AN-Thanks for the reviews. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. This is my first fic. Nice to get some kudos.

DTS-I agree that time jumps can be disorienting, and they will become less common and eventually disappear in this story. I hope the longer the wait for our girls, the sweeter the reunion!

Chapter Five-Welcome to Khul

2002

I gained no strength when the portal closed behind me and I found myself flat on my back looking up at a dark sky. I could hear Rack nearby, moaning. I couldn't move. Never had I known such exhaustion from magick. Every muscle and bone in my body ached from the inside. From the sounds he was making, Rack was in no better condition.

Sometime later, I heard a siren wailing loudly and getting closer. I was too weak to even raise my hands to cover my ears. I saw the shadows of people running toward me carrying bright lights and I realized they were uniformed, booted and armed. They circled me with weapons pointed and I waited for the end to come. I wondered if that might be a kindness.

Instead, a man clearly in charge stepped over my supine form and spoke menacingly to me in a language I had never heard and didn't understand. When I failed to respond or move, he spoke to two of the soldiers who hauled me to my feet and thrust me roughly into the back of a military vehicle. A short ride later I found myself led inside a large military complex and to a cell, where I promptly passed out.

When I woke up I took the opportunity to lift my head enough to look at my surroundings. A double row of cells, not all occupied, filled my vision. To one side of me I could see no one. The cell on the other side contained a single occupant, a man in uniform, but different from the soldiers I had seen.

With the knowledge I had acquired from Rack, I knew Khul had been a world of magick. Millennia of magick with some of the most accomplished practitioners in any dimension. Then the wars came, Light versus Dark, both sides exacting terrible tolls. Both convinced of the righteousness of their cause.

The Dark seemed stronger, but they had trouble working together. Leaders would appear and initially conquer, but then would succumb to the call of the darkness. Time and again they would turn on their brethren, convinced by the lure of their dark source that they and they alone should rule, both Dark and Light as a master or king. Following fall of the last Dark leader, those who remained of the Dark retreated, regrouped and turned to more traditional methods of waging war. They forbid the use of all magick, viewing it as inherently evil. They became technologically advanced and created weapons that were stronger and more adaptable, capable of again battling the Light.

The two sides had ultimately fought to a stalemate, which led to an uneasy truce. Land was divided based on the ancient allegiance. The orbit of the planet left one side in constant twilight and the other in pre-dawn gloom. The Light inhabited the twilight leaving the others in, well, the Dark. After hundreds of years, the division remained, but frequent skirmishes cropped up at the borders, with the death and capture of occasional warriors.

I shuffled to the front of the cell and looked down the row. Four cells up and across from mine I see Rack. He is slumped against the bars. "Happy now Strawberry?" he asks me.

I think his question rhetorical as he knows I have his memories of this place, his home. Growing up strong in magick but weak in character. Finding himself an outcast to both the Light Magick community and their enemies, the Dark anti-magick military. Discovering a way to travel to another dimension. Waiting for years to gather the strength and knowledge to perform the spell. Stealing, hurting, and murdering to achieve his freedom from this world. Learning to sustain himself on the magick of others, addicting them to the temporary high he could provide. Living an extended existence; even his native people from this dimension ultimately faced mortality.

He discovered that with magick he could transfer his essence into a new vessel when necessary. He had done so many times, but the magicks became weaker in the world of humans and true witches became fewer, and he found he needed a new vessel more frequently.

Vessel. It sounded so clinical. But what that meant was a female human. What he needed was Tara. Forcing upon her his dark essence to be renewed into the birth of a new male child. A child that would develop with unnaturally accelerated growth and aging to adulthood, taking the strength and draining the magick of his pure witch mother.

That is what I tried to prevent with my last actions in Sunnydale, worth any cost. If only I knew that I had succeeded. Now, I was here, imprisoned, with no way to know if Tara was safe, if Rack had been stopped in time, and with no way to get home.

I examine Rack and he looks weak, diminished. His long hair hanging unkempt in his face over sunken eyes and sallow cheeks. But I am sure I am not looking my best either. "What will they do with us?" I inquire, not sure if I will believe any answer he gives.

He looks at me for the first time and I am surprised when I see the truth in his eyes. "If we are lucky, they will just kill us," he replies.

Rack and I remained in our cells for several days with provisions of water and what was supposed to be food. I had been too busy suffering full out dark magick withdrawals in the corner of my cell to really pay much attention. Sweats, violent shaking and puking occupied my time. The only joy I found was listening to Rack suffering to an even greater extent.

The lack of sunrise or sunset had confused my ability to differentiate day and night, but I believe it was on the fifth day that the cells were filled with soldiers, many injured. They put three women soldiers in the cell next to mine. It was obvious one was gravely injured and the other two were attempting to save her, with little success. I was shocked to realize they were trying to heal her using magick.

I approached the bars between our cells and watched as they tried to staunch the bleeding from some kind of a wound on her abdomen. I had never seen anything like it. The wound looked like a gunshot, but the skin around it appeared to be burned. I tried to reach out with my magick to see if I could help, but my system was completely drained and all I could sense was that the wound was too serious for my limited healing skills even on my best day, which was a day far across the calendar from this one.

One of the women must have sensed my undertaking however, as her head shot up at my use of magick. She wore a dark brown uniform, torn and filthy. Her arms were toned with lean muscular development. But the hard, military appearance was softened by short loose wavy brown hair and deep thoughtful feminine brown eyes. After I gave up my pitiful attempt at magick she returned to tending to and comforting her friend for another few minutes, until she died.

Several hours later, all the cell doors opened and we were herded back into a central courtyard. The soldiers were lined up in ranks and Rack and I were taken to the side. The front gate opened and what appeared to be a delegation strode in and started conversing with the officer in charge of the prison. After a few minutes, a member of the delegation approached the soldiers and indicated they should head for the gate.

The female soldier I had seen in the cell suddenly pointed at me and spoke to the delegate. He shook his head and scowled at her and she gestured at me again. The delegate called over the officer in charge and began a heated conversation pointing at me and then at Rack.

Both men approached us and the officer in charge started speaking. Rack listened for a minute then turned to me and laughed. The officer in charge knocked him to his knees with a blow to the side of his head, but he continued to look at me with mirth in his eyes.

"Goodbye Strawberry," he said almost gleefully. "I'll be an ordinary slave to the Dark. But you, oh you are being traded to the Light. You think you have caused me pain? You think you have experienced pain? They will pull you apart from the inside just to see what you are. They will dissect your soul Dark Witch." He was practically yelling now, as I was led away by the delegate through the front gate. "I will think of your suffering each day and rejoice!" he exclaimed, and it was the last I heard from Rack.

As soon as we left the prison, we approached a convoy and temporary compound on the side of a road. The female soldier who had apparently had me brought out of the Dark prison with the Light delegation came over to where I stood next to the delegate. They spoke to each other for several minutes, the soldier becoming progressively more agitated. Finally, the delegate pointed towards the soldier's encampment and spoke with finality. Looking as if she wanted to continue the argument, but could not, the soldier looked at me sadly, then spun on her heels and strode away.

The delegate spoke to another nearby soldier who retrieved what looked like a large pair of handcuffs from a nearby tent. The handcuffs looked like they would engulf all of my forearms. They placed me in the back of a locked vehicle and the delegate took the handcuffs securing one at a time. When the lock clicked into place I think I screamed. I'm not sure if the sound actually left my lips, the pain was so white hot and blinding. Magick, was my last thought as I passed out.