Opening her eyes slowly, she frowned at a soft hissing sound that she thought had been the cause of her waking up, and with eyes feeling heavy, she dragged her head up and squinted in the dim light as she found a very intent looking Daemon looking back at her. She blinked slowly as she tried to figure out what was happening, and recalling their last moments of argument.
Dragging her eyes down him, she was surprised to find that he was wearing nothing but pants, and she had to wonder how that had happened. He had been fully dressed in the garden, hadn't he?
Sitting in a chair she didn't recognise, and he was sitting oddly, as though his back and the undersides of his limbs were glued down.
He made another hissing sound as her eyes began to slide shut, and she growled in frustration. She just wanted to sleep, and he was keeping her from that.
Looking up at him, it took her a moment to realise he had been gagged with a strip of white fabric shoved into his mouth, and tied so tight that it was leaving marks on his face.
The fact that he was gagged only added to her confusion, and she frowned, the movement making her very aware that she too was gagged.
That woke her up, and she tried to say his name, but it came out muffled. He looked suddenly relieved, his intent stare on her fading to one of simple anger.
Looking down at herself, she frowned as she found herself in a simple black dress made of cotton, and nothing else, not even undergarments. Who had changed her, and why?
Trying to lift her arm up off the chair she found her arm simply refused to move as though she were bound, but there were no ropes, nothing was holding her down.
Looking up at Daemon, he had watched her attempts to get free, but when she shook her head, he let out a slow sigh of disappointment.
Trying to ask him who might have taken them, he could only shake his head, and she turned her attention to the room around them. They were in what looked to be a bedroom that had been converted, polished wooden floorboards, and white painted walls with heavy beams exposed.
A heavy bed at the far end, but nothing else, and she tilted her head in confusion as to why they would be there. She didn't recognise the building, but there was something about the style that was familiar to her for some reason.
Looking at the heavy door, she growled to see the handle was heavy and dark grey, likely iron, to mean she wouldn't be opening it any time soon.
Her eyes turned back to him and he gave a slight shrug, apparently as clueless as she was but it wasn't long before their captors arrived, and Etani immediately recognised the tall, buxom redhead.
Daemon made a sound of recognition as well as she smiled at them, it was the witch from Naile's home, and Etani looked past her, spotting several of the others including the small blonde witch herself.
Five of them entered the room and Naile smiled at her when she came in, excited about something, but it was the redhead who spoke as she approached Etani.
"Why didn't you tell us you were a Goddess?" She accused. Etani could only raise her brows in confusion. "Hecate told us."
Nodding slowly, Etani gave a slight shrug and spread out her fingers in a show of not knowing herself, but it didn't seem to be getting across. Reaching out, the redhead ripped the gag from her mouth, and she hissed at the pain, glaring up at the witch.
"Was that really necessary?" she said, rolling her jaw.
"You kept all sorts of secrets from us," the redhead accused.
"I was here to get a job done, not tell you bedtime stories." Etani's eyes turned to Naile, but the witch was silently observing. "Why have you brought us here?"
"That leads back to you being a Goddess," the small, dark witch said.
Etani looked at her, looking lovely in a red and gold dress. "In what way?" she asked slowly.
"Do you know what you are Goddess of?" the dark woman asked, and Etani shrugged. It wasn't like she was just the Goddess of one thing. "Creation," the woman answered. That went against what Loki had said, but she was sure he had been lying, anyway.
"So?"
"We know you can create other worlds."
Etani immediately went wary, and her eyes slid past the two, finding Daemon whose face had gone carefully neutral.
"Not any more I can't," she said slowly, unsure of what they knew.
The redhead bent forward and grinned savagely. "Ah but we know you can. It just takes a man to do it."
Etani met her eyes and smiled grimly. "I didn't know you were a man," she said sarcastically.
The slap was hard, but the redhead was still only a modified human, and she gasped, glaring up at the redhead.
"Are you trying to turn me on, witch?" she taunted.
The witch laughed gently, her eyes blazing as she reached out and Etani jerked back against her chair, but the finger found her skin.
Her blood turned to acid in her veins, and she screamed, unable to escape the hand, or the pain with her bound to the chair, and the witch was clearly enjoying her suffering.
"That's enough," Naile said softly, her eyes on Daemon who was fuming, his hands clenched on the armrests.
Panting as the pain vanished as if it had never been, she looked up at the redhead. "What do you want?" she asked, dreading the answer.
"You are going to create us a new world where we can all go to be in peace. You're going to create it with the Demon," the witch said, and Daemon growled.
"I'm not doing anything for you," Etani snarled, but the witch only smiled.
"You can do so willingly, or we can take away his reason and trigger his lust so that he rapes you again and again until we have what we want."
She went cold, looking up at the redhead, and then to Naile, who had schooled her expression into neutrality. Finally, her eyes went to Daemon, and he was staring at her, horrified.
"Why would you do this?" she asked, unable to take her eyes off him, nor he take his eyes off her.
"Because we want a world away from this one where we can be left alone," the witch snarled, and Etani closed her eyes, her choices limited.
"You can go burn in the underworld," Etani hissed, tracking the witch as she smiled, and then headed towards Daemon.
Daemon growled in warning, but as her hand found him, she saw his pupils contracting and then expanding as they found her, intent and hungry, the way he had looked in the office.
"Fine…" she whispered, and Daemon whimpered as he was released, shaking his head roughly to try and clear it. Her mind rejected the idea time and time again, but whether it was willing or not, there was no refusing, and she tried to accept that, even if she was screaming inside at the thought.
"Good girl," the witch said gleefully. "Get to work. We will be back tomorrow, but we will be monitoring your... progress."