Iris gritted her teeth as a blast of pain-inducing blood magic rolled through her body, starting from the tips of her toes, slowly flowing upward, until it finished at the top of her head, slowly creeping up just an inch at a time! As each nerve-ending was overwhelmed and briefly shut down, the spell moved like a contagion to the next, activating a fresh nerve, so the process could start all over again!

  Sweat dripped from her body into the puddle she sat in, because the repeated torture spells had raised her body temperature. Her arms were stretched behind her back in an extremely uncomfortable way, her hands chained together behind the rough, granite column her back was against.

  She’d initially tried casting spells to escape, but her minder was too fast with a stun spell for that to ever work.

  Standing at the center of the dirty cell was the Docking Witch, who looked on Iris with admiration and muttered, “That’s amazing. Eleven of those in a row. I’ve never seen anyone last so long, without screaming.”

  With the spell finished, Iris looked up with an intense glare, “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.”

  “You don’t have too endure this. You could just tell me what you tried to do to the spell-core.” The witch shook her head, then lowered her voice, “Keep going like this as long as you can, because she’s planning to consume your soul, once you break. Do you still believe your sister will rescue you?”

  Iris nodded.

  “Good. Hold that thought as long as you can.” The witch once again raised her voice, “Tell me what you tried to do to the spell-core!”

  Iris gave the woman another intense glare and growled, “You can kiss my rosy, red-” she cursed, then screamed, “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2!”

  “Sorry about this.” The witch muttered, then strung together the witch’s words of the torture spell: ‘blood’, ‘agony’, ‘torture’ and ‘slow’.

  Another wave of agony rolled through Iris, as she met the gaze of her interrogator.

  “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.” Iris muttered.

  The words had gone beyond mere rote and become a mantra representing her stubborn will to resist to the bitter end, but every time she repeated them, her mind went back to Dugaria, the WIA, the battles she’d observed from up close and the mountain of corpses she’d tallied.

  “Tell me what you were doing!” The witch screamed and hit Iris with another blast of magic!

  Iris suddenly floated above the pain, looking down at herself, as if from above. Her body was in agony, but her spirit would always be free, because pain was merely physical and expected.

  She wasn’t quite sure what she was experiencing, but it was very much like remote-viewing, though she hadn’t spoken the words.

  The torture spell ended and her body spoke, “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2!”

  Iris walked the room, observing from every angle as the interrogation continued with the fourteenth agony spell and her body’s declaration of name, rank and serial number.

  She looked down and finally noticed the sheer size of the puddle of sweat on the floor, which was enough to cause severe dehydration, indicating her body was near death. Iris felt strangely disconnected and detached from the situation, but hypothetically that had always been a part of remote-viewing, leaving the body behind, to let the spirit roam. She just hadn’t known it was possible without the words of a spell, though the magic was clearly easier when one was close to death and wished to be anywhere but present.

  Iris stepped around the column her body was chained to and got a good look at her manacles. The cast-iron chains were old and stained with the blood of others. The locks were quite simple, single tumbler affairs, which was quite sufficient. After all, if the correct length was used, as the current case, the person chained to the column would never be able to reach the locks, at least not with their body.

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  Iris reached out and touched the chain, lifting it very slightly. That confirmed she really was remote-viewing and able to remote-touch. She’d been slightly worried she was spirit-walking, a phenomenon witches that had near-death experiences sometimes described, in which they left their bodies behind for a time, while they were effectively in a coma.

  The current situation left Iris with more questions than answers, however, most of them regarding the nature of magic. Was the witch’s tongue even required to cast spells, or was it merely a concentration aid?

  Iris briefly considered attacking the Docking Witch, but immediately discarded that option, because without an escape route off the monolith, what was the point of getting loose? No, it was better to wait for Amelia, who was sure to cause lots of commotion, because her plans were always on a grand and flashy scale, at least if she had time enough to consider.

  As much as Iris hated to admit it, she knew it would be better to save her surprise for the perfect opportunity.

  She concentrated to end her inadvertent spell and returned to her body.

  “Water.” Iris requested, “I think I’m dying.”

  The Docking Witch scowled and hissed, “Don’t you realize I’ve been trying to kill you ‘by accident’, to spare you from being consumed?”

  Iris whispered back, “Can’t be rescued if I’m dead.”

  “Fine.” The witch growled.

  She lifted a canteen from a pair of hooks on her belt, opened the lid and pressed it to the lips of her prisoner. Iris drank freely, feeling slightly revitalized.

  The door opened and the Queen stepped into the room, followed by the biggest dog Iris had ever seen, which had glowing, red eyes.

  The Queen ordered, “Report.”

  The Docking Witch answered, “She’s stronger than any witch I’ve interrogated. All I’ve gotten from her is her name, rank in some military I’ve never heard of and what’s presumably her service number.”

  “Really?” The Queen rubbed her chin, causing a bit of dead and decayed skin to flake off, “Reverse your tactics.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  The Queen stepped close to her subordinate and whispered in her ear for some time, while the Docking Witch’s eyes went wide as her face filled with disgust. That was more worrying than anything else Iris had seen on the monolith. Having finished her business, the Queen once again left them alone and her dog followed her out.

  The Docking Witch’s eyes teared up as she offered, “I really am sorry about this.”

  She muttered in the witch’s tongue, using the words for ‘blood’, ‘pleasure’, ‘addiction’ and ‘slow’. The effect was nearly identical to the torture spell, though it was reversed, producing a wave of pleasure that started in the toes and rose through the body, activating every nerve-ending in the most wonderfully-wrong fashion Iris had ever experienced, leaving her initially speechless, but after a minute, she couldn’t help but moan. After five, she was able to hold back no longer, finally letting out the screams she been suppressing all day, but for all the wrong reasons! The spell lasted an entire hour, until Iris was unconscious, because the pleasure center of her brain had been completely overwhelmed.

  Iris woke feeling more awful than she had after a day of torture, with a powerful craving for more of the pleasure magic, because while it had been the single most intense experience of her life, it hadn’t been at all satisfying and she wanted more.

  The Docking Witch spoke with extreme distaste, “If you give me answers, I’ll give you another taste of that spell. For every answer you give me, you get one minute.”

  Iris shook her head, but deep down, in the very depths of her soul, she wanted to give in. Tears filled her eyes as she tried to forget the mountain of pleasure that her entire body ached to feel again.

  “What were you doing to the spell-core?” The Docking Witch requested.

  Iris softly muttered, “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.”

  The self-hypnosis qualities of her WIA interrogation-resistance training failed to have the desired effect, because she’d only been trained to resist torture. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped to the floor, because she knew her will had been broken. She was going to give in and it was only a matter of time.

  “Just say one word and I’ll give you a little hit of what you’re craving.” The Docking Witch offered as a tear dropped from her own eye, making it apparent she didn’t care for what she’d been forced to do.

  Iris resisted for ten minutes as the question was repeated, over and over, while she found her mind wandering back to that terrible, yet wonderfully-wrong mountain she wished to crest again.

  “What were you doing to the spell-core?”

  “Remote-touch.” Iris finally answered and the witch delivered on her promise, using the spell Iris craved to experience again.

  She resisted between each session of the spell, but slowly gave up her secrets, a few words at a time. The interrogation took all day, but Iris knew she’d been broken and the worst part of it was the way she was grateful she’d given in. When it was all over, she felt dirty, hopeless and empty, as if she’d been selling her body on the street.

  The only thing she’d managed to keep back was her budding escape plan, but that was only because the Docking Witch never asked.

  At the end of the day, Iris was rewarded with another hit of the spell at full-strength, lulling her off to sleep.