Mountain, Capital Shire of the Ruling Sphere of Phelia
Present day
Aluminaria had been wrong or so she felt. Tough words for anyone to think, to say even especially in regards to oneself, but tough times do call for tough measures and even tougher ones where ones sanity is involved. The reason she had been abducted and the reason that they had brought her there, the implications, they were all much more worse than she had initially thought. Aluminaria felt like she had just been sentenced to a life in prison, to a living hell with no possible form of escape and she thought, she thought that it would have been better had they just thrown her into a giant cauldron, into a giant steaming pot and made her into a stew or a pie or anything that served their cannibalistic interests, just anything but the cruelty that they were showing her just then.
To be sentenced to a life of servitude, of slavery and of lifelong torture?
Not that it made any sense to anyone, but to her and in a temporary fit of madness she saw what would happen to her. She saw how she would soon lose herself, watch as she became a shadow of her former self, a shell as her will was broken, her spirit crushed and her living soul tortured out of her... The mental pictures were vivid, fading in and out of focus as her panic arose, or diminished with every rise and fall of the old man's voice.
The man, who had earlier on introduced himself as Birit and whose company had just been joined by two others, wearing the same blue and shimmery colour coded cloaks, one with a golden insignia of a pen on a book (an academician? she had no idea) and the other with the golden insignia of a blazing sun, continued to speak, his eyes watching and alert as if he knew that something was amiss.
Lumi's head began to shake and slowly her feet began to follow suite and soon she discovered that she was moving, taking small hesitant steps backwards and towards what she hoped was the entrance slash exit.
There was no way she was going down without a fight, she continued to tell herself even as another part of her argued back, reasoning, that it was probably not wise to go ahead and act upon that line of thought and risk making them angry. However, she reasoned back, these people, these old geezers were already planning to torture her despite having not done anything to offend them, to insult them or to harm them in any way.
'The panel...' her more than wild thoughts continued to tell her. 'You probably ruined it or they got offended when you used their lavatory. Maybe it wasn't a lavatory at all. Maybe it was something important. An artefact... A fountain or a watering hole...'
'Lumi...' Birit's soft drone cut through her reflections and Aluminaria looked up, her fear showing through her eyes and the stance that she had now taken as well and yes, the shaking too as no matter what she did, no matter what she tried, her feet were now like jelly under her weight and her hands were shaking uncontrollably. 'Lumi... We are not going to harm you,' said the emperor of Lilliput to Gulliver, but Lumi was not so gullible as to believe him. She had read the book (or books) and she now knew better and would not allow them to blinden her. 'No!' She thought with a violent jolt of her head.
'Lumi...' Birit spoke out again.
Lumi's back was now flat against a wall. One turn, one swift turn and she knew that she could make it out of the room. They couldn't have taken her far, she continued to reason with herself. It had to be the forest. She had seen the trees and she could still see them,the tree line and the canopy through view the huge ceiling high windows afforded her and that alone confirmed what she had been thinking all along. They had to have taken her somewhere near home and she just had to try, to try and make it out and to hide in the woods. Cover her trail and stay low. Stay out of sight until they gave up looking for her and then, then she could turn and find her way back home.
'Lumi?' Birit called out again.
Making a split second decision, Lumi gathered the skirts of her dress, long as they were and dashed off out of the room, abandoning her bejeweled sandals to pad the white floors of the corridor beneath her, barefooted. It crossed her mind once that she would probably need them, the shoes that is, but she soon threw out the thought as she fully acknowledged that she needed to get as far away from that odd trio as much as she could and that that kind of footwear, as fancy as it was, was weak and would only serve to slow her down.
The corridor seemed endless. Long and winding as it meandering in ways that had her doubting and wondering how big the place was. However, despite meeting a couple of guards in Grey Armour and that same golden and sometimes silver insignia patched to their chests, none of them seemed motivated to stop her. What was even more bizarre was the fact that when she looked over her shoulder, nobody seemed to be pursuing her. However, she soon found out why.
As came around what appeared be the another bend, the corridor suddenly ended and she found herself in a dead end. There were no more corridors, no more hidden doors that she could find behind weirdly glowing insignias and instead, a small rotating cube that resembled a Tetris block was hovering around the furthest corner. The cube was all bronze, a tarnished bronze that glinted in the overheard lighting that illuminated the carvings that had been made out on each side of the cube. Unlike the insignia she had seen before, the letters on this cube was not something that she had seen before despite reminding of something akin hieroglyphics and the more she thought about it, the more she found herself agreeing with that assessment. As she moved closer to corner and to the cube that was levitating, suspended on unseen cords about a metre and a half from the ground, her ears caught a humming pulsating sound that caused the entire cube to vibrate as if powered by some other unseen energy.
'Queer...' she remarked mesmerized by the markings that now glowed a dim blue, getting brighter with every step that she took closer. 'A drone? No that id silly.' she laughed at herself even as she felt her hand raise, drawn in by the same inexplicable energy and the blue light that was threatening to entrance her again.
'No!' Lumi's hand was violently jerked back and her person pulled back, effectively breaking the hold that the little thing had just had on her. 'No!' Birit said before adding albeit a little bit more gently. 'You do not want to do that.'
'Why?' she demanded of him. Lumi was livid, an emotion that must have had something to do with the broken connection to the now glowing cube and the old man must have known it for he was now giving her that knowing look, a knowing but look that Lumi found to be more irritating than anything.
'So you can continue to keep me here as your prisoner?' she taunted.
'I assure you that the Tamakyi will not make a slave out of you.' he replied sounding almost disgusted by the very idea of it but Lumi was not buying it. 'I can vouch for him and I know that because your experience must have been a little traumatic...'
'A little?' she exploded, cutting him off quite unceremoniously, but for the life of him, the man continued to remain calm, the white mane on his head giving him such an aura of wisdom that it was becoming almost impossible for Lumi to ignore.
'I know it is not home, but almost everything else should be largely the same.'
'The same?' Lumi gave him a look, a skeptical expression that should have offended anyone, but the old man just smiled back. The smile strangely comforting her and it unnerved Lumi to learn that that small gesture would have such an effect on her and bring a certain amount calm despite how hard her mind tried to fight it. ' Meanwhile...' having effectively disarmed Lumi the old man continued. 'Why don't we get you a little something to eat...' his gaze fell down to her bare feet, 'and some shoes too, as we continue to arrange for a more suitable accommodation for you?' Like the traitor it was, Aluminaria's stomach growled and she frowned down at it even as the old man proceeded to let out a hearty laugh that reverberated throughout the expanse of the long and winding corridor. 'I think that answers it.' he said much to her consternation and growing embarrassment. 'and for what it' s worth, I think you're going to be the quite welcome addition to the female populace here.' he added with yet another smile that left her insides churning and her emotions more clueless than she had ever felt before and in all that confusion, Lumi could still not help but wonder what exactly it was that these people had in store for her.