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She must've nodded off some time after Astrophyllite left. It was hard to tell how much time had passed; she'd sung through ten repetitions of The Downeaster Alexa, so that had to have been a half an hour, at least -- but it was an imprecise way to mark the passing of hours, at best, and did her drying throat no real favors. And she was tired. Someone had come through, shortly after, and drawn a long spool of energy from her, leaving her sunken in her bonds again. Even with the room as cold as it was -- even in a strange place, in an uncomfortable position -- even terrified for her life -- she'd nodded off. It was hard to take heart from that sort of unconsciousness.

It made climbing out of it difficult and surreal, too. A voice came to her -- singing, swirling, moving from place to place about the room -- and then a dancing silhouette to match, moving between all the other black shapes of marionettes like they might all come to life at any moment and join the waltz. She'd seen something like it in a dream, and wondered if that was what this was . . . but Laney was no princess who'd touched a forbidden unicorn. She was not special, and the devil did not dance for her --

No. Consciousness was slow in coming, reluctant with exhaustion, but it came, surely enough. Came with a face she knew, if from the long distance of a year or more past. No, she was no devil -- but they had danced before.

"It would be rude to forget," she said with her best attempt at tired poise.

I remember you all, she didn't say. I listen to the way you say your names and I practice it until I can do it the same way. I listen to your stories and I anchor them in rooms in my mind with carefully placed mnemonic devices, and I remember -- as best I can.

Even so -- even so, I'd remember you. The feeling of being so close to death, like standing on a cold precipice, the wind laughing at me . . . No one else has ever put their hand inside me, their fingers wrapping -- I still feel my heart thudding down through my fingertips and I remember the look on your face as you held my life in your hands, but I still -- still -- don't understand what it was. You were the first agent to answer my questions, but still, no matter how much I go over it, I still can't make sense of you. I don't understand you -- so how could I forget?

"It's General Schörl now, I assume. You've come up in the world."

This was not expected. This was -- this was -- frightening. Alarming. Schörl was in her space, astride her lap: close enough to kill with a swipe of the hand if she was of the mind.

Or, it seemed to -- to take some sort of an inventory of Hvergelmir's person. Alright, she convinced herself, that makes sense. She's just assessing me as a threat in a way that's meant to make me uncomfortable. Maybe checking me for lockpicks I might use, confirming there's nothing hidden. I don't know. She's just looking and touching. Mind games to make me confused.

All the same, she was. She was confused.

Unlike Zircon, who had cut straight to the point, Schörl's opening comments seemed innocuous enough. What she was offering was conversation, at this point, and it seemed obvious -- if Hvergelmir thought about it -- that there was no gain in being defiant about that needlessly. Conversation alone was her ally, if anything, her safest play as long as she was allowed it -- because it bought her time.

(Time for what? a tendril of fear curling in her gut asked, the one that knew full well what her chances were of surviving her captivity, and was at least merciful enough to stay mostly hidden in the shadows of her stomach.

I don't know. But time. It's better than nothing.)

If Schörl wanted to have a slow dance of this, there were surely worse things. Conversation -- harmless conversation. It was worth at least an attempt.

"It would take a lot of time to fight at Cinnabar's level, I imagine," she said, allowing Schörl's assessment of her lack of skill without argument. "Especially with -- whatever happened to her. I want to say she looks taller, even." It was a guess -- Hvergelmir hadn't had time to exactly take measurements. Maybe the scales and fangs had just made her more imposing. "I suppose I thought the investment offered diminishing returns before it would ever pay off for me. You must work hard at it." It felt that way, too. Schörl, in her lap, was light but lean, cut from tight, unyielding muscle like she'd never seen any use for padding. It was like playing chair to a lightning rod, all coiled power.

The General's finger was very deliberate, outlining the perimeters of little shapes that made up Hvergelmir's pale seal. The mark gave nicely beneath her hand, glitter like silt water, fluid with sparkles that caught whatever bare vestiges of light haunted the corners of the room, snuck in through the crack under the door.

It was information -- the mark, her seal, its meaning -- and Hvergelmir could withhold it, she supposed. But setting a price to something she had always given for free in the past was no way to drag the conversation out. It was already lost ground -- let it at least buy her some goodwill in conceding it, maybe.

Maybe.

"The crest and seal of my Wonder," she affirmed. "I swore an oath on my life not to knowingly raise arms against any Negaverse officer while you fight in the name of Earth's protection from an alien invasion. The mark shows my Wonder accepted my vow, and holds me to its terms."

Her left hand was being released. She wasn't sure why -- surely no one would assume someone was left-handed, if they wanted them to write something -- but regardless of the reason, she couldn't resist a little sigh of relief at the sudden opportunity to have her arm in a different position. Hvergelmir could be grateful for that, if nothing else.

"Hvergelmir Knight of the Cosmos," she clarified. "My power comes from the Well -- it has a sort of sentience of its own. Not from the senshi. Her power also comes from the land she serves. If," she looked down to where Schörl was looking, studying her hand. Hvergelmir didn't think the General was engrossed in chiromancy, in looking. "If I'm bound to follow her orders, that would be news to me. I don't think she has the power to strip my powers from me as your Metallia might to you."

