Fragment 7: Obsidian - The Price

Lorelai woke with a groan, her mind a fuzz, the faint stain of wine on her lips. Steam, it felt like she'd been run over by one of those hover bikes and then tossed into the underworld's pits. Her face pulsed the gallops of poison she drunk, catching up and taking interest.

"Uhh, where am I?"

Ego vibrated, the Valkar inside her leaving the impression of grogginess. That lazy one always came and went whenever it wished, the figment of her imagination as solid and reliable as a drunk shadow.

With a huff, she flickered her lashes open to see a Mongal woman pacing the cramped barracks. The upper floors of the ship were filled with fineries, but here, the lower levels retained their barracks-like structure. As the name suggested, it was built to hold soldiers with no fluff, no comfort, just the bare minimum that could be squeezed into an eight-by-eight-metre box. So when she pressed her fingers, it surprised her how the old hammocks replaced with shabby beds were objectively worse. The cheap fabric was cheaper than her dress, and that had been stitched with scraps and chucked at her to wear.

She sighed. Undoubtedly, Amara would refuse to give her anything better than the itchy garbage fabric she wore. But was it that hard to imagine something that actually fit her? A cloth that didn't leave a rash whenever she wore it? Something that let her feel pretty for once in her adult life.

Then, like darkness that consumed her sight, Amara's antlers curled over her, her fangs ready to snap. The woman might not been an Archdemon, but it didn't make her any less imposing. Her glare was on part with that Valkar man, but not even that oozed such hostility. Lore's tail tightened; she knew that expression anywhere, and she knew what it meant.

"I told you!" Amara screamed. The woman yanked Lore by her horn, her tight grip threatening to pull bone from skull. "Do you have any idea who you let go? That man is a killer and a danger to everyone on board!"

Lore opened her fangs," You didn't tell me he was a-"

Amara threw her to the deck, and pain flared through her elbows as they struck the rough wooden grooves. Splinters jabbed at her skin, the texture of the floor biting like needles. She tasted blood where she'd bitten her tongue, the metallic tang mixing with the stale, greasy air of the room. The vibrating hum of the ship's core pounded in her ears, a relentless reminder of her captivity. She groaned, the burn in her joints almost as sharp as the furnace she saw in Amara's eyes.

She hadn't seen Amara this mad since the fall of House Violette. Back then, Amara endured her mother's cold commands, every scrape and bruise a testament to her place beneath her mother's heel. But when the house fell, the weight of that humiliation hadn't disappeared—it had just found a new master. Torture the daughter of a monster. Amara had stepped into the role with ease, she had practise, she knew where it hurt and she was set on collecting interest.

Lore groaned, her fingers fumbling across the rough floor, searching for anything to hold onto, but there was nothing. No safety, no comfort—nothing but the sting of what was to come. Her breath hitched, and for the first time, panic seized her. Where was Ego? That stupid voice, the one that never let her feel completely alone, the one that whispered defiance when she had none. Why had Ego left? Why didn't it take her, too?

"Do I need to explain every fucking detail to you?"

The woman's voice was the voice of survival, one that demanded obedience and gave nothing in return. Lore knew this anger well—it was the price of disappointing her. Amara stabbed her heel, and the metallic end punctured Lore's knuckle, a resulting howl escaping her quivering lips. She cried; the pulse of blood dripped down her finger. Shame and anger twisted inside her as Amara twisted her heel, amplifying the pain until it drowned out everything else.

"You're a grown-ass woman, but you insist on acting like a child. Start thinking for yourself, just once in your pathetic little life!"

Lore attempted to free her hand; her fingers numbed, the Mongal weight, like a vice, pressed into the wood below. Amara was just a little mad; it wasn't unusual for the woman to use her as a punching bag to relieve her stress. Lore lost count of the bruises she had to endure. The cuts, scrapes and humiliation her body had to take. But she could do that; she had to, as it was always like Amara said. She was an immature, foolish girl too stupid to survive on her own. And the fact that she wore the form of a grown woman despite this. Amara made sure to punish her for that.

Then sucking the heel out of flesh, the woman snatched Lore by the ankle and dragged her across the room. The burn of fibre sawed skin from her back. Her cries were on deaf ears as the strangers around her watched. But too distracted to ask why they were there, her eyes fixed on the destination.

"No, please, no." She said.

Not giving her a breath to beg, Amara chucked her into a box, the clear top crushing her until she fit. It was designed for demons at least half her size, so forced into the confines, she spilt out. Her lanky arms and legs felt like they would snap, her neck clamped into a ninety-degree angle. She tried to breathe, but with the single hole above her cheek, she gasped. She would suffocate if not for the pressure of her horns that fought the glass, the tiny air pocket it created connecting the space between her cheek and mouth.

Amara locked the transparent crate and leaned in, "I should have left you in the gutter. But then…" She tapped the air hole with a smirk. "Valkar fetch a high price, you know. All you have to do is open your legs."

The woman stabbed a needle into Lore's neck—the cocktail of chemicals taking all feeling out of her body.

And it was at this moment Ego snarled awake—the seething fury bubbling to Lore's lips.

"Don't hate me too much." The woman chuckled, "I hear life as a bangable doll is popular these days."

She gestured the strangers over. The brutes of a Batrakin variety hulled her up and began to carry her out of the room. Their over-muscled bodies lifted her with ease, their expressions blank. Whatever it was, she knew a Neurweaver was at work. But Amara was neither an Archdemon nor a Neurweaver, so who controlled them?

Ego shook, but Lore's body lay numb.

"Again, fucking again, how many times will you let her get away with it," said Ego. "Why can't you stand up for yourself!" Ego's voice seethed, the sound electric, jarring against the creeping numbness.

Lore's lips parted as if to answer, but no words came. What could she do? It had always been this way. Didn't Ego understand? There was no fighting back, not for her—not anymore. Whatever spark she'd had was buried deep, lost under the weight of bruises and broken promises. She was not a princess anymore. Amara no longer bowed at her mother's feet, and certainly not at hers.

Then, completing the transaction, the massive demons, like good autonomous drones, marched her down the corridor and the reality of her fate closed in. She shivered to what was to come. Her breaths came shallow, her mind racing with fragments of what was to come. Sold. Used. Forgotten. Whatever freedom she'd imagined, whatever dignity she had left, slipped further away with each step. Forward was an existence that did not care for will nor consent.

As she got twisted out into the hallway, the box facing the woman, Lore got one last look at the devil that raised her. Blood or not, even as unkind as she could be, Amara was like a parent; nothing would change that. She was a fragment of family Lore could cling to, a single drop in her isolated life. And it pained her to lose that. It pained her to be thrown away when she was promised a home, a place… a glimmer of love.

However, getting a flash of a gem shard in the woman's fingers, a grin plastering Amara's fangs. The stab hit harder. Black, like obsidian, oozing power that could only be forged in the pits below. The rare Obsidium—the only stone capable of teleportation, hummed before her, the value of everything she was.