Chapter 49-51

Defeat

The next night, in the dead of night, Rienna spontaneously woke. At first, she didn't know why; she heard nothing, it wasn't too cold, she wasn't hungry. But she was wide awake, so something had to have woken her.

Then there was a sound outside. Footsteps on grass.

She looked around. Both Luke and Hana were in the cabin with her. Which meant… the fairyeld must have come back.

She got out of bed and shook Luke awake. "I heard footsteps," she said quietly.

"It was probably a dream," he mumbled.

"No! I was awake," she hissed. When he didn't reply, she realized he had fallen back asleep. She went to Hana's bed and woke her. "The fairyeld’s back. I heard footsteps."

Hana sat up and rubbed her eyes groggily. "Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"Alright. I'll go have a look."

"What? Alone? Are you crazy?" Renna said.

Hana put on her coat and stretched. "Yeah. But I'll be fine. It's one guy." She picked up her dagger and quietly snuck outside. For a moment, there was silence. Then there was a sharp yelp and a thud. Then nothing again.

Hana didn’t come back.

Rienna frantically shook Luke, hysteria and panic taking over. "You've got to wake up! Something happened to Hana!" He stirred and she leaned back, trying to restore her calm. "Hurry up!" she whispered.

"What do you mean, 'something happened to Hana?'"

"She went outside to check on the footsteps I heard. She hasn’t come back! We need to help her! Or get out of here!" Rienna said, exasperated.

"Okay, okay! Be quiet," Luke said finally getting up. "Let's go out the back entrance, maybe we can sneak back to The Suppression." In the event that they would need to escape but couldn't use the front door, a back door that could only open from the inside had been installed in the cabin. It opened perfectly silently.

They slipped out of the cabin and slinked across the grass to the glowing barrier beyond. As they walked, Rienna's bare feet slid on the wet ground. She barely stopped herself from falling, sliding into a wide and wobbling stance. She froze and looked around.

There were three figures in the dark near the front of the cabin. Two were holding down a thrashing lump on the ground. None of them seemed to have heard Rienna's blunder.

She desperately wanted to help Hana, but knew she couldn't take them; her magic still hadn’t recovered enough from the spells she’d stored right before going to bed. She started forward again, careful not to slip on the grass. She kept her feet low to the ground and crept closer and closer to The Suppression.

Her toe jammed hard into a rock and came to a sudden halt, unable to help the muffled cry of pain that burst out of her. The silhouettes spun around to face their direction. Desperately, she shot some magicka away and towards the forest to distract them.

It was a terrible attempt at a distraction. Causing more harm than good in fact. The streak of light shooting away from them was a dead giveaway. They were spotted, completely illuminated by the light of The Suppression. And now she had wasted her magic.

The figures, who she assumed were fairyeld, shouted and ran after them. Hana stayed thrashing on the floor, obviously tied up and gagged. Rienna could hear her muffled yelling.

Rienna and Luke ran towards The Suppression. She couldn't see Xio or Xia following them, even though she knew they had gone through the back door with them. "Xio! Xia!" she called, hopelessly searching for them in the dark instead of bringing out her crystal. "Xio! Xia!"

“Rienna, come on! We have to go!” Luke said in an unnecessary whisper.

“No!” Rienna shouted. “I can’t find Xio and Xia! I’m not leaving them out here!”

“They can take care of themselves. We have to leave.”

Rienna glanced back at the guards and yelped. They had almost reached them. Finally heeding Luke’s advice, she brought out the crystal and rushed to create an opening in The Suppression.

As Luke jumped through, Rienna sent a mixture of force and light directly into the soldiers’ faces, stunning them long enough for her to get to the other side and for the gateway to close before they recovered.

She turned to face the closed barrier, chest heaving as she caught her breath. They made it. They would be safe. Unblinking, she stared at the wobbling silhouettes beyond The Suppression. She worried helplessly for Hana. There was nothing she could’ve done, but she felt as though she should have still done something.

The figures behind the sparkling wall darkened as they approached the barrier. In a slow span of seconds, they ran up to The Suppression. What were they doing? They were going to hit it.

They did hit it… and passed through.

Rienna didn’t have enough time to register what had happened before a hand grabbed her wrist and a gag was being thrown into her screaming mouth. A sack was dropped over her head and her hands were forced behind her back to be bound by a rough rope. The sounds of struggling beside her confirmed that Luke too had been caught.

