Annabelle Lee found herself waking up on a cold stone floor, with a lingering headache. How had she gotten here?

It took a bit of time for her to remember. She had triggered the alien mothership's self-destruct sequence, and then she attempted to use a wormhole to escape back to Earth. But now she was in... a cave?

No. Not a cave. A cave wouldn't have iron bars blocking the exit. This was a prison.

Annabelle slowly got to her feet, and began to analyze her situation. The stone in the room appeared to be mostly unworked, likely part of an existing cave. Outside, she saw a pair of guards, equipped with medieval-era equipment: leather armor, a sword, and what appeared to be a crossbow. Meanwhile, all she had on her was rags. Wait, when did she put those on?

"Hey!" she yelled at the guards. "What the hell is this place?"

The guards looked at her, but didn't respond. Maybe they didn't speak the same language. Something was off here. Her first suspicion was that she was thrown back in time, and could be causing a temporal paradox just from existing.

But despite that theoretical risk, Annabelle didn't care. She wanted to leave, and if she had to do it over the dead bodies of everyone in this prison, she would.

First though, she tried reasoning. "I don't belong here. Let me out, now."

The guards continued to ignore her. Maybe it was because she was in her early twenties, and didn't look very intimidating on a first glance. Sure, she had potent abilities, but they didn't know that.

"Final warning. Either you let me out, or I'll kill you and let myself out."

That appeared to get the attention of one of the guards.

"As long as you remain in that cell, you cannot kill us. I'm not stupid enough to open the cell door." Hey, at least they spoke the same language.

"That's not going to stop me," Annabelle said.

With the guards clearly unwilling to budge, she decided it was now time to use her psychic powers to force the issue. She took a few seconds to focus herself, pushing aside her headache.

As she began to manifest her psychic ability, she was surrounded in an aura of purple energy. It was the sort of visual indicator that she would normally subconsciously suppress, but in this case intimidation would likely work in her favor. As predicted, the guards panicked.

Unfortunately, her first idea of blowing the door off wouldn't quite work. She could generate a kinetic shockwave powerful enough to bring down a solid wall, but the shockwave would pass straight through iron bars, and unless the bars were very rusted, applying telekinesis directly to them to tear them out would take quite a bit of time and effort. So instead, she seized control of the annoying guard's mind.

The other guard was too distracted by her show of power to notice his buddy drawing his sword and stabbing him through the back. However, he did manage to get off a scream before he was taken down, drawing attention that Annabelle did not need right now. Now, she would have to fight them off and unlock the cell door at the same time. Luckily, that was one thing she was quite effective at.

The controlled guard handed the key to her, and she began unlocking the door herself as more guards came in to react to the threat.

There were four guards coming in, two from each direction. One mind-controlled grunt, with the advantage of surprise, would maybe take down two of them. So Annabelle decided to assume direct control of her thrall.

Normally, mind-control simply changed the target's allegiance, rewiring them to work for someone instead of against them. But with more effort, Annabelle could essentially assume direct control of the target, controlling their body as if it were her own. This would come at the cost of fine control over her own body, but she'd have enough time to unlock the door after the imminent threats were dead.

This wouldn't have been that much of an advantage, if not for a fact she had gleaned off of her thrall's mind. Their crossbows were actually repeating crossbows (or 'bolters' as they called them), capable of firing up to five shots from a clip before needing to reload. They had to be pumped in between each shot, but the design easily supported firing as fast as the weapon could be pumped. Her modern firearms training might just find a use here.

The guards that rushed in saw a dead body on the ground, and immediately drew weapons. However, in the time it took for them to react, Annabelle's guard slam-fired three shots to his left, dropping the two guards coming from that side. Her thrall then took a bolt in the back from one of the guards on the right, while the other charged in with a sword.

