****** Crown of Torments ******
                           Provided By: BDSM_Library
                              www.bdsmlibrary.com



Synopsis: The Necromancer returns from the grave to take his harrowing revenge
against the Warrior Queen and her supporters.
This story is fantasy fiction set in a fantasy world depicting extreme
and very graphic torture. It is intended for mature adults not offended
by such material and the author does not endorse or excsue violence of any
kind.

Chapter 1 - From the Dead

The thumping of boots and the clanking of metal echoed eerily in the rough,
winding corridors. No light had graced their descent except for the wavering
flames of their own torches, and the triumphant pace of the first steps had
become more and more hesitant the farther down they went, as shapes hiding in
the dark receded just out of torchlight range.

Even the blond mane standing as tall as the rest among the helms no longer
shook in defiance every few steps, resisting the two burly warriors dragging
their captive along. The ominous silence of the underground complex had
silenced even Kayleen, Warrior Queen of Tarnis, a feat none had pulled before;
her bright blue eyes seeking in the darkness the reason for the sudden turn of
the events which brought her here.

Now that the group had slowed, she could walk as fast as the rest in spite of
the short chain linking her fettered ankles, which had hobbled her ordinarily
spirited pace much as fear had hobbled the warriors during the ambush. Fear of
her, of her prowess, of the legendary Warrior Queen who had struck down the
evil tyranny of Zhorun the Necromancer; even at odds of twenty to one, even
after catching her on a hunting trip, after she dispatched the boldest three
none of them would come near her and she almost put them to flight. Almost.

One of them, more enterprising than the others, hit her solidly on the temple
with a sling bullet, dazing her long enough for the others to gather their
courage and swarm her. Once subdued, they manacled her with strong iron cuffs
and pushed a wooden tack in her mouth to prevent her from calling for help,
wasting no time in marching her to their destination ... these passages, under
the ruins of Zhorun's former castle. Leaving her legs free to walk soon proved
a bad choice, as at her first chance she brought one down with a savage kick
to the knee and sought to escape, but there were too many of them.

After the episode, her captors decided to take no more chances and bound her
cuffed hands behind her back, tying them to a rope tightened around her waist,
binding her arms to a staff brought up under her shoulders and encasing her
soft hunting boots in iron cuffs connected with a short chain, to prevent her
from running effectively. Since this also prevented her from walking quickly
enough for their intents, they had to took turns into goading and carrying her
by the staff under her shoulders, while the strong woman spared no effort to
make their lives harder. Until now.

The corridors were over, and their steps now sounded like they were in a sort
of large underground hall, with imposing pillars rising up in the darkness to
a ceiling beyond the dwindling light of the torches. A dripping sound could be
faintly heard in the distance, but no other noise could be heard beyond those
of their own making. One of them addressed the leader, whispering for no good
reason: "This must be the place. I say we leave her here and leave now."

The leader, a large man still smarting from the vicious punch Kayleen had
managed to land on his eye during her recapture, shook his head and whispered
back, "No, we're supposed to bring her before the Master himself. If this
wildcat escapes after we depart ..." and left the rest unspoken as his voice
trailed off. To Kayleen's ears, that made no sense: the Master was how Zhorun
was addressed by his subjects, but the necromancer had met his end on her
sword sixteen months ago, freeing Tarnis and vaulting her on the throne.

"Exactly," whispered a voice in the darkness, a screech like glass on
cobblestone. Everybody jumped, and Kayleen softly muttered into the tack, "No
... it cannot be. You are dead." realization hitting her as all pieces of the
puzzle fell into place. The elusive deer leading her away from the others, the
warriors whose colors she could not recognize, and the hideout under the ruins
of the accursed castle: she should have known better. The ambush had been
prepared to take her, alive, before Zhorun.

While Kayleen's mind realized the truth, the leader had recovered and barked
to his men, "Very well, bring her forth ..." as he wanted to make a good
impression when delivering the Warrior Queen before his Master. His last word
sputtered in blood as Kayleen's sudden head butt hit him full force under the
chin, sending him sprawling on the floor before turning in a determined rush
for the corridor. But even the mighty Warrior Queen could not defeat a dozen
warriors while in chains, so she never got there, although subduing her proved
taxing for the warriors being humiliated before their Master.

"I see our Queen does not wish to be our guest," said the screeching voice as
its bearer drew nearer, yet somehow distant, as if coming from dark depths
beyond the word light by the sun. "It's a pity. We've prepared her stay for
months, even since our last encounter."

As the voice entered the range of the torches, the warriors holding them
almost let them fall, as the small caped possessor of the voice was a vision
from Hell, a walking corpse smelling of rot and decay barely held together by
heavy black robes torn open at the left shoulder, where a ghastly sword wound
almost reached to the midsection.

"Your smell did not improve ..." spat the struggling woman, which was being
held by three warriors while the leader was still unable to get up, but her
voice trailed off losing the remaining of the stinging comment because
Zhorun's condition became obvious to her as much as to his henchmen, as those
men inured to the worst crimes caught themselves muttering prayers from their
lost childhoods.

"I should thank you and your ministrations for that, o gracious Queen." said
the voice coming from the empty space between a worm infested nose and a limp
jaw bone, in a visage from the grave where two reddish points of light shone
at the bottom of empty eye sockets. His rotting hand, which had been clutching
a staff, extended towards her slowly and the voice said, "Yet, more pressing
matters require your and my attention before I can show the full extent of my
gratitude for that. Remove the tack and bring her along."

With that, he turned and started slowly limping into the darkness of the hall,
but the warriors holding Kayleen hesitated until the leader materially pushed
them forward, just as the robed corpse was leaving the torchlight area. After a
while he spoke again, "You carried yourselves well, today. They haven't even
started to search for her yet. When they will, they'll find tracks aplenty ...
leading all over the kingdom. If, as loyal subjects are wont to do, they'll
leave none untried, your warriors will end up spread very thin. Too thin to
resist my forces, I wager."

As Kayleen drew her breath, about to reply that the few followers he could
still muster would be no match for her warriors, the robed figure started down
yet another flight of stairs, and the leader ordered, "Lift her and carry her
down. No tricks on those stairs." much to the chagrin of the woman who had
been planning exactly that. The voice spoke again, "Yes, the might of our
Warrior Queen is indeed renowned. A shining example on the battlefield ...
unless she's missing." at which one of the warriors coming down mumbled, "It
was not just her. It was also that redhead bitch, the sorceress."

The memories of that day fluttered in Kayleen's mind for a moment, the day
when the people rose against the tyrant and his henchmen, but her attention
was almost fully devoted to her predicament, as this area was unmistakably a
prison, with dark cells and, as she realized when her heart missed a beat upon
entering, a torture chamber.  

The chamber was a large, vaulted hall divided in sections by thick pillars and
lit by torches and braziers large and small. Three occupants had been
obviously waiting for their arrival and drew nearer: a burly man of pale
complexion wearing a leather apron, a wry Easterner with slanted eyes and thin
dropping mustache and an olive skinned, fat old man wearing a large collection
of shiny jewelry. The withered hand rose to encompass them in a mocking
introduction, "My Queen, let me introduce you to the advisers I carefully
selected for the matter to be soon addressed between you and me. On your left
is Hadhar, from a secluded oasis in the Southern Desert, from which he brought
many of his specialties. The other here is Chang, from the Far East, a guest
of highly refined tastes and exquisite finesse. And of course there is Grod,
who has been in my service long enough that his name should be well known to
you already."

The cold fingers of fear crawled up Kayleen's spine, as the loathed name of
Grod was indeed known by its sinister fame to her, and the other two were
probably the same or worse. One of the warriors behind her commented to a
comrade, "It's going to be hell for the bitch now!" and her heart sank as she
contemplated the gruesome fate which her prowess could not avoid. Of course,
Zhorun was bent on taking a slow and painful revenge on her and had concocted
this elaborate plan to satiate his hatred.

"Indeed," chuckled the voice, while the old man grinned and Grod wandered off
in the chamber, "But there is a matter is of more pressing concern. While
during our last encounter it was your sword that presented me this gift I
still bear, and our valiant warrior correctly reminded us of how troublesome
Shandra the Sorceress proved, I am now informed that there was a third meddler
involved, one Lyreen, a devoted Priestess."

"He knows of Lyral," raced Kayleen's mind, "although he got the name wrong, at
least." This was something the Warrior Queen had not anticipated, because the
role of young, devoted Lyral had indeed been instrumental in Zhorun's defeat,
but mostly because her powers of healing had allowed Kayleen instant respite
from her wounds after each fight. Unlike herself and Shandra, although the
latter only so far as her magic would last, Lyral would not be able to put up
much of a fight. There had to be something about Lyral and her powers which
was of utmost importance to Zhorun.

The walking corpse staggered nearer, his foul stench now unmistakable as if
aroused, and spoke in her face, "I want the Priestess. She lives at a shrine,
I am positive, and you must give the exact location to me, so that she can be
brought in my power." The prospect of vulnerable, innocent Lyral in the hands
of the Necromancer would have been enough to draw her sword even before, when
she was but a wandering warrior. The Priestesses were rather secretive,
however, so he would be hard pressed to locate her with only the wrong name
to go by. So loathsome was the creature before her that her fears turned into
resolution on the spot and she sneered "Go find her yourself, wretch."

"I did not expect you to cooperate, of course. Grod, you may proceed." hissed
the robed figure, taking a few steps back. Grod spoke for the first time, with
a low, raucous voice which startled Kayleen, addressing the assembled warriors
and not the leader, "Bring her here. Her restraints need some work." This did
not fare well with the latter, who had took care of restraining the captive to
his liking after her first attempt, so he felt like scoring a point and
smirked "Be careful with her. She's a wildcat."

When she was dragged to where Grod stood, the Warrior Queen noticed that Grod
did not want to take chances with her: hanging from a beam overhead he had
lowered a solid hemp rope, which despite her struggles he adeptly arranged
around her neck, looping it tightly three or four times and then pulling it up
until she was forced to stand on the tips of her boots. He then positioned
himself before her and waited.

The attitude of the assembled warriors, meanwhile, was changing. She was no
longer a dangerous opponent, or a valuable captive; her stares now longed on
her body, which the restraints and the hunting outfit did not conceal fully.
Her panting and small, halting steps were turning her into an object of lust.
She had only one man in her life, her would-be husband whose grisly death at
the hands of Zhorun's henchmen set things in motion many months ago, but she
was no stranger to lustful stares; now, however, she was not in the position
to choose.

As her eyes wandered on the leering warriors, Grod suddenly hit her hard in
her stomach. Her reflexes allowed her to harden her muscles and even roll with
the blow somewhat, but Grod was a strong man and her position severely
restricted her air supply, so she gurgled and would have doubled over had she
not been restrained. Grod kneeled and started removing her leg irons and the
soft hunting boots, replacing them with heavy, tight ankle cuffs which he then
connected together with a short chain, while his captive struggled to catch
her breath as each leg was lifted in turn, leaving her gasping for air.

Satisfied with his work, Grod rose and circled behind the struggling Warrior
Queen, who was now discovering that the soft boots had been the only thing
allowing her to reach the floor and was trying to extend her long, slender legs
to gain that half inch which made the difference between breathing and
choking. Thus, she was no obstacle as Grod removed the restraints tying her
arms behind her back and placed another pair of cuffs on her wrists, pulling
her arms up above her head. "She's turning blue." commented the leader.

Grod knew his stuff, however, so he stood and waited, removing the rope from
the neck only when it suited him. Onlookers were then treated to the sight of
the strong, athletic figure of Kayleen hanging barefooted by her wrists,
panting heavily as she recovered her breath. The robed figure mocked, "A sight
to behold, Grod. Aren't you going to reveal more of the delectable charms she
is endowed with to our faithful followers ?"

"I am, Master. In a short time." rumbled the large man. As Kayleen's sight
cleared, she saw Grod pick up a long, heavy bullwhip, weighting it for a while
before cracking it twice to test it. The first crack startled her, but at the
second the Warrior Queen closed her eyes and sighed within, "It begins now.
I will not falter. These wretches will not get anything from me."


Chapter 2 - The Matter at Hand

Hanging by her wrists, the Warrior Queen awaited her fate. She still wore hen
hunting outfit, although torn here and there during her capture, but her bare
feet dangled above the floor. She had closed her eyes, waiting for the whip,
but when the crack came nothing happened. As she opened her eyes in surprise,
she took in his wicked grin no sooner than the heavy whip found its mark on
her left thigh, slashing her breeches. She stifled a scream which was as much
of pain as of enraged surprise, as her legs pulled up in reflex. She was no
stranger to pain, she had been wounded in combat before, but now her sword
could exact no retribution, and no opponent would be defeated.

The grin on Grod's face subsided, as his little game was met with only partial
success. He had not taken well to the two newcomers in his dungeon, as if he
were not up to the task, so he was determined to break her. Since she was no
ordinary woman, he had chosen not to strip her to follow up with a light
whipping for warming her up to the benefit of the others. His first strike
with the heavy, long whip had torn a wide gash in her breeches, but the welt
on the shapely thigh was not bleeding. Her hunting outfit would stem some of
the bite of the heavy bullwhip. At first.

Another three strikes, in quick succession, landed on Kayleen's back. She kind
of screamed, a halting, spiteful scream. The next strike landed on her right
calf, on bare skin, drawing blood as she hissed. Grod hit her again a few
times, pausing in between, then circled around and landed the next blow on her
taut stomach, followed immediately by another at the front of her thigh and by
a third which landed on her left breast. She cried for real this time, and the
onlookers salivated at the sight of the voluptuous body writhing under the
whip, whose lashes were shredding her outfit to tatters.

This Warrior Queen showed all signs of being proud and stubborn, not likely to
yield so easily. He pressed on, lashing her nice legs again and then moving to
the arms stretched above her head, which proved a difficult target as the whip
would wrap around instead of slicing the fabric open. Changing his mind, he
targeted with a smile first one and then the other tempting breast, and was
rewarded when the shirt revealed a nipple as she cried behind clenched teeth.

With each lash, Kayleen felt her resolve waning. She could not dodge the whip,
she could not fight back, all she could do was writhe and scream. Grod did not
strike at regular intervals, but paused often to let the pain sink in before
renewing it. Just as she thought that, he launched a barrage of strikes in
rapid succession, raining one after another all over her body as she gasped in
pain. Her outfit now shredded, the Warrior Queen hung before her nemesis and
his cohorts, who now ogled the magnificent body revealed by the lash.

The whip slashed again at her leg, drawing all eyes to the slender, athletic
limbs rising up as a moan left Kayleen's throat, followed by another higher in
pitch as the strong leather licked her exposed buttocks, where only tatters of
her breeches remained. The eyes stayed on her full, muscular buns contracting
under yet another painful sting of the vicious bullwhip, only to follow it as
it bit her side and immediately thereafter her caved stomach, as she turned
around under the force of the blow. The lashes climbed up her athletic body,
now mostly naked, up to her clenching fists, and then moved down again trough
her stretched, long arms, where the muscles flexed on each blow, to the round,
proud breasts now undergoing another barrage of strikes among her drawn out,
muffled shrieks, and finally to the front of thighs again.

After another strike which removed the last tatter of leather from her left
tit, Grod let one of his pauses draw out and finally put the whip aside,
moving to the chains stringing the Warrior Queen up. She was lowered to the
floor, gulping and battered but still attempting to disguise her relief as
her chafing wrists found some respite. A bucket of cold water was dumped on
her limp body, followed by another, and she took long, avid draughts from a
jug brought to her mouth.

Her respite lasted just long enough to let her believe that it was over, then
the wretched shell of a wizard came along and asked, "Is there anything you
wish to share with us, now?" followed by a gleeful "I thought so," as his
inquiry met only silence.

Grod bound her wrists behind her back and then pulled her up by her ankles,
suspending her upside down. "No, not again!" she muttered, catching herself
just before letting it out aloud for the enjoyment of those sick bastards.

The sick bastards, meanwhile, were enjoying the sight of her luscious body in
inverted suspension. Kayleen was a tall, athletic blonde whose fair skin, in
spite of a healthy life in the open air, had tanned only slightly, just enough
to show what modesty had kept from the sun. Most of her body, except for the
arms, bore only tatters of her hunting outfit and was crisscrossed by welts,
some bleeding; removing the rest would have taken but a swat of the hand, but
Grod had other plans. Her position exposed, among other places, the soft
underside of her firm breasts, and Grod made a point to himself to remove the
shreds of her shirt still clinging there, striking first one and then the
other as her head bent backward in a silent cry of anguish.

