Celia may have been lulled into a gentle sleep by the gentle rocking of the walking animal she was riding on if it was not for the fact she was frenzied panic that ravaged her mind. She was bound to the animal by more magic chains, and she had no chance to free herself or get the sack off of her head.

'What—why— what did we do to deserve this?' Fear scrambled Celia's mind as she tried to focus, but she felt blind and could not find something to anchor her thoughts to. In the darkness of the sack, she could not think of any short-term goal other than getting out and escaping. Her senses felt muffled and lost, as she could not even locate her and Verbena's mindlink in her confused blizzard of thoughts.

Verbena's worried mental presence briefly reached Celia, but it felt soft on Celia's comprehension it only came like a mere distant echo among the swirling winds of fear and bewilderment. Celia attempted to snatch the brief echo and use it as an anchor, but it slipped through her mind like liquid water or loose sand that easily slipped between a person's fingers.

'Maybe Xan escaped?' Celia's mind managed to rein in on that one thought, then descended into chaos and doubt. 'He was nearby when we were buried in snow, so maybe he was not captured and stayed hidden.' After a pause, she sighed in defeat 'there is no way he was not captured as well,' she emitted an audible whimper as she mentally admitted the flaws in her thoughts, 'I can't feel Verbena, and I am tied here, trapped, unable to move.'

"Everything will be fine, everything will be fine," she took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself again, "Xan and I will survive and be perfectly all right," she whispered to herself to trick her brain to believe her scared words as true. However, her heart refused to believe it.

'Whom am I kidding, this is hopeless,' she mentally admitted to herself and for a while, her mind paused in a bout of depression caused by the lack of hope. Her mind settled and she stopped panicking.

However, she had no idea how long she had been overwhelmed by panic or how long she had been riding on whatever creature she had been brutally tied to. With the bag over her head, she was blind to the moon, which was often the only hint of the passage of time, even if it was inconsistent.

After another unknown amount of time, Celia finally heard voices break the vocal silence, though they were barely understandable through the cloth. Luckily, they spoke a language similar enough to Celia's own for her to understand.

It took her a few moments, but she finally began to pick out bits of what the discussion was about and place the fragments together into a sentence she could understand.

"I found the disgraceful villains on the edge of our territory." The recognizable voice of the dark-skinned capturer spoke, though what Celia's understanding came from a mental reconstruction of the muffled noises that managed to reach her ears through the sack on her head.

There was brief silence as if someone was pondering what to do with the two prisoners, then another voice spoke, "Send them to the done-gen for now for later questioning," the slightly echoed voice rang loud and clear with a power Celia sensed and understood, but could not explain.

Celia had no idea what a "done-gen" was, but a sickening feeling settled in her stomach. In her fear, she attempted to locate her mindlink with Verbena. Sadly, her attempt was to no avail as she found herself unable to locate anything but were in her mind the bond was supposed to be.

All she could do was allow herself to be taken to a new place, as there was barely any slack in her binds she could use to struggle and squirm. Without any options, Celia felt useless, and unlike the rest of her life, she could not talk to Nami and Chrome and alleviate her feelings.

Based upon the slight feeling of blood rushing to her head, Celia noticed animal she was tied to begin to walk down a slope. The smooth descending path turned a few times, but Celia believed there was no hope of escape.

Even if she remembered the paths and could navigate the twists and turns of the unfamiliar cave system, her instincts reminded her that there could be untaken branching paths that would cause mistakes. Without a guide, there would be no escape.

Eventually, someone ripped the bag off of her head and instantly removed the magic chains. After they ripped her pack of supplies off of her back, one of the two shoulders shoved her onto her knees in a cubical room of stone. Once Celia was inside,  the last wall made of strange metal bars was slammed shut like a door. The air rang for a few moments from the sound.

Once she recovered from the rough, forced move, Celia shakily stood and rubbed the abrasions she gained through her clothes after being shoved to the ground. The fall had also roughed up her clothes a bit, but thankfully, the forceful actions by the masked Ulven only caused only minor injuries.

Celia turned and fearfully looked to the dark-skinned captors. Unlike Celia's pale skin, the Ulven had a reddish-brown to bronze skin tone, lighter than rock and stone, but much darker than any other skin color Celia had ever seen.

Instead of the reddish colors of hair so common in Celia's home, both of the Ulven had slightly different shades of dark brown hair. In Celia's homeland, maybe five adults in the entire cave system town of Rein had brown hair atop their heads, while all of the Ulven Celia has seen so far did. Even the town of Snouw had a population of mostly redheads, and the prevalence of dark brown hair was odd to Celia.