She no longer knew what to do. She was caught and too much of her magic had been used; the best she could hope for was enough magic to escape later. Mentally, she was already berating herself for forgetting that fairyeld could pass through The Suppression without a crystal.

Even so, it almost didn’t feel real. Like a hazy nightmare.

Rienna was mercilessly tugged forward and towards where she knew The Suppression was. A strange feeling came over her as they passed through. Thousands of minuscule vibrations surrounded her and she suddenly had the strange, awful feeling of being watched by someone unseen. It was horribly disorienting and by the time it faded she would have lost all sense of direction if it weren’t for the lingering warmth from The Suppression pressing against her back.

There was an unfamiliar shout and one of the fairyeld holding them captive yelled back. A moment later, they were joined by Hana, evident by the sounds of annoyed and muffled struggling. By the sounds of it, they had also bound Hana’s ankles, effectively crippling her.

They were blindly led away, parallel to The Suppression. The fairyeld didn't talk or gloat much, which was unusual in Rienna’s experience. When they did talk, they didn't discuss their captives or their plans. They mostly grumbled about mundane things like being late or getting sick.

They stopped and Rienna was shoved to the ground. Soon after, she heard the crackling of a campfire and saw the orange glow through the sack over her head. She heard Luke and Hana trying to yell, and the grunts of the guards as they fought to keep them still.

Rienna joined them in yelling, but quieted when the bag was yanked off her head and one of her captors, a ragged man who looked like he'd just spent a long day at work, glared at her menacingly. “Quiet!”

Rienna growled halfheartedly through the spit dampened cloth.

"I said, quiet!" the man said again. "You'll draw attention from the forest. And then you'll be dead, which I know would be worse for you than this."

Rienna decided to stay quiet.

For a while, there was silence as everyone stared at the fire and waited. Then one of the fairyeld spoke up. "So, you can do magic." Rienna didn’t say anything (thanks to the gag) and glared at the ground. "No wonder she's been so worried." She looked up, intrigued.

"You don't know that she's been worried," another said quietly, glancing at the forest. "You don't know anything about how she's been. You haven't been in the fort in ages."

"That's my point. No one has. She's completely locked up. And she'd be mad if she wasn't worried. Another sorceress, The Suppression fading. She’s got to be worried. I’d be worried."

"Will you two blabbermouths shut up?" the final fairyeld said crossly. Rienna was surprised to hear that the voice was feminine. Could that be right? She'd never seen any female fairyeld before. "You're saying too much in front of them. Just because they can't speak, doesn't mean they can't hear."

"It is not like they'll be able to do anything with what they hear," one huffed, annoyed. "I doubt she will let them out."

"Just shut up." Yes, the voice was definitely female. She felt like she shouldn't be so surprised. There were a handful of women in the regular guard, after all.

They continued solemnly watching the fire until the first signs of daylight appeared. The fire was put out and Rienna was forced to walk again. At least they didn’t seem to think they needed to be blindfolded anymore.

The forest stayed to their left for a long while. Rienna felt uneasy whenever she looked at it too long, like it was watching her, a different, yet equally sinister, feeling as she had felt while going through The Suppression. Still, it also was one of the only things to look at besides that horrendous bubble, which she thought was worse.

She couldn't believe they'd been caught. She should have insisted that they stay within Vieryen after she'd seen the fairyeld that one night. What would happen to them now? Would they go to a dungeon? Or… or would they be executed? She didn't think Jenni would do that after what she’d read in the Sovereign’s journal back on Aya's island. Then again, those words had been written centuries ago, and people changed

A mountainous region appeared and they began up a long, winding path. The ground was hard, but after her time wandering without shoes, it wasn’t difficult adn she didn't find it as bad as running through a jungle.

They reached a point where The Suppression went as far below them as above them. They turned inwards, away from the cliff face and up a slowly rising plateau. In the wider space, Reinna felt less nervous. She was allowed to space herself from their captors a little more, now that she wasn’t at risk of falling down the mountainside.

Hana also took advantage of the new situation. In a surprisingly loud yell given the gag, she burst forward and into the back of one of the fairyeld. The guard shouted and they both fell roughly to the ground. Somehow Hana managed to get her gag out of her mouth and instead loosely around her neck. Her voice echoed and then disappeared into the unyielding emptiness beyond the cliffside.