The whip uncoiled with a crack and bit her left arm, bound behind her, and
then found its mark on the right arm, targeting the remains of the sleeves.
But soon the tip returned to other parts, more tender, such as the crease
between her buttocks and the soft flesh between bun and thigh. Strike after
strike, Grod attempted to extort from her a real scream, but only managed to
obtain muffled cries, hisses and gasps. This bothered him, and his blows
became more vicious, with longer pauses to let the pain linger before renewing
it in a different position. Nobody was keeping count, but the blows rained on
the writhing Warrior Queen slowly and deliberately, one after another, causing
her to twist and bend at the waist, shaking her head in anguish. Her tits were
now marked by a number of bleeding slashes, her nipples on fire, and no trace
of cloth remained on the martyrized undersides.

Screaming and vainly fighting tears, Kayleen clung to her dedication as the
urge to give up first entered her mind. Grod was targeting her thighs now,
where some remnants of her breeches still clung. She almost blanked when the
whip bit behind the knee, and again when it lashed below her belly, near her
private parts, Her eyes met those of her tormentor, and she knew what fear he
had read in hers, because the hellish whip landed between her legs, causing
her to scream aloud for the first time. "We hear her sing, at last. It took
entirely too much time!" said the Southerner derisively.

If Grod heard the remark, he reacted by landing another and yet another blow
on the insides of her thighs. He wanted her to collapse, now. He aimed two
quick blows at her nipples before putting all his strength in a blow at the
remnants of cloth covering her sex, a difficult strike since she was
desperately clenching her thighs. His efforts were rewarded by another shriek,
but the next only resulted in a gasp and the next after that in a wailing moan.

After a few more lashes at her calves, he dropped the whip and lowered his
victim, her body glistening with perspiration, only to immediately drag her
away, followed by the assembled onlookers. He placed her supple body on a
narrow bench, face down, tying her wrists on one end and her ankles to
another, pulling the chains taut and tightening iron rings at her knees and
waist. Her full breasts, dangling on each side of the bench, were bound at the
base with a thin cord, causing them to bulge out. Her body shriveled as she
was again doused with icy water. He half expected the woman to beg him to
stop, and Kayleen for a moment was about to do so, but then she sighed and
lowered her face between her outstretched arms.

Grinning, Grod lashed the exposed soles of her feet, hitting both with a
single strike and then following on with four more strikes, one after another,
her head rising again in a mute scream. Just a short pause, and then the lash
kissed her buttocks, once, twice. His next strike lingered as he aimed it with
care, landing the tip on her anus and wrenching a shrill cry of despair from
her lips.  He timed the subsequent strikes to her soles carefully, and then
moved to the back of her thighs, with ample pauses and putting less strength
on each blow as the skin was already torn and bleeding.

Kayleen lay on the bench, no longer a Warrior Queen, just a pain wracked
bundle of flesh and sinews. Her mind flashed with the image of young Lyral
on that same bench, screaming, but then she realized these were her own
screams, as Grod had targeted her delectable left tit, and then followed on by
wrapping the whip around her body to land the tip on the right one. Satisfied
by the results, he aimed more blows at the dangling globes, the whole body of
his victim writhing in vain to move off the path of the lash.

After a few more lashes on her back, the burly executioner dropped the whip
again and inspected his victim. She was panting heavily, soaked in
perspiration and her body was crisscrossed by welts and bleeding stripes, but
she was strong and could withstand more. She was untied from the bench and
dragged to a sloping ladder, where she was tied feet over head, spreadeagled
over the rungs and chained at the waist. As she came to, the first thing she
saw was the wicked grin on Grod's face as he uncoiled the whip and let his
glare linger on her vulva, which clenched thighs could no longer shield.

She wished she had Lyral's faith, for only faith could allow her to withstand
was about to come, but her efforts to remember a prayer, any prayer, were cut
short by a savage blow to her left breast, followed by an oblique strike to
her mound. She cried once, at the top of her lungs. Another strike landed on
there, sending wisps of blonde hair fluttering about. After a pause, the tip
licked at her labia, as she shook her head in anguish, biting her lips
savagely, and the next tore the folds of skin where they joined. Her cry this
time was loud enough for everyone, and lasted into the subsequent pause as he
drew near, removed the chain from her waist and doused her with cold water.

Walking away, he let her follow his stare to her nipples, hardening in spite
of the horror coming on her face, and turned and landed a vicious strike on
the right nipple, then waited for her wailing to stop before aiming at the
other. Her waist now free, her desperate attempt to writhe away from the lash
resulted in a number of strikes landing off mark, until Grod started playing
games with her and letting blows crack within a hair of their target, only to
be followed by the real strike as she relaxed.

Pain was plain on her face, and Grod thought she could be broken now. He
targeted his next strike to slash her labia, once, then twice, and then
paused, hoping to catch her eyes and show her where the next would land. She
trashed her head on the ladder, however, so he cracked at the empty air and
then aimed his strike at her love bud and let his ears confirm that he had
found his mark. He paused before striking there again, to let the pain sink
in, and then lashed her sculpted breasts a few times, in quick succession.

Kaylee on the ladder was in agony. No wound had ever been so painful, so
humiliating, no blow had been so unrelenting, nothing had ever hurt her soft
femininity inside her warrior shell. "Heaven, make them stop. Please, make
them stop!" she cried to herself, before shrieking at the top of her lungs as
Grod hit her clitoris yet again. And again. And save for a few strikes at her
breasts, he landed lash after lash in that exact place, until she fainted.

She came to under the sting of cold water again, and as her sight cleared her
eyes found Grod among the onlookers. She had a taste of honey in the mouth,
but she was in stocks, her ankles pulled up at face height and cuffed to a
post, tightly enough to force the leg horizontal, and her wrists cuffed half a
foot above. Since her backside was off the floor by a foot or more, all her
weight hung on her sore wrists and ankles, forcing her to stretch her arms and
bend her knees for some relief. On her side was the small Easterner, and upon
a gesture from him, Grod spoke mockingly "Welcome back, o gracious Queen. Our
friend Chang is not very comfortable with our tongue, but I guess he wants to
ask you if you feel like talking before he proceeds."

Her whole body throbbed in pain, and fear gripped her mind, but she found the
strength to keep silent somewhere between those words, "Warrior Queen". Chang
pulled, from a collection of ornate boxes, a thin, clear cord and started
tying it around her left thumb. The cord went through a small bronze handle,
whose function Chang soon revealed as he he twisted it between thumb and
forefinger to tighten the cord, at which point Kayleen discovered that the
cord had evenly spaced knots that dug painfully in the flesh. The pain was
mild at first, hardly comparable to the whip, but as circulation was
constricted she started to moan, at which point the man tightened it again,
until she hissed, and then dragged the cord forcefully around the full
circumference of her thumb, letting it slide in the furrow dug as it tightened
into the flesh and drawing a shriek of pain from her sore throat.

The man produced another cord, and repeated the procedure on her left
forefinger. She was gasping with pain, and she cried in anguish as he started
placing a third cord on her middle finger. He had not bothered to remove the
others, so even when he did not exert force, pain wracked her fingers as the
knots bit relentlessly her flesh.

After tightening yet another cord on her ring finger, he raised his hands,
first extending ten fingers and then folding four; six more to go. Defied by
her silence, he finished with her left pinky, moved to her right hand, and
after a brief respite her cries resonated in the hall again.

Time passed, with the pain in her constricted fingers increasing instead of
subsiding, but at last Chang moved to her left hand and twisted her thumb cord
backwards, at which Kayleen screamed again as the blood found its way again in
the now purplish flesh. As before, he did the same to each finger in turn, but
at the pinky he stopped and stared into her expecting eyes before reaching for
the thumb cord and tightening it again, wrenching a shrill "Noooo" from her
hoarse throat which rose into a screech as he pulled on it again.

After repeating this procedure a few times, he finally freed her fingers for
real, produced more cords, and grabbed her left foot. Horrified, she tried to
pull and twist her leg to escape his hand, but to no avail. She could not hold
a screech at his first pull, nor at each subsequent pull, as if the toes were
more susceptible to this torture. Her tormentor, on the other hand, proceeded
to alternate between left and right foot, as if to let the other recover.

Once more he tightened each cord around the respective toe, but this time he
took care to align all handles just the same, and then tied each to a cord
looped around the toe and affixed to a single hand sized handle, which he
grabbed. As fear silenced Kayleen's anguished sobbing, he pulled on the
handle, causing all cords at the same time to slide almost full circle in the
furrow dug around the base of each toe, the knots dragging over the
constricted flesh. Droplets of blood spilled on the floor, and the Warrior
Queen wailed yet again as pain rose from her foot through her writhing body.

Chang did the same on her right foot, and then moved to the left again,
reversing the sense of rotation to grind into already damaged tissue. Kayleen
screamed at each pull, shaking in pain under the thin man's attentions while
the other two gaped at her suffering body bending and twisting in pain, her
glistening breasts heaving and panting and her blonde mane shaking.

After yet another pull, in fact, Chang started freeing her toes from the
dreadful cord, and subsequently freed her from the stocks. She lay on the
floor for a moment of respite, bringing her fingers to her mouth as if to ease
the pain. The woman looked too tall for the wry Easterner to handle, but he
grabbed her hair and dragged her to a decorated bench, where she was chained
face up, arms over her head, her fabulous body taut.

With practiced swiftness, the Easterner looped a thick hemp rope around her
slender waist, constricting it and pushing the knots along its length into her
wounded flesh, drawing a hiss from behind her lips which turned into a moan as
he started to tighten the rope twisting its handle. Another two coils of rope
were similarly wrapped around her ribcage, one just above and one just below
her sculpted breasts, painfully marked by the whip but still proud and firm.

More rope was looped and tightened around her legs, thighs and arms, digging
in her limbs as the Easterner looped it across the coil in order to tighten
it fully before twisting the handles and sending the knots into her. The
ropes around her ribcage and waist constricted her breathing, lending to her
stifled cries a tone of anguish as she gasped for air.

After more tightening, her silent tormentor rose, grabbed the handle of the
rope clinching her waist, put a boot in her stomach and pulled with all his
strength, dragging the rough rope three quarters of a circle around her waist
and digging an agonizing trail of chafed skin in her once perfect midsection.
Unable to scream at the top of her lungs, she choked as pain deluged her.

Her only respite soon became the time it took the wry Easterner to circle
around the bench as he alternated the left and right side, and the ropes
started getting red with blood. Her body attempted to escape the pain, but as
her muscles contracted and flexed in vain, seared by the ropes constricting
her arms and legs and stabbed by knots digging in her flesh, she could not
help herself as her aching limbs started burning with pain of her own making.

Devious as it was, this torture in the eyes of the old man from the Southern
Desert lacked visual appeal, so he commented "You could do us a favor and put
up some kind of show for our benefit, you know". In spite of her pain, Kayleen
noticed a cold sideways glance on her tormentor's face at this comment, but no
good came to her from this as he stopped her trashing, produced two loops
of knotted silken cords and tied them around her nipples.

Her heart sank as she fought for breath, envisioning yet another assault on
her femininity, which had never been specifically targeted before all this.
The cords were tied to a chain, distorting her firm breasts into cones of taut
flesh which he then proceeded to bind with a single knotted cord drawn behind
her neck, reaching to her left breast, and circling it in a counterclockwise
spiral, down to her muscular chest where it snug under her bondage, while the
other extremity was similarly wrapped around her right breast.

The thin man pulled viciously on the left handle of the cord, savagely
tightening the spiral around her left tit, the knots digging gashes as they
chafed skin, and she gasped and choked under the assault on her mauled breast.
He made a short pause before letting go, then braced placing a boot on her
muscular chest and pulled again, wrenching another strangled scream, before
circling the bench to similarly shear her right breast. After a number of
pulls, he paused to add more cords to her bondage, in order to prevent the
ropes from dislodging as he pulled repeatedly at them, and pulled up her bound
nipples some more, to make the spirals wrap around her breasts just right
before the next of many round of pulls and cries which were to follow.

When the ropes binding her were finally unwound, causing gasps of pain as
blood rushed back into the offended limbs and large swaths of skin chafed to
bleeding were revealed on Kayleen's still beautiful body, she was doused in
cold water on the floor and made to drink the same stuff again. Any trace of
good intent she could find in her tormentor's ministrations, however,
shriveled as her legs were doubled over and chained ankle to thigh, her arms
cuffed behind her back in a reversed prayer position which strained her
shoulders but pushed out her chafed breasts to the delight of the onlookers
and she was hung by her splayed knees, the head two feet off the floor.

The Easterner produced a thin, bristling rope whose knots looked like lumps
of boar hair, proceeded to wrap it around the base of each breast, and then
coiled more ropes across her chest, flattening her tits onto her sculpted
ribs. Twisting the handles at the end of the each rope, he would tighten the
one at the base of her globes, making them bulge, and then the one flattening
them against her chest, basking in her anguished wails and strangled gasps.

Unlike on the bench, Kayleen's pain found no respite when her tormentor busied
himself otherwise, as her position forced her to lift her constricted chest to
breathe, and relative freedom of movement made her trash in her bonds, chafing
her pain wracked orbs against the knots biting her flesh. The silent Easterner
produced more ropes, which he bound around her waist and at the base of each
thigh, and then another bristling cord which he wound over her shoulders,
under her breast bondage in spite of her cries, and then through her crotch,
soon followed by a similarly arranged rope, the two squeezing her poor love
button outwards as they sunk savagely into her vulva.

He then pulled her nipples through her breast bondage as she writhed in pain,
looped more knotted cord around each, did the same to her outstretched bud
and then tied the three together, shortening the loop to force her to bend
her head up towards her belly to reduce the searing pain. He allowed her to
writhe in her new position for a while, until her aching back gave and her
head lowered, tightening the cords around her nipples and clitoris and jerking
her head back up with an anguished cry as she understood her predicament.

He wound two more bristling ropes across her crotch, rubbing her cunt lips
into the pair already searing her love bud, so Kayleen's writhing body would
find no respite, her aching back unable to keep her bent up to spare her
nipples and her ravaged love button the bite of the knots. As she oscillated
between one painful position and the other, her tormentor bid his time, while
the others savored the sight of the suffering Warrior Queen. He knew she would
pass out eventually, even hanging upside down, so he positioned himself behind
her back, and twisting its handle tightened her crotch rope, which pulled her
backwards and made her efforts to spare her feminine charms harder and harder.

When her crying and writhing started to weaken, he talked to her for the first
time, asking "You talk ?" as she once more failed to raise her head enough. In
spite of the maddening pain, however, the Warrior Queen's lips proffered no
word, so he moved behind her again and pulled the handle up with both hands,
which rushed the bristling crotch ropes through her labia and rubbed them
violently against her tender parts, the knots mauling her as she howled.

"You talk ?" he asked once more before pulling the ropes downward, reversing
their action and bringing renewed pain met by a scream of despair. No answer
was forthcoming, so he pulled up again, and then immediately down, and
repeated the questioning and pulling until she passed out after a seemingly
unending nightmare of gasping, forsaken screams.

When the acrid smell of salts brought her back, she found herself hanging
spread-eagled between two posts, her chafing wrists but one of the voices in
the concerto of pain which ravaged her body. Judging from the intent gaze of
the old Southerner, however, neither the welts on her strong arms, nor the
chafed skin on her muscular chest, the angry whip marks on her generous, firm
breasts, the stings peppering her sculpted abdomen, the gashes dug by the
knots between her thighs, nor the crisscrossing of red stripes on her slender
thighs and legs, nothing had diminished its beauty.

"Please, no more" she begged, but only to herself, since at some level she
knew that they were exactly after that. She had to find somewhere the will to
defy them, lest they gathered from her mouth the whereabouts of poor Lyral and
brought her to suffer the same horrors she was being subjected to. Or was
about to be subjected to, she reminded to herself as the swarthy old man
brought forth a large case containing leaves and branches, some fresh and some
dried, which he dug into only after putting on thick leather gloves.

With raptured eagerness, his hand brought a shrub draped in dark green leaves
against her calf, watching her gasp as the leaves stung fiercely and repeating
the application until tears filled her eyes. "They are called stinging nettles
for a reason, my dear." spoke the Southerner before drawing the shrub against
the back of her thigh, still enjoying her hisses and cries, which turned into
stifled screams when he grabbed the shrub with both hands and started sawing
back and forth at the soft flesh between her upper thighs and her ass cheeks.

He then kneeled and proceeded to wipe the sole of her left foot with the same
back and forth motion, her head shaking as the skin burned under the sting and
the welts from Grod's bullwhipping made their presence painfully known again.
She had learned to avoid stinging nettles as a nuisance when she was but a
child, but now in the hands of the old man they had turned into yet another
instrument of torture. Her right foot was now trashing under their sting, and
then the assault moved to her legs, as what little resolve she had mustered in
her brief respite waned, and her attempts to preserve some dignity instead of
crying at the top of her lungs declined one cry at a time.

