The room was filled with the scent of singed hair and sweat.  Everyone was taking a break from their attempts to short-circuit or break out of the room that had held them all for far too long - no matter if that time had been days or months.  

Sam and Blaine sat back to back, trying to rest, relax, and let their bodies heal.  Blaine's hair was particularly bad.  It was poofy on a good day, and now, well it just looked like he was trying to imitate Marge Simpson's beehive.  Even his beard was sticking out like a mountain man's.

“I figured it might be time for a haircut…”  Santana mused across from him where she sat against the wall, fingering her own hair and looking at the ends which had gone from brown and soft to black and jagged.  

“You'd look good with any cut.”  Blaine said, trying to be supportive.

She snorted, “Like you'd know.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Blaine groaned, shifting as he felt Sam fall asleep against his back and his whole weight pushed against Blaine's back.

“It means the only thing you think looks good is a certain halfling boy in the community who's watching my son…”

“Kurt's not a halfling.”

“They're looking for a source of power that's somewhere in the community Blaine.  Open your eyes.  Kurt's the only thing that's even remotely magical there.” Santana grumbled, letting her hair fall as she lifted her eyes to look at Blaine directly.

“He's not a halfling.”  Blaine again stated flatly.

“Well he's not exactly normal is he?”  Santana huffed.  “Face it Bird boy.  Your boyfriend is what they're looking for.”

Blaine shook his head.  Kurt had the most human heart of anyone he'd ever met.  He wasn't an Other.  Sure, there was something… unique about him, but he wasn't one of the creatures responsible for the massacre of millions… if not billions of humans.

“He did come back from the dead….”  Karofsky said quietly from where he was sitting not far away, not bothering to look up as he noted it.

“And everyone saw how he took down your old gang….” Azimio added from beside Karofsky.

Blaine again just shook his head.  “He's not a halfling.  He's just… really amazing.”

That made Santana, Karofsky, and Azimio all snort with laughter - why though, Blaine couldn't figure out.  He was being sincere.  Did it come out like he was joking?  Or did they think the idea of Kurt being amazing was just that funny?

“You are such a lovestruck puppy dog Blaine… after what… three years… STILL!”  Santana laughed and tipped her head back, the rest of the small group around them joining in.

He blinked a few times, looking around questioningly, “What?  Is that… so bad?”

“No… no…”  She gasped through her chuckles, “It's just… you are so blind to what should be obvious.  He's it.  He's the center of the power circle.  There's no other explanation.  It makes the most sense.”

“It's why no one complains about having a halfling in town Blaine…”  Karofsky spoke up with a shrug of his shoulders, “... he might be one of their kind… but for whatever reason… he protects us and has kept us hidden from them… and safe.”

“He's not -” Blaine started again, but a wavering purple form in the center of all of them had him clamp his mouth shut and nudge Sam awake behind him as the Halfling woman came into focus between them all.

“Why is it moving?!”  She snapped, looking directly at Blaine.

“What?”  He glanced around, trying to figure out what she was talking about when she elaborated.

“The circle.  It's moving.  Explain.”

“I… don't know?” Blaine said quietly, brows arching and looking past the woman to Santana whose own eyebrows had shot up.

She spun around then, facing Santana next, “You.  You said it was something called Kurt.  Explain.”

So they could hear them inside here, and they were listening.  Blaine bit his lower lip and tried to make eye contact with Santana, pleading for her to not reveal too much.  Whether or not Kurt was the source of power, Blaine didn't want any harm to come to him.

“I… ah… it's what we've always called it… we don't know what it was… but we gave the protective… shield?  We gave it the name Kurt?”  Her eyes flicked between the woman and Blaine as she tried to come up with a lie on the spot, and Blaine just hoped the woman bought it.

“It's moving here.  It's coming this way!”  The Halfling snapped, reaching for the sword sheathed at her side, “Someone WILL explain it!”

Blaine's face went red, and he looked around as everyone else did the same, looking from person to person, trying to read each other's faces to determine what, if anything, they should say.  If this Halfling was threatening them for information, was there any point in giving it?  She had already said she thought they should have been killed instead of kept - giving her information wouldn't save them from her.

Apparently everyone else was thinking along the same lines because they stayed quiet, nibbling their lower lips or just pressing their lips into tight little lines as a physical show that they wouldn't speak.  

“Fine!”  She wavered into purple again, disappearing from sight and a collective sigh of relief was let loose from the group.

“What do you think it means?” Karofsky asked in a whisper, as if they wouldn't be able to hear it with whatever they were using to listen in.

“Kurt must be coming here…” Santana said, looking directly at Blaine.

