Aaaaand now she's in a great big evil mountain fortress. How symmetrical.

Nobody here seems to know how to keep private thoughts. There are a bunch of people, who can pretty neatly be sorted into 'humans, currently being tortured' and 'not humans, currently being evil'. The not-humans think of themselves as Endarkened. The place is a huge maze and she's in one of the deepest and most mazelike bits; it is unlikely but not inconceivable that she could do enough mental eavesdropping to successfully sneak out without someone finding her.

...right then. Is there anyone close enough to hear if she starts singing before she starts sneaking?

N—

—actually yes, and she's coming this way; she heard a noise that didn't sound quite right, and she's wondering who could possibly have gotten all the way down here without proper authorization.

Well Beka will start sneaking real fast now as quietly as she can without one of those self-contradictory songs for quiet.

The lightless tunnel twists and dips and forks and generally misbehaves.

Endarkened have better dark vision than orcs or Elves; to the approaching evil mountain resident, every detail of the tunnels is perfectly visible in a hundred shades of black, and the faint gleam of Beka's snowflake stands out like a beacon even from around a corner.

- she hastily arranges her hair as soon as she's figured out what her pursuer is seeing.

She can't see the light as well now - but she's caught Beka's scent now. It's new and interesting, not quite like any creature she's heard of before. She's very curious.

Shit.

Sneak sneak sneak maybe if she sings really quiet -

- she'll fetch up at a dead end and her pursuer will finally catch sight of her?

That probably isn't the outcome she was looking for.

"Oh, you're lovely," the Endarkened exclaims - the language is unfamiliar, but the translation is plain as day in her thoughts. "My brother will be so pleased!"

If being lovely is the problem she can try the orc song?

Her eyes narrow. Perception-altering magic is not polite at all. That's no way to treat a queen.

She sweeps along the tunnel, wings half-open, and grabs Beka's arm in a taloned hand; and then her magic seeks out the right pattern and imposes it on the body, and Beka falls unconscious.

- unconscious orf is unconscious.

When unconscious orf wakes up again, she will find herself in a room containing actual light - not very much of it, just a few dimly glowing stones on the walls, plus of course the body heat of the seven-foot-tall winged man who is currently taking a knife to her stomach. Also, she's gagged and tied to a bed.

fuck

Yes, precisely.

wow if she were a real person this would suck a whole lot

Wouldn't it just.

kinda sucks anyway not really her favorite genre ow

Over the next several days, she is treated to all the highlights of King Sovarith's torture repertoire. He mainly likes fire, and sharp things, and sexual violence, and combinations of the above; but once in a while he'll branch out into something more complicated.

Since she managed that weird magic song thing before, they keep her unconscious when not in use.

And then after a week or so of that she wakes up and she is not tied up at all and there are no Endarkened around, just an extremely concerned Serik holding her and carefully not touching her too-short hair and attempting to give her healing water.

...sip?

Her miscellaneous burns and so on heal rapidly. It doesn't fix the hair, though. Serik snuggles her. What happened—and who do I need to murder for it—

...she pulls together vague dissociated suffering, picks out the events more salient than individual stabs, osanwës him without the coherence of a verbal presentation.

Snuggle. Part of him wants to proceed directly to murder, but most of him is primarily concerned with making sure his orf is okay, and he doesn't really know how to do that, snuggles are the best he's got.

Snuggles are good.

Oh good. Then he will snuggle her so much. She is safe in his lap, it is the safest place, so so so safe, anything that tries to harm her in it is getting extremely murdered.

Good.

I love you.

Is Kat okay?

I love you too. She's fine— he sends where he last saw her, being supervised by a very patient Iri. I killed the snake and then figured out how to follow where it sent you. Sorry I didn't get here sooner.

...how long was I -

It's been almost a week. Following the snake turned out harder than expected. He has not actually slept since he noticed she was gone.

Snuggle. I love you.

Snuggle. She is his precious orf and he loves her so much and no one is allowed to hurt her.

Can you fix my hair?

Oh—yeah, of course—

He grabs a bit of power and fiddles with it and now her hair is back at a reasonable length. Snuggle snuggle. He was so worried and now he has his orf again and he is not letting go of her anytime soon.

Now she can be less carefully snuggled and that is good and important.

So important! She will be the most snuggled.

(Somebody's coming.)

Eep

Her all-powerful boyfriend hugs her and glares at the door.

Somebody opens it.

Now somebody is on fire!

Somebody wasn't expecting that!

Good. She loves her all-powerful boyfriend.

He snuggles her some more.

Being on fire is definitely a major inconvenience and ruining his whole day, but it doesn't seem to be actually killing him.

...and there's something oddly... Serik-like in the flavour of his thoughts, now that they're both present to be compared.

It takes her a while to notice. Then she bounces the echo to Serik. ?

...uh what the fuck? Yeah, he definitely recognizes the feel of that emotional state, and he is confused and vaguely concerned and would really like to find out what the fuck. (But if Beka would rather he just kill the guy already he can do that instead.)

I know you won't let him hurt me, it's okay.

Okay. I love you.

So he snuggles his orf and permits that guy to stop being on fire.

He spends half a minute healing from a pile of charred bones, which is not a super pleasant activity, and he's all set to do something vengeful immediately afterward—

—but then he sees Serik, and the look on his face and the way he's holding Beka, and the sheer casual confidence on display makes him instinctively certain that he would lose that fight if he started it. So he marshals his temper and asks, "Is she yours?"

(Even the way he thinks about Beka being Serik's is Serik-like. It's like they're the inverse of twins, two of the same mind in different bodies.)