He moved behind her back and mocked "Now it gets better!" and draped a
bundle of shrub across her taut stomach, her fears coming true when he started
sawing it back and forth, but also up and down, as she writhed and cried
attempting to twist herself away from the burning embrace of the stinging
nettles. Her twisting turned to frantic buckling as his hands rose and the
bundle was draped across her chest, the leaves brushing her sculpted breasts
and rekindling the pain of all the abuses they had been subjected to so far.

Maybe the Warrior Queen could have understood that it was her own trashing
that ground the leaves into her ample bosom, but Kayleen had nothing on her
mind but the fire on her ravaged skin and the occasional burst of agony as her
nipples brushed against the hellish leaves. She was given some respite, as her
tormentor circled her and fetched fresh shrubs, but soon pain returned as her
buttocks were treated to the burning kiss of the nettles and soared when he
moved his attentions to the inside of her thighs, alternating left and right
and bringing the shrubs inch by inch nearer to her crotch.

With a glee, the old man draped a single leaf over her vulva, and kept rubbing
until her gasps turned to shrieks, then opened her lips and slid a small shrub
in between, dragging it back and forth leisurely. Her hoarse screams aroused
the old man, who kneeled and forcefully inserted two entire shrubs between her
parted lips, drawing them back and forth as pain shot up her body sending
her cries to lose themselves in the vaults of the chamber.

When she was lowered to the floor, Kayleen was but a whimpering girl in her
twenties, curled in a ball and vainly attempting to soothe her feminine parts
with her hands, a sight bound to inspire mercy in all but her tormentor. She
was dragged to a post to be tied again, her arms bent over the top beam,
cuffed at the elbows with her wrists behind her neck, her legs doubled under
her thighs and painfully bent outwards and up to cuff the ankles wide at the
low beam, her midsection pushed forward by a wooden wedge against her kidneys,
a position which put her weight on her shoulder and thigh joints.

The dusky old man then busied himself with a bristling collection of brushes,
rollers and hand scrubs, and following her gaze said "Looking for nettles, my
pretty ? We have nettles here." showing her a roller draped with the green
leaves, although interspersed with tiny thorns. He applied the roller to the
sole of her left foot, lightly at first, and then more forcefully, turning her
gasps into stifled cries again. The Warrior Queen could still manage the
strength to keep the whereabouts of Lyral from her tormentors, but her pride
had withered under the ordeal she was being subjected to.

The Southerner had a variety of rollers, from two hands wide to the equivalent
of just two fingers across, and switched from one to the other as he ravaged
her body prickling the smarting skin and paying special attention to the
objects of his ongoing arousal. He used a doughnut shaped roller in the crease
under her buttocks, dragging it back and forth under her as she shrieked at
the assault on skin which had been somewhat spared so far. Nor could she
stifle her screams as he moved to her abused breasts, one roller in each hand,
the thorns prickling at the smarting skin as he pushed the rollers into her
firm globes time and again.

Although her arms were not spared, it was against her legs and thighs that her
tormentor concentrated his attentions, turning them an angry red as he
repeatedly rubbed them with the hellish rollers. "Anything to say, before the
real treat begins ?" asked the leering old man, not even awaiting her answer
before rubbing her private parts once with one roller, then with other, each
time drawing a howl of pain which turned into a gasping screech as he fetched
a smaller roller and rubbed it viciously into her ravaged slit.

Kayleen was about to pass out again, desperately seeking some respite, but the
old man thought she could be broken now and so decided against a pause. He
fetched another instrument of pain, a hand scrub fashioned after a cupped
glove and bristling with stitched leaves. "If you sang so well for a stinging
brush, you'll sing like a nightingale for the stinging tree which begat
these." he said, bringing the scrub against her left breast and brushing it
vigorously, as if to clean it. She heaved, screamed and bucked, the ache in
her kidneys all but forgotten as her left tit was overwhelmed by pain. Her
tormentor pressed on, moving to her right tit and then alternating between
them, but soon her cries waned into moans and she was untied from the post.

To prevent her from fainting, she was suspended by her left ankle, the right
ankle tied to her left wrist and the left wrist behind her neck to a collar,
bending her back and exposing her sore, but still appealing, breasts and her
vulva to whatever he had in store for her. "We were almost done, my pretty,
but now we'll have to start over again." purred the Southerner, his words
betraying his irritation. True to his words, he picked up his rollers again
and rubbed them forcefully against her thighs, her buttocks and her taut
abdomen, renewing her pain as her skin suffered the kiss of the nettles again,
but soon he targeted the tempting undersides of her full breasts and the
inside of her slit, bringing a narrow roller against her love button with
eager viciousness as she screamed in despair.

As he put the rollers aside, dread filled Kayleen's eyes as her agonized tits
reminded her of the hand scrub, but worse was to come as he picked up a
different implement, a brush not unlike those used to clean bottles, except
for the menacing size and the stiff boar bristles circling its length. He had
seen her fear, and asked "Now, girl, want to tell us something ?" taking the
time to make abundantly clear where the brush would be inserted otherwise.

Despair and fear numbed Kayleen's mind, the thought of being violated by the
hideous implement of punishment most fearful of all, yet she still clinged to
some of her former self, enough to know that she did not want to surrender her
friend's whereabouts to these monsters. She attempted to steel her resolve,
gritting her teeth, but when her tormentor drove the brush down into her ass
a strangled scream escaped nonetheless, followed by more as he twisted and
dragged the brush as if actually cleaning something.

The brush was extracted, the bristles chafing at the rosette of her anus on
their way out but not bloodied, and then inserted again, and the old man did
his worst to break her using the hellish brush, adding nettle leaves which the
brush ground into her innards as she howled and cried pitifully. The brush was
then discarded for a larger one, which she eyed in horror as her mouth wanted
to beg, but only silence could be heard until her anguished cry broke it as he
forcefully inserted the brush down her slit, the stiff bristles rasping
against her womb, and then twisted it left and right, at length, before
extracting it with deliberate, excruciating slowness.

He pushed the brush down her love channel again, and then two more times,
adding nettle leaves to increase her pain, and finally stuffed her canal with
nettle leaves before driving it down one last time, the unyielding bristles
pushing the leaves into her as she cried out her misery. His hands now free,
he wrapped a stinging tree leaf around her left nipple and started rubbing it
with a straight brush, its short, stiff bristles grinding the thousands of
invisible needles covering the leaf into her abused flesh.

Her screams now resonated in the chamber, her resolve broken by the protracted
ordeal, and as her tormentor moved to the right nipple, the shell of the
former wizards known as Zhorun closed in, to savor her degradation and enjoy
her defeat. "Now tell us of the Priestess!" he hissed. If anyone else had
asked, she might have, just to stop the pain before the robed Southerner
targeted her poor love bud, but the Warrior Queen found the strength to spit
on the walking corpse's rotting visage before her mouth opened in a scream
when her tormentor started scrubbing a stinging tree leaf into her clitoris.

With the intent of breaking her before Zhorun, the swarthy Southerner insisted
with his scrubbing, her cries rising hoarse as he replaced the leaf with a
fresh one or twisted the brush in her womb. He replaced the leaf twice, each
time scrubbing her into maddening pain, then grabbed the brush and pulled it
half the way out before driving it back in, twisting it left and right.

"Now you talk" he added, his nervous tone betraying his dismay at her
stubbornness. With his thumb, he pulled out her love button, while his other
hand fetched shards of stinging tree leaves and stuffed them around her love
bud and under the hood, so when he released it they stuck in the fold and
seared her feminine flesh while she howled and screamed, unable to find
respite from the pain. Her torture continued uninterrupted, her voice rising
to heart rending screeches when her tormentor rubbed a hand scrub over her
breasts or twisted the brush in her slit, until her voice lost strength and
waned to a gasping, exhausted wail.


Chapter 3 - Of Things Past

In the darkness below the ruins of Zhorun's castle, Kayleen hung by her wrists,
her chained feet dangling a foot over the floor. The ache in her arms, bearing
the full weight of her bruised yet shapely body, kept increasing alongside the
fiery pain in her torn wrists, and the iron band clenched at her waist made
her breathe in short, halted gasps and added its weight to her misery.

As anguish and hopelessness hung over her, something stirred in her mind. A
distant feeling, a warm presence she instantly recognized; Lyral was attempting
to extend her consciousness to touch hers. She had used the same power in the
past, to let Kayleen home on her quickly; this was of no use to her now, but it
brought a rush of hope, and waved the curtains of despair away as the Warrior
Queen rose her head again.

If Lyral was attempting to call her, the search was underway. They would find
traces or her capture, come to her rescue, and thwart Zhorun's plans. He had
hinted at "forces" at his disposal, but an army could not be hidden, so these
forces had to be of magical nature, and Zhorun's insistence on finding Lyral
meant that he knew the Priestess had the power to oppose them, although Kayleen
was not versed enough in magic to tell how.

She had to buy time for her friends, which sent her keen tactical mind back
into full gear. First, as long as she could hold out, the situation would not
change for the worse. Second, they had not left here like this to recover, so
they probably meant to weaken her resolve through exhaustion and lack of sleep,
and she had to avoid that if she was to hold out for some time. She also had to
think about what would come next; for example, she had to do something about
her wrists sooner rather than later, if she wanted to wield a sword ever again.

Her hands grabbed the chains above her wrist cuffs, easing the pull on her
bleeding wrists, a stopgap measure which nonetheless brought a relief which
almost made her cry. The hands would tire, of course. Her ankles were linked by
a short chain, so she could use her legs to some extent, but she saw no way to
remove the accursed waist band constricting her breathing. She could spin her
hanging body left and right, and using her legs she could spin it enough to
twist the chains she hung from onto each other. She then raised her long legs,
first to her chest and then above her head, her lungs burning and her heart
pounding as the waist band bit her muscles; she lost count of how many times
she had to give up, recover her breath and try again, but at last she managed
to pull herself up above her trembling arms, swivel her legs and rest on the
chains crossing below her.

Her position was precarious and uncomfortable, but at least her wrists were no
longer in pain, "Although I am now exhausted." she smiled to herself. She was
so tired that she actually managed a number of brief, fitful naps, always at
risk of losing the little balance she could muster, the throbbing pain from
the welts, bruises and chafed skin receding gradually.

Then she heard them coming; it was probably well past dawn, but she wished
they had stayed asleep. She lowered herself into suspension again, and closed
her eyes, as if to avert the ordeal to come. It was just Zhorun and the three
tormentors, this time.

The corpulent Southerner addressed her with mock joviality, "Good morning, o
Queen! Hope you had a nice night of rest, because we've got a full day ahead
of us. Unless you wish to tell us something, that is, but I really hope not."
Undeterred by her silence he brought her down, and she let herself collapse in
a heap, allowing him to drag her to the inclined ladder and tie her to it,
face up, her arms over the head and her feet a few inches off the floor.

To her disgust, the old fart had fondled her in earnest during all this, and
his member, bulging below his flowing robes, rubbed intently into her flesh
more than once. She shuddered when his hands grabbed her calves and then slid
up her thighs, his thumbs digging briefly into her sex, still smarting from
his former attentions before climbing up to her full, proud breasts and
sinking into the firm flesh. He turned to the robed figure and asked, "What
about bringing Her Haughtiness down one notch before proceeding, Master ?"

She clenched her teeth as cold gripped her stomach. For no sound reason, she
had thought she would be spared rape. The old man could have been three times
her age, and yet this. "By all means do, my esteemed guest," hissed the
limping figure, drawing closer. The swarthy man turned to her and gripped her
tits savagely, placing himself over her and then pulling up his flowing robes
to free his hardening member. As her gaze wandered away in despair, she
noticed Grod contemptuously muttering something to the Easterner, and a plan
started forming in her mind. Not one second too soon, as his throbbing manhood
entered her with unexpected force a split second later.

Kayleen had not been with a man since the death of his Walder, and still
longed for his strong yet tender embrace, but there was none of that in what
she was being subjected to, his rutting member trashing her insides in a
frenzy devoid of any love. She grit her teeth to quench any sound escaping
from her mouth, attempting to relax and ease the pain while the man panted,
grunted and pushed relentlessly. Imagination tricked her into hearing the
squirt inside her womb, making her almost retch, but she had managed to keep
herself immobile under his assault. It was now or never.

"Are you done already ?" she uttered, loud enough for all to hear, then added
"You must have wet yourself," as his disbelief turned into deep anger and a
red undertone grew under his swarthy visage. He slapped her hard, a backhanded
slap intended to draw blood; she expected more to follow, but he stopped in
mid gesture, composed himself and left, only to come back minutes later
pushing a trolley where a multitude of glass and ceramic jars lay scattered.

With a deft gesture, he selected a pair of tweezers, among many of differing
sizes, which once inserted inside a tiny jar produced an angrily buzzing,
yellow striped wasp, which he brought against the inner thigh of the bound
Warrior Queen. The angry insect stung her almost immediately, eliciting a brief
gasp. "She finds you irritating," snickered the aged man, and stuck the wasp
against her thigh again, and then again, a couple of times in quick succession.
Her gasps grew louder, but she could stand wasp stings.

The look in his eyes, however, told her that he knew that, and had more in
store. He replaced the wasp in its jar, only to produce a black, furry spider
about one inches across, musing "Maybe this one will like you better." After
savoring the fear in her eyes, he brought it against the soft flesh of her
underbelly. Her leg jerked as she cried at the stinging bite, and twitched as
the vicious pedipalps bit her again and again.

With a raptured expression, the old man dragged the angry spider down along
her leg, savoring each gasp and shriek, and then lingered under the left foot,
counting "One, two, three, ..." as each bite drew another scream. He then
picked up another spider, which bit her with unspent viciousness under the
right foot, and then his hands rose up her legs, slowly accompanied by her
hoarse cries as both spiders bit her mercilessly, nearing her crotch.

A cold fear gripped Kayleen at the thought of the spiders biting her down
there, and she bucked and twisted as his hands closed in, the bites landing in
her thighs, her plans now forgotten. But his hands reached there again, and
again she turned in her bonds to receive the assault anywhere but there. More
assaults followed, exhausting her to the point that she took a good while to
notice that he was no longer actually attempting to get her bitten, he was
just pretending to and enjoying the show.

With a gasping sigh, she let her taut muscles relax, praying between her lips
to gods whose beacon of hope brought no light there. "The show is not over,"
whispered the old Southerner, switching back to a wasp again. His skill with
the tweezers was amazing, and he seldom happened to squeeze one of his hand
picked specimens. She was almost relieved to see the spider go, but her relief
was short lived as he placed it behind one knee, and the soft flesh there
smarted under the sting. Replacing that wasp with a fresh pair, he snug one
under each foot, letting them take on their wrath on her soles as she tried to
stifle her cries.

The swarthy tormentor then procured another yellow striped wasp and brought it
against the tender flesh between her first and second toe, basking in her
surprised shriek and swiftly proceeding to repeat the operation between the
other toes in spite of her vain attempts to avoid his ministrations. After
declaiming "Not all feminine flesh was created equal," he brought a fresh
wasp against her left armpit, and then did the same on her right. Her attempts
at hiding her pain and fear were failing quickly; he was clearly targeting the
soft spots of the female body, and sting after sting reached the crease
between buttock and thigh, the ass cheeks, the navel, the flesh between the
fingers of each hand, the armpits and the lower belly.

Her fears came soon true as he brought a fresh wasp against the underside of
her right breast, wrenching a shriek from behind gritting teeth, and proceeded
to sting her proud mammary in tightening circles which betrayed his ultimate
target, trying to elicit from her a crescendo of screams as she writhed under
each sting in a vain attempt to escape the next. Another wasp was finally
let loose onto her nipple, but her screams were now hoarse and choked, as her
endurance was at the limit. Yet he proceeded to treat her other tit like the
first, each sting drawing less and less response, before suspending the
torment and freeing her from the ladder.

With help from Grod, the Southerner tied her ankle cuffs to chains winding
through pulleys which were then used to lift her off the floor, pulling her
basin up and splaying her legs wide, parallel to the floor, before cuffing her
elbows and her wrists together behind her and affixing both to a post hanging
from the ceiling, bending her in an arch which exposed her crotch and pushed
her full breasts forward and down.