Annabelle pushed her thrall through the pain, pushing his body to its limits. He spun around, blind-firing the remainder of his clip in the direction of the crossbow-wielder before using the crossbow to deflect the other's sword swing. He then stepped in past the swordsman's guard, stunned him with a well-placed sucker punch, and threw his body into the path of a second crossbow bolt to take him out. The thrall grabbed that guard's sword and charged. He took a third bolt as he charged, but Annabelle managed to keep him on his feet just long enough to slash the last guard's throat open before he collapsed from his wounds.

With all of the guards nearby taken care of, Annabelle finished unlocking the cell door and walked out. Even with those guards disposed of, it would only be a matter of time before more showed up. She needed to find the exit as soon as possible.

**********

Raiks was shaken awake by guards, dragged to his feet, and taken to the warden's chamber. The guards shoved him to his knees in front of the warden's throne. The warden himself was wearing a black mask and cloak, aiming to intimidate both the prisoners and his fellow guards into following his orders. Raiks was fairly certain that the real reason the warden was intimidating was not his personal appearance, but the fact that his quarters doubled as his personal torture chamber.

"So, it has come to my attention that you are planning to escape. I can't let that happen."

"We both know this place is inescapable," Raiks said. "Any attempt would be a waste of time." He had verified that, and given up on the effort. Any escape would require outside help, and even that would be a difficult proposition.

"You're smarter than that," the warden responded. "You were trying to kill yourself to escape."

Not really. Yes, Raiks had considered the idea of suicide, and hoping that some of his contacts back at base had the bright idea to try and resurrect him. However, there were a number of flaws with it. Even if Daraken hadn't set this prison up to steal the souls off of anyone who dies (which, admittedly, might conflict with the null-magic field), and Julia could somehow resurrect him without a body to go off of (normally a body was necessary to resurrect), the rebels would need to know of his death in order to make the attempt. But yes, if those flaws were mitigated, it could work.

"I wouldn't commit suicide unless I was absolutely certain it would work. Though given that you're actually afraid of it working, I probably should have done it already."

"Well, it's too late now," the warden said. "You see, my objective is to keep you alive. I don't have to keep your body intact." He shouted out an order to his men. "Tie him down."

Raiks made a desperate effort to escape, more for show than anything else, but he was soon overwhelmed, beaten, and dragged on top of some sort of crude operating table. His arms and legs were strapped down, and the warden grabbed a long knife off of the rack nearby. He then ordered his guards out of the room, leaving him alone with Raiks.

"So, which limb should I remove first?" The warden asked cruelly.

"You should just slice my throat open," Raiks responded. "I'm going to run out of blood before I run out of limbs."

The warden paused briefly at that remark, before replying. "You know you're too tough to just die like that." He was right, too. Due to his combat experience, Raiks had significantly more durability than a civilian, and a bit more strength and dexterity as well. While losing a limb in combat could easily be lethal for a normal person who didn't get immediate medical attention, he could likely stay alive.

He pointed his knife around for a bit, eventually decided on Raiks' right arm, and began sizing it up, apparently figuring out where he should start cutting. After almost a minute, he finally got down to business, and began to cut into the shoulder joint. Raiks tried to stay stoic, but the pain rapidly became too much, and he broke down and began to cry out in pain. Of course, this did not bother the warden in the slightest.

Then, Raiks heard a boom from outside. And then another one, followed by some shouting. Even the warden was confused, and he looked up from his work.

"What. Is. GOING ON!" The warden stormed towards the door, not even bothering to remove his knife from Raiks' shoulder. Another boom echoed through the dungeon, and the warden pulled out his spiked chain, his favored instrument of torture, before opening the door.

In a move that the warden should have seen coming, an attacker slammed into the door right as it opened, knocking the warden back and blowing the door wide open.

Raiks' rescuer was a woman, too thin to have raw muscles, and too young to have the experience to compensate. Raiks wasn't sure how she had managed to slam the door open, but she had.

She levelled a stolen bolter at the warden, and slam-fired a whole clip into his chest. But though the bolts did embed in the warden's cloak, they appeared to cause no damage; Raiks suspected the warden had some armor hidden under his robes, and slam-firing bolter shots (as opposed to pumping multiple times to store enough kinetic energy for a powerful shot) did nothing to help punch through it.

