Brynn felt as though she'd drank her weight in vodka and then had thrown herself down a hill as a fun thought experiment. It had not been her most restful awakening. She was sprawled on cold and slightly damp stone, her cheek smeared in something that might have been mold. She shivered and even that small movement caused a groan.
Everything ached, her head felt foggy, and she couldn't quite place how she'd come to be unconscious in a place that was giving off a very creepy dungeon vibe.
Had there been drinking? There had to have been with the horrific thrumming in her skull. She was slowly sliding into the back half of her twenties, and the hangovers seemed to get progressively worse. She no longer considered drinking on a weekday the sort of thing her body could handle, but she was certain it was a Tuesday. Or a Monday. It definitely wasn't the weekend, that much she could remember.
She hoisted herself up from the floor, her head spinning slightly with the sudden change of position. She wiped at her cheek, optimistic that it might be drool instead of green floor sludge when she heard the rattle of chains and realized her wrists were shackled together. She stared dumbly at her hands, somehow more bothered by the fact that the restraints looked like they belonged in a museum than her actual predicament. Beyond that, there was something deeply troubling about her hands. One of them was glowing.
She held it out in front of her face, as though proximity or sheer bewilderment might erase the fact that her hand looked like a bio-luminescent jellyfish. Swords thrust out from the darkness when she moved and she made an undignified yelp, falling backwards and bouncing her skull sharply off the ground.
"What in the shit-?" Getting upright was a bit of a challenge, she started to push herself to her feet, but one of the blades moved immediately to her throat. "Or…I can stay down here…" she said in a tight voice, eying the figures that loomed above her. They were lit by a pair of torches on the wall, three surrounded her, and another two stood further back in what looked like the only exit to the depressing looking cell. The faces of the two at the door were hidden in shadow, but she had the unnerving feeling they were watching her with particular intensity.
"So…Does anyone want to explain what- Christ!" she hissed in a sharp breath as her hand turned into a sparkler, green light flickering off her fingertips and up her forearm. It felt like someone had pressed a red-hot iron into her palm and she reflexively curled herself around it. She let out a slow controlled breath, clenching and unclenching her fist as the pain slowed to a dull throb. That had been… unpleasant.
"Thanks for not stabbing me," she muttered at the figure who'd been thoughtful enough to pull the blade back before skewering her throat.
One of the two at the door spoke, a woman's voice with a rough accent, but not in a language Brynn recognized. She stepped forward, some of the shadows falling away to reveal an angular face decorated with scars and short black hair above narrowed eyes that watched Brynn with disgust.
"Hey, so um. Is all this…" Brynn noted how everyone in the room was wearing full armor, of the 'Medieval Times' variety. The woman with the dark hair wore a breastplate with an enormous flaming eye on it. Brynn could admire the craftsmanship, but even then, it all seemed a little over the top. "Is this necessary? I'm not entirely sure how I stumbled into your… really intense LARP party, but I am sorry…" she shifted again, and her own attire caught her attention. She was likely freezing to death because she had been stuffed into an over-sized tunic that slid halfway down her shoulder and a pair of badly worn trousers that felt as though they'd been knitted from the finest sandpaper.
"The fuck…" Brynn had been keeping relatively calm, all things considered. But the sense of panic she'd been effectively dodging was starting to bubble to the surface. "Where are my clothes?"
The cranky looking woman barked some accusatory statement and waited on some response.
Brynn shook her head, "Right. Naturally. Here's the thing. I don't speak whatever it is you're speaking. So, piss off. Who's in charge here?"
The woman didn't care for her tone and lunged forward, snatching the chains at Brynn's wrist and shaking hard enough that Brynn nearly pitched forward. The woman was shouting, infuriated by something more than Brynn's shitty attitude.
Brynn had been a barista while she'd gone to culinary school, and she knew how to handle this sort of situation. She yelled nonsense to equal the woman's own volume and then bit the woman's hand through her leather glove.
The woman squawked in surprise and released Brynn, dropping her back to her knees. Brynn pushed herself to her feet quickly, while her guards were unsure whether a bitey lunatic was worth stabbing. She took further advantage of their hesitation by stepping as far back as the chains would allow. Though it didn't look like she had any real place to go.
"Look," she held her hands up in a placating gesture, trying to keep both the panic and fury from her voice. Maybe the biting had been a bit too far, but in her defense, she was really starting to freak out. "I don't understand what you're saying, but if someone could take me to a phone maybe?" she made the universal gesture for a phone and searched their faces for understanding. There was none. "Does anyone speak English?"