She awakened while the old man was almost done rubbing a sort of jelly on the
wasp stings, but soon she shrieked in renewed pain as another yellow wasp was
brought against her labia, while his thumb started rubbing her love bud into a
more exposed position. This new position allowed her much less movement than
on the ladder, so the swarthy Southerner was able to place sting after sting
on her vulva, while she could only cry and shake her head. Her tormentor bid
his time, as she trembled in pain and fear, before delivering the dreaded
sting to her now throbbing clitoris, and paused intently before delivering the
next, and the others which followed among her anguished cries.

After finally returning his instrument to a jar, her tormentor uncovered with
a flourish a set of clear jugs, crawling with half-inch reddish ants. "Now we
introduce you to some new friends," he chuckled, drawing out one with a pair
of tweezers and letting her examine it up close before bringing it suddenly
against her nasal septum, which the mandibles promptly pinched as she gasped
in surprise and pain. The gasp turned into a shriek as the ant bent upwards to
sting her, just above the upper lip.

The swarthy man waited until the ant stung her again, then procured another
ant and let her mandibles sink into her left breast, followed by another on
her right breast, awaiting the unavoidable shriek before placing yet another
in her navel. The ants were clinching their mandibles tight on her flesh and
twisting them as they bent to sting, a sharp pain but no equal to the jolt
delivered each time they stung at random around the place they clung to. As
she hung there screaming, her tormentor clinched more ants to the front of her
thighs, her soles, her arms, her belly, one scream one ant, until she guessed
and stifled her cries in desperation, as if this could make him stop.

In spite of the dozens of ants hanging off her body, the Warrior Queen managed
to hold her wailing for a while, until her sensitive breast was stung again,
eliciting a strangled cry at which her tormentor promptly attached another ant
to her left nipple, already swollen from the wasp stings. Grinning as the
expected screech of agony allowed him to continue his game, he immediately
placed another on the right nipple. A howl of pain and despair left Kayleen's
mouth, but he bid is time until the next shriek, then hung one ant on each her
cunt lips, soon followed by one on the fold covering her love button.

Her cries of anguish turned into a screech of maddened pain as one of the ants
hanging off her vulva bent and stung her now exposed clitoris, and her
wailing turned to a howl as he hung yet another ant on the violated piece of
feminine flesh. She was now convulsing, which made the task of hanging two
more ants to her nipples considerably harder; her tormentor then leisurely
kneeled below her, to savor her body spasming in pain at each sting.

Finally, the old Southerner rose again and started pulling the ants off, each
one causing another screech as he turned and twisted to dislodge the fierce
jaws. He inspected with satisfaction the discolored spots where her body had
been assaulted by the yellow wasps, forming small turgid blisters which were
treated with more jelly. With help from Grod her slender body was lowered to
the floor and then suspended by her right ankle and left wrist, bending her
body backwards to tie the left ankle to her right wrist. A jug was brought to
her lips, the contents of which revived Kayleen from pain induced stupor
enough to let her eyes focus on the eight legged horror which the leering
Southerner held a few inches from her left breast.

Her mouth had just started forming a silent "No" when he brought it against
her tit, resulting in a convulsed twitch followed by a halted cry of anguish.
Spider bites were immediately and vastly more painful than wasp stings, whose
effect however mounted over time. "These were not done yet," he said turning
to the others, as he used one after another biting spider to savage her arms,
thighs and buttocks. He then paused, holding one near her panting chest until
she recognized it and attempted in vain to twist in mid air to get away.

Laughing softly, the robed executioner started chasing her as she turned and
twisted in mid air to avoid the twitching pedipalps, scoring a few bites on
her belly but reserving most for her panting breasts, in a dance of pain
punctuated by her desperate sobs and shrieks. As he moved his attentions to
her feminine parts, changing spiders again, she was allowed some pause between
each bite as her twists turned into twitches and her screams into gurgles, but
he spared her nothing, whispering "I am not done yet" whenever the spider bit
into her love bud and her world exploded in a howl of pain and despair.

As if even the malevolent deities which overlooked this place could feel
mercy, her suffering was finally suspended and the old man again treated her
wasp stings with the same cold jelly he had used before, which caused them to
soften and recede. At the back of her mind, she noticed that he was doing
nothing for the ant stings covering her battered body, but at the forefront
she was attempting to collect the tatters of her pride, dreading what was to
come as her morning resolve was now lost in a haze of pain and humiliation.

Apparently, her three tormentors had decided to take turns, because it was the
Easterner who stepped in and, with help from Grod, dragged her to a wooden
tank, where she was tied face down with iron bands at her waist and neck on a
wooden bench, while her ankles were cuffed to her wrists and her elbows were
also cuffed together, straining her shoulders. The Easterner tilted the bench,
and her head was plunged in the freezing cold water.

The cold actually revived her at first, clearing up her mind, but soon panic
overwhelmed her as her burning lungs screamed for air. When the bench was
tilted back, her gasping for fresh air turned into a shrill cry as the switch
wielded by the silent Easterner landed across her stung feet with a whistle.
The second stroke hit her under her toes, but the third gouged her right
breast in the pink areola just above the nipple, on a spider bite.

The imperturbable Easterner lambasted her tit again, hitting on an ant bite,
then as her chest rose in a vain attempt to stem his strikes switched to her
feet, leaving angry red stripes but drawing no blood. As the quick strikes
made her pant, the bench was tilted plunging her headlong into the tank again,
the impact with the cold water jarring enough to warrant a shriek which
bubbled in the water. She was kept under much longer, until lack of hair
caused her to trash in her bonds and gurgle, but when the bench was tilted
back and her mouth reached for air the switch landed on her feet, forcing her
to expel precious air in a cry instead of drawing it in, and then the bench
was tilted back immediately, her lungs unable to replenish her air supply.

The Warrior Queen's mind raced while her throat burned, in a stupor induced by
the lack of air, returning to ordeals of the previous day. Details flashed in
her memory, details which she could not pay attention to as they occurred but
were now within her grasp ... and disappeared when her head cleared the water
and the switch stroke her thigh, on a spider bite just under the buttock,
shooting pain through her heaving body which screamed for immediate attention.
The bench was plunged in the ice cold water again, denying her the fresh air
she desperately longed for, bubbles rising to the surface as she half drowned.

The bench was raised again, her blonde mane drenched in water flailing about
as the tendons on her neck almost burst in her efforts to keep the head above
the water and draw in some fresh air in spite of the savage strikes of the
switch at the stings over her exposed breasts. She could not scream and
breathe at the same time, and this was what made this torture so devious.

Her breathing over time turned to a wheeze, and as her head was kept
underwater her body was wracked by choking spasms, water drowning her
piecemeal as her only chance to expel it was through screams. Her feet were
now crisscrossed by purple bruises, and the her tormentor had taken to
switching her swollen nipples instead. The cycle of drowning and lambasting
repeated itself while her mind span in circles, chasing a detail which
eluded her as each whistle heralded another wave of pain.

The bench was tilted again, and her head went under once more, water filling
her tired mouth still open from her latest scream, and burning in her throat
desperately gasping for air. When the bench rose, her pale face contorted in a
mask of pain as the switch hit her trashed nipple again, forcing her to scream
and splutter in spite of all her efforts.

Her tormentor put her down immediately and selected a meaner switch, which he
used on her soles after raising the bench, tearing the bruised skin, the
resulting spasm of her wracked body helping her cough out some water from her
bursting lungs. He alternated the new switch with the old when striking her
nipples, then after a number of strikes he dropped the old and used the new
one on her nipples also. Kayleen's lungs were on fire, her body bluish and
shivering, her shoulders ached because of her vain efforts to raise her head
off the tank, her nipples were purplish and swollen and yet the wry Easterner
tilted the bench again, and kept her under.

When she came to, she was hanging upside down from a rod snug under her cuffed
knees, her elbows shackled together behind her and her wrists chained to her
ankles, bending her backward. A smaller tank opened below her, apparently just
the mouth of a deep pit in the floor. Her eyes went to her tormentor's hands,
which no longer held a humble switch, but grasped a four feet, wicked cane.

With a sudden clanking, her aching body was dropped head first into the pit,
impacting the water with surprising force, and she was unprepared she found
herself gasping for air again. She started choking, although in this position
water did not flood her mouth, and at length she was finally pulled up, her
dread of the wicked cane not materializing as she was allowed to breathe
unmolested and even take a deep breath before being dunked again.

While she held her breath, an atrocious pain shot through her when the cane
smacked against her right tit, forcing her to scream in bubbles and expel her
precious air, letting water in. The cane then stroked the front of her left
thigh, with similar effect, and then struck full force across her ribcage,
just under her breasts, savaging the ant-bitten flesh there and forcing her to
waste her last gasps in a scream while water filled her nostrils. In spite of
her buckling and trashing, she was pulled up only after half a dozen strikes
later, her eyes injected with blood and water spurting from her mouth.

"Next time longer," stammered the Easterner, although the Warrior Queen was
apparently not paying much attention. He let her gather some breath, but then
dunked her again and slashed the cane across her taut stomach, preventing her
from holding her breath, and then on the soles of her feet, drawing blood but
concentrating on the bubbles in the water, gauging the time for each strike at
her arms and then counting those on her lower back and buttocks, her body
contorting and buckling deliciously but unable to bring her head above water.

Only he could bring her fresh air again, which he did only after caning first
her left and then her right breast, targeting the ant stings in their exposed
lower halves because the nipples had taken a real beating before and he wanted
to save them for later. She was now expelling water in sobbing gasps, and he
attempted to gauge her resolve, dismayed to notice that not only there was
still fight in her, but she had somehow recovered.

He cut her respite short and dropped her in the water again, submerging her to
her ribcage, and started caning the front of her thighs. Kayleen's mind was
drowning in a watery mayhem of pain as her exhausted lungs desperately
attempted to draw in air and water filled them instead. The cane had moved to
her ass cheeks, and then visited her feet again, her screams lost in bubbles
as she dropped any pretense of stifling them.

He raised her, but her hope was immediately shattered as he just caned her now
exposed breasts without giving her the fresh air she agonized for, at least
not before half a dozen strikes at the stings on her generously proportioned
globes. Unlike the switch, the cane tore the skin, and she was now bleeding
from a number of welts, many of which across her still proud breasts.

She was dunked again and again, each time prolonging her dunking for one or
two additional strikes of the cane, the ache in her knees steadily increasing
as they bore her weight without interruption, her flesh turning pale and then
blue as air deprivation took her toll, yet reddening under the cane and the
drops of blood from her torn skin. The brunt of the assault landed on her feet
and her cramping abdomen, her muscles on fire in the effort to breathe.

Strangely enough, she did not pass out, so when she was finally lowered from
her position, gasping for air, the Warrior Queen recovered some semblance of
resolve as she caught a comment from Grod, "Impressive. Her endurance and
willpower are unmatched in my experience." Her mind cleared somewhat, and as
they wrapped iron bands around her torso, the detail which had been haunting
her became obvious: they were doing their best not to kill her. It was not
just keeping her alive until she talked; as they cuffed her arms along her
sides, she vaguely recollected her wounds being treated last night, as if
after a combat, to prevent festering. They fed her food, liquid food, maybe
honey and herbs. There was some ulterior motive behind Zhorun's actions.

Her mind returned to her current predicament as she was pulled by chains
cuffed at her ankles and brought over the accursed pit again. Her torso was
tightly encased in iron bands connected by rods all around her, her arms tied
along her sides, meaning she was essentially unable to move or bend from her
waist up to her neck. Her legs, on the other hand, were half spread, not
painfully but enough for a caning of her private parts. She sighed. At the
end, her tormentors ended up always targeting the same spots.

She was not surprised when her head was lowered into the cold water again, and
did not protest when no cane landed on her body. As time passed by, however,
the almost familiar burning in her lungs appeared and mounted, with no other
torture forthcoming, "Just dunk me to exhaustion ?" she mused to herself. As
her air supply dwindled, she could not help but kick with her legs, hoping
they would notice and raise her, but nothing happened. In panic, by chance,
she found out that pushing her legs wider she could raise herself up, so she
put all her strength in her legs and opened them wider, managing to pull
herself up enough to take a breath.

As she replenished her air supply, her muscles started to ache under the
strain, and she had to let herself under again. She held her breath as long as
possible, then repeated her feat, her thigh muscles flexing like steel cords
as they lifted her to breathe again. She could imagine the sick bastards
leering at the show, above, but for now that was all they would gain from her.
Her mind examined her options, as a shorter time underwater would mean less
strain but more frequent exertions, when pain exploded in her crotch and her
legs gave, dropping her into the water as her breath turned into a scream.

She held the little breath she had, dreading the cane she could not see, but
as time passed her lungs screamed for air and she had to push against her
ankle cuffs against, raising herself up again to draw an anxious breath which
turned into a strangled cry when the cane landed on the tender flesh of her
left thigh, dropping her in the water, again and far too soon for her burning
lungs. She was soon forced to pull herself up again, but this time her unseen
tormentor bid his time. She strenuously pushed against the chains, breathing in
short gasps as fear gripped her, but nothing happened until she let herself
down into the water.

A split second thereafter, as her thighs burned because of the prolonged
effort, the cane landed on her crotch, her air supply bubbling away in a
silent underwater scream, immediately followed by a strike on her left thigh
and another on her right as she twisted her pelvis attempting to get away from
the swings she could not see coming. Her tormentor was lambasting the very
muscles she used to lift herself off the water, although on occasion he landed
a few blows elsewhere.

Pain wracked her when she had to pull herself up again, and even when the cane
landed on her breasts her thighs turned from ache to agony, as their strained
muscles had to bear her weight again. Her stay underwater was becoming shorter
and shorter, but still she found the strength to lift herself up each time,
only to meet the cane. Blood dripped from her torn skin, pooling between her
legs and flowing down her caged chest, but the real pain was in her agonizing
thigh muscles and the dwindling air supply in her lungs.  When she was finally
released, unable to lift herself up again, her lower half was a canvas of
bloody welts, an accursed testimony to the endurance of her fit body.

She welcomed her release from the bands around her chest, until her eyes
focused on the hairy forearm unlocking them and traced it up Grod's determined
countenance. Fear gripped her as he brought her under a a waist band hanging
off a chain from above, clinched it around her, cuffed her wrists and ankles
to rings set in the floor, then pulled on the other end of the chain until her
slender limbs cleared the ground, suspending her spreadeagled in mid air, face
up. Her eyes left the ceiling to follow him around and bulged as he fetched a
table where dozens of pliers of mixed sizes and shapes were neatly arranged.

He took a midsized pair and without much ado seized her left nipple, already
ravaged by stings, switch and cane, keeping his grip until her hiss turned to
a gasping cry and then to a veritable howl, which he unflinchingly protracted
before releasing her punished flesh. The Warrior Queen would later find her
observations confirmed in the fact that the jaws were sheathed in wood, but at
the moment Kayleen could only sob in despair at the ordeal lying ahead of her.

He selected another, larger pair and sank it in her forearm, twisting and
pulling at her marked flesh as her head shook in agony, and then repeated his
assault all over her arms, her fists clenching as her muscles were torn by the
wooden bite. Dread overwhelmed her again when he moved between her legs, as
the pliers bit into her calves and then assailed her thighs, the muscles still
burning from her exertions twisted and knotted under the unyielding jaws.

She yowled in pain as he selected a small yet massive pair and grabbed her
toe, tightening his grip almost to the point of crushing it only to release it
and move to her next toe, then the next, slowly turning toe after toe to
molten rods of searing pain. Her ass cheeks were not spared, as a pair of wide
pliers bit into their firm flesh repeatedly as she bucked in a vain attempt to
escape the wooden tormentors. She was already hoarse, and the pliers could be
applied for extended periods with little actual damage, so Grod worked almost
without interruption, hurting her even in places she had forgotten about.

Of course he also tormented her in places she was painfully aware of, such as
her battered private parts, letting his grip linger on as she screamed herself
hoarse and pain numbed her mind. Kayleen twisted in her restraints as the
pliers grabbed her left labia again, but his muscular hands twisted in the
opposite direction forcing her to turn around, always a step behind as he
reversed his twist without releasing her mauled flesh.

She found a little respite when he switched to a set of large pliers which he
applied under the base of her left breast, cupping it before the grip
tightened and her firm tit bulged, squeezed agonizingly by the relentless jaws
of the hellish instrument. He subsequently applied it to her other tit, slowly
turning it left and right, and then with a pair in each hand returned to her
other breast and applied them both, twisting back and forth in opposite
directions as she howled and gasped, bereft a mercy which would not come.

The relentless torture continued without interruption as he switched from one
breast to another, then Kayleen was given some respite as he moved between her
legs with a pair of pliers in each hand, each with a short handle and wide
jaws made to crush a woman's nether lips. He literally lifted her higher up by
pulling on her lips, letting her fall back painfully, repeatedly, but in spite
of the devastating pain she neither fainted nor failed her friend.