Blaine shook his head, “No… he can't… he has… Eugene and the girls… and Isaac…”

“There are other people who could watch them…” Sam said quietly, referring to Mercedes.

Panic set into Blaine's heart, to the point where he was sure everyone could hear his heart beating rapidly.  What if it was Kurt?  If he came here… Sure he had fought off the Warblers, but they were just human.  He couldn't go up against Others with their magic and technology.  He didn't stand a chance.  He'd end up in this tiny room just like the rest of them and Blaine's attempt to rescue everyone really would have been for nothing - even more than it already was.

“If Kurt moves though… that'll leave the community unprotected…”  Azimio hissed, “Damn man… I got's a baby on the way.  I may not exactly like Kurt, but I'd rather he was there than wasn't!”

Blaine again shook his head, “What if it's someone else though?  Or something else?”

Everyone looked at him then like he was an idiot.  Dead serious stares and head shakes like he was missing out on what should be obvious.

“Let's just work on trying to get out of this thing…”  Blaine suggested then, getting nods in return which alleviated the feeling that he was missing something so obvious.  At least if he was getting zapped as he poked around the ceiling he wouldn't feel like a complete idiot.

Of course, that was a matter of perspective.

They kept at it, every now and then someone getting launched off another person's shoulders.  Shoes were taken off feet to prod at the spaces that seemed particularly sensitive, and they too were launched across the room once they hit whatever that electrical source was.  

“I don't think we're getting any further with this.”  Santana stammered as she picked herself up off the ground after getting shocked again, her hair floating around her like a brown and black cloud.  

“Well what else can we do?” Blaine grunted as he wiggled his fingers in between the space where the wall met the ceiling.  “Wait for death?”

“Instead of giving myself a heart attack by doing this?  Yeah.  Maybe.”

Purple lights shone down the center of the room and everyone paused and turned to look towards the three figures that came into being - the hairy shapeshifter, the white-eyed Other, and the Halfling woman.

“It continues to move closer.  Once this location is covered by its radius, this room will cease to function.  You need to tell us now - what is it?”  The Halfling yelled, looking at everyone and seemingly unconcerned about those that had their fingers in the wall spaces.

“Why on earth would we tell you anything if it means that we'd be freed?” Santana spoke up, stepping over and in front of the Halfling, dark eyes glaring at violet ones.

The Halfling woman's eyes narrowed into slits, and Blaine gulped.  Everything about her spoke danger, and it was as if he could see the rage floating around her.  She was not impressed by Santana's sudden burst of confidence.

“Fine.  Then we move you to a less magically inclined prison.  Only…”  The Halfling looked up and around the room, a smirk covering her sharply defined facial features.  “... we don't have enough chains for this many…. Ilu!”  She looked back at the white eyed one.  “Freeze them all and show me which ones have stronger attachment to the power source by their aura!”

Bodies froze, Blaine could only move his eyes which flitted around in panic as he saw glows of different colours and intensities forming on the bodies of his friends and colleagues - though once his own glow formed, he was nearly blinded by how strong it was.

Though not so blind as to avoid seeing what came next.

The Halfling unsheathed her sword, and then, with no more preamble, spun her blade and began slaughtering those whose aura's were lighter and weaker.  They weren't able to fight back.  They couldn't even yell as her blade sliced through them and any colour they had around them faded to nothing and their frozen bodies fell to the ground, forever unmoving now.

“Plenty of specimens for you to study now Ilu….”  The Halfling mused as she stepped back towards her kin, licking over her lips and grinning smugly.  “Chain the rest Bruno.  We'll take them topside.  It might be useful to have them after all if the power source comes close.”

Those that remained had chains clasped around their arms and legs by the hairy one, Bruno, while the white eyed one shuffled around the room to the bodies of those deemed unworthy of being alive and teleported them away.  Once they were all in chains, and the bodies gone, the Ilu pulled the bodies of the living close to himself and the Others, and the room reformed around them into a sphere which seemed to shift around them even though they still couldn't move.

Blaine couldn't speak still, but he could see his friends… Sam had been left, Santana, Karofsky, Jeff…. a few others… but there was only half as many of them left alive now, and all shared the same wide eyed, tear rimmed eyes.

Eyes that begged the question - how could this be happening?

There was a splash, and suddenly the glow of the room was replaced by that of the sun which shone through the now translucent sphere which looked down over a large lake below them from which they had emerged from.  They had been underwater.  How deep though?  If they had somehow managed to make the room cease functioning, would they have been so deep they would have drowned?