"Whoever you are, you made a big mistake," the warden said, before whipping his spiked chain forward in a series of wicked swipes. Outside of raw intimidation, the main advantage of a spiked chain was its wide arc and the ability to wrap around weapons and shields. Though a spiked chain was ineffective against even light armor, it was devastating against unprotected flesh. Raiks' rescuer was driven back by the flurry, firing off one more shot from her bolter before the spiked chain wrapped around the bolter and dragged it out of her hands. She attempted to take cover behind the door, but the warden whipped the chain around the door and into her belly, then pulled the barbs out, tearing out chunks of flesh with it.

The would-be rescuer fell to her knees, clutching at the wound. She muttered a curse, as the warden advanced on her. "I do not know how you defeated my guards, but it will never happen again." But then, something changed. A purple aura sprung up around her head, bright enough to tint the entire room. The warden panicked, taking a few steps back, forgetting that the safest place to be against an enemy mage was melee range.

"You are a monster," the intruder said. "You torture people for fun. You don't belong in this world."

The warden swung his spiked chain overhead, but before it could make contact, it was caught in midair by a telekinetic force, and then ripped out of the warden's grasp. The warden, terrified, staggered backwards.

"DIE." She turned to face the warden, arm outstretched. A stream of energy projected out from her head, down her arm, and into the warden's head. The warden suddenly clutched at his head as he came under some sort of mental attack. After a few seconds of agony, his head exploded, splattering blood and brain matter across the entire room.

"Did you just-" Raiks managed to say.

"Yes."

**********

Bad move, Annabelle thought. The more you interfere here, the more involved you get in a situation you shouldn't even be a part of. But in all honesty, did this detour really matter? She was already stranded here whether or not she interfered, and she was already causing quite a bit of chaos by plowing her way through the prison's guards. And even though Annabelle's goals were normally self-centered, one thing that she could not tolerate was torture. She vividly remembered what the Ascent Foundation had done to her in the name of 'research', and could not bear to have anything like it happen to anyone else. If it meant tearing down an entire evil regime, so be it.

Although detonating the bastard's head with a psychic overload might have been the wrong call. Not only did she burn off much of her energy, but she lost the chance to take control of a high-ranking enemy leader to disrupt their defenses. She was already getting an exertion headache.

Annabelle untied the man on the table, who introduced himself as Raiks Strike-Hammer, general of the Resistance or something. Not exactly pertinent right now. His dark skin was bloodied and scarred to the point where he seemed to be keeping himself alive by sheer willpower alone.

"I'm Annabelle Lee, and given what's going on here, I feel inclined to rescue you. Can you stand?"

Annabelle expected that answer to be a no, but Raiks struggled to his feet. Then, he pulled the knife out of his shoulder. Annabelle expected a spray of blood coming from the wound, but though there was some blood, it was far less than she expected.

"I'll live, if we can get out of here." Maybe he actually was keeping himself alive on raw willpower. Annabelle was doing something similar, using telekinesis to stem the bleeding from the wound across her chest.

Behind her, she heard footsteps, as reinforcements streamed in.

"I think I can take care of them."

Annabelle stepped out of the room and unleashed a telekinetic wave down the corridor, knocking the guards off their feet and sending them flying. Some of them were out cold from impact, but others started recovering, getting back on their feet. She then took over a guard in the back, and he shot down three enemy soldiers with bolts to the back before switching to his sword.

A few guards managed to get up and charge Annabelle. Without moving a muscle, she fired a bolt of kinetic energy into each of them, crushing their chests and taking them down. "Who's next?" she taunted.

The remaining guards decided they didn't want to be next, and ran.

Raiks stumbled out of the room, saw the pile of dead bodies, and asked, "How?"

"Magic." was Annabelle's first response, even though it was technically psionics. Sure, the physics behind it were somewhat understood, but according to Clarke's law, if it was indistinguishable from magic, it might as well be magic. Especially to a society that didn't even know what guns were.

