A/N: Lo and behold, chappy eight has arrived. That last chapter was kind of weird. I hope I explained what they were saying in Deutsch well enough. Although I guess the vast majority of the people who read this speak Deutsch, to some extent. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well. Anyway. Ideas are appreciated greatly. Thanks. You rock meine Sockenfluffers. Um… yeah. On to chapter eight…

Oh crap! I have to put Elena in! Aw I just remembered! Ok, Elena, sorry… you'll be in soon, I promise… 

We last left our… um… heroes… as they followed an extremely foreign bald guy through a doorway. This doorway was in an exquisitely decorated room made of mud. The room was in a building, also made entirely of dried mud. The building was in a city made entirely of dried mud. The city was in a desert made entirely of… um… sand. The desert was in the middle of God knows where, and we're not going to discuss this any more because it's getting really old. Anyway, our main characters had just followed this man through a doorway. Coming right out of the room decorated with detailed tapestries, rugs, ornate sconces, and even some little sculptures and the like, they weren't really sure what to expect of wherever the doorway led. So when they had all stepped through… well, they were as confused as hell, actually.

The room, hall, well, whatever it was, it was very dark. It took almost a full minute for the students' eyes to adjust to the almost complete lack of light. Once they had regained full eyesight, they were astonished at the room into which they had just come. Actually, it was more of a crude hallway.

Yes, Liz thought, a very crude hallway.

There was almost no light in the hallway. The only source of light was the doorway through which they had just come. The area in which one walked was very narrow, and on the opposite side of the hallway (the side that they were facing when they had first walked through the door) was what appeared to be an unoccupied jail cell.

"Wha— what— we aren't—" Christian began. "There's no way—"

The crude corridor, comprised of grayish, slightly crumbling blocks, seemed to be quite lengthy. The row of tiny cell blocks extended for as far as any of the students could see.

"Er—…" Liz said. "You aren't— um— Sie sind nicht— Wir sind nicht im dieser gehen!"

"Yeah! She's right! We're not going!" Mary said defiantly, only to remember a few moments later that this guy didn't speak English. "I mean… um… stimmt!" she tried. "Sie ist stimmt! Wir nicht geh—"

The bald man got a huge, evil, absolutely malicious smile on his face.

"Think he's related to Malfoy?" Allison whispered to Christian. Christian sniggered.

The man heard Christian, and whipped his head around to face her. "Du werde nicht bald froh bist," he said. "Ja," he continued, sneering happily. "Ihr geht in dieser. Ja, ihr werde gehen. Heh heh." And he started doing that annoying little evil-laugh thing.

Sirius slid over to the nearest German-speaker (who happened to be Allison) and said very very quietly, "What did the big git say?"

Allison replied even more quietly, 'You won't be happy for long. You are going in there. Yeah, you'll go in there."

"Nein! Wir nicht gehen! Wir sind verlassen! Nein!" Liz screamed, almost hysterical now. ("No! We aren't going! We're leaving! No!")

The guy rolled his eyes. "Hut dein Mou," he said, which basically means "Shut up." He began advancing on the students, causing them to back up. Unfortunately, this was exactly what he had wanted and expected them to do. The students had absolutely nowhere to go. The corridor was so narrow that their bald captor's bulk filled up the entire space. They didn't want to continue going backwards, but unfortunately, the bald guy had just pulled a large and lethal-looking… well, some kind of killing thingy out of his apparently rather large pocket.

"Ob geht ihr nicht, denn sterbt ihr," he said. Horribly, he was grinning broadly, which generally isn't normal for a person that's just said, "If you don't go, then you're gonna die," and is probably going to have to carry out that not-so-thinly-veiled death threat. His expansive smile revealed his canine teeth, which wasn't so weird, except that his canine teeth were a horribly exaggerated, pointy, and yes, lethal-looking rendition of the students' own.