The sphere moved towards a pier where an old, abandoned restaurant stood.  They set down and the sphere disappeared, just like it had never existed in the first place, and one-by one, Bruno grabbed them like they were feathers and chained them to parking posts before the white-eyed one finally released his hold over their bodies.

Santana let out a cry then, tears falling freely now as she snapped her head back and looked at the Halfling, “You didn't have to kill them!”

Karofsky just kept shaking his head, mouth moving but no words coming from it as he stared at the ground while Sam just kept murmuring the names of those that had been slain and biting down on his lower lip until blood was drawn which dripped down with a little pitter-pat onto the concrete below them.

Jeff just stared.

“I told you.  Not enough chains.”  The Halfling said with all too much pleasure in her voice as she stepped around them.  “Besides, may as well keep the ones with the strongest attachment to the source of power.  Most of those that are now bodies only had no trace of the source of them….”

Santana looked towards Blaine then, and to his shock, started snapping at him, “Tell me again how it's not Kurt!  We're the ones out of that whole group closest to him and we're the ones still alive!  Your glow was the strongest of all of us! Tell me!  Tell me how we're alive and not them!”

Blaine just let his jaw go slack and shook his head at her, eyes staring blankly at the latino woman who struggled against her bonds, pulling her arms back as she cried openly, grieving for her friends she had just lost and crying out for Brittany before letting her head fall into her hands and her hands falling to the pavement as she sobbed into the ground.

Not far behind her, the Halfling chuckled.  Her face so full of pride that the human side showed.  Blaine turned his vacant stare towards her and glared.  “What are you so scared of?  Why is this power source so important?  Your kind has already destroyed most of humanity - what's a few more holdouts?”

The chuckling ended as she looked back at Blaine, face growing cold once more as she regarded him indifferently.  “You presume we care about what's left of your race.  We don't.  We just want the power for ourselves.  Humans can't be trusted with it.”

“We don't even know what the hell you're talking about though!  How can you assume we have any sort of control over it?!”

She smirked, thin pink lips curling up villainously, “Like your friend said - you had the brightest glow of all.  You tell me how you don't have control over it?”

His lips smacked shut and he just continued to glare at her, at a loss for a response aside from directly his anger towards her.  No matter what they thought, Kurt was not a monster like them.

Not even a little bit.

The white-eyed one, the one the Halfling called an Ilu, rattled off something in their language towards the Halfling woman and the Halfling nodded in turn, looking towards the hairy Other and speaking, “Watch them.  We're going to do some tests…”

So they were left with the massive, hairy giant who seemed to only have an interest in wearing tiny pants - which, given what Blaine had seen of other shapeshifters, was lucky.  Most he had seen were perfectly alright with walking around in the nude and it was a complete distraction for even the most anti-Other straight renegade males when a female shifter came into sight.  They were only human after all, and breasts were breasts.

Time passed, and Blaine looked up towards the sky as the stars came out, speaking over to Jeff, “Do you think you can chart where we are…?”

“Way ahead of you man…”  Jeff mumbled back, muttering different star names and constellations to himself as he looked around and did his work.  Jeff was something of a savant when it came to navigation.

Santana had cried herself to sleep on the pavement, while Sam and the others seemed to have gone completely mute after the massacre in the room, just staring at the ground.  Blaine wasn't going to let it get to him though, at least not here, at least not now.  He would get back to Kurt.  He would make sure he stayed safe.

“Northwest of home.  Directly north of where we were captured.”  Jeff finally whispered over, even though the hairy hulk didn't seem interested in what they were saying as he stared off towards the lake.  “If the radius of Kurt… er… the power source is similar to the distance between the community and where we were caught, then we're about a half day away from the edge of that circle by horseback.”

Blaine nodded to himself.  Get free, then make a dash southeast.  Good to know.   Get back to the safety of whatever it was that was protecting them all.   Get back to Kurt.

He just needed to figure out how to break free of the chains binding him to the post by his wrists and ankles.  There had to be a way.  

“It's old bronze…”  Jeff muttered and Blaine turned his head to look at his blonde haired friend who was examining the chains that bound him.  “.... like… really old.”

“Does that… help us somehow?”  Blaine asked, one brow perking up as he finally looked down at the bindings around him, noting the intricate patterns in the bands.

“Not even a little…”  Jeff sighed and looked towards Blaine, “... I just thought it was unusual…. it's old so you'd think it would have been made from iron, but it's bronze… thankfully not arsenic bronze… but still… huh.”

Blaine cringed at the word arsenic, even though Jeff had noted it wasn't in the metal holding him in place.

“What about the markings on it?”  Blaine asked, seeing if he could keep his friend's mind active and focused.

Jeff shook his head as he looked to it, “Not an art guy Blaine… don't know about that.  Best guess?  Just decorative.”

