Lanie strained against the glamour until she was soaked in sweat and had a throbbing headache, but it was no use. She was new to all this magic stuff, but whoever had put up the illusion wasn’t. They knew what they were doing and had far more juice than she did.
The simple stone room seemed so real. If she ran her fingers over the stone of the wall, she felt stone, not the metal of the cage bars. The wavery sunlight through the blurred glass warmed her skin, despite knowing that it wasn’t really there. She was thankful that the illusion didn’t affect her mind the way it did her senses, that she could hold on to the fact that it was an illusion instead of forgetting and having to figure it out over and over again.
She walked around the perimeter of the space, trailing her fingers over the seemingly solid stone walls. Even the wooden nightstand felt real, even though there had been nothing at all in that space in the brief glimpses she got of reality.
Heart pounding in her chest, she could feel herself on the ragged edge of panic. She was breathing too fast, too shallow. So much of her childhood had been spent feeling helpless and trapped. Less than two days ago, she’d been trapped and beaten in another small concrete room. She hated it. Hated the feeling of being at someone else’s mercy, hated the way she flinched at every imagined sound, her body tensing for the next beating.
She wrapped her arms around herself and fought to hold in the tears. She couldn’t do this, not again. Slumping back against the wall, she slid down it to sit on the floor. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, huddling into herself and trying to be small. For long minutes, she sat there, fighting with herself. The scared little girl nearly won, but there was a core of iron determination buried inside her, forged of anger and pain. It was, perhaps, a little brittle and rough around the edges, but it was there.
When she finally found it—that cold, hard knot—she sniffled and wiped her face. “Get yourself together, Lanie,” she whispered to herself. “You have two options here. You can curl up and wait for the bad thing to happen, or you can be the bad thing that happens to whatever asshole put you here.” The words were mostly bravado, and she knew it, but they helped.
Instead of flailing in panic like a trapped animal, she turned her mind to the problem. She could pick any lock holding her, but she had to be able to find the lock first, which meant she needed to beat the illusion. The glamour was strong, but she had magic now, too. Opening her interface, she scanned down the list of powers that she could spend sakti on and, under the Svadhisthana chakra, she found the one she’d seen earlier. There were other powers she was more interested in, and she’d wanted to save up for them, but right now, this was the one she needed, and saving her points would do her no good if she wasn’t alive to spend them. So, she spent the six points to buy Mental Defenses.
Warm power flowed up from her center to wrap around her consciousness. It felt like strong, gentle hands sheltering her mind. Her ragged breathing calmed as the pressure on her psyche eased. She could tell that it was still there, outside the barrier of her power, but it no longer pressed in and distracted her. This time, when she pushed against the glamour, it receded.
It wasn’t dispelled entirely; she had to keep up the pressure against it, or it would roll back in. As she took stock of her surroundings, she could see the glamour superimposed over it, like a transparent overlay, and if her attention wavered the overlay would become more opaque, obscuring the reality behind it.
The cozy, quaint bedroom faded to reveal the dim, dank basement room lined with cages that lay behind the illusion. There were four large cages made of metal bars set into the stone of the floor and ceiling. Two cages on one wall, and two more against the wall opposite. One of the cages was empty. The one across from Lanie held three apparently human young women. They huddled together against the wall. It was hard to tell their ages, but Lanie guessed they were all in their late teens, maybe early twenties at the oldest. The sight of them—scared, ragged, and crying—fanned a flame of rage in Lanie’s heart.
In the cage next to hers was a single figure: a man, shirtless, wearing only buckskin pants. His build and features were mostly human, but on a larger scale. He was as broad and muscular as the most avid of bodybuilders. His skin was a dark mahogany, and horns like those of a bull sprouted from his head. They swept forward from his skull and gave him a wild, dangerous appearance. He sat on his cot with his eyes closed, seemingly deep in meditation of some sort. A third wall, beyond the caged bull man, held a doorway. The door was open, but the space beyond was too dark to see anything.
