Chapter 2: The Trap

“It’s just in here,” he said, his voice suddenly losing its nervous edge, replaced by something smooth and cold as polished steel. He gestured toward the glove box. “A perfect distraction.”

The phrase was the only warning I received. Before I could process its meaning, my senses screamed. A figure erupted from the back seat. As the coarse, damp cloth pressed hard over my mouth and nose, my powerful legs tensed to shove the seat back, my fingers instinctively curling into fists. But I was too late. A cold, silver venom seeped into my veins, a cellular betrayal.

The betrayal was a sharper, more physical pain than the poison. In that sliver of a second of shock, as my body fought the creeping toxin, he acted. His fingers, surprisingly nimble, didn’t justgrab for the coiled Lasso; they found the master clasp of my golden girdle itself, the Belt of Gaia that anchored the Lasso to my very being and acted as a conduit for much of my earthly power.

“Gotcha now,” he crowed, and with a sharp, metallic click, he unfastened it.

The moment the belt was torn from my body, the effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. It was not like the creeping lethargy of the poison; it was a violent, gravitational shearing. A profound, sickening lurch went through me, a vertigo of the soul. The divine strength that saturated my every cell, the might of the earth itself gifted to me at my creation, was suddenly… gone. Not suppressed, but unplugged. My muscles, capable moments before of resisting the poison’s full effect, became dead weight. The power didn’t fade; it was ripped out, leaving a hollow, aching void in its place. A gasp of pure, soul-deep shock escaped my lips as I felt my own divine essence being stolen.

“Did you really think I was some star-struck fool? Oh, you poor, beautiful thing,” he taunted. He did not see a warrior deceived; he saw a ‘thing,’ its value determined by its beauty, its status defined by its victimhood. It was a reduction, the first and most common weapon of men who fear female strength.

With my power so violently severed, the poison now faced no resistance. It flooded my system, a triumphant tide overwhelming a fallen fortress. I felt my own powerful hands go slack in my lap, my fingers uncurling against my will. The taut, sculpted muscles in my thighs and back turned to water. My head, which I held high with the pride of a princess, grew impossibly heavy, slumping forward until my chin rested against my breastplate. My eyelids, which had stared down gods and monsters, fluttered and closed.

“Don’t struggle,” my captor cooed. “This is a special little recipe, designed to peel away the goddess and leave only the woman. Sleep tight.” His laughter was a distorted, underwater sound as my powerful lungs, which could hold the air of the deepest oceans, struggled for a single, shallow breath. My last conscious sensation was of my own hand falling, limp and useless, from my lap. Then, the darkness took me.