I was thrown to the ground, somewhere in a field. The Behemoth was back to a normal human size, which is to say he was still enormous but within the upper bounds for a human being. I could see someone else was a little ways off but they were mostly blocked by one of those mounts they'd been riding. The Behemoth leaned over me and tore my bandolier of knives off, tossing them aside. then he roughly pulled at my jacket as well. I suddenly had a horrible thought - they were extremely likely to see the Dumine on my chest, but if he was pulling all my gear off he was going to see the one on the bottom of my foot, too.

There was only one solution, which was to make sure I pulled my own boots off. I wanted to laugh, the whole thing seemed so absurd - who would have thought that having my shoes taken off could be some sort of dire situation? With both legs in so much pain I knew I had to just do it as quickly as possible, so as the jacket pulled free I quickly leaned forward and hooked my thumb under what passed for a sock around these parts - elastic was something I had been missing since I arrived. The good news is that I'd been wearing my stupid hover shoes, which were basically wooden clogs and would come off pretty easily - the bad news is that would still wrench my mangled leg around.

I did it quickly and managed to pull the leg back towards me as I did it, covering the awkward movement with my extremely real screams. The Dumine was hidden for the moment, at least. The Behemoth laughed, of course, but then pulled the other shoe off me and unceremoniously wrenched my shirt - but not the bra-like thing I was wearing underneath thankfully - up over my head. He grunted and threw it back in my face, similarly pulled off my pants in a way that hurt more than anything else so far and almost flashed my foot Dumine at him, and then threw those at me too.

Finally he ripped the gold nose ring out and gave me a once-over for anything he'd missed before gathering up my belongings. I noticed for the first time why I hadn't gotten a signal from Mister Creepy, and remembered how tightly the Behemoth had crushed me in his gigantic hand - he peeled the flattened spider bits off of the device but didn't seem to care what it was. If I could somehow get it back I could just attach the spider-end to a new animal, but I still was sad that my stupid lobotomized arachnid got crushed.

The Behemoth returned a moment later as I was struggling back into the shirt, lifted it back up, and slapped something on my chest - it felt like ice water was flowing through me for a split second and then the sensation passed. Glancing down, I could see the same kind of odd blue-gray device Katrin had stuck to her Dumine in the jail after being caught by those bounty hunters. I got the shirt on, stared at the pants but couldn't imagine getting them on with my legs in their current condition, and resigned myself to being in my stupid ugly fantasy underpants for a while. They were revealing in the least sexy way possible, like a tiny loincloth with the flaps buttoned together underneath you. Seriously, I needed to get my hands on some elastic.

My captors seemed content to leave me alone for the moment, so I tried to escape the pain by ducking into my memory palace and felt instead like I was struggling through tar. I could meditate, and I could even feel that there was something just out of reach, but whereas normally it felt like something snapping into place this time the parts didn't fit - I was having to force it with all my mental strength. And then, click. I was in.

"What the fuck was that?" I muttered, but of course I knew. It had to be that device. I'd forgotten to talk to Katrin about it, but the use was clear - you don't want prisoners blowing shit up with magic. The cold feeling had been similar to when I overspent on mana but not quite the same, and it had faded too fast - in fact I was sure I still had some mana, so it was clearly different.

I concentrated and tried to picture my Dumines and after a moment I could sense two of the three, with the last one being a vague blur. Did I have enough points to get the mental security I'd been wanting and putting off? It wasn't expensive but I hadn't been training properly for the past week. It was on one of the Dumines that hadn't been clamped - the one on my foot, specifically - so I was able to concentrate and get a feel for it. I had enough, barely, and breathed a big sigh of relief once it was finally unlocked - I'd waited way too long, and that had almost been a disaster. Of course they were still going to kill me, but whatever.

With as much care as I was able, I stuffed both legs into one side of my pants and used the rest of the fabric to kind of tie the legs together. This meant they weren't flopping around anymore, and it kept my Dumine hidden since my feet didn't stick out the bottom. But the little bit of effort required to turn me into the world's saddest mermaid left me completely exhausted, and so I couldn't even spit in the Behemoth's face when he came to haul me back to my ride. He shoved a sack over my head, but otherwise treated me with total disregard rather than actual malice; I'd been braced for him to deliberately knock my legs around so that was nice.