"Yes, I know that," Raiks responded. "But there's supposed to be a field in place here that nullifies magic. How did you get through that?"

Wait, what? So apparently actual magic existed in this world, and the countermeasures to it didn't work on psionics for some reason. Or maybe it was affecting her, just in a different way. She felt like she had much less energy than normal, and was starting to get a backlash headache much earlier than normal.

"How about we escape now and worry about that later?"

"What about the other prisoners?" Raiks added. "We can't just leave them behind."

Annabelle considered it. If she freed the other prisoners, this would be a far bigger mess than just freeing one individual. But it wouldn't exactly be harder (given that a significant portion of the guards were already dead), and given that this wasn't actually Earth minus a thousand years, it had no risk of causing a temporal paradox. And, screw whichever evil empire this was.

"Okay."

They unlocked the cell doors of a few prisoners. Raiks handed each of them keys, and ordered them to go free others. Oddly, after the last engagement, the guards were nowhere to be found, and did not interfere. Soon, every prisoner was free to roam the halls, and some of them grabbed weapons off the bodies of guards.

They soon found out why the guards had retreated. The only exit to the dungeon, the only route to the surface, was incredibly well fortified. An antechamber was set up between the surface entrance and the dungeon exit, and it was designed as a deathtrap.

"There's too many of them out there," Raiks said. "The only entrance into that chamber is a locked gate, which we will have to somehow open while under sustained fire from every guard still alive. Even if we get through, we just get funneled into a killzone, with bolts raining down from high ground onto our position."

A group of freed prisoners were gathering behind Raiks and Annabelle, hoping that one of them would come up with a plan to get through the chokepoint. Annabelle considered the issue, and figured out a solution fairly quickly. It would probably burn up most of her remaining energy, but it would be worth it.

"Raiks, how large is that chamber?"

"Do I look like I know that? The warden didn't give me specifics when he was boasting about his security measures."

Annabelle sighed. "Well, let's hope this is enough."

Annabelle launched a brilliant purple orb through the gate and into the room, where it stopped in the middle of the chamber. The guards most likely looked at it in shock, just before it activated, creating a spatial vortex. It was one of her signature techniques, rapidly shifting space inside an area to break apart and shred anything caught inside it. It was incredibly draining to do, but almost nothing could withstand it for more than a second. The cavern shook from a combination of the pure destructive force of the vortex and the deafening noise it created as it cut through the air. Inside the cavern, the guards discovered the true meaning of the word killzone, being torn to shreds in an instant as space itself was torn apart.

The vortex lasted for twelve seconds before dissipating. As soon as it faded, Raiks rushed in, with Annabelle trailing closely behind.

When Raiks got to the gate, there was no opposition. When he pulled the gate open and walked in, he was shocked by the destruction. As Annabelle followed behind him, she surveyed her work. The vortex had turned an impenetrable defense into an inescapable death sentence for the guards caught inside of it. In fact, given its power, Annabelle realized she was lucky she hadn't brought down the chamber entirely. Chunks of stone were gouged out of the ceiling, floor, and walls, and the room was covered not just in the gore that remained of the dead guards, but also in dust and debris.

Annabelle also felt her backlash headache, building rapidly. Backlash and energy drain from psychic exertion took a few minutes to fully take effect, so in a few minutes, she would likely be in agony (and also unable to use psychic abilities for a while). It was possible for a psion to pull off incredible feats in the span of a minute or two, if they were willing to suffer devastating headaches and/or blacking out when they were done. Well, other psions blacked out. She would just tough out the headache.

Although her energy had drained faster than expected. Normally, she could do a bit more before her energy was gone. Maybe the prison's 'null-magic field' had had something to do with that. After she reached the surface, her headache seemed to lessen significantly. Maybe the field was affecting her, just not to the level of completely nullifying her ability.

But she didn't really have time to dwell on that, because she quickly realized there was another problem.

"Out of the frying pan, and into the fire."