"Jetzt GEH!" he shouted. ("Now GO!") The little party was almost at the end of the corridor now, the place with the least amount of light and worst smell. The smell, which had been steadily increasing as they receded farther and farther into the darkness, was that of mold, dust, decaying flesh, and probably some rodent crap was mixed in there as well.

"Ihr," he said, grabbing Liz and coincidentally, Aidan, "geht im hier." (You two go in here.") He threw them into a tiny cell, slammed the door shut, and started tying a heavy, thick-looking piece of twine or something around the bars of the cell, which appeared to be bamboo-like.

Sirius, appalled by this display of brutality, blurted out, "Bloody hell! You can't just— just— manhandle them like that!"

The man simply laughed, grabbed Sirius and Mary, and said, "Dann ihr kannt im hier gehen." ("Then you two can go in here.") He tossed them effortlessly into a tiny cell, right next to Liz and Aidan, who were trying to get up off the disgusting floor of the cell.

Remus, Peter, Christian and Allison were the only four left. After quickly tying the same thick, shiny twine around Sirius and Mary's cell bars, the bald man advanced on the four, who were slowly backing away, even though they knew that there was nowhere to run. The man grabbed Christian and Peter, flung them into the cell next to Mary and Sirius, tied their cell door, and them quickly did the same to Remus and Allison.

Their captor surveyed them with satisfaction. "Jezt, verlassen nicht," he smiled, laughing evilly. He smiled once more and then retreated down the long hall. The students could just barely see the door into which he disappeared.

"What did he say?" Sirius asked, still lying on the floor after being thrown into the cell.

"He said—…" Mary began, her breath catching on a slight cough. "He said, 'Now, don't you leave." She scowled, then shouted down the hall, "WE WON'T! GIT!"

"Mary! Are you stupid?" Christian asked, meaning that it was stupid to scream insults at the very people who held their lives in their hands.

"Oh, you're right," Mary said. "They don't speak English." She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "WIR WERDE NICHT! BLÖDASCH!"

Christian gaped. "Idiot! Way to call the guy a dumbass!"

Meanwhile, Liz and Aidan had successfully disentangled themselves, but were sitting on the floor. Sirius and Mary were still just lying there, not bothering to get up. The same went for Remus and Allison, but Christian was seething, yet again. But before she could start yelling…

"Is everyone okay?" Liz asked, concerned. She was rubbing her arm. "I think my arm's hurt."

"I think my leg is hurt, too," said Mary. She poked a spot on her calf and winced in pain. "Yes, it hurts when I do this." She poked it again to show Liz. "Ow." A pause. Poke. "Ow." Another pause. "Yep, that definitely hurts," she concluded.

"Badly?" Liz asked.

"Nah." Poke. "Ow."

Nobody else was hurt, although every one of the students had a splitting headache and an overwhelming desire to sleep. They remained fairly quiet, speaking only in low voices and not really talking about anything important. Even Christian had decided that yelling at Peter was a waste of energy, so she satisfied herself by giving him a detailed play-by-play of what his death would be if he came within a foot and a half of her. First, she explained, she would give him a long, slow, and painful death by letting him bleed to death. She said that she might even go the way of Wesley's threat in The Princess Bride: she would cut off his nose, hands, gouge out his eyes, etc. etc. Then, when he was close to death, she would chop his body into about fourteen million little pieces and feed the pieces to the rat-like creatures that lurked around the cells. The students had noticed these animals: larger than normal rats, some about the size of a house cat, they prowled the corridors when none of the bald people were around. No rat had really been brave enough to try and confront any of the prisoners yet, but oftentimes one of the students would find themselves staring into a seemingly disembodied pair of gleaming black eyes. For Mary, more than half of the time it was just Sirius being a git, but for the others, it was truly frightening.

The only thing that really happened for a while was that they were brought some food by a different unfamiliar man, small, beady-eyed, skittish. Heck, he practically could've been Peter's father. He brought some coarse bread and the same silvery liquid that the students had encountered and shied away from in the desert. The man hurriedly slid one small woven tray in each cell, then hurried away without a word.