The female fairyeld growled angrily and shoved Rienna into the third fairyeld’s grasp. “Keep control of them,” she hissed, rushing to help her fallen comrade.

Luke realized their advantaged position first and began yelling and kicking just as Hana had. Rienna noticed what he was trying to do and tried to follow suit.

Luke quickly escaped, the fairyeld’s fingers pried apart from their grip on his shirt. Immediately, he shouldered the soldier forcefully and tried to wrest Rienna free as well. She almost fell to the ground, but instead found herself almost hanging from the fairyeld’s arm before being shoved back upright.

Suddenly, the unstable struggling stopped and Rienna looked up. Luke was no longer charging the guard to put him off balance. For a moment, Rienna thought he had escaped without her and felt betrayed, but then she noticed one of the other fairyeld crouching next to a figure on the ground and tying his ankles together. He was the guard Hana had originally attacked. His face was already bruising and a small trickle of blood was making its way down his neck.

Rienna found Hana a few meters away being held by the last fairyeld. Despite appearing conscious, she was limp in her grasp. She was panting heavily and looked just as bad and worse than the fairyeld who was now pulling Luke upright.

We’ve lost, Rienna realized. She felt hope fade from her completely as any dreamlike feeling left. They were done for. There was no way they were going to escape now. They’d missed all their chances. It was all her fault.

“We should bind them with more rope,” the fairyeld holding Rienna said.

“We can’t,” the woman said. “You didn’t bring enough.”

"Where are we going?" Hana demanded, gag still around her neck, interrupting any bickering that would have occurred otherwise.

"The Sovereign's fortress," the fairyeld answered sharply.

"What's going to happen to us?"

"I don't know!" she snapped. "Stay quiet!"

Hana didn't listen. "What does she usually do with prisoners?" she asked indignantly. “You’ve got to know at least that!”

The fairyeld turned and glared. "I wouldn't know. She doesn't keep prisoners."

Twisted Fortress

Hours later, there was a knock on the trapdoor. "Young mage, the Sovereign requests your presence at lunch."

"No."

“‘No’ is not one of your options, kid." There was the sound of a key turning in the lock. The trapdoor jiggled under the weight of the chair and desk. "What the–?"

"I'm not going," Rienna said stubbornly.

"Why isn't this moving?! What did you do?"

"Go away."

The trapdoor's movement became more violent. "Look, kid. She wants you intact, but your friends? She doesn't care too much about them. Do you get what I'm saying?" The rattling paused.

Now she was threatening her friends and allies? "Fine," Rienna called after a moment. "Give me a minute." She hated it, but she removed her barrier of furniture and opened the trapdoor. "You're horrible," she said down to the guard.

He ignored her. "This way."

He led her down the stairs and through the crystalline halls, weaving from one corridor to the next. There were no signs of any other people. Rienna kept an eye out for any dungeons or rooms where Luke and Hana could be imprisoned while trying to keep track of where she had been led. She was wildly unsuccessful; the place was like a maze. Every hallway and door looked the same. Crystals here, crystals there. Bare stone everywhere else.

Every once in a while they passed a window and Rienna looked out towards The Suppression. Why isn’t it beautiful? she wondered. It had once been. Glimmering pinks and purples and reds. It was awe inspiring. Or it should have been. But there was no sense of awe when Rienna looked out at it, only a deep disgust.

The fairyeld brought her out a door and onto a patio where the Sovereign was waiting. This she could find beauty in, even if she hated it. The sun shone merrily above, and flowers in trays swayed ever so slightly atop a railing facing a mountainous drop to the fort entrance, built at such an angle that no one below would guess there was a little outdoor balcony right here.

“Please, Rienna, sit. Have some lunch,” Jenni said with a crisp smile. When Rienna didn’t move, the woman’s eyes started to glow purple, a threat of her power.

Rienna hesitated a moment but reluctantly sat down in a woven chair and took the sandwich handed to her. It had sprouts, chicken, and cheese; not necessarily common foods for those within Vieryen.

"Does this come from your 'camps?'” she accused angrily.

Jenni sighed. "After you took out two of them, supplies have been dwindling. No, most of this is from here,” she said, popping a cracker from her small charcuterie board into her mouth.

"Here?" Rienna asked, surprised.

"Yes, Rienna," Jenni said impatiently. "Not all of the food we send in is grown by labor camps. Not all of the camps grow many crops, either. Don’t worry, you can eat the sandwich with a clean conscience.”