We stopped again at one point and someone shoved something roughly into my mouth - I tried not to swallow it but they were persistent, and in any case it turned out to be something that made my legs go numb. If they'd just said that I would have eaten the damn thing willingly, and I wasn't sure why they hadn't given it to me sooner. Meanwhile I kept trying to use magic - I was sure the fate lines thing worked, but I couldn't actually see them since there was a bag over my head. That struck me as unfair, since the lines weren't actual physical objects anyway. I could sense mana, and enchantments, but I couldn't say how much time was passing or detect probability manipulation. Probably it was blocking my ability to activate runes as well, since that was on the same Dumine.

Even the abilities I could use felt difficult, though only to get them started - they didn't actually work worse, or use more mana than normal. I spent the next few hours activating and de-activating them like a bored kid flipping a light switch on and off. I began to feel something, in almost the same way I could feel my Dumines when I concentrated on them. In the same way that I could sort of sense them and visualize them in order to unlock abilities, I very slowly became aware of where and how I was reaching through to activate something. It was strange, and not immediately useful, but I was fascinated.

I was also keeping an eye on my mana, since I wanted to do something useful eventually. I wasn't sure what - the only person I could contact remotely was the wild mage, and she would probably be thrilled to hear I was captured and beat to shit. Likewise, I could do some divination on my surroundings but it seemed unlikely it would mean anything to me - we were traveling overland through the wilderness. Done. It's not like I needed to know the direction we were in, since I could just zero in on Katrin and Errod with the fate lines if I had the opportunity to escape.

The only thing I really wanted to do at the moment was to use divination on my memory from right after my legs got wrecked - that would let me see what had happened to Hugh, who I was not even sure was alive and didn't have a fate line for. But I was terrified of trying too early only to run out of mana like some sort of cliffhanger. Better to know nothing until I could for sure see the whole thing. So instead I popped in and out of the memory palace, and tried to detect enchantments around me, and otherwise just dicked around without using up any significant amounts of mana while I waited for my battery to fill up.

Eventually the numbness wore off and my legs began to hurt more and more. I missed cars that had nice rubber wheels to drive on proper roads. The boar-wolf things were jostling me all over, to the point that I had to retreat to the memory palace just to tune it out. I was a little worried, because when I had first started meditating even a little pain would kick me out of it and now I was forcing myself to stay in to avoid pain - what if that meant that I would sit there unaware while someone was stabbing me to death? But I did my best to set that fear aside for the moment, and got some reading done.

My heart wasn't in it, of course. It's hard to read when you know your battered body is being hauled off to its doom. But I flipped through The Paradox of Fate, and then through Jake Ross and the Shattered Crown. I lost track of time and finally even fell asleep, although that mainly just meant the scenery outside the window changed from featureless mist to erratically shifting landscapes. I checked my mana again, judging, trying to guess how long it had been from what I'd gained. When I finally woke up I decided I couldn't wait any longer.

First things first, I checked on the real world - I was laying on wood and there was no wind, so probably indoors - the quality of the sound felt like the inside of a building too. A quick mental inventory told me I was just as hurt as before but probably not any worse, and the wrap on my legs was still in place. Good. Next was to go back into my memory palace to mute the pain, and retroactively check on Hugh. It only completely drained my reserves to look at things that had happened on Earth, so I felt certain that a quick peek to however long ago the fight happened wouldn't be a big deal.

The Behemoth darted forward and Hugh stumbled, tripping on something - I slowed everything down which apparently I was able to do, and there was nothing he could have possibly tripped on. Had someone used magic, or... oh. I smiled, and let the scene advance again. Hugh stumbled, not quite falling down, and right as the Behemoth swung at him he dropped the ruse and stepped to the side, punching the Behemoth's wrist so hard shock waves rippled through the thing's colossal body. Then he followed it with an uppercut that actually lifted the Behemoth a little off the ground before darting away - none too soon, as the Behemoth swung right at where Hugh had been standing.