She shivered at the press of thumb down into the meat of her hand, down to her fingers, arresting her detailed motor functions. It wasn't painful, not yet, just tight -- but the implication, or -- reminder, or threat -- wasn't meant to be overlooked, she thought. We both agree we're pretending this is a nice chat, it seemed to say. But a moth pinned under glass may flap its wings and pretend it can fly away, so long as it proves amusing. When it fails, a needle through its head will render it decorative in due course.

Hvergelmir did her best to keep nattering on even while her heart thudded louder, faster in her chest. Just feeling confused was not enough of a thing to be scared of, surely. She could -- she could manage it, find a strategy to rationalize it all away. It was just a hand, a mouth, eyes on her. Eyes in the dark, glittering like early autumn's decay, terrible in their certainty.

"Am I understanding it correctly? Is your power from Metallia, or from the rocks of the Earth -- or do you see them as the same?"

Hvergelmir stared, pupils in the dark blowing wider to edge out more of the outer gold. Her heart was hammering in her chest now fit to crack her ribs, she was sure -- the room was silent, but so loud --

Schörl couldn't ask about that. Couldn't ask about the scar. She couldn't ask, because Hvergelmir couldn't answer, wouldn't benefit by answering, and that meant they would have a problem because s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t s**t shitshitshitshits**t--

"Babylon, can you still communicate with your ancestor? Could you ask him something?"

"He's still there, yeah. What do you need?"

"Tell him hi for me. And ask him -- ask if there's a connection between knights and princesses. If he knows of any time when they can sense each other."

"He says she can feel when you're in danger or in pain and when you need her help. He says it would be an honor to meet your princess."

Her breath came out in stutters, uneven. "A Dark Mirror senshi did it to me," she lied in a slurred rush. "As an insult."

It was immediately clear that Schörl wasn't even slightly going to believe her. If Hvergelmir hadn't already been panicking, she would've started now.

This was a corner she'd been backed into that hadn't really occured to her until Schörl had started examining her hand, but that she absolutely didn't want to be in. Withholding the information meant that, at best, they'd torture her in hopes of getting it out of her. Telling, though, meant worse: it meant they'd hurt her even so, and continue on with doing so until her suffering either summoned Sailor Cosmos right into the midst of a trap or until Hvergelmir passed out from pain or bled out on the floor.

There was nothing she could say or do from here to make her situation less perilous. Zugzwang, it was called.

She held her tongue in nervous confusion while Schörl ran her fingers over the ins and outs of Hvergelmir's arms, searching again -- maybe for something her first inspection had missed. Confusion became curled-toe squirming and a few startled flinches as seeking hands went wandering from the outsides to the insides of her thighs, where strangers didn't normally have cause to touch; the muscles of her abdomen bunched tensely beneath the lipid layer with each curious pass of fingers there, too. The fact of this occurence, on its own, was alarming enough to take a higher priority in her mind than attempts to understand its purpose.

There was a reason she was searching where she was, some obvious clear reason. But Hvergelmir couldn't seem to get her mind to operate on that track. What she knew was still, and increasingly, that she was afraid.

The knife eased no fears.

Her first instinct was to clamp her jaw shut tight, turn her head away as thought she could protect the many delicate parts of the human face; her second was to struggle against her bonds and the hand that held her to try and get away. Her efforts gained nothing. The knife bit into her hand, slow and precise in its tracing, and she let out a gurgling whimper and squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could. Her other hand, her dominant right, scratched uselessly at the wood of the chair where it was bound. She felt blood welling.

Stay away stay away stay away stay away stay away, she thought as hard as she could. She couldn't be sure if that would have any meaning, any impact -- did her thoughts, her intentions, help carry or sink the message of distress? -- but right now she was prepared to let Schörl stab a star straight through her hand and out the back so long as it didn't end in Hvergelmir having led Sailor Cosmos, the great Princess of the Galaxy Cauldron, straight to her doom.

Her hand was burning with pain; the scarred flesh gave less easily than unmarred skin would've, forcing Schörl to dig the knife hard if she wanted to follow the same path that had been drawn before. She did, of course; she was precise. Hvergelmir bit down on her lip till she tasted blood.

Waited. Concentrated on willing Cosmos not to hear or heed her distress. Waited more, as Schörl did.

She hadn't come yet. There was still that much hope.

"It wouldn't save anything," she said stiffly, pain singing up through her arm.

Hvergelmir could feel Schörl's fingers skimming over her bleeding palm, then the wet press of her index finger against the rising star of her sigil. The sudden push of her own hand against her seal, bent awkwardly and aggravating her wound, drew a startled yell of pain -- then a tight grimace while she tried hard to master it, not to lose focus on what she had to do.

It was the sharp dig of the knife into the small of her back, against the base of her spine, that drew her screams.