The little room came to a shuddering stop after several long, agonizing moments, during which Ranshee huddled against the wall, shivering and waiting for the floor to fall out from under her or the walls to turn to shards of metal or something else equally horrible. Even with everything she'd seen so far in the Aerd, moving rooms were not among them-- and it was terrifying. When it finally stopped moving, Ranshee wasn't sure what would happen next.

Seeing the wall slide open to reveal the gold and silver foxes staring at her was not among the things she had envisioned.

"I told you she'd be down here eventually, Gin," the gold one said briskly. "Come on, wolf-girl, get in here so we can get this over with. Our Lady is waiting."

Anything had to be better than being stuck in the tiny, moving room, so Ranshee slunk out, keeping low to the ground and trying to watch everything. Compared to the office, this new place was very bare, with walls of stark white highlighted by highly polished metal. The only things within it were flat, cold-looking platforms, most of which held faintly glowing clusters of crystal or tiny blades that Ranshee didn't want anywhere near her-- actually, the glowing stones she didn't want anywhere near her, either. They smelled like more magic, and she wasn't about to let anyone use that trick on her again.

"Just hop on up here," the silver fox said lightly from further inside the room than his partner, who had been just beside the metal room's sliding door and was watching her closely as she crept more into the open. The silver one patted one of the cold-looking surfaces and gave her a weak smile.

"Why?" she demanded.

"So you can be more comfortable during your talk with our Lady."

There was a definite hesitation when he said "talk", and this time Ranshee recognized it. There would be no "talking" going on here, and she wanted no part of it! "No!" she snarled. "Lies! What? What will do? Not talk, no. Not talk-place, this."

::No, we will not be talking, but if you would please get on the table, I will be brief.::

The mind-voice was as clean and crisp as Ranshee's sendings were muddy with image and emotion, the sense of it sharp like shards of stone and of all color and no color. Ranshee shrank back from the speaker, a hooded and robed figure that smelled like dragon and wrongness, and that was gliding towards her slowly and inexorably. Everything about whoever this was seemed off, unnatural, or simply wrong, and her aura of power was more frightening than moving rooms.

"If you'd just cooperate, we could have been done by now," the gold fox snorted, breaking Ranshee's paralyzed stare.

"Who?" she barked, shaking her head vigorously.

"The Aerd-Lady Drakiera," the silver fox answered, sounding surprised.

"Who did you think it was?" the gold exclaimed. "Gods and Ancestors, Lady Drakiera, you'd think she's stupid, or something!" The fox-woman might have continued, but the hood turned briefly towards her, and she fell sullenly silent.

::Onto the table, Ranshee,:: that same mind-voice came again, completely expressionless. ::I want tissue samples, a blood draw, and a few majyckal tests, then you may go.::

Tissue samples? Blood draw? One gloved hand pointed imperiously at the metal surface, and the other held a pair of those tiny blades. For one moment, Ranshee nearly took a step in the indicated direction-- no one had ever made her want to whine and tuck her tail between her legs before, but if anyone could, this Aerd-Lady might have been one. But the glint of the blades and the glow of the stones was too plain a warning to deny. Though she had no idea what a "tissue sample" was, "blood draw" as plain as day, and there was no way in any world that Ranshee would stand for that without being coerced. She bared her teeth and stepped back, away from this Drakiera figure and its power. The gold fox tried to grab at her, but she spun away, backing herself to the wall and bracing herself for a fight.

But then, as the gold fox stalked towards her, muzzle wrinkled with annoyance, and she tried to lash out with clawed fingers, Ranshee found that she couldn't move. The smell of magic sprang up around her, and she struggled against invisible bonds, with no success at escaping them whatsoever. The fox-woman grabbed her arm and dragged her forcibly away from the illusory safety of the edge of the room, despite her feeble attempts at resisting. She pulled up her reluctant magic, felt the power of the stones on their own tables, and tried to tug at that, as well, for the fuel for a fireball spell. If she wasn't able to move her body, she would move her magic, if she could--

Something alien and oddly fractured overwhelmed her senses, and she heard, ::If you can't play nice, Ranshee, I'm afraid we will have to play without you.::

And the next thing she knew, Ranshee found herself curled on the floor of the dragon-rider rooms she had claimed as her own, feeling groggy and disoriented. The rest of the rooms were empty, she could tell by the silence and empty scent, and only a faintly lingering scent of the two fox-people proved to her that she hadn't dreamed up the whole horrific "adventure". She pushed herself up into a half-sitting position with a little whine, aware of a mild headache, a slight pain in her shoulder patched over with some kind of fabric, and the feeling like she'd been shaken by the scruff and then tossed down.

What had happened? She remembered the two foxes, remembered the office, remembered the moving metal room and the confrontation at the bottom.... Then nothing. Waking up here. How had she been cut? That Drakiera person with her blades? What else had they done to her? She groaned and levered herself to all fours for a good shake before staggering to her feet.

Somehow, that Drakiera person, or the foxes, or someone, had knocked her out, or taken away her memory; her remembering wasn't that bad. She was making her very small resistance against the Hunts against creatures who could take over someone's mind, body, and will-- it almost felt like it wasn't worth it. She should just run away and live her last few days in freedom instead of buried so far underground that the air smelled stale.

And yet... if they'd wanted to kill her, why hadn't they? Were they just cruel here, tormenting the outsiders and newcomers? Or was this just something else that Ranshee didn't understand, to add to her continuously growing hoard?

The door to the large room creaked open, and Ranshee spun around automatically-- then let out a low whine as her head started to pound. She sagged against the nearest wall, holding her head in her hands and squeezing her eyes shut. Whatever those people had done to her, they'd left her with a headache....

::Ranshee?::

That mind-voice, with such overtones of concern, annoyance, exasperation, and images of herself, could only belong to Nocol'Fita. After the painful clarity of Drakiera's mind, the fuzziness of the black dragon's was a welcome relief, and not at all painful. ::Head hurts,:: she complained at him without opening her eyes.

::Drakiera,:: the dragon agreed with some venom. Because Noiku didn't like the Aerd-Lady, neither did Nocol, and at the moment, Ranshee was inclined to agree with both of them. Then, though, the tone of his thoughts changed to accusatory: ::You-Ranshee not been eating!:: Apparently, judging from where that knowledge had to have come from, dislike for Drakiera or not, he wasn't above getting information from her....

Ranshee opened one eye to glare at him. ::Cooked-like-inside makes me sick,:: she sent shortly, the image of the prepared food the Aerd-people ate going along with the thought-concepts. ::Eating rats, bats, small-catch-things.::

::Should have said,:: Nocol told her sullenly, then picked up something he'd been hiding with his own bulk and tossed it into the room. It smelled deliciously like a freshly-killed something, larger than a rabbit but not so big as a deer, head still attached but troublesome fur already skinned away. It was just enough for one good meal. Ranshee's nose twitched, as much as it could so short and snubbed like her human nose was, but she looked sharply at Nocol. ::Eat. Look, smell, sense-- is safe.:: The invitation to search his own mind to assure herself that the dead thing, whatever it was, was a free gift with no poisons or spells attached to it, was reassuring in and of itself. She took him up on it immediately, taking his opened mind in a powerful mental grip and shuffling through his memories. True enough, Nocol had caught, killed, and even prepared the thing himself-- Noiku complaining at him the whole time, too. Ranshee smirked.

::Good,:: was all she said, before she fell on the offering like the starving thing she was. Nocol gave a smug little snort, but said nothing more, and by the time she'd devoured every last morsel he was gone.

Chapter Six

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