The Fortress Takes Them

Abacus reached the portal room, but it did not arrive as a rescue plan. It arrived as noise, panic, and a deadline.

Maine and Ash understood enough to move. The gazer that had been watching them repeated the word with its strange little echo, and Ash answered by doing the most direct thing available: he hit it with the changed part of himself. The tentacle-arm struck hard enough to kill the creature where it hovered.

The babysitter was dead.

That did not mean they were free.

The portal behind them was a one-way wound. The hall ahead bent into unknown fortress stone. Maine and Ash rushed toward the armory by sound, smoke, and guesswork, trying to find the others before the fight finished without them.

Inside the armory, Fog Cloud turned the room into confusion. Jonah went down. Victor tried to pull Walter out of danger, reaching through the smoke and calling the dragon back before the Githyanki could seize him. Darius stayed on his feet longer than anyone had a right to expect, swinging through pain and psychic force while the captain's guards closed around him.

Outside the portal, Dhaz finally had enough of waiting.

Jeff had come to the farm expecting weapons and a route back to town, not a black hole into the void. When he saw the portal, he understood too late what it meant: this was where the weapons were coming from. He went through. Dhaz followed, less heroic than resigned, and landed in the same purple-lit mess the others had already made.

By then, the rescue had become another capture.

Maine reached the doorway and threw magic into the room, fire striking one Githyanki but not ending him. Ash saw Jonah restrained, Victor unconscious, and Darius still fighting, and tried one last time to ask what the fortress wanted from them.

The answer was simple.

Bend a knee.

Ash answered with a knee of his own, turning surrender into an attack. It was brave. It was very Ash. It was not enough.

One by one, the room emptied of options. Maine dropped. Ash dropped. Victor was already down. Jonah was cuffed unconscious. Darius, bloodied and refusing to stop, killed one of the Githyanki before the red-headbanded warrior cut him down in anger.

Dhaz reached the edge of the fight and saw the bodies, the captain, and Jeff already being held at sword point. He tried the only sensible sentence left: he had just arrived.

The captain did not care.

Dhaz fell too.

The fortress had taken all of them now: My Alchemical Romance, Walter's keeper, and Jeff of the Black Ward. Whatever bargaining power the party thought they had, it had been stripped away with their weapons.

When they woke later, they were locked in a room without their gear, surrounded by more dragon imagery and the cold knowledge that the Githyanki had not killed them.

That was not mercy.

It was containment.