The End of This Road [4/4 - Group Four]
Posted on 11 Mar 2021 @ 12:18pm by Captain Mallory Thorne & The Narrator & Lieutenant Madalene Sabine & Lieutenant Quinle Rahl
650 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission: The Quagmire
At the end of the tunnel was yet one more damned room. This time, they were in a smaller stone room that had the look of a forge from long ago--but it was all stone and there was no fire in the hearth. It was quiet and dim, like the other rooms had been, but there was no strange mystery awaiting them.
In this room, there was a woman who slipped out from around the fireless forge.
"You've made it!" this stranger exclaimed, sounding genuinely warm and excited to see them. She was tall, well-built, dressed like a blacksmith of yore, with blonde braids and a single blue eye. The other was bright white. "Welcome!"
Mallory just stared for a moment. "Who the hell are you?"
The blonde woman smiled. "I'm your host!"
"Host?" Madalene asked sounding a little confused, mostly because she still wasn't sure where she was, "where are we?"
"You're in my home, of the moment," the woman said lightly. "I haven't really done much decorating, but I'm just so excited to have you here. I'm glad that you solved the riddles and made your way here."
“I am sure we are glad that you are glad, but why are we here?” Quinle decided to get to the point, the puzzles and mystery of what had gone on had pushed her to a less patient place.
The woman tilted her head, her heterochromatic eyes flashing with a strange light as she smiled. "I thought you might like to have a chat," she said, waving a hand and replacing the forge with a table and chairs. There were jugs and rough metal mugs, as well as platters of food. "I thought you might like to tell me about your homes. Captain Thorne. Lieutenant Rahl. Lieutenant Sabine. Ensign Sov." She nodded at the table. "Sit, drink. Let's talk."
Mallory arched a stiff brow. "I don't imagine I want anything you're serving, thank you."
"I'm not trying to poison you," the woman laughed.
"I'm pretty sure Hades said that about the pomegranate seeds," the captain murmured, rubbing the back of her head where it was starting to throb.
Madalene went to go take a seat but didn't reach for the food or drink, yes she ate food and drank drinks perfectly fine from replicators which whisked into existence as if from thin air, just like she did. "How do you know our names?"
"I know many things," the woman said coyly. She took a seat at her own table and poured herself a drink. "I know of the place you come from. I imagine it to be a place that you would all wish to return to."
Quinle was polite in taking a seat and if she had been a cat her eyes would have danced with curiosity there, one didn't have a symbiot and then not want to know new things and this was a new adventure. "Place or time? Homeworlds or the ship we have been taken from?"
The woman giggled. "Both, really," she admitted. "But I more meant your time, your universe. Back to a place where and when your Starfleet exists, and your ship is not lost from all it knew."
Cydwenn looked around before also finally taking a seat, the idea of returning home was well it was wonderful, "c can you really get us home?"
"I can," the woman said. She opened her mouth to say something more...
Very abruptly, the woman's head tilted like an animal who'd just heard something. She held still, like she was listening, and then she smiled. Her attention turned back to those in front of her, and she smiled. Her eyes were glowing now, though. (Entirely unknown to this group, the same thing was happening to every group trapped in this strange place.) "Someone just said the magic word." She winked her pale eye, and everything went white.
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