“I don’t want to,” Rienna said stubbornly.

“Fine, you can eat it with a guilty conscience if you’d like, it’s not my problem.”

Rienna tried to glare at her but found it hard to meet her eyes. A certain physical power seemed to radiate out from her, less than, but similar to being in the presence of one of the fretch. So she just glared at the sandwich instead.

The Sovereign said nothing. She just sat there, looking regal in her purple dress, eating her lunch with long, graceful fingers.

Rienna glanced around, looking for possible exits. There was only one door back inside, and it was likely guarded by fairyeld. If she could get past them she could probably find a way down to the fort entrance, she thought she had seen a staircase going further downwards a few corridors back. Left, left, right. Or maybe right, right, left?

“Did you read any of the books I left for you?” Jenni asked, causing Rienna’s head to snap back to her. She smiled knowingly.

Rienna glared. “Yes. One about the history of Vieryen. I didn’t like it.”

“Really? I found it quite amusing. Humans are truly fascinating beings. The stories they tell when the truth doesn’t suit them. Ridiculous people.” She remained infuriatingly calm and indifferent as she spoke, not even looking at Rienna as she talked, just eating her lunch as though she was merely discussing the weather.

“Do you not consider yourself human?” Rienna demanded.

The Sovereign shrugged. “Not really. It’s hard to do so after a few hundred years, ruling over them, watching their lives pass by. You’ll understand someday. We both have so much more power, more time. We are not the same as them.”

“We’re not the same! I’m not at all like you!”

“You are a little,” she said. “But no, we are not the same.” She laughed, almost like a cackle and not too different from Trusten’s. “Of course we are not the same. I am lifetimes older than you and you aren’t even half of one! I have five times the capacity and knowledge of magicka and have no one left that I truly care about. Of course we are not the same.”

Rienna frowned a bit, annoyed that she felt offended. She didn’t want to be like her, she should be glad that she so clearly wasn’t.

“Why am I even here?” Rienna asked angrily.

“Because I can’t have you wandering free, plotting against me,” Jenni said with a condescending tone.

“No! I mean why here? Having lunch with you?”

“Because I want company?” the Sovereign said with a small smile. Rienna glared at her and she rolled her eyes. "Fine. I want to propose a deal. I want you to stop sabotaging my operations, and in return, you and your family may live here, we have plenty of space. I think it would be wrong to keep you in The Suppression, unable to use your magic, so I’d let you live here. You just have to stop… getting in my way.”

"That's the worst deal I have ever heard," Rienna said. "And very classic evil villain of you."

"Was it? I really don't think of myself as a villain, but I guess most villains don't. Very well, you're obviously not interested. So what will it take to get you to leave me be? Riches? You don't seem the type. A nice house? What do you want?"

"I want you and your influence to disappear," Rienna said hotly.

Jenni laughed loudly."Wow! You really don't like me! That makes this difficult." She sipped some water and thought for a moment. "So, you can't be bribed. Fine. You can always be threatened. If you don't stop, you will stay here forever, where I will harvest your magicka for my own use."

Rienna paled and started to panic, but then she had an idea: maybe her own magic mixing with the Sovereigns would give her enough of a distraction to escape. “Fine. Go ahead then, take my magic.”

Then again, Rienna didn’t know what might happen if the Sovereign took all of her magic…

Jenni laughed again. "Oh. You think I'm bluffing? I'm not. I don't need magic now, thanks. But I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you live a luxurious life." She sent a signal of magic out the door and a guard came hastily in. "Bring her back to her room. Let her bring her food with her."

Rienna stormed past the guard, purposefully leaving the sandwich behind. The guard hurried behind her and shut the balcony door. Rienna kept storming ahead back towards where they’d come, angry and frustrated.

She stopped, realizing she was out of reach of the guard. This was her chance. This is my chance. Time seemed to slow as she looked back at the guard who was walking after her, clearly irked that she had gotten ahead of him. She glanced back at the T shaped corridor and ran.

Left, left, right. Staircase, staircase, staircase. Where was the staircase? Had she turned wrong? It was so hard to tell. But she couldn’t turn around, the guard would catch her. A terrifying second passed by and she sprinted down the hallway and to the right.

