-CHAPTER SIX-

She wasn’t drugged. It had been too long since she’d ingested anything in any way, unless the blade had been poisoned again, but that seemed unlikely.

She didn’t think she was insane, and barring the idiom that said insane people never do, that was all she had to go on.

So.

The only remaining explanation, according to Holmes, was that no matter how improbable it was, this was real. Whatever ‘this’ was.

All at once, absolutely everything Karlene had thought she’d known about her situation was obliterated.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to panic, or bolt, or anything else inconvenient her kidnappers began moving, and she followed automatically. They had arrived somewhere very green and very wet, as if it had just rained. A lot. Karlene’s sneakers sank into the muddy grass a good inch, and walking was a thigh exercise to rival her gym’s stairmaster.

“Where are we going?” She asked what felt like hours later. As if she hadn’t spent the entirety of their trek in a tangibly heavy and contemplative silence, Sid answered.

“Pyroxis,” he said. “It’s not the closest city to the fort, but it’s the only one we haven’t been to in a long enough time to risk a visit.”

“I see. And why are you taking me to a city that’s risky to visit?”

“More like you took us,” Rowe interjected. “If you want to be accurate.”

“Oh, I love accuracy.” Her deadpan was rewarded with a laugh from Sid, as genuine as she could hope from someone who’s hand she’d tried to bite off the day before.

“We need supplies we can’t get elsewhere,” said Nix. “And you need to see... Well, you need to see.” He gave a shrug in lieu of actually describing what she needed to see.

“I think I’ve seen enough, thank you.”

“It doesn’t much matter what you think.”

“Obviously.”

They walked in silence a bit longer before the heavy quiet of post-realization in her head began to crack, and no matter what she tried to think of to distract herself, the questions managed to make their way to freedom.

“Oh for the love of- What is he?” She asked, a bit too loudly.

“Who?”

Karlene stared at the back of Nix’s head. He couldn’t be serious. Except she was starting to think he was the only serious one among them. Sid had turned away from her to hide a grin, while Rowe looked about to dance with anticipatory glee. Man his size, she’d almost pay to see the show.

“Diom. Is he…” She couldn’t believe she was about to ask this. “Is he an angel? Or…a demon?”

All three of her kidnappers glanced at her, all with their own expressions of confusion.

“What are those?” Rowe asked.

She blinked at him. Seriously?

“What are...what? Angels? Or demons?” She really couldn’t believe this conversation was happening.

“Both. Never heard of em.”

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She stumbled, then stopped dead. Her captors stopped and stared at her, all looking confused. Or amused. Or both. She was finding it hard to tell for sure through her haze of anger and fear. Either they really didn’t know, or they were having fun with her.

“Forget it,” she grumbled, and they exchanged glances before turning forward again, with her trailing along roughly in the middle of them. She was, she realized, still a captive for all their smiles and her limbs being unbound.

She glanced at the silver cuffs and winced. Not unbound entirely, though. She began to wonder if there was a limit to how far away their little finger gestures would get a reaction from the cuffs. She shivered, remembering the pain, and Diom’s looming presence, and decided she was out of bravery for the day.

A few hours later she got her first glimpse of their destination. It was a city, all right, with buildings and traffic and ungodly smells. But that was where Pyroxis started and ended its list of resemblances to any city Karlene had ever seen before.

For example, some of the buildings were floating.

As were all of the vehicles.

And some of the people.

“Holy…” Karlene stared, slack jawed, at a guardhouse that hovered over the main city entranceway, a collapsible set of stairs the only thing connecting it to the ground. Men in the obvious equivalent of police uniforms with batons at their belts tramped up and down to the floating structure, not looking at all concerned that their workplace for the afternoon was held up by nothing but air and...more air.

Sid had taken her arm, she noticed, though whether it was to keep her near or to keep her from getting knocked over by a stray breeze, she couldn’t say.

The entrance to the city was narrow enough that the otherwise small number of people trying to get in seemed a horde. They walked right under the floating guardhouse, and she couldn’t help it; she reached her arms out, wiggling her fingers like a lunatic, trying to feel some sort of super sheer glass, or the press of anti-grav technology. Though what that would feel like, she had no idea, since it didn’t exist. Except, obviously, it did.

She felt nothing, in any case; just air.

