Beka runs away from the snake thing this time but has only gotten out the first syllable of Serik's name before it closes in on her anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh good. Then he will snuggle her so much. She is safe in his lap, it is the safest place, so so so safe, anything that tries to harm her in it is getting extremely murdered.
I love you too. She's fine— he sends where he last saw her, being supervised by a very patient Iri. I killed the snake and then figured out how to follow where it sent you. Sorry I didn't get here sooner.
It's been almost a week. Following the snake turned out harder than expected. He has not actually slept since he noticed she was gone.
Snuggle. She is his precious orf and he loves her so much and no one is allowed to hurt her.
Oh—yeah, of course—
He grabs a bit of power and fiddles with it and now her hair is back at a reasonable length. Snuggle snuggle. He was so worried and now he has his orf again and he is not letting go of her anytime soon.