The blinded one was squinting, trying to follow the fight, but from the looks of it he couldn't see much at all. He certainly didn't see Hugh coming. There was a terrible crunch, and he slammed down into the ground in a very final way. The Behemoth was a little caught off-guard, clearly assuming this was going to be a one on one fight, but he recovered quickly and just barely stopped Hugh from finishing off the unconscious one. Hugh retreated, but when he tried to dart back in the Behemoth threw one of the wagon wheels with so much force that it exploded when it hit the ground, thankfully missing Hugh but peppering him with shrapnel.

The guy with the spiked ball grabbed the unconscious one and they both flew into the air out of the fight. Hugh charged in and slid at the last second, kicking the Behemoth's knee so hard it bent back the wrong way - but I noticed the arm that had been so badly hit already looked normal again, so it wasn't clear if the knee would matter. The Behemoth grabbed Hugh, Hugh smashed his fist, he grabbed with the other hand but Hugh rolled out of the way. Every hit on Hugh was minor, a scrape or a glancing blow, but every hit on the Behemoth was instantly healed.

Finally it happened - Hugh took a solid hit, thankfully a punch rather than being grabbed and crushed. It flung him more than ten feet, and he barely stumbled to his feet afterwards - a far cry from the spry movements I'd seen from him up to that point. He looked at the Behemoth, then up at the two hanging from the spiked ball fifty feet in the air, then towards Sentortzi where I could now see a dust cloud rising - probably city guards rushing out towards the battle. Hugh ran. There was a twinge of something, some tiny sense of betrayal, but it was more out of habit than anything else. I didn't actually think he was abandoning me, it was clearly the right move under the circumstances. But it still hurt a little bit - old trauma dies slow, I guess.

Finally, I popped out of the memory into the present moment to survey my surroundings. I was in a basement, and while they had been nice enough to bring my belongings down there was no chance of me reaching any of it - everything was up on a table on the other side of the room and the formerly unconscious guy was keeping an eye on me. I climbed the stairs, and found the Behemoth gnawing on a bit of jerky - I didn't want to watch him eat anything now that I knew what he had done - and outside there was some fairly nondescript woods. It didn't look like the area right by Sentortzi, which made me worry I'd somehow been out for way longer than I thought.

That was about all I had the mana for - I hadn't completely used up what I had regained, but I was reaching the point of diminishing returns for divination. Best to save the rest for later if all I was going to see with the rest of my juice was these fuckers sitting around picking their noses. So it was back to the memory palace, and back to pretending to read and practicing turning my sensory abilities on and off again. I was tempted to scry on myself while I turned on the fate threads to see if I could bypass the sack on my head, but it didn't seem like I would learn anything anyway.

I dozed off again, at least once, and once more lost any sense of time. It could have been three hours or half a week for all I knew - I was hungry, thirsty, and had pissed myself at some point probably back when my legs were all numb. But none of that really told me how long it had been. It had been cloudy, so I wasn't sure about the exact position of the sun either during the fight or now. I was pretty sure it was the next day that the visitor arrived, but not certain.

He was nervous. I watched him through divination as he spoke to the Behemoth, and the wiry little guy looked like he was pretty sure he wasn't going to get out of this building alive.

"She's... unwilling?" he asked, looked disturbed at the question.

"If she knows what's good for her she'll let you do your thing. I need you to just... get in there, tell me what she knows. Verify her story."

"Ah. Well, I can view memories if you can give me enough information to locate them, and I can ensure she speaks nothing but the truth." There was an implied 'but please don't kill me if that's not enough' tacked on the end.

I popped back to my body and started to think as I heard them tromping down the stairs. What I couldn't do was let them ask me a bunch of yes or no questions. I wasn't sure if this guy was going to know when I was lying or if he was going to force me to say only true things, but either way them controlling the conversation would be bad news. The bag was ripped off my head and I did my best to look surprised.

"Okay," the Behemoth said to the newcomer, " do your thing."

The new guy gave me an apologetic look, but he crouched down behind me to place his hands on my head and I felt the attack begin.