When her torturer lowered her on the floor she just lied on her back, still
spreadeagled, whimpering and moaning, but she was dragged to the post where
the Southerner had ravaged her with his rollers but yesterday, and she was
tied in the same fashion, arms above the post and legs painfully bent outwards
at the knee, her pelvis pushed forward by a wooden wedge. The eyes of her
tormentor locked into hers, and he slowly showed her a pair of pincers, pliers
whose narrow wooden head had untapped depths of pain in store for her. He knew
that showing the victim what would befall her next could be very effective.

As she shook her head, he moved behind her and pinched the flesh between her
middle and ring finger, pain shooting from the crushed wasp sting sending her
head banging against the post as drool burst from her mouth in a yowl of
despair at the never-ending inventiveness of her assembled tormentors. Instead
of pinching between her fingers again, he moved immediately to her front and
closed the pincers on the fold over her love bud, twisting it as she gasped
and screamed her lungs out, then pinched her left nipple as bile gurgled in
her mouth, already beyond screaming as the pincer heads savaged the flesh
which had been stung, bitten and caned without mercy all over the day.

Yet he moved the pincers back to her love bud, and then to her other nipple,
and repeated the pattern a few times over before moving to her foot and
pinching the flesh between her toes, the renewed pain no respite for her
screaming throat but intended to prevent her from being overwhelmed. With a
pair of ordinary pliers in the right hand and the pincers in the left, he
moved back to her vulva, grabbing and pulling with the pliers to close the
pincers on the distended flesh where the discolored stings and spider bites
could be easily seen.

Kayleen's eyes were clenched shut, her beautiful face contorted in an
uninterrupted scream which no longer resonated in the chamber but gurgled in
her throat, her head shaking and the blonde mane drenched in sweat and drool.
Grod pulled savagely at her love button with a pair of pliers, pulling it out
from under its hood, and pinched it, the heads closing over a sting. She had
to be broken now, now that her voice rose again from the depth of the hell he
was subjecting her to, and even the robed Zhorun closed in as his unyielding
grip brought her to new heights of agony and each twist elicited a howl which
should have cracked the chamber open.

Even her incredible endurance had to end at some point, yet Grod was acutely
aware that she was not yielding yet. He did not fancy killing his Master's
prize before his eyes without obtaining what was wanted from her, and the girl
had already taken an unbelievable amount of punishment, although damage had
been limited as much as possible. Yet the pliers, among all methods, were the
least likely to kill her, although a heart attack was always possible.

He released her bud and grabbed the left nipple, again pulling at it and then
pinching it where a sting could be seen, listening to her screams and howls as
he twisted his hellish instruments, alert to any telltale of collapse. Kayleen
would have welcomed a heart attack, but her strong, fit body was enduring the
punishment better than even her tormentor could fathom, a quality which she
had been proud of in the past, but was now proving her undoing.

Grod, stymied at the lack of progress, switched to her inner thighs, then her
armpits, attempting a change of pace, but when no progress resulted returned
his ministrations to her nipples and bud. No woman could withstand the torment
of her feminine charms forever, so he concentrated on them to the exclusion of
everything else. His victim, however, was sliding into oblivion, cold water
notwithstanding, and his unrelenting pulling and twisting was no longer being
felt in full. He called her, breaking a long tradition of keeping absolutely
silent while inflicting torment in order to increase the victim's sense of
isolation and helplessness, but to no avail.

Kayleen was released from the post against Grod's better judgment, delirious
and barely conscious, her mind probably unhinged by the unrelenting pain. The
empty eye sockets under Zhorun's cape studied her silently, but Grod could not
fathom what was in his Master's mind as he brought the tall girl to iron
stocks hanging from the ceiling, locking wrists and ankles to the stocks, face
down, her back bent backwards, her legs open for more torture. Repeated
application of smelling salts brought her back to consciousness with a sob.

"Tell us what we want, and be done with it," said Grod, almost moved to mercy
at her suffering. Or so she thought, as no human being could be unmoved before
her ordeal. She drank from a jug brought to her mouth. Still shaking from pain
and despair, she uttered "Lyral ..." before catching herself and lowering her
head, sobbing and coughing. Another pair of pliers was brought under her eyes
then; their wooden jaws had been rasped and hacked raw.

A soft "No" left her lips, then another, sobbing "No" died in a whisper as the
girl hanging in pain closed her eyes. Maybe, if she had begged, Grod would
have spared her this. The question became moot as the pliers closed around her
midsection, gnawing at her punished flesh with wooden jaws which rasped and
splintered on each twist and pull. She had her voice again, and she let it be
heard, her wail lasting well beyond the bite of the bloodstained pliers and
blending into the shriek which followed the assault on her forearm, the first
in a sequence apparently meant to leave no spot of her arms untouched.

Buckling and twitching in her suspension, Kayleen withstood the subsequent
mauling of her bent legs, the chain rattling whenever she jerked in pain and
screamed her lungs out, her attempts to clench her thighs easily foiled as
their inside became his next target; his expert hand avoided the places where
blood vessels could be cut, but nothing else was spared.

The raw jaws of the pliers could tear the skin and draw blood, although deep
wounds were not a possibility, so Grod started alternating their use with the
use of the pincers as he did not want her to bleed into unconsciousness. He
targeted her back, the pincers lifting a fold of flesh which the pliers would
then maul repeatedly, and then carried through her taut buttocks, although
they were somewhat difficult to reach.

As her buckling receded, he pinched her love bud and squeezed her left tit at
the same time, lest she slid away from his ministrations, then moved to the
right tit while keeping the pincers closed on her feminine flesh, alert to
changes in her hoarse screaming which had to occur sooner or later.

But his victim was defying him, even as he used rasped pliers on both her
nipples, hanging his full weight to them and scouring her nipples as her
breasts distended into twin cones of searing pain, even as he repeated the
feat again and again, even as he repeated it on her labia and subsequently
alternated nipple and labia, even as he put all his weight under the pliers
scouring her clitoris and jerked repeatedly, lying under her battered body now
marked all over by bloody bruises of his own doing, her tears dripping into
his face as her heart rending howls echoed fitfully in the chamber.

His determination shaken, the torturer carried on his grisly task as if in a
dream, fetching pincers and pliers, targeting other areas of her body, going
through the motions of a script he no longer belonged to. Her pain subsided,
her physical limits again close at hand, her wailing turning to spent moans as
she wandered into unconsciousness, but somehow, before darkness swept over
her, Kayleen could sense, from his very hands, that doubt was creeping into
her tormentor.


Chapter 4 - Of Things Present

Kayleen cried bitterly unto the darkness of the chamber deep below the ruins
of Zhorun's castle, as her precarious balance shifted and the coarse ropes
chafed her. Some wound tightly around her forearms, bringing her elbows
impossibly close together. Her legs were also tightly tied together from ankle
to knee, a tight rope wound around her waist, and her body was encased in a
pattern of crisscrossing ropes which seemed to serve no purpose.

More rope coiled around her generously proportioned and now bulging breasts,
and four more ropes had been savagely tightened across her crotch, her love
bud protruding between the inner two and her nether lips trapped alongside.
Her kidneys rested on a stout wedge, raising her midsection and anchoring the
ropes binding her so that she could not roll away.

Rest would not come easy in her torturous position, but she was exhausted
after her ordeal, so the Warrior Queen had time to ponder her recollections.
They had cleaned her, as she had soiled herself during the torture, treated
her wounds, fed her, but then left her like this. "It makes no sense." she
thought, "Why feed me if I am to be broken through exhaustion ?"

She woke up, after slipping into unconsciousness, because of something above
her lip. An itch at first, turning into a rash where the first ant had stung
her. She started writhing in panic, and in a matter of minutes it was all over
her body. She could not see them, but the skin was blistering where the ants
had stung her, and where the coarse rope ground into them, the blisters hurt
fiercely. The purpose of the crisscrossed ropes now revealed, she wailed in
despair, a drawn out "Nooo" which was soon punctuated by gasps and cries as
she was no longer able to keep still and her love bud started feeling the
consequences, the harbinger of what would happen when the stings on her
feminine parts started blistering under the bite of the knots.

The footsteps arrived well after that. As nobody had been present, she had
felt no compunction in screaming her lungs out, and now it was too late to
recover the tatters of her pride, the sane corner of her mind dreading the
forthcoming torture session, fearing this would be the one where she would
betray her friends, her subjects, anything to stop the pain.

Grod removed the cords, with some difficulty because of her uninterrupted
twitching, allowing her to relax her arms and legs, then picked her up and
laid her on a table where she cuffed her ankles, one by one, to a roller and
then her wrists, still one by one, to another. She was doused with cold water,
and woke up, still itching fiercely because of the blisters but free from the
ropes, on a massive, ominous rack.

In a corner of her mind, Kayleen remembered what she had sensed last evening
and sought his eyes, but the burly executioner now wore a mask of cold
determination and immediately started cranking the rack, skipping his habit of
showing the victim what would befall her. The device soon caught up all slack
in her body, and she felt the cuffs tighten around her ankles and wrists, but
no real pain. She saw the leering man from the South salivating at her taut
body, still a feast for the eyes from the magnificent legs, her slender
thighs, her taut midriff, her sculpted ribs, to the proud, full breasts which
had regained their delectable shape.

Before cranking the device again, Grod shifted gear, each turn of the crank
now the equivalent of a inch. It was inch by inch, then, that she started to
feel the tug of the machine, and a few cranks brought dread in her as her body
started to protest. The executioner shifted gear again, and then cranked some
more, until pain shot through her body from her shoulder and hip joints and
her scream rose under the vaults of the torture chamber.

The torturer locked the device and inspected her, suddenly aware that he had
been negligent; two or three cranks at this setting would have broken her
spine. He had to suppress his gnawing urge to be done with the matter, and get
back his former self. Never before had a prisoner wrought doubt into his
determination, never had a prisoner failed to break under his ministrations.
He reversed the device, her cry of relief heavy on him, and shifted gears
again, at a setting which allowed minute adjustments. He brought the device
back to normal and started cranking, letting his eyes wander on her shapely
form as it elongated under the tug of the rack.

The moment of respite was too brief for the Warrior Queen to achieve anything
but gathering the shreds of her resolve, and soon the rack started delivering
its due. The unrelenting chafing on her wrists and ankles deepened, and the
tug at her arms increased to a dull ache. A few more cranks turned the ache
into searing pain, her legs also on fire, her ribcage sunken as her spine
distended. The old Southerner enjoyed the sight of her stretched body
immensely, feasting on the leaning muscles stretching like cords of flesh
inside her taut arms and thighs.

His disgusting gaze incensed the Warrior Queen, bringing her to stifle the
scream about to escape from her lips as more cranks added to her agony. There
was blood on her wrists and ankles now, and she breathed in short gasps as the
stretching took its toll on her diaphragm, but an insane determination grew
inside to her not let that pig enjoy her screams any longer. She hissed and
bit her lip, cursing under her breath, a new blazing in her joints telling her
that the rack had been cranked again.

Her tormentor noticed her new resolve, and reversed the device, loosening it
one notch in the hope of surprising her with the unexpected pain of release,
but she jerked her head against the table and kept her cries behind clenched
teeth. The release lasted mere moments, then the rack was cranked back one
notch, followed by another, and a renewed fire rose from her hip joints and
elbows, rising above the gnawing pain along her spine and even the agony at
her wrists and ankles. The rack was briefly reversed again, and then cranked
two more notches as her jaw set strenuously to stifle her anguished scream.

Now that she fought him, Grod was finding his old self again. He released her
again, two notches this time, in order to build up dread when he would later
crank her two notches again. Her body was drenched in sweat, her breasts
heaved fitfully under the exertion, her ankles and wrists had been chafed raw,
but she did not scream any more. One more notch, and then he inspected her as
she trembled under the incredible pain and tension, to make sure she could
take what he had in store for her. He shifted gear before reversing the device
once, releasing a whole inch of agonizing elongation with a single crank.

Her body snapped like a rag doll, her limbs jerking, her face contorted in
agony and the beginning of a shriek rose from her throat, trailing off as she
found the will to silence it. He inspected her again, his hands testing for
sprains and dislocations, and then one at a time replaced her cuffs with
padded, wider cuffs made for the rack. The old man from the South sneered
"Moved, Grod ? Luxury cuffs for your Whore Queen, no less." compelling him to
retort "If I leave these on, I might as well let her slit her wrists. You can
put them back later on your turn, if you like them better."

During this brief respite, the Warrior Queen remembered how she had conceived
a plan, last morning, to put the divisions between her tormentors to her
advantage. She clinged to that nugget of hope as the rack was cranked up again
and ache mounted in her joints, her wrists and ankles still tearing but no
longer bleeding. After a brief pause for shifting gear, Grod cranked her notch
after notch up to where she had been before the pause, occasionally reversing
the rack to add the pain of release to her misery. He then fetched a pair of
tweezers, moved besides her body, and plucked a blonde hair from her mound.

Her gasp of surprise was about to turn into a scream as her thigh muscles
reacted by attempting to contract in spite of the pull of the rack, but she
caught herself and stifled it, her fists clenching spasmodically. He plucked
another, then a couple more before cranking the device another notch. Her
stretched body glistened with perspiration, and the tweezers pulled a curl,
her voice rasping in a strangled breath as she twitched in spite of herself.

He released her one notch and fetched a leather harness, consisting of a pair
of straps which wrapped around her body from shoulders to groin. Winding them
under her back was agonizing, each pull reverberating in her bones and
wrenching a stifled cry from her laboring lungs, but the straps would absorb
some of the tug of the rack, preserving her spine at the expense of her hip
and shoulder joints. A property which she could testify to when the rack was
cranked again, and her joints howled as if shot through by needles of fire.

The straps tightened around each side of the vulva, and he considered
squeezing one of the many angry blisters there, but he liked his technique
better so he just pulled at more pubic hair with the tweezers. She was
released one notch and then cranked up two, each time the pain increasing even
as she thought that it could not get worse, and then the tweezers pulled at
her pubic hair again. And again, a few hairs at a time but unrelentingly. Her
pain was now uninterrupted and she was beyond herself, clinging to a single
simple thought in a gulf of searing white agony, "I will not scream."

She failed when the rack was again released a full inch, as release wrought
havoc on her inhumanly stretched muscles and ligaments, the snap reverberating
through her innermost being as a shrill cry rose from her fatigued lungs, her
will not up to the task of suppressing it. Then dread engulfed her when she
heard the device being cranked again and the tension returned, her mouth
forming a begging "No" which in a supreme effort she managed to turn silent,
but only up to when a curl of hair was wrenched from her pubis.

With devilish patience, her torturer plucked her blonde bush curl by curl,
releasing and cranking back the rack now and again, keeping her on the edge of
agonies beyond human endurance. Enough of her resolve was still with her to
turn gut-wrenching cries into hissing gasps, but she occasionally vented her
anguish in fitful, inarticulated screams. Half of her mound had been plucked
raw when Grod suspended the torture, to allow her pounding heart to recover.

On her bed of agony, Kayleen wished his fingers never got away from her throat
in astonishment at the speed of her recovery, but they did, and soon the rack
was cranked again and fire shot through her limbs, blotting out the chafing
from the leather straps and even the fire at her ankles and wrists. Again the
accursed tweezers wrenched a curl of pubic hair from her mound, her hips still
attempting to buckle in spite of the agonies wrought by each attempt. Her
flesh, under the sheen of perspiration, was hot to the touch and her stretched
muscles bulged below the taut skin.

The calloused hands of her tormentor closed on her left leg, the fingers
searching for her tendons. She incongruously thought of when she had her
muscles massaged after exercise, but realization hit her on a wave of pain and
she screamed, her resolve shattered by the blazing agony from her limb, the
fiendish massage straining her muscles instead of soothing them. The old man
from the South had moved beside her, transfixed as her magnificent body
writhed in spite of the unbearable tension, drops of his drool landing on her
contorted visage as he could not help but close his hands on her breasts.

The old fart was shooed away by Grod, who had to extend over her in order to
grip her right forearm, but when she realized their nature those drops burned
into her to the point of letting her forget the hellish agonies she was
undergoing and recover at least some of her determination. Not enough,
however, to still her cry as Grod strained her flexor muscle. "I cannot stand
any more of this." she said to herself, but Grod gripped her right thigh and
started digging hard fingers in the muscles bulging on its inside, agony
following their trail until he managed to strain them also. He did the same to
her left arm, turning her powerful biceps into a bundle of blazing pain.

