#(technically a prequel)

Camilla’s hands shook as she pushed the unlock button on her car keys. Nothing happened. No unlocking sound. She gripped the keys tighter as the rain was forthcoming. The key slipped around the lock until it slipped out of her hands. She gasped and scrambled for them in the puddle of accumulating mud surrounding her car. A swatch of metal hit her fingertips and she latched onto it just in time to feel a boot against her ribs. Her head hit the car side door, the rest of her body splashing water all over her. She buckled in pain, sure something cracked as pain shot through her body. The figure pulled her up, opened the door, and pushed her into the passenger’s side. The car roared to life and she could barely see where they were going.

The person seated beside her was tall, with a wicked smile and curly wet hair plastered to his forehead. The hilt of a knife poked out of his belt just barely within reach. Her vision blurred as she tried to straighten herself out. Warren glanced at her briefly, one hand on the wheel, the other fingering the hilt of the knife. “I only came by for a quick chat.”

“A quick chat? You’re going to murder me, aren’t you.”

Warren stopped the car in an empty lot and turned to face her. “Only if you push me too far. This isn’t something for you to take on. You really should listen to the others. Don’t be a hero and all that.”

“Did you pull those lines from YA novels?” Camilla spat. She could feel the fire in her hand building, but a car was not the best place for a fight. The door to her car unlocked and she got out cautiously, watching her back. Warren followed suit, his shit-eating grin practically splitting his face in half. His suit, distinguishing him as a professor of the college was stained with mud. He glanced at it, “Kidu will hate me for ruining it.”

Warren took a few steps around the car. Camilla backed up with each one.

“If you don’t back off, you’ll be forcing my hand. And no one will stop me.”

“I’ll stop you!” She shouted. The fire building in her hand fizzled out and turned to steam. She willed the water around her to condense and form a bubble surrounding Warren’s head. He struggled and tried desperately to splash the water away.

Camilla struggled to keep herself upright. The twinge of pain in her side made her crumple to her knees, but she kept the bubble of water surrounding Warren’s head. Something slammed into her side and she lost all control. Hard metal, cool against her bare arms. Her whole body broken and in pain. She turned her head as much as she could manage. Heim stood over her with a shovel.

Warren coughed and sputtered and cursed somewhere away, and she felt a sharp object dig into her shoulder blade. She tried to scream, but the wind was knocked out of her and she could hardly breathe without hyperventilating. Warren drew closer, blood staining the front of his shirt. He pulled the knife out of his shoulder and brought it dangerously close to her throat.

“Not here,” Heim hissed. “Take her to the place. To Kidu’s. You won’t have to worry about anything there.” She felt the sensation of being lifted, the feeling of being teleported to the Qualian plane, the cold placement of metal cuffs on her wrists and ankles.

“Do you understand how many come after me?” Warren circled Camilla’s broken form on the hard slab. “The organization has people tailing me constantly. They think I don’t know. In the end, most of them find their way here. No witnesses.” He grabbed something from the wall that sounded like metal grating against metal. “You just had to insert yourself into the whole mess. You’re not right for Denthos, a little cat like you.”

Camilla made a weak effort to cast fire, condense water, do anything. Above her, a giant pendulum blade swung lazily in place. The metal rubbed her skin painfully until her wrists burned.

Warren smiled. “You’ll be the first real warning to them. The first example I’ll let them see in case anyone else gets any mad ideas to cross me.”

Something sharp stabbed into her arm, and Camilla’s sight began to go blurry and dark until she was no longer aware of the pain.

“You’ll beg for death soon enough.”

Everything burned. Alcohol washed over her open wounds, white hot and unbearable. It was difficult to see with only one eye. Everything was blurry, and dark. In her head, she screamed for help. There was a quick pinch at the back of her neck, like a bug bite, and her face went numb and tingling.  

It was a relief only for a moment. It allowed her to think, to remember where she was and why her heart thudded painfully in her chest. Her body wanted to die, but Warren wouldn’t let that happen. Not yet. She could see him hovering above her like a blurry shadow. Her glasses were crushed pieces of glass crunching under his foot as he shuffled around, picking up one tool, putting down another.

She could only see his smile when he brought his face nice and close to hers, playing the edge of a tool across her numb cheek. He moved away, and picked up her left hand. The tool’s cool, rounded body slid to her fingertips and she knew what it was just a moment before the pain hit.

Clamped around each finger in turn, she felt the ripping out of each nail. When one hand was done, she balled it up into a fist, trying hard to squeeze away the pain. Blood coated her hand like paint. She bit her tongue so hard it bled; when he got to the next hand, her body shivered. She called out for Denthos, her voice meek, tremoring.  

Warren paused, and pulled her arm out. Something squeezed around her forearm, a tourniquet. Cold, and a pinch, and more tingling numbness made her arm and hand limp like a dead weight. He murmured so low she almost missed it. “Denthos can’t hear you here.”

He repeated the process on her other hand, numbed it, moved on to her toes. Blood pooled under her heels. Her toes and fingers twitched. Her eye rolled in its socket, searching for a way out. All the while, she called out in her mind to Denthos, begging him to come. Begging him to help her.

The ceiling came to focus above her, and she recognized it at long last. Kidu’s home. Warren had taken her to the Qualian plane just to torture her. A chop and soft thud of something hitting the floor, crunching underneath his foot as he shifted to one side of her body, made her stomach heave. He rolled her to one side, allowing her to empty her stomach’s contents onto the floor. Fingers lay below like dead branches cut from a tree.

She wanted to leave. She wanted her body to give up. She felt vibrations come from her throat. She was laughing. Denthos couldn’t save her. Denthos couldn’t enter Kidu’s home.

Denthos couldn’t save her.

She wanted to black out. She wanted to leave.