“Why decorate something used to hold your enemies?”  Blaine huffed, trying to sit himself down in a way that was comfortable.  He almost missed the white room given how much less giving the pavement was up on the surface.

“Don't ask me man… I'm not the one shacked up with an Other.”

Blaine's lips pressed together as he cast his eyes back up towards Jeff who was looking at him just as intently.  “You blame him for this too.”

“I don't blame anyone.  I'm just mad and I don't have anywhere to direct it aside from those things right now.”

“It's not Kurt's fault.”  Blaine snapped.

“If he didn't exist then they wouldn't be out here looking for him and killing people!”

“If he even IS the source of power they're looking for, then he's what's kept EVERYONE from being killed there.”

They both breathed heavily, staring at one another for awhile before turning their heads away in a mutual acceptance that this was neither the time nor place for a spitting match.  No doubt it would only amuse their captors and exhaust them, taking away their focus from getting free.

Not that Blaine had any idea how to go about that.

The sky became darker, lit only by stars and a small green line of northern lights, and his fellow captives all seemed to accept their state for the moment, falling asleep one by one.  Blaine tried to keep his eyes open.  The ground was too unforgiving, too cold, too uncomfortable to fall asleep on he told himself.  He couldn't allow himself any time for sleep that would be better spent trying to find a nonexistent memory of how to escape from bronze shackles and chains.

He somehow fell asleep anyhow.

Hours later, with the dawn trying to pry past his eyelids and his cheek screaming at him for being crushed against the pavement, Blaine awoke.  He forced his body back to sitting from where it had slumped itself over on the ground, and rubbed off the gravel bits from where they had stuck to the side of his arm and face, wincing at the numbness that radiated in the parts of him that weren't just plain aching.  

Most of the others were in the same state of waking - brushing off dirt and pebbles, rubbing their eyes, and looking vacantly out towards the lake where they had seen their comrades killed before their eyes the night before.  No greetings were shared, and no words spoken.  It was as if most of them had accepted their fate now that they had seen what the Others were capable of.  Something they had all been powerless to stop or even anticipate.  How could they fight against creatures that had the power to puppeteer their bodies?

The shapeshifter was no where in sight when Blaine looked around, at least, the first time he looked around.  A closer inspection towards the horizon where a nearby forest grew aside the lake revealed a wolf chasing after a rabbit, except the wolf was a good ten times the size of a normal canine.  He wasn't a bear, he was a wolf - brown and dark in color.

“Is that…?” Karofsky asked, catching sight of the same scene Blaine's eyes were locked onto.

“Yeah.  The shifter.”

“His jaws look bigger than my head….”

Blaine just nodded, watching the wolf make the final tackle that ended the escape of the rabbit and tear its head off with one savage movement of its jaws, consuming it in a bloody mess before all their eyes.

He wasn't just eating.  He was showing them just how dangerous he was to cross.

Blood covering his maw and rabbit decimated, his form pulled backwards, morphing piece by piece back into that of an Other, though with the blood still trailing from his lips down to his chest and below, where his small pants seem to have been destroyed at some point.  

He grinned as he walked past them, back to where he had been standing watch the night before - not even bothering to cover up or wipe the blood from his body.  The smug, toothy grin on his face told them all he was pleased with his kill, and they should know it.

The Halfling woman made her appearance not long after, glancing towards the hairy beast for half a breath, arching a brow, and then looking upon her captives.  “We are in the circle.”

Blaine looked down to his bindings, tugging on them gently and finding no give.  In the circle of protection or not, it didn't seem to affect the bronze fixed around his wrists or ankles.  

“He'll kill you… he'll kill you.  We saw him kill a whole group after coming back from the dead…”  Santana said, voice wrecked from her sobbing the night before.  She didn't say it to spite the Halfling this time though.  She was saying it as a matter of fact.  

“He's not -”  Blaine once again started, and then stopped as the Halfling spoke over him.

“Oh really?  So it is a person and not an object.  Good to know.”

Santana just repeated herself, and Blaine frowned as he watched her stare vacantly towards the ground - so close to losing herself to madness.  “He'll kill you…”

“Well I guess we'll find out soon enough.  It's been moving constantly towards this point at about… 60 miles per hour or 100 kilometers per hour… depending on whatever measurement system you humans use….”

Jeff twitched a little and, outburst from the night before temporarily forgotten, turned to Blaine to whisper, “That's too fast for a horse… especially moving constantly….”

“Well I know you humans don't have any dragon-kind on the surface, so your power source must also have some force of speed….” The Halfling stated simply, whispers clearly within her capacity to hear.