When the tweezers pulled a hair from her mound again, a hitherto unmatched
hell descended on her, as the slightest attempt at moving under the
unrelenting pull of the rack went though at least two opposing strained
muscles. Unbelievably, the pain increased as he plucked hair after hair, at a
rate which would protract her suffering beyond the boundaries of sanity, and
subsided only when he at last stopped.

Her eyes shut in misery, Kayleen heard him close by and barely stifled a jerk
of surprise as his gloved hand started rubbing a cold, oily ointment onto her
hot skin, starting under her ribcage and extending to her torso. There was
nothing soothing in the creepy substance, and when the first savage cramp rose
in her ribs she wailed in despair at this new cruelty.

Her throat could no longer contain her agony, and she screamed and screamed as
his fingers dug hard in her chest, pulling and twisting until she howled to
high heaven as first one and then another pectoral muscle was strained. The
ointment was causing spasmodic cramps in her chest, every breath a torment as
if all her ribs had been broken at once. And he plucked another hair.
In spite of the unrelenting pain she still attempted, in vain, to hide her
terror and cling to some of her former dignity. Grod released the device two
notches, wrenched a curl of blonde hair from her half raw mound, then cranked
it back one notch and plucked her pubic hair again. She had to be brought back
notch by notch, or she would risk permanent damage.

"Not yet." a cold voice commanded. It had been his Master for a long time, but
Grod hesitated before releasing the device one notch and cranking it once and
then twice. Impossible as it was, her screams rose higher, and she kept
screaming as he again released the rack one notch and then cranked it twice,
alert to the popping sound of some joint dislocating. It didn't happen, but he
would not risk another notch, and kept wrenching curl after curl from her
mound, not releasing her until it was plucked raw.

She was released from the rack one notch at a time, and when she was finally
free the old Southerner had her brought to a pillory, since she was unable to
walk on her own. She was put on her knees, the cuffs at her wrists and ankles
were locked onto the device and an iron band was savagely tightened around her
waist and pulled up with a chain from the ceiling, exposing her firm buttocks
to the lewd gaze of the old Southerner.

He placed on the pillory, under her stomach, a case containing a collection of
what she took some time to recognize as ... cucumbers, as if expecting her to
be afraid of them. The incongruity of the situation was such that she giggled,
and then laughed aloud, although briefly because of the rib cramps.

"She's not impressed, Hadrad." mocked Grod, and the swarthy Southerner fully
understood the insult to his virility. He eyed his victim and seemed at a loss
about what do to next, then sat behind her and picked a smallish cucumber from
the case, her upside down face puzzled as he showed it to her. "We start
small." he said, and pushed it into her exposed anus.

She cried in protest and dismay at this violation, but soon pain tinged her
voice as her sphincter was painfully distended. Her tormentor started to twist
the implement left and right within her, then rose and pulled it out, only to
push it back a heartbeat later, sending a wave of pain through her loins.

"Wet already. She likes it." mockingly proclaimed the old pig, his fingers
probing her private parts. "It's not true!" she protested in her mind,
speechless at his lewdness and furiously looking for a way to denounce his
falsehood. "To whom ?" it occurred to her, her cheeks burning in humiliation
at her degradation at the hands of this scum.

He thrust the implement into her ass again, exerting his full force, and
started pumping the intruder into her steadily, her broken voice wailing on
each push as her ass was being ravaged. He stopped when the cucumber had lost
most of its shape and consistency, her voice trailing into sobs of despair,
but quickly procured another and violated her ass again, over and over,
without interruption, until his arm tired and he sat panting behind her.

"You should like this one better." said her robed tormentor after recovering,
pushing a larger specimen into her vagina, savoring her outraged gasp before
twisting it and pulling it out. "But it does not belong there." he chuckled,
and brought it against the rosette of her anus. Her eyes widened in fear at
the girth of the implement, and then shut in pain as it tore through her by
force, its knobs and ridges searing her sphincter.

Pulling it out entailed substantial twisting and exertion, and each attempt to
push it back in met with the same resistance met on the first, so he could not
pump her with this one like he had with the previous. With an evil grin, he
started smearing it with something whose smell Kayleen could not pinpoint, and
on the next assault the implement slid in with a sickly sound.

"You already forgot Grod's ointment, my dear ?" cackled the old pig's voice,
and horror froze her face as she recognized the smell. "It works best if the
muscles are exerting, so let's put them to work," he said, pumping the
implement back and forth with sadistic glee as she cried in pain and fear, his
ear ready for the howl of despair which rose at the first savage cramp from
muscles which rarely cramped over the course of a lifetime. His lustful glee
bore the promise of many others, and he fulfilled it in earnest.

She regained consciousness on the stone floor, moments before being dragged to
a post consisting of a cross beam atop a pole. Her elbows were cuffed behind
her and tied to the post, the beam nested under her shoulders and her wrists
cuffed to the base of the post, while her legs were doubled under her thighs
with the ankles cuffed to iron bands encasing the thighs at the hip. An iron
band was clinched around her waist.

Her position would have been uncomfortable under ordinary circumstances, but
was almost unbearable for her racked body, as it put most of her weight on her
strained pectoral muscles, bringing her to tears in a few minutes. This was
not enough for her swarthy tormentor, however, who fetched from his case a
bundle of dried, one inch thick stalks, twisted clockwise over themselves into
a grotesque hybrid of a male member and a corkscrew.

The fat pig drooled as she twisted in her restraints, attempting to prevent
him from penetrating her with the hideous implement, and when she screamed as
it entered her, the swarthy Southerner bent back his head and joined his cry
of triumph to her agonized howls. The device had thicker stalks at the bottom,
and they were coarsely wound, so to penetrate her he twisted it left and
right, its ridges and grooves alternating in tearing at the ring of her
vagina, and pushed it upwards, deeper into her, impaling for a torturous
moment the full weight of her body on the ever widening bundle.
He kept pushing up and deeper, screwing the horrendous device into her with
each push, until a blood-curling howl told him that the head had reached the
cervix, at which he paused before pulling it down with full force. The grooves
rushed out of her stretched cunt with sickly popping sounds, inaudible among
the fitful, horrified screams of his victim. He paused until her cries turned
to sobs, and then pushed up again, savoring her cry of despair.

He kept pushing, pausing in between to twist it in earnest, until her cervix
was hit again, but instead of pulling it out he pushed it up, her scream
echoing under the vaults of the torture chamber. Each time he pushed it up, he
pushed it against her cervix one more time, counting aloud. Visibly aroused by
her suffering, he started licking her breasts as he pushed up and biting a
nipple each time he pushed down.

Disgust and loathing did not, unlike in the recent past, give back to Kayleen
some vestige of her former resolve. She was starting to slide, her pride
shattered, her will collapsing. Words came to her mouth, incoherent words
which immediately turned to screams, and even the muscles made to deliver a
child started to tear in places, blood trickling on her trembling thighs.

"Now for some medicine." he cackled, pulling the bundle completely out and
fisting her with his own gloved hand, smearing the cold ointment causing
muscle cramps on her cunt walls and lips. The ointment was only effective on
muscles undergoing exertion, so her torture resumed and the implement was
quickly thrust up deep into her, then yanked down in a single, uninterrupted
pull punctuated by Kayleen's desperate, spasmodic screams.

The repeated exertion after some time achieved the intended effect, and her
love channel was wracked by the first in a series of savage cramps which added
their misery to her ravishment at the hands of the grotesque implement,
shooting through her loins as her tormentor had taken into pushing it up with
savage knee thrusts and pulling it down by leaning on it with his full body
weight. Her wracked body jerked and buckled, the rekindled torments of the
rack in her limbs a quibble before the relentless tearing at her cramped
vaginal muscles, spasmodically clenching and distending as the grooves and
ridges of the hellish bundle rushed up and down as she screamed her lungs out.

Denied the blessing of unconsciousness, her torment continued until it became
apparent that its effectiveness was dwindling, and only then she was given
some respite, fed the usual syrupy liquid and freed from the post. Bitterness
engulfed her at the thought of her morning resolutions, because at present she
was not even able to walk by herself, and despair descended upon her as her
tormentor cuffed her wrists to an iron bar hanging from the ceiling and pulled
her ankles up to cuff them to the same bar, the limbs immediately aching as
the lewd position pulled at her racked muscles.

"It is not right to let an old man do all the work for you." leered her
tormentor, pressing the head of a dried cucumber onto her sphincter. A number
of grooves had been carved into its girth, and the resulting ridges had been
wickedly crenelated. As he pushed it, her sphincter distended on encountering
each ridge until the crenelations dug their way trough the stretched muscle,
which sent her gasping even as his push was almost gentle, and then contracted
onto the subsequent groove. Her dread found immediate confirmation when he
smeared on it some of the accursed ointment, which would soon make the
squeezing as painful as childbirth.

When the device was in place at last, he circled her and started tightening a
knotted cord around her left breast, followed by another around the right
breast. More rope was wrapped around her chest to connect the tight breast
cords to each other. He then moved between her legs and produced another dried
cucumber, carved like the one in her ass but frightening in girth and length,
to the point of wrenching a whispered "No" from her lips for the first time
after days of relentless torture.

Enjoying himself immensely, the lewd Southerner pushed the horrid implement
into her vagina, forcefully, enjoying her inarticulate pleas, hoping that she
would not break just now. When it was over, Kayleen hung from the iron bar,
sobbing and crying softly, afraid of looking at her torturer who was tying a
rope from the device tormenting her ass to a ring in a vertical wooden board
about two feet from her groin, and subsequently did the same with the one in
her womb. The Southerner then circled her and wound the loose ends of the
cords encircling her breasts around an overhead pulley.

"Now you do the work." he said, pulling her by the cords around her breasts
and swinging her forcefully away from the post, until the cords running to the
implements in her orifices were pulled taut, yanking both of them almost half
the way out, drawing a shrill cry as the muscles ringing both were torn
through by the onrushing grooves and ridges.

As her tormentor let his end of the breast cords loose, her momentum inverted
and she swung groin first into the post, impaling both dried implements into
her passages with a sickly thud. A spasmodic scream surged from her throat and
turned into despair, as he was already pulling at her breast cords again.

The relentless tearing of the hellish implement soon sent cramps wracking
through her body again, and the stretched muscles strained, first her
sphincter and then her cunt, her screams desperate enough to crack open the
walls of the torture chamber. Her innards were bleeding, droplets scattering
on each thud against the wooden post, her cervix swollen within her.

She hung there, mad with pain, a helpless young woman at the mercy of a
sadistic pig, her name forgotten, her pride lost, but still at the heart of
her soul willing to stand between a fate like hers and her innocent friend.

"I won't!" she gurgled, "I won't betray her." A cramp savaged her insides, and
she howled, "You heard me, monsters ?" the last word a snarling cry as her
cervix was pummeled again. "I won't betray her!" she cried as her vagina was
torn through, sputtering "I'll see you rot in Hell" as her tormentor pulled at
her with all his weight, and she passed out.

She woke up on a bench, face down, as the silent Easterner was cuffing her
right ankle to an iron bar crossing the head of the bench, her legs painfully
spread in a T position and secured to the bar by the ankle cuffs and by iron
bands at knee and hip height. Her torso was tied to the bench with iron bands
at the waist and the neck, and her arms were painfully bent upwards above her
head, the wrists tied to a bar hanging from a chain in the ceiling. Her body
ached as the strenuous position rekindled the pain of the rack.

Once finished, the Easterner busied himself with something she could not see
but which made itself felt soon enough as her left ass cheek was stung by a
dozen of tiny pricking needles, of the kind used in the Far East for tattoos.
Kayleen could not see that, but he was using a seal where the tiny needles had
been firmly lodged, and tapped onto it to prickle the skin, the needles not
long enough to actually pierce it.

Tattoo masters did this, testing various needle lengths because not all skins
were the same thickness, and unbeknownst to her he was looking for the perfect
needle length. The pain was mild, far milder than anything she had experienced
in this chamber, and the Warrior Queen made good of the respite allowed to
her. The Southerner pig apparently got so carried away that he no longer
paused except when she passed out before his eyes, so this breather was a
godsend for her. Her hopes also rekindled, because this was going to be the
last session of the day, she just had to pull through.

Meanwhile the wry Easterner was done with his preliminaries, and fetched the
first actual instrument of torture, not a quarter inch in diameter but a full
inch, and bristling with the finest needles, so fine that they would bend if
they were longer. Dread awoke in her as he placed the seal on her left
shoulder blade, followed by searing pain as he drove the needles into her skin
with a vicious slap from a hefty wooden paddle.

She screamed in surprise and pain, her confidence dented, and while still
deliberating within herself whether she wanted to let the bastards enjoy her
screams, another slap landed on her back, followed by another, her skin on
fire from the prickling of the countless needles.

Her jaw set when he moved the seal onto the side of her dangling left breast,
as she visualized the lewd Southerner enjoying the show, but when the slap
came the pain was so excruciating that it took all her will to stifle the
scream, and the next, and the next still, as her tormentor seemed to favor
three strikes in quick succession in the same area before moving on.

Her dangling breasts proved a cumbersome target, although Kayleen could not
tell that as he seared them over and over, so he moved to her back in earnest.
The flat, muscled canvas of her back lay in wait of an artist of pain, and he
tried his level best to be up to the task. He moved his seal from place to
place following intricate symmetries, her voice denying him her song but her
muscles flexing in a living sculpture of pain under the rhythm of his slaps,
her panting torso heaving and twisting as her skin was punished exquisitely
with unmatched intensity.

The uninterrupted pain was already chafing at Kayleen's resolve, but when he
moved to her firm ass despair visited her again, because the taut skin of the
ass cheeks felt as if on fire as the slaps drove the needles almost, but not
quite, through. He slapped her in rhythm with her belabored breathing, without
respite or mercy, her restrained body unable to move away.

And the full measure of how a taut skin was more sensitive to this fiendish
torture visited her when he started applying it to her legs, first a slap here
and a slap there, then following a veritable path of agony along one and then
the other, her strangled cries growing more audible on each slap, as the
wanderings of the seal came closer and closer to her groin.

She managed to hold her howl as the seal was slapped into the soft flesh below
the vulva, the first time, and hissed spasmodically at the second slap, but it
took all her will not to burst as the third seared her viciously. The seal was
then moved onto her feminine parts, and when the slap came she writhed and
gritted her teeth as the pain shot up her restrained body, barely managing to
quench the wails of despair arising from her.

The Easterner then suspended her torture and partly freed her from the post,
moving her with Grod's help to another, where she was tied with her back to a
sloping bench with iron bands at the neck, under her breasts and at the waist,
her legs still painfully spread along the iron bar. Her wrists, cuffed above
her head, chafed under the weight of her body, because her groin dangled off
the low end of the bench.

Her tormentor tied a cord around each nipple and tied them behind her neck,
shortening them savagely until her breasts were distorted into conical
receptacles of stretched agony, the soft undersides taut enough for proper
application of the seal. Kayleen could only clench her teeth as she understood
what lay ahead, her voice rising in a shrill cry when the first slap brought
fire to the tender skin and the others kindled it again and again.

Now that he had a proper setup, the wry Easterner heaped unrelenting torment
on her breasts, raining slap after slap on each, pausing in between and timing
his assaults on her panting cries. Her position forced her to take in the full
horror of what had been visited on her body, as she could see the bullwhip
welts, the chafed mark of the ropes, the bluish bruises of the cane, the
blistered ant stings ... and she was spared the sight of the torn, bleeding
muscles ringing her orifices. The seal left round, reddish marks like coins of
fire, her breasts a money-changer's drawer by now and her voice hoarse from
her efforts to deny her tormentors the audible confirmation of her defeat.

Looking into her eyes, the wry Easterner moved again to her legs, her position
allowing him to reach the front of her thighs and the slaps causing them to
pull at her strained muscles in a vain attempt to clench them before the
horrors visited on her. He alternated the slaps on her thighs with slaps on
her ribcage, abdomen and belly, and soon Kayleen realized with dread that he
was circling around her vulva, closer and closer. She shut her eyes too late,
but he bid his time, and when the seal came to her vulva the front of her body
was covered in reddish round marks.

When he discarded the seal she thought that it was over, but then he produced
another, a strip which could fold around and trap her labia, the slap searing
the captured flesh on both sides as she howled in pain, her short lived will
broken by the relentless torture, sobbing through the other slaps until she
managed to regain some resolve in time for the assault on her love button.

Her clitoris was too small a target, however, so the Easterner fetched a small
seal, a third of an inch wide, mounted on the top of a short handle. He lay
the seal on her love bud and hammered it down with the paddle, her teeth
almost cracking in a desperate effort to stifle a howl of pure agony, the
first of three she frantically hoped, only to see the hammering shatter them
as he continued uninterrupted, looking into her eyes before each strike, both
well aware of what was at stake, at least until blackness clouded her mind as
her screams subsided into gurgling wails.