The woman with the dark hair glowered at her and her hand rested on the pommel of a sword that would have been laughably oversized if Brynn wasn't completely convinced that the woman could cleave her in two with it. The second figure stepped forward and placed a calming hand on the others shoulder, she murmured something low and shifted her focus to Brynn. When she stepped into the light, her face was prime and pale, strands of red hair escaping beneath the purple hood that crowned her head. Her sharp blue eyes watched in a very calculating way and Brynn wondered if she shouldn't have tried to keep communicating with the big angry one.
"Spanish?" Brynn offered again. "I can…I think I can ask about the library? Donde esta la biblioteca?" Neither of the woman struck her as particularly Spanish.
The redhead brought a gloved hand to her chain-mailed chest and said a single word. "Leliana."
Silence followed and Brynn looked between the two women, wondering how else she could communicate that she had no idea what was going on.
"Leliana?" She offered with a shrug, hoping it would at least convince them she wanted to be cooperative.
The redhead gave a short nod and then gestured to the angrier of the two. "Cassandra," she said. Then she pointed to herself again and repeated, "Leliana."
"Oh!" Brynn felt oddly elated that she's solved the puzzle. They were playing the name game in some crusty dungeon straight out of the crusades and Brynn was relieved. Sometimes you had to take the small victories.
"Brynn," she pointed to herself. "I'm Brynn."
Leliana gave a small smile and nodded, "Brynn," she said by way of greeting.
"Yeah, sure, it's great to meet you." The relief was short-lived. She was no closer to knowing how to ask for a fist-sized aspirin or to clarify just what the fuck was happening. "Now can we take these off?" she rattled her wrists together hopefully. "Please?"
Cassandra snorted indignantly, extinguishing what little optimism she'd mustered almost immediately. Unfortunately, establishing names was a far cry from conveying to her captors that she wasn't likely to try and make a run for it in a room full of stab-happy lunatics, chains or otherwise. Though Cassandra didn't strike her as the type who would care either way.
The two women spoke briefly before coming to some sort of agreement and Cassandra finally relinquished the grip on her sword and brought a key to the lock that secured Brynn to the floor. When that was released, she put a firm hand on Brynn's shoulder and began to march her forward.
"Oh, are we going on a field trip?" Brynn said, wincing at how painful Cassandra's iron grip was. "Would it be too much to ask to head toward a police station? Or a phone? Or a single normal person?" the tremor in her voice stemmed from the very real possibility that she was about to play a part in an alarmingly real reenactment of the French revolution.
Cassandra didn't answer, but evidently the tone translated well enough that she gave her shoulder a sharp squeeze. Leliana opened the single door and they marched out into a blinding white light.
Brynn's eyes ached as she blinked in the flood of brightness, holding her hand up to try and shield herself. Cold biting wind sliced through the rags they'd dressed her in, and half melted snow was soaking through her thin shoes before her eyes adjusted. The reason everything was obscenely bright was because everything was covered in snow. The stone building, they had emerged from, the wooden cabins ahead, and the trees that lined the hills. Piles of it.
She couldn't stand the snow, which is why she'd moved to a desert. Which made her present circumstances even more inexplicable. Jagged mountain peaks soared overhead, and she tried to wrap her head around where they could possibly be.
She did take a moment to feel some relief at the fact that there were no guillotines, snow covered or otherwise.
But mountains, actual mountains, not just grandiose foothills, were at least a full day's drive outside of the city. And since it was mid-July, there was no reason there should be any snow cover at all, mountains or not.
And yet somehow that was not the most alarming of the new information she was rapidly absorbing. More pressing was the enormous green cyclone that spun in the sky, directly above the tallest peak. It stained the clouds surrounding it a sickly chartreuse and made her dizzy just looking at it.
Lightning forked out from the twister, striking the clouds above and the green expanded further into the sky. Her hand mirrored the action and she watched in horror as the green light spread up to her wrist followed by the excruciating pain that nearly doubled her over.
"I don't suppose," Brynn said through gritted teeth as Cassandra pushed her to move again. "We're running away from that thing?" Her flimsy shoes sank deep into the sloppy path where boots had churned the snow into mud.
Cassandra shot her a look, one that suggested if she continued to make a nuisance of herself, she was going to make the remainder of her journey in the state of unconsciousness.
"Right," Brynn tucked her arms against her chest, trying to hold what little warmth she had. "This is gonna go great."