Faye’s knees hurt. They were bleeding. She didn’t even have to look down to tell-- they flared in pain with every beat of her heart, which hadn’t slowed since this whole thing had started. She cursed herself for wearing a skirt that day. Still, she wasn’t doing as poorly as Dillon. He breathed heavily through his gag, in clear pain from his rib.

After they were captured, the five of them were brought into the parking lot not far from the TTV van. Already the strange invaders were looting it, among other things. They shouted with glee once they discovered the brown bottles in the brewery contained beer. It earned them a stern shout by those who could only be their commanders.

The invaders were already busy setting up cloth tents and setting up tables. Across the road, she watched as they worked to cut down trees and pointed in uncertainty toward the telephone poles. Part of her hoped they’d try, but apparently they were concerned enough about the wires to stick to normal trees.

Just in front of the brewery, a pile of bodies was growing by the minute. She watched Dane Bishop out of the corner of her eye. His eyes were trained on it. Of course. The brewery received the brunt of the attack. Dane Bishop likely knew each of the corpses laid atop of the pile.

And, judging from the stack of wood they were laying next to the pile, soon the bodies would be burned.

Not, of course, before the invaders took their trophies.

Whoever they were, they moved quickly. How long had it been? Ten minutes? Twenty? The passage of time didn’t mean much to her at that moment. She was still trying to make sense of it all.

She replayed the events over in her mind, trying to parse what she knew of the universe with what she’d witnessed. First, the men in half-plate armor. She might have thought them part of some strange LARPing death cult, if not for the other things. The things that didn’t quite fit into her paradigm.

Namely, the tree, the portal, the direwolves and the dragons.

But what had happened was obvious, wasn’t it? A magic tree opened a magic portal, and an army riding direwolves and dragons came out of it killing everyone they saw. It was obvious, certainly. But it required one to sacrifice thousands of years of technological development to believe.

And yet, despite their murder spree, the invaders had decided that five of them were more useful alive. Nearby was another group of three people she didn’t know. Across the road a knelt four more, each being guarded by a group of wolf riders. One of them was a child.

Her eyes shifted over to their captors. The one she thought to be the leader, the one who’d killed that poor man in cold blood, was busy speaking to the important-looking man that had come through the portal with a small entourage. He was older and certainly more plump that the others. Their leader, maybe?

Faye’s locked eyes with the young red-haired woman that stood near the important-looking man. She wasn’t dressed in half-plate like most of the men. She was, however, wearing form-fitting leather and carried a satchel at her side. More importantly, she was the first woman Faye had seen among the invaders.

The woman wandered over toward Faye while the others spoke in a language she’d never heard before, then sat upon a rock, continuing to regard them. Faye’s eyes twisted to a pleading look. This was the first invader that didn’t look at them in contempt.

The young woman opened her satchel and pulled out a piece of paper and… a piece of charcoal? Was she drawing?

More importantly, was she drawing them?

Faye didn’t know what to think of that. She instead looked away, toward Owen who knelt to her right. He said something to her quietly from under the gag, darting his eyes at the van nearby.

Faye shook her head. He wanted to escape, but there were too many of them. She motioned toward the pile of bodies. She could hear Owen sigh.

She wanted to escape too, but considering how many corpses there were compared to captives, she was willing to roll the dice on possible survival versus certain death. If they tried to escape now, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind they would end up atop that pile.

But there had to be some other way. She took stock of what she had-- her phone was still safely in her breast pocket, covered by her blouse. Her purse was in the van, but that only contained her phone charger, wallet and some random bits of makeup.

Dillon had his bag over his shoulder when they were captured, on the other hand. And Dillon, for as disorganized as he was, was almost always prepared for any eventuality. Well, almost any eventuality.

She looked back to the young woman drawing them again, just as she looked up and met her eyes again.

“Fyed we dreg?” she said while showed her drawing. Faye had to reluctantly admit it was good. It was a drawing of the five of them in front of the brewery, but with the Alex Fraser Bridge hanging in the distance behind it. “Hud so pac tenny-feck, pid ee dreg edam pa kuut aweeger vun dra gek.”

Faye couldn’t have guessed what she was saying, but it lacked the sharp tones she’d heard from the soldiers that captured them. Faye cocked her head to one side and tried to say, “Please let us go!” It didn’t come out that way, of course. The gag made it impossible to enunciate. But from the look on the young woman’s face, she understood.

She smiled sadly at Faye. “Ajah ev ee lewint tu kusadrek du ramb we, drid fou’it umo sin so kekdan cylnevela. Ee’s cunno.” From the look in her eyes, she was apologising.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Faye’s attention was suddenly pulled away by the growing howl of a police siren down the avenue. Her heart throbbed so hard she could hear it. Was it a rescue? The important-looking man started to bark orders, pointing at it in the distance, and she watched as a number of men climbed atop their wolves and started running toward the squad car as it approached them.

The police car stopped about a hundred feet away as two officers climbed out and started to fire shotguns at the wolves. She watched in muted hope as the wolves and riders went down one-after-another. Next to her, Dillon shouted encouragement from under his gag, then groaned in pain. It went unnoticed by their captors.

For a brief moment, she felt relief as another wolf rider went down. But then one of them reached the officer on the driver’s side of the squad car. She looked away instinctively just as she saw the wolf’s jaw close on him.

Two more shotgun blasts went, and then silence.

That is, until the invaders started to cheer. Faye finally opened her eyes to see one of the officer’s bodies being ragdolled by the direwolf.