The silent Easterner stopped his hammering and untied her while she was still
on the brink of unconsciousness, cuffing her arms behind her back in a reverse
prayer position and suspending her upside down from the iron bar which still
spread her legs achingly wide.
She still clung to some of her will, but fear was cold in her stomach as he
fetched a seal mounted on a wooden handle, like a carving knife with no blade
attached. He pressed the seal on her ribcage and forcefully raked the seal
against her skin, digging a fiery trail of prickling agony in her tormented
flesh and wrenching a stifled, desperate cry from her torn throat.

Her position allowed him to visit the raking agony almost everywhere over her
martyrized body, and he explored places which could not be reached with the
slaps such as the crease between her ass cheeks, her armpits, the soles of her
feet and the back of the knees, but he concentrated on the breasts and nipples
as if on cue from the leering Southerner, raking them over and over, droplets
of blood oozing from her distended flesh as the skin was prickled once and
again in the same place, in a crisscrossing pattern of woe punctuated by her
dreadful gasps and desperate hisses.

The proper target for raking, however, were her distended legs, so he moved to
the left leg and pressed his devious instruments on the calf, drawing it in a
single, prolonged stroke up to the iron band at the knee, her gasp turning
into a gurgle as her skin was on fire. He experimented with a few variations,
such as spiraling around the bound limb rather than raking in a single
straight stroke, and then moved to the other leg, her face set in a mask of
agony and despair while her cries mounted behind clenched teeth.

The fear of what would come next swell within Kayleen's mind as he moved off
her legs, and to her horror she realized words, incoherent words she had no
control on, escaped her mouth under her panting breath, "Lyral," she babbled,
"Help!" which she actually cried aloud when her labia was raked, "Shrine" and
"Please" when her torn vaginal muscle was raked over and over, as if rinsing
it in white hot pain, her will stifling an anguished "Mercy" as he raked her
love button, multiple times, the pink feminine flesh turning red raw.

If her tormentor had heard anything, he paid no heed when "Enough!" barely
escaped her lips, as he fetched another instrument, a pair of wooden scissors
whose blades had been set with the same needles found on the seals, but which
would drive them with unrelenting force well beyond what the seals provided.
Her tormentor raked her left thigh, her coughing turning into a hiss, and then
closed the scissors on a fold of her flesh in the same position on the right
thigh, her mouth snapping open in a uncontainable howl of agony.

He repeated the alternate application of rake and scissors, driving home his
argument of pain onto her twitching body, scanning her eyes for a plea or a
confession, at which Kayleen shut them tight among tears, her ultimate attempt
at holding out against the inevitable. Unmoved, he started applying rake and
scissors over her body, circling in a tightening pattern around her feminine
parts, dread mounting in her as her mind frantically compared the agony of the
scissors against the raking and shrank before the realization that the
application of the scissors on her clitoris would break her resolve, and
condemn her friend to the same hell she was going through.
The imperturbable Easterner dropped the rake and fetched another pair of
scissors, assaulting her cunt lips and the torn muscles ringing her orifices,
her screams now rising one after the other and interspersed with babbling he
did not care about, confident that her will would snap soon. He listened at
her breathing and slowed down his grisly handiwork, then paused to fetch and
apply smelling salts as he did not want her to pass out just now. He wanted
her to break, so he recovered the scissors and descended on her feminine
flesh, tearing and drawing blood, unrelentingly ravaging her while she howled
to high heaven, but only to be stymied as he understood the words escaping her
mouth between agonizing cries, "I'll never betray her!"


Chapter 5 - A Plan Hatches

Kayleen yowled as her feet slid again on the greased bronze ball and pain shot
from her thumbs down her aching arms. She hung in the dark torture chamber,
the balls of her chained feet seeking the four-inch bronze sphere on which she
could not manage a steady grip, as the thumbs locked in screws high above her
head bore the entire weight of her aching, suspended body.

Droplets of blood fell on her face as another slip ground the screws into her
blood encrusted thumbs, her manacled wrists preventing her from grasping at
the chain rising above into the unlit emptiness. Her waist was again clinched
in the accursed iron band intended to constrict her breathing, which it did.

The Warrior Queen pondered her fate, baffled by the behavior of her captors,
desperately searching for an opening. They were not actually attempting sleep
deprivation, as she was allowed any fitful naps her wracked body managed to
slip into; they were not attempting to break her by exhaustion, as they fed
her after, and sometimes even in the middle of, each session.

She cracked a smile at the thought of the liquid food, mostly honey and some
herbal preparations whose effects she could not discern; apparently, they did
not want their brand new torture chamber messed up too much. Pain suddenly
gripped her thumbs as she slipped and had to regain her precarious footing, a
daunting task for her racked muscles. They were not attempting to break her in
a single surge, always allowing some respite in the course of each session.

And they had grown complacent about that, no longer keeping her fully tied as
they switched turns and sometimes even as they changed from one torment to
another. Her body was still strong, although at present every single muscle
ached terribly, but they were no fighters, and surprise would be on her side.
Zhorun's presence was an unknown, as she had no idea of how his present nature
had affected him, yet wizards made poor close range combatants.

Time was not on her side, however, as her strength would not endure forever
and she could not fathom when they would start to really damage her. She was
less worried about fighting three against one; she could take out the first by
surprise, preferably the old fart or the puny Easterner. Grod would be a tough
opponent in her condition. She had to rest somehow, if she was to snatch the
chance of freeing herself when fate offered her one, but as the screws bit
into her thumbs again she was reminded of the the difficulties involved.

When the Warrior Queen heard the dreaded footsteps, after a night devoid of
any rest or respite, she cursed because exhaustion made her plan essentially
unfeasible and she would have had to withstand another day of whatever horrors
they had prepared for her. She considered pretending to be on the verge of
breaking, but she loathed the thought and it would be of no use today.

The three brought torches, whose light shone on her taut body, causing the
swarthy Southerner to wet his mouth in anticipation. Kayleen was freed from
the thumbscrews and her arms were bent behind her back in a reverse prayer
position, her legs were doubled under her with the ankle cuffs tied to bands
tightened on her thighs at the hip, and the band around her waist was used to
lift her off the floor, her face up, her back bent backwards and her generous
breasts full and firm on her ample chest.

Already excited, the Southerner freed his member from his flowing robes and
thrust it into her on the spot, forcing her tight love channel open again,
rasping at its dry walls and enjoying every second of the pain and disgust she
tried to stifle in her voice but could not hide from her face. He pumped her
raw with brief, rutting thrusts, rocking her body back and forth.

"First things first." he declaimed, then fetched a tray and affixed a steel
staff, over four feet long, to the chain holding her weight, followed by
another crossing the first in the middle. The staves were strong but thin and
had dozens of tiny hooks underneath. He added another, shorter staff crossing
the other in the middle, parallel to her midsection. Although Kayleen had no
doubt about the general intent behind the contraption, she could not help but
wonder how it was supposed to hurt her.

Her doubts were soon washed away as he produced a thin steel chain ending in a
bronze clamp, which he brought against her left breast, pinching a fold of
firm flesh with his right hand, onto which he snapped the clamp which he then
hung to a hook, making sure the fine chain was taut. The clamp was painful,
although not nearly as painful as most of what she had been subjected to in
this chamber, but dread mounted over her as she counted the hooks above.

The next was placed inside her thigh, near the knee, and forced her to buckle
to the right because the chain was too short. The one after that closed on the
soft flesh under her right breast, and the short chain again forced her to
raise her shoulders as a gasp escaped her lips. Her fiendish tormentor used
clamps whose chain had different lengths, so as he added more her weight still
pulled only at those added last and she had to twist and turn for his delight.

After over twenty clamps, the last biting the tender flesh of her underbelly,
he contemplated his handiwork and then casually leaned on her thighs, drawing
a spiteful hiss as she grimaced to stand the pain. He kept leaning, his grin
widening, until the clamp snapped and she jerked with a strangled scream when
another was pulled suddenly. He rose, and waited until her panting subsided,
then, locking his gaze into hers, moved between her legs.

Fear and humiliation turned into burning hatred as he violated her again, the
clamps pulling and tearing whenever he pushed and coming off with audible
snaps, as she desperately tried to deny him at least the satisfaction of
hearing her scream, with limited results. Her marked flesh grew new bruises as
each clamp was yanked under his lust, although most often than not little
actual damage occurred, and he ran out of clamps some time before climaxing.

"We'll have to try again with more, my dear. I am no longer the man of my
youth but apparently you rekindled some flame here." he said panting while she
sobbed softly. He recovered his clamps and started over, reaching under her to
clamp some more under her back and her ass cheeks, but leaving most for her
inner thighs and breasts. He then pulled at her left nipple and clamped it,
allowing some slack as her jaw set among tears, then pinched the other.

He then moved beside her and pulled her blonde mane downward, yanking a clamp
and then another as he said in her ear "Dance for me, Whore Queen, until I am
ready for you again." And dance she did, in spite of herself, as he pulled at
her hair or sent her spinning, the clamps snapping in quick succession as she
wound around the chain holding her waist and then back, her body convulsing in
a vain attempt to lessen the pain and her stifled, fitful cries arousing him
until he violated her again in a frenzy of snapping clamps.

As the Warrior Queen was lowered to the floor, only seething hate allowed her
to notice that she was being allowed a moment of respite just as exhaustion
was creeping over her. She was however not freed this time, as the chain was
moved from her belly to her back, suspending her face down above the stone
floor, her torso slightly leaning forward and her still doubled legs finding
no comfortable position.

Her sweating tormentor fetched from his accursed tray a clasp of a different
kind, the bronze jaws at least twice as wide but wickedly jagged and with a
single ring in place of the fine chain. Leisurely, he closed the jaws on a
fold of flesh along her sculpted abdomen, apparently unconcerned when she
barely flinched. He added a few more and then pulled her head up by her
disheveled hair, so that she could not see the lead weight that he attached to
the first clasp and hoping to savor her visage contorting under pain.

He was not disappointed, although screams would have been welcome, so he sent
her spinning. Unlike before, the clasps would not go off but simply keep
pulling, rising as she spun around, falling as she slowed down and then rising
again as she spun in the opposite direction. He would have liked to close his
eyes and gauge the progress of her by her screams, but she still defied him.

He hung a few clasps to her labia, sending her for another spin, to no avail.
Well, he was not running out of clasps. He hung one to each breast, then more
to her inner lips and inside her thigh, each time sending her spinning. He
savagely clasped her love bud and her nipples, savoring the yowls as she spun.

When he felt ready, he moved behind her, freed his member from the robes and
put his hands on her ass cheeks, the thumbs digging on each side of the
rosette of her anus. A muted "No" formed on her mouth as she realized what was
going to happen. His member pushed into her, slowly at first, forcing her
sphincter, then he pumped deeper, and the weights hanging off the clasps
danced under her, her body twitching under the pain, her throat hoarse in the
effort to hold her mounting anguish, and her mind seething at the humiliation.

He was not done with humiliations, however. He moved before her and pinched
her nose, so that she had to open her mouth to receive the hollow gag meant
for her final abuse. But Kayleen guessed the intent and finding strength in
desperation managed to thwart all attempts at gagging her, so he left.

When he came back, he wore gloves and carried a handful of stinging tree
leaves. Dread filled her eyes as he folded a leaf into a clasp, turning to
agony as he closed it on her left nipple, but she managed to hold the cries
she had not held when first exposed to the hellish leaves; the same fate
befell her other nipple, her cunt lips and her love bud, yet she did not give.

Instead of weights, he snapped the clamps on the clasp rings, so that he could
gather the chains in his left hand, then held the gag before her mouth and
said "When you've had enough, take it." He jerked at the chains and the clasps
ground the leaves into her tender parts, a scream of agonized suffering
escaping her lips in spite of her vain efforts to contain it. He jerked again,
and kept jerking, until her screams turned to gurgles, but she seemed bent on
defying him. Incensed, he kept yanking at the clasps until he managed to gag
her exhausted mouth by force. He could have waited until she recovered, but
lust overcame cruelty and he throat fucked his victim into unconsciousness.

When she came to, she was lying face down on the floor, still gagged, her arms
now cuffed behind her neck to an iron collar and her legs opened painfully
wide by a ten feet iron bar resting behind the small of her back, to which
ankle cuffs and thigh bands had been clinched. Above her, a matching iron bar
hung from a chain, with the now familiar hooks he used to hang his clamps to.
But he was not using clamps with time, he was using the same clasps whose
wickedly jagged jaws could chafe her skin raw when pulled.

Kayleen could not help but despair at the thought of more torture at the hands
of this pig, but she was not allowed time for more because as soon as he had
enough clasps on her to hold her weight, he lifted her off the floor by the
clasps running the whole length of her distended legs. Her shaken resolve
shattered at the sudden pain and she screamed in earnest through the gag.

Only when he was done adding more clasps all over her body, with chains of
different lengths, did he clasp her breasts in earnest, lust coursing through
his hands as he tightened the clasps on her firm tit flesh, enjoying her cries
and gasps. But he had saved his worst for last.

He opened her cunt lips wide and clinched a pair of clasps on each, pulling
them to distend the lips further as she shrieked, then followed on with
another pair of clasps, and then another, a wheel of clasps deforming her cunt
lips which he completed by clasping her love button and pulling at it savagely
until it was distended enough to clasp it once more at the base.

When her cries subsided he moved behind her back, hissing "Now your tongue
makes an old man hard again." grabbed a handle in each hand and pulled her up
by the clamps on her breasts, forcing her to arch her back and bringing her
gagged mouth at the height of his flaccid member. A howl rose from her throat,
the clasps chafing her breasts raw, but she defied him and however he jerked
the clamps, she still denied him this humiliation of her.

Her refusal incensed him to the point of leaving on the spot. Unbeknownst to
the others, he had in his room the means to serve the bitch right. When he
returned, his member was already bulging and his erection became prodigious
when he savagely pulled her up again. Kayleen's eyes were wide with horror as
he pushed into her throat in a frenzied rut.

The savage violation lasted much longer than before, his wild thrusts snapping
a number of clasps from her chafed breasts, but did not exhaust him. After a
brief pause he moved between her legs, pulled her up by the clasps on her
breasts again and savagely penetrated her ass as humiliation and pain shot
through her forlorn screams, each thrust snapping some clasp holding her
weight until she fell on the floor, her legs chafed all over.

His drug-induced lust still not sated, he put a leather sheath on his bulging
member, rubbed it with stinging tree leaves drawing a strangled "No" from his
victim's ravaged throat, and viciously fucked her on the floor, pulling her
groin onto his erect member by the clasps on her nether lips, and after those
snapped off, by those on her love bud.

Whatever merciful entity made her pass out again did a half-hearted job,
because she awoke in pain on the cold stone floor, sobbing, gazing at the
Easterner who eyed her coldly. She was dragged to a rail bench and her wrists
and ankles cuffed to the ends, while an iron band was clinched at her waist.
She was pulled taut, but the bench was not intended to rack her.

The man moved to the head of the bench, took her left middle finger and
encased it in some metal contraption, which she could not see but whose cold
touch she felt and soon turned into pressure as he operated the device, slowly
bending her finger backwards, the ever increasing pain shooting through her
hand even when he just sat idle and increasing when he tightened it. He did
the same on her other hand, tightening one and then the other until she
thought that he would snap her fingers.

Her tormentor instead stopped just short of that, and simply moved to the next
finger on each hand, visiting each in turn with excruciating slowness as sweat
glistened over her body, her generous breasts heaving under the effort and her
jaw clenched in the effort to withstand the unrelenting pain.

Her toes soon underwent the same treatment, the ligaments stretched near
breaking point toe by toe and the unrelenting pain compounding that from her
ailing fingers. He surveyed her writhing form, the head shaking and the teeth
clenched to fight back the screams, and bid his time before moving by her arms
and encasing her right elbow in another iron contraption.

The Warrior Queen was able to see enough of the latter device to guess at its
functioning: iron bands encasing the elbows and a vise bending it backwards,
tearing at the ligaments of the upper and fore arm. Her guesses found
immediate confirmation as the pain from her bent elbow joined that from her
fingers and toes. The deviousness of this torture was that the pain never
decreased, each device unrelentingly tormenting a different joint but not
causing shock or permanent damage. Yet.

After her elbows, he encased both her knees in a similar contraption, bending
her leg inwards at the knee in spite of the muscles flexing under her
glistening skin, the unrelenting pain heavy on her breathing and her face
contorted in the effort to resist the mounting agonies inflicted upon her.