The fourth wall was lined with shelves, and those shelves held smaller cages, all empty. On a table below the shelves sat a lone cage, and in it, Nips stood. He appeared to be moving his hands over an illusion of his own. Lanie called out to him, but he didn’t react to her voice. Nor did any of the other prisoners.
The only light in the room came from a narrow casement window set high in the wall above the shelves. The bright sunlight that filtered through the grime on the glass was a stark contrast to the gloom of the underground room. With her ability to see in low light, though, it was more than enough for Lanie to examine the lock that held her cage closed.
The lock was old, and not in a good way. It was a heavy brass padlock that looked about two centuries out of date. Lanie had to split her concentration as she examined the lock. The glamour pressed against her, slipping in and hiding reality if her focus wavered. Her hands were through the bars, lifting and turning the padlock, but as she turned her thoughts to the antique lever lock and what she would need to do to spring it, the illusion would creep back in. When it did, she could no longer see the bars and lock, but, despite knowing that her hands were through the bars, she would see them pressed against the door of the cozy bedroom. Even the feel of the cold brass in her hands would be replaced with rough wood under her fingers, and yet, she could still feel that her arms were extended farther than the door, and were being resisted by the weight of the lock that she could no longer feel. Her external senses and internal proprioception were at war with one another, and it left her feeling queasy and odd.
The old lock wasn’t something she had a lot of experience with. She’d watched several videos online about them and knew what she would need to do to open it, but her only practical experience was a few practice attempts with the one she’d found at a rummage sale. She hadn’t spent much time on them because she just didn’t encounter them often enough to make it worth the effort. One thing she did know, though, was that the flimsy paperclip she had might not be the trump card she’d hoped it would be.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
If this lock was like the one she’d practiced with, it would have heavier levers inside instead of pins. She carefully straightened the paperclip. Closing her eyes to block out the conflicting scenes they were showing her, she lifted the lock and slipped the wire into the keyhole. She gently probed the workings of the lock, feeling for the levers. It was delicate work, made harder by the effort it was taking to push back the phantom sensations of the illusory room.
Five levers, and no tricks. She let out a breath. These older locks could have clever traps, especially the hand-made ones, but this one was as simple as they came. She put a little pressure on one of the levers to test how it moved. It was a little stiff, and for a moment she feared that her paperclip would be too flimsy for the job, but it moved.
Her head was starting to ache from the constant mental pressure. Splitting her focus was getting harder, and her will was starting to feel more like a wet noodle than the iron fist that she needed. She was about to let it go and take a break when she heard voices coming from beyond the doorway. Lanie pulled her hands back into the cage, but she kept pushing against the illusion so that she could hear what they were saying.
“Three girls. If you want the Enkidean, he is for sale, but, since he’s a prime specimen and would make quite a gladiator, he’ll bring the price up significantly.” The voice was low and rough, like the croaking of a bullfrog, and yet it still somehow managed the oily inflection of a crooked used-car salesman. The voice was moving closer, so Lanie scrambled backward to lean against the bed. It was hard to keep from watching the real doorway to see who came through, but she had to pretend that the inside of her cozy bedroom was all that she could see.
Another voice answered the first, “Your message said that you had many girls to offer. Three is not ‘many’, Dalgo. My lord will be very disappointed if you have wasted his time. The Enkidean is not of interest to him. Arena fights are not the sort of blood sport he prefers.” This voice sounded clear and cultured. It had an odd quality to it, like the reverberation of a great, deep bell. It wasn’t a physical sensation, but it was there, almost like something more fundamental to reality vibrated as he spoke. It was a subtle thing, and Lanie didn’t think she would have felt it if her sensitivity to magic hadn’t been increased. It made the hair on her neck stand on end and sent a shiver down her spine. She immediately felt more wary of the speaker, whoever he was.
“Three are all I have in at the moment, but I have an arrangement with a human agent to acquire more. I should be able to provide regular shipments in the future.” Two figures entered the room as Dalgo spoke. Lanie could only assume that this was the Zoren Dalgo that Basty had spoken of. He was a short, broad man of indeterminate years. His skin had a slightly greenish tinge that made him look sickly, but his girth spoke of someone who never missed a meal. His mouth was unnaturally wide and frog-like, and his eyes were small and solid black, like beady little doll's eyes. Creepy.
