Inspired loosely by a music video you might recognize.
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1. Backstory: Just a fairly quick rundown ...
Katrina kills monsters. Specifically, a demonic race from another dimension called Snatchers. They like to steal children, crawling up into our world through horrible goopy portals underneath the kids' beds. They can only open those portals when the kids are having bad dreams, which generate psychic energy the Snatchers somehow home in on and manipulate.
Our protagonist Katrina is a college sophomore, somewhat nerdy yet still quite attractive, blonde and slim and sassy, who learned about the Snatchers when her three little cousins got taken while she was babysitting them. She was making out with her boyfriend on the living room couch, as babysitters so often tend to do, while the snatch was occurring, but heard the kids scream and ran into their room just in time to see them dragged away through the foul steaming portals, which immediately sealed and vanished as if they'd never existed. Of course nobody believed her story, including her boyfriend. He's not her boyfriend any longer.
Shortly afterwards, her therapist sent her to a support group that turned out to be a front for a team of monster killers, half a dozen girls like her with similar stories. The group's counselor, Professor Bogarty, is actually a sorceress who trains and equips the girls with magical weaponry. The professor herself is half-demonic, and an outcast from the Snatcher's realm, which is why she now helps the girls. She doesn't much care about the stolen children, just wants vengeance on her kind.
Professor Bogarty can make portals of her own, allowing Katrina's group to invade the Snatcher's dimension. Only it's not easy for her. It's not something she can pull off every day. The spell requires a big pile of monster heads as a power source. Katrina and the others must obtain these for her.
In another paragraph, where the tale will properly get cooking, we join Katrina on a day they've successfully gathered a big enough heap of monster heads to make a portal and penetrate their enemies' home base, the Fortress of Obscenity. They bring a bomb to destroy the place, once and for all. But then, oh no, for some reason it doesn't work. Treachery? Incompetence? There's no time to figure it out; the monsters are swarming them from all sides and the team must flee. Except Katrina is separated from the rest and left behind. (She fell through a trapdoor.) The monsters have her cornered. As talented as she is with her "deathstick"—a sort of quarterstaff with enchantments so it can also shoot lightning bolts—there's no way she can fend off all the creatures by herself. She'll be hacked to pieces! Unless ...
2. She Gives Up:
"Wait!" Katrina yelled, and threw down her deathstick. It clattered on the stone floor, both tips fizzling red, but then its power dissipated as it was designed to if she wasn't holding it in her hands, and it contracted to half its length. "I surrender! Don't kill me! You don't have to kill me!"
All children the Snatchers snatched were converted into monsters—more Snatchers. Except for a few exceptions, 'cause occasionally their transformative process was unsuccessful. That was what had happened to Professor Bogarty, in her youth. She only got partially converted, yet didn't die as the failures most often did. Hence her banishment.
Grownups could not be converted. Snatchers rarely bothered with them. When they did, they simply ate them. That was what Professor Bogarty had said. Would Katrina be eaten? Or was she still young enough for the creatures to attempt conversion? Perhaps they might decide to keep her as a hostage, to hold over her comrades and stop them from attempting another assault. Perhaps they would want to interrogate her, to learn more about the other girls. Their plans, their abilities. It would be a sensible move. It was what Katrina would choose in their position.
"I can give you information," she said, "If you spare me, I'll tell you everything I know." She would lie. She would make up all sorts of outrageous stuff. Confuse them and frighten them as much as possible. She'd tell them she worked for the government. She'd make them believe the CIA was on to them, not just a little vigilante group of college students.
They marched her along twisting tunnels, deeper and deeper beneath the fortress. The creatures didn't bother to tie her hands or put her in chains, but they continually prodded at her with their spears and cleavers. She gnashed her teeth as tight as she could to keep from crying out each time she got another agonizing jab on her shoulders or her back. All the Snatchers were twice as tall as her, covered in shaggy hair that was luridly colored either green or purple. Their heads and faces looked a lot like rams, with backward-curling horns. A few of them had wings but not the majority.
Katrina wore no special armor or uniform, just comfy, practical, no-nonsense workout clothes. A sleeveless pullover hoody and loose leggings, with running shoes, plus a headband to keep her hair out of her eyes. Most of her friends had dressed the same kind of way, though a couple had preferred leather jackets and jeans and boots. Trying to make themselves feel a bit more hardass, no doubt. Katrina wondered if she'd ever see any of them again. She wondered if they would try to rescue her.
She didn't see how it would be possible. Not any time soon. They'd need to collect a bunch more monster heads to make a new portal. Putting that problem aside, even if they could have come back right that second, how would they know where to open the passage? How would they be able to find where she'd been taken? The Fortress of Obscenity was enormous. The size of a mountain.
Katrina was brought to a ledge, and then, with ominous creaks and clanks, a huge hefty lopsided ball of brownish corroded metal was lowered in front of her, dangling from a thick chain. It was like a wrecking ball. Not at all smooth or shiny. It was scuffed and scarred and pitted, with bulges in some spots, other parts flattened or dented inwards. Actually it wasn't exactly huge, not as much as she first thought. Maybe twice as big around as a beach ball. Still quite big but not enormous—just slightly too wide for a single person to be able to wrap their arms around it. The black chain it hung on looked about as thick as one of her arms, or maybe a bit skinnier.
She couldn't see what it was hanging from, if there was an actual moveable crane looming up there over her head, or if the thing was embedded in the roof of this cavern. The chain's top end, that was too far away for her, too dark to see. While below the ball seemed to be nothing but a chasm, equally black. There was a funny smell coming up from it. She thought she recognized that stink but at the same time couldn't identify what it was.
Soon as the ball was positioned roughly level with her waist, with no warning she was shoved toward it off the ledge. She was too startled to scream. Katrina just barely managed to fling her arms up across the top of the ball in time to catch hold of its chain—otherwise she would have rebounded or slid right off the crusty surface and plummeted immediately into the blackness to certain doom. Instead, gasping and swearing, she was able in a few moments to pull her legs up and plant her feet against the curved metal, until she was huddled in a crouch on top the ball, and more or less safe there so long as she kept both hands fixed on the chain. After that, working hand over hand, she straightened herself until she stood fully upright with her feet squeezed together on either side of the chain, pressing as tight on it with her shoes as she was with her hands.
The ball moved, as soon as she was standing. The chain that suspended her was made to glide sideways farther and farther away from the ledge she'd been pushed from. It lowered itself at the same time, so she was moving at an angle. A reddish glow appeared beneath her, as well as wisps of steam, and great heat. The light was very faint at first but brightened rapidly.
It was lava. A pool of boiling lava forming directly below her, getting larger and larger as the ball descended toward it, and because more lava kept being added to it, pouring in from sloped channels along the sides of the cavern.
From above she heard laughter and cheers and stomping. Snatchers had gathered upon several levels of encircling balconies, quite a good size crowd. Their faces were gleeful, their black eyes shining. They were eager to witness her demise. Some threw garbage at her, hunks of rotten fruit or worse things. None of their aim was any good, thankfully.
The lava was still a considerable distance from her, and yet already its heat was almost impossible to bear. The air scorched inside her nose and throat each time she took a breath. Her eyes stung if she opened them for more than a second. Actually they kept on stinging just as bad when she kept them closed. She had to hop from foot to foot because the ball had turned too hot to stand on. It hurt her feet even through the thick soles of her running shoes.
