Author's Note: Well I'm glad you liked it, I wasn't sure if anyone would. So here's the next bit.
Chapter Two – The System Won
Kel pulled her bruised body into a ball, her back to the door. She didn't even have the energy to cry. She was tired and hungry and thirsty. Their horrible voices rang through her mind over and over again. Kel couldn't wipe the memory from her mind, it just kept playing over and over again in her mind like the terrible nightmare that it was.
The mad cackling drove her insane; she didn't want to live anymore. The system had finally beaten her, and there was nothing she could about it. Kel didn't know how long she'd been kept captive, if it had been hours, days or weeks, she did not know.
"I want her found, and I want her found NOW!" Raoul roared at First and Third Company.
The men were quaking in their boots. No one had ever seen Raoul this angry, not when the men of the Own pulled pranks on him, not when the Queen had ordered him to his room that summer past. Raoul dismissed them and they all hurried not wanting to be the last one in his sight.
"Kel, where are you?" Raoul whispered quietly, trying not to cry.
Kel was like a daughter to him. He knew her almost as well as Wyldon and Neal; he knew that she wouldn't run off.
"Don't worry Raoul, we'll find her," Dom said as he rode up on his black mare.
"You better," Raoul growled.
Dom nodded and kneed his horse into a canter out the city gates. A light sprinkle of snow beginning to fall from the sky, all was eerily quiet on the palace grounds.
No house was left untouched, no bench left unturned. Every person was looking for Kel. Rumors started to spread that she had given up on her shield and ran away. Others said that she had been taken by Scanrans. The men of Third Company gave anyone who said but one thing about her that was veered from the truth a nice smack in the head.
Finally, a tid bit of news came through Daine from her animal friends. They'd seen a tall woman that fit the description of Kel wandering down the street the night of her disappearance. Her glove had been blown to the opening of an alley where two men had attacked her.
Daine led the entire force of Third Company and a few very anxious knights to an alley not even but a block from the inn they'd been drinking in. A mangy looking cat led Daine to a shed behind the very inn. Neal and Seaver broke down the door, not even bothering to check if it were locked or not. They found nothing but an empty storage room. All that filled the room was a bench.
"Well that was absolutely pointless," Neal muttered as he glared at the cat.
The cat replied by in her own way snorting, she walked underneath the bench and started to scratch the wall.
"She says there's something on the other side of the wall." Daine murmured, getting onto her knees and pushing on said wall, "It's stuck."
"Her let me try," Dom told her.
Dom moved the bench out of the way and began to kick the wall.
Kel heard pounding from above. Fear rose through her, tears began to well up in her eyes. She knew that Joren and Vinson must be coming back. The pounding of many feet on stairs was heard above her. Someone was pounding on the other side of the door. Kel thought that they must be trying to wake her up before they tortured her again.
"Not a chance," Kel croaked, forcing herself to fall into an unconscious stupor. After years of forcing her body to bend to her will it wasn't that difficult.
"KEL! Kel are you in there?!" Neal yelled at the iron door.
"Neal stop shouting in my ear! It's obvious that she's either not in there or she can't hear you!" Wolset yelled at the man.
The men all tried rushing the door, but just succeeded in bruising themselves.
"Someone go find Alanna!" Neal yelled at the people that were still standing on the stairs. Four people heeded his directions and took off back up the stairs.
Alanna woke up from her troubled sleep to pounding on the door. She glared at Raoul who was tossing and turning in his own bed, he'd so generously given her the armchair in his study. She trotted to the door yanking it open.
"Lord Raoul…oh, Lady Alanna, they've found Kel but they can't get the door open and need your help," rushed a young man in the colours of the King's Own.
"Raoul!" Alanna yelled as she grabbed a basin of water off of the table and threw it on him, "They've found her!"
Without waiting for her friend Alanna followed the soldier to where ever Kel had been taken to.
Alanna shoved her magic into the lock, hearing the click. It was a piece of cake, almost too easy. The door creaked open and a mass of flesh was seen curled up opposite the door. Everyone stood frozen and looked at the mass of pink flesh with purple, blue, yellow and green splotches all over.
Dom was the first to approach. The girl that he had thought could overcome anything lay there broken.
"Kel," he whispered, cautiously touching her back.
The form flinched when the hand made contact. Alanna immediately unfroze and began yelling orders. She sent someone to go find Duke Baird, another to bring her blankets and other such things. Alanna kicked the men out of the room.
Kel woke up, except this time she wasn't freezing nor was she on a hard dirt floor. She was tucked into a comfortable bed, which happened to be in her room. Her body felt like one massive bruise. She sat up and looked around. People littered her room. Raoul was in one of her armchairs, Alanna was in another one opposite him. Neal had dragged in a few chairs from Raoul's study and was stretched across them, his feet hanging off of the end.
"I must be dreaming," Kel murmured.
She swung her legs over the bed and went to stand up. Her feet made contact with something soft and warm. She heard a yelp as she put pressure on her feet. Something dumped her back onto her bed. Kel looked down and saw Dom rubbing his chest where she'd stood on him.
"Kel?" Dom stood up and moved to hug Kel.
Kel wasn't sure what set it off, but the dark form coming towards her brought fear into her. She let a blood-curdling scream rip from her lungs. Every person in the room was brought to consciousness, all looking for the source of the scream.
"Kel, calm down," Dom tried to get Kel to breathe normally but she scrambled away from him.
When Raoul and Neal began to approach Kel, she struggled to find a way to get away from them. She found herself boxed into a corner. Tears flooded from her eyes as she prepared herself from the hard blow she knew was coming, except it never did. Kel looked up through her hands and saw that only one person stood in the room.
Dom, Raoul and Neal stood in Raoul's study. They had no idea what had happened to Kel. She was completely different.
"Dom what on earth did you do to her!" Neal hissed.
"I didn't do anything Meathead, she must have woken up and stepped on me and then I went to give her a hug and she just started screaming."
"Enough," Raoul said before the cousins could argue any further, "Whoever kidnapped gave her a pretty good scare if she won't let her friends hug her."
Author's Note: And I think I'm going to leave it there, because I want to go have something to eat. Don't forget to review or you won't get to find out what happens to Joren and Vinson, or who Kel turns to for comfort after her scare.