The man with him was his opposite in nearly every way; tall and elegant, with long blond hair that curled just so. His clothing was a mix of red and gold silks and brocades topped by enameled armor pieces on his chest and forearms that looked more ceremonial than functional. He wore a rapier at his belt. His ears were long and pointed, and his large green eyes were slanted in a way that made him look almost feline.
Lanie watched them from the corner of her eye, but the tall, slender man was so striking that she had to struggle with herself not to look directly over at him. She wanted a better look, but it was more than that. There was something about him that demanded she gaze upon him. It was a pull that almost screamed, “I am the center of everything, and your attention should be on me.”
It had to be another glamour, she was sure. The pressure against her mind had increased, and her head felt like it was going to split open, but she didn’t dare drop her defenses and let the illusion come back. She had to hear what Dalgo was going to say. Who was she being held for? How long did she have to get out? Any tidbit of information he let slip could help her chances for survival.
“You gave us the impression you had the girls here and ready for transport. My Lord will not be pleased, but these three would be an appropriate gift to make amends for wasting my Lord’s time.” The elegant man gestured to Lanie’s cage, “And what of this one? All four would be better.”
“G… gift?” The frog-like man seemed to nearly choke on the word. He tried to turn the strangled noise into a cough. “I will, of course, give one of the girls as a gift to his Lordship as a gesture of appreciation for his custom, but I would be a very poor merchant were I to give away all of my wares. As for the fourth girl, I’m afraid not. She is being held on a special commission. One of my mortal partners has an interest in her, specifically. Since his continued goodwill is instrumental in the flow of the very product you are interested in, it would be counterproductive to sell her to you.”
“Oh? Counterproductive in what way?” A perfectly sculpted blond eyebrow lifted with the question, and the tall man’s eyes bored into Dalgo like a hawk eying a mouse.
“My contact with the mortal world is something of a freelancer, a sort of… mmmm, troubleshooter, is, I think, the word they use. Deiter’s an occultist who has contacts in our realm and with the… less savory element of the mortal realm. He has multiple clients, and, should he discover that I had the object of his search in my hands and failed to follow through, it would not hurt him so much to find another broker for these wares. When I got word from him last night that a morsel he sought would be coming my way, and that he would pay dearly for her return, I sent out agents to locate her. To my good fortune, one of them not only found her but was able to steer her my way. She practically fell into my lap.”
“My Lord will pay you better for these than any mortal could.” The taller man’s face pinched inward, and his brows lowered. He made no effort to hide his displeasure at being told no.
The froggy little man shrugged, “And a one-time payment, no matter the premium, wouldn’t make up for a long relationship with many future sales. Your Lord is not the only High Noble with a taste for delicate Human flesh, Orsidan. If he does not buy them, another will. Girls like these are a product with no shortage of demand. Come, you’ve seen them. Now let’s return to my office to discuss the price. I’ve recently acquired an excellent wine that your master might enjoy. We can sample a bottle while we chat.”
Lanie shuddered. She wasn’t sure which would be worse: if the froggy man had meant ‘taste’ literally or figuratively. Both sounded beyond awful. She struggled to hold herself still and to appear disheartened and defeated until the two had left the basement room. That wasn’t too hard. She had plenty of practice at staying small and quiet. Sometimes, going unnoticed was the only defense available. Once they were gone, and she heard their footsteps on the stairs, she let herself relax and let the illusion of the cozy bedroom flood back in.
Basty. The agent who’d found her had to have been Basty. She shouldn’t have let the little creep go. She clenched her jaw against the wave of frustration, anger, and fear that made her want to snarl and rage. Those feelings wouldn’t help; they never did. She pushed them aside.
Her mind felt raw. It pounded like the morning after a bender, and felt as tired and stuffed full as if she’d been cramming for a test all night. Her eyes would barely focus. She closed them, promising herself that she was only going to rest for a few minutes, then she’d go back to picking the lock.