Beka bounces what he meant. Actually she can just open up her osanwë sense to Serik in general.

Serik snuggles her and nods. (It is super fucking weird how much like him this guy is.)

Sovarith is starting to be a little unsettled too, and he doesn't even have the advantage of telepathy! There's just - something weirdly familiar about the way this stranger moves, looks, acts.

"Well, you can have her back, then," he says, a little warily. (If this stranger is really as much like him as it seems, and really as powerful as it seems, then he's probably going to conquer Shadow Mountain and there's not much Sovarith can do to stop him.)

"I don't think this place is very nice," contributes Beka, "it's kind of Angbandy."

"I could conquer it, I suppose." Snuggle. "I'm not much of a conqueror, but there's something to be said for not leaving great big horrible torture mountains lying around where somebody might fall into them."

—despite himself, he laughs. He has a very Serik laugh.

Beka nuzzles Serik.

"What I really want to know," he says, "is why you are exactly like me right down to the giggles except for being a completely different species."

"We can't be all that alike if you call yourself 'not much of a conqueror'," he says uneasily.

"Oh, I used to be more the conquering type. Then I grew up."

"That's not something you just grow out of!" he says, offended.

"Sure it is. And I'm much better off this way. I would've missed out on so much if my orf had shown up on my mountain and I'd tortured her instead of giving her flowers."

He is suspicious of this assertion!

"So much of what?"

Beka, dear, could you please send him— and he remembers what it felt like the first time he saw her smile.

Bounce.

"oh," he says in a small, stunned voice.

She snuggles Serik.

Snuggles. He has the best orf. With the best smile. So much the best.

That - if - if this is really some all-powerful otherworldly human version of Sovarith, then maybe being human explains how he let go of his sense of right and wrong so easily, and that explains why he'd want to - and Sovarith still has his sense of right and wrong, he shouldn't regret hurting her, he knows he shouldn't, but he does, he knows it's wrong wrong wrong but he wishes he'd been merciful—

...that's weird. Beka doesn't quite know what to make of it.

That... is pretty much exactly what Serik's moral compass looked like back when he paid any attention to it. He has since stopped doing that, because his moral compass was very stupid and did him no good at all. It's kind of unnerving watching this otherworldly not-Serik have a crisis over it. But it is good that not-Serik now has the correct attitude toward having hurt Beka.

I'll be okay. I've been tortured before, just not that bad.

Snuggle. Good. I love you.

He doesn't know what he'd do if his Beka got vanished off somewhere and when he caught up to her he found that she was not going to be okay. Well, probably he'd murder everyone responsible and then cry. But it would be just about the worst thing. His Beka is so important.

Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

Meanwhile, Sovarith isn't entirely sure he wouldn't rather have just stayed on fire. Is he really willing to throw over his entire way of life just because he tortured someone who turns out to have a nice smile?? (Yes.) What does that say about him?? (Nothing good, probably.) Aaaagh.

Wow. Poor guy. Well, that's what you get.

It's a good thing Kat wasn't with me this time.

Yeah.

Are you gonna turn this place into a bunny field?

I might! I'm not nearly as mad at this guy now that he gets the picture, but... it'd be nice to turn this place into somewhere you would've been safe landing on.

Awwww I love you.

I love you too!

After a while she wonders, "Hey do you have an Iri?"

—?

"Have you ever had a kid?"

"No? What, you have?"

The overlap between parenting techniques he is aware of and things he would be willing to do to his own child is pretty much nonexistent, but maybe it's different for humans. Probably it's different for humans.

"Good, I don't think Iri would like to be this species at all."

"I bet she wouldn't!"

"I'm hardly in urgent need of an heir, anyway, I co-rule with my twin sister."

"...huh. I don't have any siblings."

"Is she that person who caught me?"

"Yes." (He flinches slightly at the reminder. He wishes he hadn't hurt her, wishes it so very much, wishes it even though it's wrong to show mercy.)

Aww.

He glares up at Serik. "Are you going to conquer Shadow Mountain or not."

(The loss of prestige would annoy him, but as long as he and his sister are safe, he doesn't care what happens to anyone or anything else. The Endarkened as a civilization are supposed to be working together to call their dark god back into this world, but Sovarith has never intended to go through with that plan and wouldn't mourn the loss of the possibility for a second. His only real concern is that without a thousand Endarkened at their backs, he and Nesifra would be easy prey for the forces of the Light if they were ever found; and the forces of the Light don't currently know that any Endarkened still exist, and need not ever be informed.)

"I think I might!" he says. "I have no particular longing to see you or your sister hurt, but I'm not thrilled by what you've done with the place and I think you'll be better off in the long run if I wipe it out. Maybe I'll see if I can teach you my magic in case of future conquerors who don't like you as much as I do."

(It's baffling how - merciful Serik is.)

"Are you gonna hook him into your thing?"

"Maybe." He snuggles his Beka.

(If she doesn't want him to, then he can refrain. It is very important to him that she should get to feel safe. But, well, they can both see what Sovarith thinks of the idea of hurting her again; he seems, to put it mildly, very unlikely to try it.)

D'you think it'll stick? What if his sister tries talking him out of it or something?

I think it'll stick. If it was me I know it would - there's no one who could ever convince me to hurt you.

Nuzzle. Okay.

Snuggle. I love you.

(He envies them. He doesn't quite know that envying is what he's doing, but he does.)

Well sucks to be him.

Mmhmm.

Beka might just go to sleep right here in this nice safe lap.

This nice safe lap has no objections to this plan. Snuggle snuggle.

Sleeping orf.