Two armored Ulven stood and briefly watched the shocked, fear-frozen Celia through their masks to in case she attempted to ram the cell open before the men secured the door to the wall.

As they emotionlessly watched, a third guard created another magic chain to secure the door and make it inoperable for Celia. Their brass armor masks gleamed in the dim light and their stoic faces stared with slightly slanted eyes. Without a word, the two soldiers suddenly turned and left in trained synchronization.

As they turned, Celia noticed another strange feature beneath the Ulvens' hair: their ears rose up into a slight point, whereas everyone else Celia had seen, even Xan, had smaller, rounded ears.

When they and their oppressive, fear-striking presences left, Celia's mind depended into a panicked mindset again and she began to pace in frantic anxiety. She walked around the confined space in a rough in a circle like a caged animal, her mind once again descended into chaos. The storm of thoughts swirled in her mind as she walked into a cyclonic circle of agitation. "I'm going to die in here!" Her hushed voice whimpered in fear.

Soon, she came to the realization that helped her be less fearful: if her rough estimates were correct, the cell was about the same size as her original room before she became a dragon rider. The initial feeling of cramped smallness had all been in her head, and without Celia's furniture to take up space, the room she was forced to stay in felt even larger in her mind.

"Calm," she instructed herself and pretended the metal bars were the old curtain that divided her room from her mother's, "this is not so bad." She assured herself and tried not to dwell on the negatives. Such as the fact she lacked her draconic friend and something blocked her ability to contact and communicate with Verbena. However, as she remembered her old room and the joys of home, the worry about the lack of Verbena's presence slipped her mind. Celia soon regained a sense of focus and decided that she should first glance around the room and survey the walls of her enclosure.

The door consisted of glowing blue vertical bars with a few horizontal bars fused to the other bars for support. Sadly, the gaps between the pars were far too narrow to slip through and escape.

Celia noticed the lighting next, as she could not locate the source of the light. Mosses and fungi did not line the walls, and no torches or bottles of flammable ryume or fire magic had been placed in small crevasses in the wall. Yet, Celia could see her surroundings on par with the vision a full moon offered in the snowy expanse of the aboveground world. 

In order to search for clues about the source of the illumination, Celia glanced down to her shadow, hoping it had answers, but strangely, her feet were surrounded in a circle of shadow, as if the light was cast from every direction at once.  She mused, "is this a new way to light areas up with magic?"

Looking for the source of the light, Celia glanced at the solid parts of the cell. She approached the nearest wall and studied the rough layered white and grey stone that made up the other three walls, the ceiling, and the floor. At first, the stone offered nothing of interest other than it's strange pale coloring compared to the darker rocks of her homeland and stripes, unlike anything Celia had ever seen before. After studying the ways for a moment, the female human suddenly noticed tiny, shimmering flecks in the walls, and assumed the light came from the glittery specks that proliferated the surfaces

As she looked at the wall more, she noticed the shadows of vertical etchings into the left wall. "What are those?" Celia whispered to herself as she approached the wall and ungloved her hand. She gently brushed her fingers across the multitude of slightly slanted random marks. Before she could speak to herself about her theories, another voice rang from the cell next to hers.

"Celia? Are you there?" Xan's voice asked from the cell next door. "I thought I heard you whispering to yourself."

Celia paused, then approached the wall nearest to where she had heard the voice. "Xan?" She asked in a soft tone, grateful for the semi-familiar presence of the acquaintance. "I'm so glad I'm not alone," she said.

After a pause, he sighs "me too, but I doubt we'll get out of here alive. If their treatment of us so far is indicative of what is to come, I don't think the Ulven will be very kind to us."

Celia frowned and glanced to the bars. After a short pause, she thought of an idea and walked over to the bars. "Do you think you can use your magic to break out?" She briefly tapped one of the bars with her finger

"Magic resistant bars, and the same goes for the chain," Xan stated in a dull, hopeless monotone voice. "My magic is not all that powerful. I seriously doubt that all of my magic combined would be strong enough to even think of leaving a scratch on this level of security magic." He sighs, then catches his breath, "Did they happen to forget to take your weapons? They took mine, but maybe they did not think you were carrying one." He sounds hopeful.

Celia slowly sighed and leaned forward, then rested her forehead on one of the bars. "I'm afraid that my only weapon is in pieces on the snow where you broke it during our first encounter."

Xan paused as the massive strength of the gravity of the situation continued to sink in, "oh."

Author Notes:
As promised, here is another chapter today!
Now the cliffhanger from last week and is resolved!
I hope you enjoyed the chapter!