She heard the guard yell from behind her and ducked into a storage closet. She pressed her back against the wall and looked around the dark room. Crystals glowed softly in crates stacked besides shelves of sheets and linen, somehow less magical crystals than what was around a single hallway in the fortress.

A moment later, she heard the fairyeld’s footsteps pound past and away from the closet. She glanced outside her hiding spot and sprinted back towards the Sovereign, hoping she hadn’t been alerted to Rienna’s escape.

Okay, opposite directions. She turned right this time, sprinting down the hallway and to the stairs. Skipping every other step, Rienna rushed down the stairway and onto the base floor. She had to find Hana, she would know what to do.

Rienna checked every door she saw, looking for one that was locked or would at least lead to her comrades. “Why do they all look the same!” Rienna muttered frantically, opening and closing doors all around. Why were there so many hallways? Where did they all lead? Where were all the people–?

She burst into a room filled with bunks and belongings. Her heart stuttered to a stop for a moment before she realized there was no one inside. There were only six beds total, all on one side of the room. The other side held racks of armor and weapons along with the occasional pen and ink.

Rienna heard footsteps coming from where she’d left the fairyeld who was supposed to guard her and quickly shut the door again. She had to keep moving, find Hana.

Every door whose handle turned without hinder was left behind; all she needed to find one that was locked. Back and forth, back and forth across the hallway she ran, testing each handle, wondering how there could be so many rooms, feeling as though she had tested at least fifty, until… she shook a handle a couple times, trying to turn it. It was locked.

She knocked loudly on the door. “Hello? Hana, Luke? Are you inside here? Hello?”

“Rienna? Rienna?!”

“Luke?!”

“I’m here! I think Hana’s next door. How did you escape? Do you have a key?” Luke asked.

Rienna looked around desperately. “No… I don’t know where I’d even find one! But wait…” She looked into the realm of magicka and examined the lock. “Maybe if I could…” She spun a string of magic into a lockpick like shape, letting it mold to what the lock needed. There was a click and she pulled the door open with a grin.

“Thanks,” Luke said, grinning back momentarily but quickly becoming serious. “Let’s go get Hana.” He stepped into the hallway and tested the handle of the next door. “Hana, you in there?”

A muffled voice answered, unintelligible.

“I think it’s Hana. They probably gagged her. Can you unlock this one too?”

Rienna nodded. “I can.” She delved back into the realm of magic and started to spin another magicka lockpick. She was almost there, the magic almost molded to the right shape–

Her magicka swirled out of her grasp and sizzled into nothingness, no longer attached to a source. She felt her arms forced behind her by air and let out a yelp.

“I’m impressed,” the Sovereign said, voice cold, nothing like it had been moments before. “But I can’t blame you for what is ultimately my fairyeld’s fault. I suppose I’m going to have to find new rooms for these two, just in case you find a way to escape again.” She sighed. “Your friends may be more trouble than they’re worth.”

A pair of guards appeared, breathless, on the other end of the hallway. They saw the Sovereign and paled, clearly aware that it wasn’t just the prisoners who were in trouble.

“Ah, your grace… We, um…”

“Quiet!” she snapped. “Get the boy secured and let your fellow guards know that the two magicless prisoners need to be moved, at least until we find something else to do with them.”

“Of course, Sovereign.”

“Good. Rienna, come with me.”

Rienna tried to resist, but the magical binds around her were both incredibly strong and weakened her connection with magicka. She became disheartened as she realized how few doors she had actually managed to look into. At the time it had felt like a lot, but now… she realized that she’d been incredibly lucky to find Luke and Hana.

She tried to resist, but the air around her pushed her forward and she followed the Sovereign back up the stairs and to the tower, dread filling Rienna as they approached the trapdoor.

“Don’t make me think I’d benefit from killing you,” the Sovereign said. She waved her hand dismissively and Rienna was tossed into the sky room. Before she could even get up, the trapdoor slammed shut and locked loudly.

She looked around the room as she’d done the first time and collapsed onto her back. So, she may have just made a big mistake. A really big mistake. What had she been thinking? What had made her think she could have pulled off an escape in the home of a powerful sorcerer?

Maybe because I’ve escaped another powerful witch more than once? she suggested to herself miserably.

And now the Sovereign believed she could harvest Rienna’s magic for the rest of time and that she would try to escape at any chance to rescue her friends, who could no longer be used for bargaining with her. It could be days before she was let out of the tower again.