Then she looked to the flying people. Not floating, as others were on what she now could see were small platforms no bigger than placemats, but flying. Some had great feathered wings like Diom, and others swooped and soared with seemingly nothing to explain how, and others flittered on what could only be described as giant fairy wings, complete with trails of glitter following along in their wingtips’ wake.

“You’re drawing attention,” Nix said quietly, calmly, from right next to her. She jumped. Somehow, she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “Close your mouth and keep your head down.”

“Remember Milly’s kitchen drudges?” Sid prompted from her other side. Numbly, she nodded, and realized they wanted her to imitate those drudges.

The beginnings of indignation rose swift in her -why in the world would she help them keep her captive?- and died just as abruptly when Nix seized the back of her neck in a hand that was, if not as big as Rowe’s, just as strong.

“See there?” He hissed, guiding her head to aim her face -and thus her eyes- at a commotion taking place across the street.

A boy, malnourished and wearing nothing but an undyed tunic tied with a red rope, was on his knees in front of one of the uniformed guards. He was sobbing, one hand reached up to grasp at the hem of the guard’s coat. Behind the boy, another man in bright clothing was apologizing profusely to the guard.

“-no idea what’s gotten into it, my apologies sir, I’ll see it is beaten twice tonight-”

“How about you skip a beating and add a meal, instead?” The guard said, sounding annoyed. “Starving your property to the point they are driven to beg from passerbys? You should be embarrassed, sir.”

Then the guard walked away. As soon as he was out of sight, inside one of the floating guardhouses, the colorfully dressed man seized the red-belted child by his hair and dragged him away. Karlene didn’t need a crystal ball to know that pain, not food, awaited the boy, no matter what the guard had advised.

“I get it,” Karlene whispered. Sick poison curdled in her stomach, making her feel dirty from the inside out. No one would help her. Enough pedestrians had passed the altercation within earshot, and done nothing, to drive that point home.

Nix released the back of her neck, and Karlene kept her head down.

She tried and succeeded in keeping her posture meek and her head lowered for all of one block of walking, then curiosity overrode her fear and her gaze was up and darting around again, trying to absorb it all.

On the heels of her abating disgust and disbelief came a reluctant swelling of awe. Whatever evils it may hide, the city of Pyroxis was one of the most beautiful places she’d ever seen. There were so many colors. There wasn’t a single drab grey, white, or tan building to be seen, all of them painted in jewel tones of blue and green and red. Windows were all rounded, most of them stained glass veined with gold.

The people matched the city, wearing suits and gowns of bright hues accented with capelets and hats and canes in glittering metallics. More than one short cape, which was either a wardrobe staple or the current fashion, was sewn with patterns of feathers in gold or silver thread. Even the hair was vibrant, usually more than two colors to be found per scalp, frequently more than five.

Rowe eventually came to walk beside her, and announced his presence by planting one big hand at the back of her neck and using his sausage fingers to tilt her head down. His grip was no more firm than necessary, but she still stiffened. She couldn’t recall the last time someone other than her mother had manhandled her so much before this whole debacle.

The cool tingle of the cuffs stopped her a half a heartbeat before she would have shaken Rowe off, and she glowered at Sid from beneath her lashes.

“Don’t forget the boy at the gate,” Rowe said quietly. “Look at others wearing cuffs and red belts.”

Through her haze of anger, she did so. And blinked. She hadn’t noticed them, before, not when they were all beside or between or behind one of the glittering jewel-toned people. They wore simple tunics of colorless fabric, belted with cords of woven crimson. They all, in addition wrist cuffs that were twin to the ones she wore, had a single charm dangling from their left ears, with hair shorn short enough to not need restraining. Karlene touched her own locks, pale blonde waves that ended at her chin. If she’d had longer hair, would her captors have cut it?

All the people she saw with a red belt and silver ear charm, every single one, walked with their shoulders slumped, heads down, and hands clasped in front of them.

Now that she was looking closer at the crowds around them, she saw other people dressed as Sid and Nix and Row, in less vibrant colors. The silks and velvets and thick embroidery was missing from these people, who were dressed with more mundane labor in mind. It was how her group had not been remarked upon; there were others like them, just thoroughly overshadowed.

There was no one else like her, however, in jeans and shirt with her cuffed arms swinging, uptilted freckled face gaping in wonder, no jewel-toned clothes but also no red belt, no ear charm.

She stopped fighting Rowe’s hand, and tilted her head back down.