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.