The young woman had left them and returned to the group. The important-looking man seemed to be giving more orders, calmer. He pointed to the sky, to the blockade a couple of hundred meters to the east. Finally, he gestured toward Faye and the others, and for a brief moment her eyes met his. He spoke a few more words.

Moments later, a couple members of his entourage approached them. A moment later, she was jerked to her feet.

Was this it? Were they about to be executed? She could hear Emma whining behind her, followed by a comforting grunt from her father.

They were all being moved. Dillon was in the lead, followed by Faye, then Owen, then Emma and her father. But they weren’t being herded toward the pile of bodies. That gave her some relief.

But then she realized what it was they were moving toward.

It was the tree.

More specifically, it was the portal. They were being taken to the portal.

She stepped up over the sidewalk as their captors led them out into the road toward the tree. She looked up at it in wonder as she stepped into its shade. The canopy blocked out the sun entirely, and for a moment she felt the relief of the shade. It seemed colder the closer she got to the tree.

The bark, she saw once she got closer, was thick and highlighted with a shiny substance, as though it were made of scales tipped with silver.

Any other time Faye would have been ecstatic to see such a thing up close, but she was too busy wrestling with the concept that unnerved her more. Being executed, or being taken through the portal.

She quickly realized she’d rather take her chances with the portal than get an arrow to her back. She hoped she wouldn’t live to regret it.

Dillon groaned in pain and fell to his knees as he started climbing the thick root that led into the portal. Their captors hit him in the back with a club and forced him to his feet, causing him to yelp out in pain.

Faye yelled from beneath her gag. “He’s hurt!” One of her captors looked at her with utter contempt. Even if he could understand, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit.

Dillon led them up to the portal. Behind her, she could hear Emma crying. Owen and Dane were dead silent. Their captors forced them to stop just prior to entering it. They spoke to each other, and the posted guards. From behind them, a couple of people were coming up. Faye saw Dillon’s eyes light up for a moment, then she looked to see why.

Three men carried bags with them. One of the bags was Dillon’s.

It was just a laptop bag Dillon carried with him. He kept his phone in there, a few random gadgets and some camera equipment.

The men argued back and forth for a moment, but then the one who had hit Dillon took the bags from the others. He turned and met eyes with Faye, causing her to look away. The man grunted with disdain and threw the bags into the portal. They went through cleanly, and didn’t make a sound.

“Ku!” he shouted at Dillon. Then looked to Faye. “Ku!” He pointed at the portal.

He was telling them to step through.

Dillon hesitated, but Faye touched the small of his back with her bound hands. He looked back over his shoulder at her.

She just nodded at him.

Dillon sighed, then stepped into the portal. The rope connecting them never lost any slack, and she followed in kind, closing her eyes just as her hand touched the portal.

Faye couldn’t feel the sensation of the portal. At least not physically. Besides a brief moment of vertigo, and a slight tingle that might have been imagined, the only real change she noted was the sound.

The ambience of Annacis Island was nothing like this place. She opened her eyes to the sound of boots rushing across the ground, orders being shouted, and the screech of strange birds.

Before her was a valley that stretched out at least a kilometer to a river in the distance, and it was packed with tents and soldiers. Horses and strange riding birds darted around, and several dragons flew above the crowd.

As they were prodded down the hill, she stepped out of the shade of the tree and briefly looked up to the sun. It was yellow, like theirs. It also hurt to look at. She let her eyes adjust and took note of the several dozen individual spires of smoke in the valley. There had to be tens of thousands of them. She felt her heart drop. Were they all invaders?

Could anyone on the other side of the portal do anything about that many soldiers?

As she walked down the hill, she passed a grassy area where about a dozen bodies had been laid down. At least, she assumed they were bodies. They were definitely human-shaped, and covered with cloth. They’d all been placed carefully, unlike the people they’d killed on the other side.

Near the bodies, several people mulled around dressed in robes. They watched with interest as Faye and the others walked by, pointing and talking amongst themselves.

At the bottom of the hill were a number of men shouting at each other. Faye assumed them to be orders. One looked up and took note of Faye’s group. He ran up and started to speak with their captor.

After a brief moment, a couple of men ran up and took over leading them. They pulled at Dillon’s bound wrists, leading them in the direction of a roofed wagon. It had wooden wheels, but the rear door was clearly constructed of metal bars.

The men opened the door and forced them inside. Inside there were four wooden blocks, each with two round holes in them. They forced Dillon to sit in front of the first one, then held a dagger to his throat. He looked at them in fear, and even Faye half-expected to see the blade cut into him. But instead, another one cut his wrists loose, then pointed to the two holes in the block.

They wanted him to put his arms through them.

Dillon got the point quickly, and did as they asked. His hands were tied together on the other side of the block, preventing him from being able to use them.

Then it came Faye’s turn. They brought her to the block next to him. She sat down voluntarily and offered her wrists to the man. He looked at her suspiciously for a moment, but then simply cut her wrists loose. Faye wasted no time putting her arms through.

The other three followed in suit. Eventually, the soldiers left the wagon and closed the doors behind them.

Faye looked to the others just as a thick black cloth covered the rear of the wagon, blocking out the light almost entirely. Faye tried, unsuccessfully, to communicate with the others for a few minutes, but they were difficult to hear over the noise outside. Plus, she feared what might happen if they were heard.

After what could have been ten minutes, or an hour, the wagon started to move.