily on the ground, and where they went marks of dark charcoal were left behind. Every moment they drew was another moment Karlene wasn’t sure she could keep on her feet. Nix was helping support her, in a twisted sort of kindness, but he looked just as strained as the rest of them.

When Rowe and Sid closed the circle there was a flash of light barely visible in the glare of the triple suns -and why wasn’t she roasting in addition to suffocating?- and Nix dragged her forward, knife ready to reopen the wound that had scabbed. This time, she didn’t have to be dragged or pushed into the pillar. Experience told her the tornado of soot would take her elsewhere, and right now that was the only place she wanted to be.

She landed on her knees, gasping for the air that had moments ago been so desperately difficult to draw in. She heard the others doing the same nearby. When the disorientation passed and she stood she had a moment of invertigo as she realized she felt light as air. As if she could float away.

Gravity, she thought. Wherever she’d just been, it had been somewhere with heavier gravity. Given humanity’s oh so very long way to go before they reached gravity-manipulation technology… And with the memory of the three suns still burning in her mind’s eye...

She looked, wide eyed, at Sid, who was looking back at her with something close to smugness, as if he realized she’d just begun to figure it out.

All she could get out was, “Well. Shit.”

She’d just been on another planet.