The mental defenses I'd just unlocked were to keep people out of my mind, but they were the bargain basement version of that ability. It's not that it wasn't working, it was that the ways in which it protected me were limited. Something settled down over my thoughts like a weighted blanket, and I was powerless to throw it off.

"Okay," the man said, "she has to tell the truth now."

Showtime. Before the Behemoth could ask me anything, I began speaking.

"First of all, I'm not Calliope Smith. I've talked to her a few times, but I don't really know her. The other woman that looked exactly like me, the one that stabbed Telen during the attack in Theramas and later killed him? That also wasn't Calliope Smith. Our faces, our bodies, were magically changed to look like Calliope Smith - you might remember that your soul trackers said there was more than one person somehow. While you were chasing the two of us around the actual Calliope Smith was playing her own game."

So far, so good. All technically true, and I hadn't had any trouble saying it. Clearly the magic didn't care too much about being deceptive, just actual lying. Logically it would need to be based on my own opinion of what I was saying, but I didn't have time to experiment. While I tried to think of what else I could say I made an attempt to declare that I was made of cheese, but that weight increased and I just couldn't get the words to form. There was something I could try, but I was worried it was stretching the limits. I gave it a shot anyway. "I told you before that I was just bait."

Huh, that had felt a little funny to say but it had worked. After all, I had in fact told him that before - even if it had been a lie at the time. The Behemoth looked to the human lie detector, who nodded.

"Interesting. So it's a diversion. But then how did you know we would follow you?"

A fair question, but one I had an answer ready for. "The wild mage - the witch? She's working with me, and she fed you false information." I paused for a moment, to convince myself that this next part was just some factual statements rather than being connected to the part about false information. "Do you remember when she convinced you to march right up to the fortress in Theramas? Or when she promised you we were all asleep and sitting ducks in Zistarne? Of course just ten minutes later when you got there we were all awake and scattered around. We trapped you on another plane, we killed Telen. It didn't go very well for your side."

His brow furrowed. He was buying it so far, but I had two main things to worry about - one was that he could still at any moment ask me a question that landed me in hot water, and the other was that the guy forcing me to tell the truth could speak up and mention some of the many limitations to this magic.

"She told me that you were headed to Granlan, but she redirected you to Sentortzi. She didn't mean for you to actually catch us though. Look, I don't want to die. I know things about Hammersmith, about Halenvar. I know secrets that people would kill to learn, or to cover up."

That was certainly true. Hell, if he pulled the pants off my foot he'd learn about one of them. The Behemoth stood and paced for a moment, then looked at the guy still holding my head. "Check her memories."

"Ah. Yes, of course. If you could narrow things down somewhat, that could... ah..."

"The first of Vijfde. See if she destroyed a laboratory in the Pike mountains."

That weight lifted off my brain, and instead I felt a soft sort of probing.

"I'll see what I can do. Um. Hang on. Wait, no. Uh. Just a moment. Sorry, I just... well that can't be right. Ah. Yes, I seem to be having some difficulty. Is she trained in thought magic?"

"She's got a fucking lock on her Dumine!"

"Right, of course. Yes. It's just that every memory I attempt to view is just an empty room. A very odd one. Unfamiliar design, strange furniture. A display of decorative spoons?"

That, I suddenly knew, was Bill's basement. I wasn't sure why that was what my brain had chosen, but as long as it was working I didn't care. The Behemoth glared at me, and I shrugged.

"It's not going to work. You'll just have to keep me alive."

"I can, ah, see a bit of her mind as a whole - but when I attempt to focus in on any one part it's just that room again. But I can see - anyone could, it's extensive - there has been memory modification done. Years ago, most likely, it needs maintenance and repair."

"But you can't see why?"

"No. Even if I were to try and break it down, without being able to go into the memories in more detail it wouldn't do any good."

The Behemoth stood, and sighed. "Fine. We'll do this the fun way."

He grabbed the man by the back of his neck and twisted, then threw the limp body into the far corner of the room. "Pogue!" he yelled, "get your torture kit!"

Oh goody.