No one moved for a moment. There was a heavy feeling of lethargy about the group, probably brought about by despair.

"Well," Remus said after a minute. "D'you reckon we should try it?"

"'We're all going to die anyway, so why not?'" Allison quoted, shaking the hair out of her eyes. "Weren't you the one that said that, Remus?"

He sighed, a blatant sign of his exhaustion. "Yeah."

Allison cautiously reached over to the bowl that contained the liquid. She hesitated for a second, but then seemed to make up her mind to drink it. She took a sip.

Everyone waited silently and tensely, including Allison. After a few minutes of suspense, Sirius asked, "Are you laive?"

She straightened up a bit and said sarcastically, "No."

At her words, there was something of a mad rush for the bowls: well, as much of a mad rush could be exerted from eight tired, smelly, dirty, smelly, hungry, miserable, smelly, lethargic and WHEW did I mention smelly prisoners entombed in four tiny, dirty, dank, and almost completely dark cells. And they were smelly. So it wasn't really a mad rush, it was more of a "You're closest to the bowl. Hand it to me, will you?" type thing.

After everyone had drunk from the bowl placed in their cell and eaten a little bit of the coarse bread stuff that had been brought to them, they were feeling considerably better, if not actually good. Seeing as how they had had nothing to eat or drink for— how long had it been? —two days, a week, eighteen million years, however long it had been— they had all been feeling a sense of slowly wasting away. The food refreshed them a little bit. There was also the matter of the silvery liquid they had finally been brave enough to drink. Far from what their expectations had been, it was cool, refreshing. A little bit thicker than water, but not too bad. It was also a little bit sweeter than water, but that was mainly the aftertaste. However, new problems arose after about 20 minutes.

"I have to go to the bathroom!" Sirius moaned piteously.

"Well, you'll just have to bloody hold it, then!" Mary said crossly. Since she was the one actually in the cell with Sirius, she was determined that Sirius should contain himself until she was far, far away.

"But I have to go bloody bad!" Sirius went on.

Liz spoke up. "Um… guys, I think there's a kind of… um... chamber-hole thing… in the back of the cell…" she pointed to a dark hole near the back wall of the cell that no one could see the contents of. She looked thoroughly disgusted, as did everyone else upon hearing about this new 'accommodation.'

"Ah! Thank Merlin!" Sirius said. "Um, Mary, please turn around for a second…"

She rolled her eyes as she turned around. "You're disgusting."

Meanwhile, Liz and Aidan had been kind of avoiding each other, at least as much is as possible when you are confined to a five by five-foot area. Oh, sure, there had been the occasional, "Please hand me that bowl, Elizabeth," or, "Um, Aidan, you're kind of crushing my foot, and I wasn't gonna tell you, but there's no circulation. In my foot. That you're… um… sitting on."

He had shifted serenely, looking at her the whole time. "Oh. I'm sorry."

Nothing more extreme than that.

However, Liz had caught Aidan looking at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention. She was glad it was almost pitch-black in the cell, because if it had been any lighter, Aidan surely would have seen her great number of blushes.

"Elizabeth… Elizabeth…" Liz was startled out of her thoughts by Aidan's voice and his hand waving around in her face. When he realized that he had her attention, he opened his mouth as if to say something, but was interrupted by shouts coming from down the hall.

"Warum erzahle du mich nicht?" a voice roared from a short distance away. "WO SIND SIE, DU IDIOT!" ("Why didn't you tell me? Where are they, you idiot?")

"Wart― Hier― Sie sind hier―" came the nervous reply. ("Waitherethey are here") Heavy footsteps, more than two pairs, came thudding in the direction of their cells. As the figures drew nearer, the students were able to see them more clearly, and what they saw didn't really make them feel very optimistic.