“Dragons… of course you'd have dragons….” Karofsky mumbled to himself, otherwise ignored by everyone else.

“Quads…”  Jeff said then, again turning his attention back to Blaine, “We had the quads all stored up near our Warbler house… Kurt…  he got the Bluebird running not too long ago…”

Blaine looked away, staring at the ground.  Again and again, all signs pointed to Kurt.  He wanted to argue.  He wanted to tell them all they were wrong… so wrong… but he found himself at a loss for arguments against it when more and more the evidence piled up against Kurt.  Kurt was unique, Kurt was special… Kurt…

Kurt was something, and it didn't matter what, because Blaine would still love him.

“How long until it gets here at that speed Jeff…?”  Blaine weakly queried, not bothering to look away from the dull grey of the pavement, cracked with inattention, weather, and age.

Jeff was quiet a moment, no doubt checking the position of the sun, and then mumbling to himself as he calculated things.  “About an hour…?”

Blaine sighed and looked up, towards the grass where there was still pieces of decapitated rabbit strewn about.  “An hour.”

The thought occurred to Blaine to suggest Jeff be put in charge of all things mathematical when they returned to the community…. IF they returned, because as Blaine counted in his head, and reached three thousand six hundred seconds, he noticed the Halfling pull her blade out and watched as the hairy Other shifted back into his wolf form while the white-eyed Other stood back behind them and lifted its hands as it prepared to cast some spell.  

They could see something… or sense it.

In the distance, there was a hum, a motor coming close, and then the Bluebird quad drove past, barren of a rider, and drove right into the lake where it sputtered and choked before it accepted its death.  The Others were only temporarily distracted by the sight, each looking their own way much the same the captives were, looking for the source of the commotion.

Then there was a bark, and all heads turned towards the building where a shadow peaked out from behind the edge of the structure.

“Pudding?!” Blaine sputtered as the black lab looked around, growling immediately at the sight of Others and tensing her lithe body.

“A dog?”  The Halfling snorted, lifting her sword and taking a step towards the bitch.  “This was all we were concerned over?”

“Pudding can't drive Blaine… right… can she…?”  Jeff asked, leaning over to whisper with nothing short of disbelief as his eyes locked onto the dog just as everyone else's were.

“I… I don't think so?”

They all watched, Blaine and his people just letting their jaws go slack at the most unexpected reveal, Blaine also now concerned for his dog - who the Halfling was advancing upon slowly, yelling back at the other two Others to, “Freeze it dammit!”

The white-eyed one said something in their tongue that made the Halfling growl audibly as she continued to advance, and as Pudding continued to growl and back up inch by inch, Blaine was guessing that whatever the power source did - it canceled out any powers the white-eyed one had, which meant Pudding couldn't be frozen by magic.

Which meant she had a chance to get away.

“Run Pudding!” Blaine yelled, pulling himself towards her as much as he could with being bound to the post.  It was bad enough the Others had no problem killing his kin from the community, Blaine didn't want to see his dog killed as well.

Loyal as ever, Pudding made a bark of acknowledgement to Blaine and then turned and ran, the Halfling chasing after her with sword drawn towards the forest.

“The damned dog was it the whole time…?”  Santana muttered, shaking her head.

Blaine shook his head too, “I… how could I know… I mean….”

There was a ‘swwfftt' of air and a gasping groan behind him that silenced Blaine's thought process.  As he turned he saw the large, hairy other snarling and grabbing at a stick embedded in his chest, blood dribbling out from around the edges where his skin had been punctured.  The white-eyed one yelling and pointing up towards the roof as an arrow flew through Blaine's line of sight and hit the shifter once more in the other side of his chest.  The beast was so dense though he barely flinched from the attack, instead growling and looking up to the roof and towards his attacker.

“Kurt….” Blaine mouthed, his whole body weakening at the sight of his lover taking aim once again at the animal that wouldn't fall for his arrows, and instead advanced on the building while the white-eyed Other flailed its arms and babbled in its language.

“It was him….” Jeff murmured, hazarding a glance towards Blaine who just watched in stunned silence, silently praying for Kurt to leave, run, disappear - anything that would get him out of harm's way.

But Kurt stayed, shooting arrow after arrow into the beast until it had climbed to the roof with its large, clawed hands, and Kurt found himself without any arrows left in his pack.  They all watched as Kurt went hand to hand then, fighting and kicking at the monster in front of him without hesitation, but with no advantage.

And when Kurt was knocked down from the building by one swift hit from the hairy monster, Blaine could only cry out his name and then watch while, for the second time in his memory, Kurt stopped moving as he hit the ground.