Another iron device was tightened around her shoulders, pushing her shoulder
blades up behind her back, her arms on the way to dislocating as the device
pulled them down. But the worst device was placed at her hips, pulling up and
apart her thigh bones out of their sockets. Her once fine stretched body was
now contorted at odd angles in the iron devices encasing her, the
uninterrupted pain now worsened because new agonies shot through her shoulder
joints whenever her chest heaved against the shoulder device.

As time passed, her endurance was sorely tested because the pain from her bent
joints and stretched ligaments never subsided. Her tormentor bid his time, and
then applied a second vise on her left hand, encasing her pinky and bending it
almost to the point of tearing the ligament. Her eyes were clenched shut, but
he rapped on her chest three times with his knuckles, her surprise such that
she almost let her mounting screams escape the tightened lips. Soon she
understood that each rap was another finger bent, the pain blazing in her
hands and the promise of more in his quiet rapping as he moved to the toes.

Just as she thought that there was nothing more to bend in her ailing body, he
fetched a thin steel switch and rapped it on her heaving breasts, slashing the
nipples, wrenching a yowl of pain through her clenched teeth as her torso
moved in reaction. The switch landed next in the palm of her left hand, and
agony shot up her arm as her muscles contracted, tearing at the distended
ligaments. After a long pause, the switch landed on her nipples again, her
shoulders a world of hurt as the jerk of her chest moved her shoulder blades.

The Easterner rapped at her crotch, through the crease between her thighs
caused by the bending of her hips, and she cried behind gritting teeth as her
buckling caused her hip joints to creak in blazing agony. He started circling
her, leisurely, rapping her exposed flesh now and then to bring renewed pain
to her bent joints and distended ligaments, until her endurance waned.

After being painfully released from the vises and the bench, Kayleen's sore
body fell on the cold floor, curling in a silently sobbing ball in a vain
attempt to escape the pain. The Easterner tied her to a post, her arms pulled
straight above her head along the sides of the post by iron bands at the
shoulders and elbows, and her thighs spread outwards, encased at the hip and
knee by iron bands. She drank from the jug brought to her lips as iron bands
were clenched above and below her breasts and at the waist.

Although the cuffs had not been removed from her wrists, she was restrained by
twin studded iron plates, encasing her palms and extended fingers like tight
metal gloves. The Easterner gauged her condition in a single cold glance, and
then turned a crank, twisting her wrists outwards.

Her elbows could rotate to compensate the torsion of her wrists, but her
shoulders much less so, and soon the twist applied to her palms reached a
point which was too much for her elbows, and pain mounted at her wrists,
elbows and shoulders as he increased the pull on her palms, inch by inch,
hoping to see defeat dawn on her pain-wracked expression.

As his gaze only met furiously clenched teeth, he bid his time and then moved
to her feet. They also were encased in studded iron bands, veritable sandals
of torment, which he rotated outwards, bending her legs at the ankle and the
knee, the position immediately painful because the knee could give only a
little and her thighs were already splayed. Sweat covered her skin again,
muffled cries punctuating her belabored breathing whenever he twisted her
restraints some more.

The silent Easterner sat behind her, studying her twitches and moans as the
unrelenting torment of her bent limbs wracked her strong frame, the pain never
decreasing and dread building up as she could not see what the origin of her
suffering had in store. He paused until, according to his experience, the
victim started hoping that no new torment would be added, and then turned a
crank pushing a wedge behind her shoulder blades, sending new pain blazing
through her shoulder joints and constricting her heaving chest.

Breathing turned into an exercise in agony for Kayleen, as attempting a deep
breath tore at her shoulder joints, and she dreaded the silent tormentor
behind her back, certain that he would draw her through this hell only to take
her into another. When he did, this occurred through another wedge, pushing
her buttocks away from the post and tearing at her hip joints, as if to wrench
them out of place inch by inch, and the anguished screams she denied her
tormentor raged within her, escaping only as gasps and hisses.

As yet another crank was turned, her knees protested as her twisted legs were
also rotated outwards, her pain-wracked hip joints reaching new pinnacles of
searing white agony as the relentless pain of her predicament was compounded
by a rotation which was allowed for only a small angle even in a normal
position. Pure, unadulterated terror descended over her as she discerned among
her barely stifled screams a sickening creaking from her joints as pain
reached new heights, screaming to herself "A cripple! I am going to be
crippled forever!" over and over until she screamed for real when the steel
switch suddenly savaged her exposed breasts.

In spite of the searing pain, nothing was broken as time passed except her
resolve, as the regular application of the switch sent waves of agony through
her body when the muscles contracted, vainly attempting to pull against the
iron devices bending her body. Once more, however, the Easterner noted that he
could break her defiance, but her will would persist until she passed out.
Kayleen woke up hanging upside down, her torso tied to a vertical post with
waist, neck and chest iron bands, her legs pulled wide along twin iron rails,
which already included the iron devices to bend and twist hip, knee and ankle,
although still unwound. Her arms were also pulled along a single horizontal
rail extending from the bottom of the sturdy wooden post.

The Easterner picked up a smallish device, waiting until her gaze focused on
it, then proceeded to apply it to her left toe, bending it again, intent on
rekindling the hell she just left. As before, her elbows and knees were
encased and viciously bent near breaking point, her fingers and toes purplish
at the relentless tearing of her ligaments, her throat sore and her jaw aching
from the effort of containing her screams again.

Once her fingers were in pain, the rail at the bottom of the post was rotated
downward, twisting her shoulder joints, her gasps and hisses the harbingers of
more to come, sweat returning on her twitching body as unrelenting pain
consumed her resolve and gnawed at her determination.

Again the wicked steel switch landed on her exposed flesh, causing her muscles
to contract in reaction and bringing fresh pain as they flexed in vain against
the stretched ligaments. But the purpose of her position soon became apparent
as her leg rails were rotated slightly, one counterclockwise and the other
clockwise, twisting her martyrized hip joints and pulling at her sore muscles.

The Easterner eyed her coldly, then started winding the devices along each leg
until they renewed their compounded agonies, and then cranked first one and
then the other rail into rotating her distended legs, choreographing a dance
of pain in mid air, a dance whose music was her broken voice wailing and
shrieking as her thigh muscles were strained one after another.

The pain in her groin rose and waved as her thighs were distended, twisted,
pulled and torn, her muscles burning and the ligaments pulled near breaking
point as her tormentor unrelentingly wound his hideous device. Her crotch was
pushed forward as both thighs were bent backwards, closer and closer to
tearing them out of their sockets, her voice rising in a howling scream when
the steel switch savagely slashed her crotch and her thighs spasmodically
attempted to pull close, spraining under the effort.

Her tormentor sent her left thigh along a downward arch, while sending her
right thigh upward, causing her pelvis to buckle and twist in a rag doll dance
of pain as her limbs were forced to come full circle and start back, slowly,
agonizingly, the unrelenting pain waxing and waning in each joint, wrenching a
fitful scream from her unwilling mouth whenever agony mounted in both at the
same time.

Time and again she screamed in fear as the pain rose to unbearable levels,
expecting the cracking of bone or the popping sound of dislocation, but her
tormentor bid his time, and exercised her limbs in his ballet of agony while
his victim howled and nonsense words like "Please" and "Mercy" escaped from
her parched lips. "Now you talk." he answered, and resumed his rapping of her
exposed flesh, slowly increasing the strength of each strike and their
frequency, her uninterrupted lambasting inaudible as her fitful cries mingled
with anguished calls to Lyral, the friend for whose sake she was undergoing
this, and whose name last escaped her lips as she lost consciousness.

The shock of cold water brought her back lying on the floor, and Grod brought
a jug to her lips, allowing her to drink at length. Her ankle cuffs had been
supplemented with narrow iron bands along the entire length of her legs and
thighs, and Grod was proceeding to bind her arms behind her in the same
fashion. With dread she realized that the bands were studded on the inside,
not to the point of piercing the skin however, and that the studs had a screw
mount which allowed each to be pushed further down.

Grod paid no heed to a number of bands still on the floor besides her, but
dragged her into a corner where chains hung from pulleys in the ceiling and
lifted her up by tying chains at her knee and elbow bands, her shoulders again
hurting horribly as they bore part of her weight. But her eyes widened in
horror when he brought under her a wooden upwards wedge, positioned it under
her buttocks and lowered her onto it.

Part of her weight moved onto the point, the discomfort soon turning to a dull
ache, and while she squirmed in search of some respite Grod tightened the
remaining studded bands on her torso, constricting her chest and waist so that
her breathing became immediately uncomfortable. More chains were fastened to
the cuffs at her ankles and wrists, her torso and her legs, so that at the end
she hung in a web of chains. The pain she dreaded came when he loosened the
chains bearing her weight, which rested entirely on the wedge point below her,
in the soft spot between the sphincter and the opening of the vagina.

The point radiated pain up her body, and she could not help but twitch in a
vain attempt to find a less excruciating position, which caused the studs in
her restraints to grind the flesh, each jerk bringing about more pain from the
wedge tormenting her. Grod adjusted the chains holding her in position so that
she would not rock off the point and bid his time, scrutinizing her contorting
face as she grimaced and hissed in uninterrupted torment.

Time passed, and yet the Warrior Queen endured the excruciating torment, each
breath bringing new sufferings as her chest pressed into the studs
constricting it, each jerk a new blaze of pain from below, droplets of blood
on her skin where the chafing from the studs had turned the skin raw. Grod
tightened the studs one by one, a mute menace of further pain to come, but
then loosened some of the chains and slowly pulled others, excruciatingly
drawing her on the point until it entered her sphincter.

After a strangled cry of dread and outrage, her suffering actually subsided,
as her weight was no longer concentrating on the tip, but a whip soon cracked
on her thigh with the full force of Grod's powerful arm, her clenched teeth
fighting a scream of anguish at this new development.

Grod had picked a short, nasty whip of twisted sinew, which could be wielded
in the confined space of the corner, and now lashed her exposed flesh all
over, apparently at random but actually looking for the most effective spots.
Whenever her body jerked under the whip, the wedge point entered her rectum
some more, impossible to dislodge, and soon the pain from her distended
sphincter and the chafing from the gyrations on the wooden tormentor added to
the suffering from the merciless lashes.

Well aware of the developments, Grod concentrated his lashing on the spots
which would push the wedge deeper, targeting her lower back, the underside of
her thighs and the exposed soles of her feet. Her glistening body flexed and
contracted under the assault, her panting often turning into hisses and gasps
as she still held out, determined not to scream for their pleasure.

There was to be no pause to this torment as long as she looked to be taking
the full measure of it, so Grod again loosened some chains and pulled at
others, dragging her body over the tip again until it rested again where it
was before, her twitching body experiencing again its bite but with the added
torment of the accursed lash.

He fetched a pair of raw wooden pliers, waited until her teary gaze focused on
them, and then moved besides her to close them on her left nipple. He could
hear the gritting of her teeth as he started pulling at the nipple, as if to
tear it off from the breast which was flattened against her chest by the
studded iron bands.

Since he had to work in a restricted space, it took him many excruciating
attempts to pull her full breast through the bands by the nipple, her jerks
and twists as the raw wood chafed her sensitive piece of feminine flesh
bringing untold suffering from the diabolical unyielding point. And she also
endured the same on her other breast, before her conditions caused Grod to
allow her a pause, as she was no longer feeling what was being done to her.

Cold water revived her brutally and the suffering resumed, her now exposed
swollen breasts a suitable target for the whip, since in her new position the
most effective strikes where those which forced her to distend her limbs,
increasing the pressure where the point dug into her flesh.

The twisted whip took to her thighs, as upon each lash her legs distended and
a new lance of white hot pain surged from the hellish wedge, and crisscrossed
them where the flesh was free from the bite of the studded bands. Grod bid his
time between each lash, allowing the pain to sink in and the grinding from the
point to do its work, but still she would not scream in spite of the agony
evident on her beautiful face.

He fetched another whip, a short whip which he wet thoroughly and then coated
in wet sand, and with this whip in the right and the pliers in the left moved
to her and closed the pliers on her left nipple, pulling it up to slash the
underside of her left breast. An agonized scream burst behind her clenched
teeth, her face distorted in the effort to contain it, and he lashed her again
to see if he could wrench it from her. After many lashes it became apparent
that she was still defying him, so he bid his time, perusing the effects of
the point on the mask of suffering distorting her face.

He moved the pliers to her other nipple and pulled it savagely up, pausing
before lashing the quivering flesh and listening for her panting voice to
burst into despair, but she still endured and the pain had not broken her will
yet. He operated the chains positioning her again, dragging her soft flesh
over the point with excruciating slowness until it dug through the lower rim
of her vagina end entered it with a sickly thud. To his disappointment, she
managed to hold even this howl behind her clenched teeth, tears flowing from
the eyes as she shook her head incessantly.

To drive the wedge deeper, her torturer slowly modified her position, lowering
the legs and raising her elbows, then fetched the twisted whip again and aimed
at her armpits, her chest rotating under the lash and the wedge grinding
deeper into her. He alternated strikes behind the knee to strikes on the outer
side of each breast, forcing her to undulate and chafe her cunt walls on the
wooden wedge, wails of agony echoing behind her folded lips.

He picked up another pair of pincers, with long thin iron jaws this time, and
inserted them forcefully between her clenched thighs, his dreadful probing
causing her to twitch and turn on the wedge even more frantically than before,
her screams a mounting wave behind the last vestiges of her determination as
droplets of blood stained the wooden wedge.

The jaws finally pinched what he was probing for, her agony bursting in a
scream of anguish as they bit on her love bud, her efforts to escape their
grip driving the wedge deeper and deeper, the torn muscles at the entrance of
her vagina bleeding again as the wedge distended them whenever her pelvis
jerked around, spasmodically searching for relief.

He returned to the wooden pliers and pulled down her left breast by the
nipple, whipping it occasionally but putting as much of his weight onto it to
driver her further down the wedge, then repeated the operation with her right
breast. Not satisfied yet, he kneeled below her suspended body, brought the
right arm wielding the pliers up on her left side and pulled at the nipple
with his full weight, jerking repeatedly, each pull lowering her onto the
wedge until her cries rose into a howl when the point hit her cervix.

A new nightmare began for Kayleen, the whip landing alternately on her left
and right sole, forcing her to rotate the pelvis and savage her innards up to
the cervix on each strike, blood dripping from inside her as her screams first
rose higher and higher and then trailed off, her endurance spent, her will
broken again. Instead of pausing, her tormentor repositioned her so that the
point dug at her urethra, the new pain searing through her while her bloodied
innards got some respite.

As even this new torment lost its bite, her obviously exhausted body not
allowing her to fully experience the torment, he wound new chains around her
pelvis and dragged her weight over the point, helping himself with the iron
pincers, until the full weight of her tormented body rested on her pinched
love button. As the unwinding of chains brought the full weight home, her
cries turned to howls and then rose higher, as cold water was poured on her to
prevent her from passing out.

The whip landed on her right breast, the underside of her thighs, the soles of
her feet; any strike ground her soft piece of feminine flesh mercilessly onto
the wooden tip. Small as it was, the arrangement of chains precluded her from
dislodging herself, although she tried whenever she had some respite between
lashes, causing more agonies on each failed attempt.

Grod produced a jug, heated by burning oil, with a thin dispensing beak, and
tipped it onto her left breast. The scalding water landed above her nipple and
flowed down her body, a few droplets which caused her to jerk more than once,
as the steaming rivulet followed its fiery trail, each movement bringing more
searing pain to her love bud.

The device actually prevented the water from reaching boiling temperature, and
the contents were released in droplets, but Grod spared no part of her body,
each drop a scream as she could not help but jerk herself onto new agonies
from her impaled love bud. Angry patches of reddened skin soon appeared on the
soles of her feet, her arms, her legs, while her spasmodic contortions rattled
the trestle on which the wedge rested, as if she was attempting to break it.

Fixing the trestle brought her some respite at least from the scalding water,
but then Grod started dripping water between her thighs, the water flowing
onto the soft flesh enclosed by the studded bands, and then placed the jug
under her navel and let the water flow, an angry red trail soon forming on her
skin while her screams turned hoarse.

Grod considered, then said "Talk, girl. We haven't even started to harm you
for real, and you're already delirious. You can't hold out much longer."
Behind a haze of pain, Kayleen thought that there was compassion behind his
voice, and warmed at the thought of telling them what they wanted to know and
end this nightmare. She wished for a desperately long instant that she could
talk, but what escaped her parched lips was just "I won't." at which her
torturer resumed liberally dripping scalding water on her contorting body as
the tip of the wedge savaged her love bud, forever and forever until no amount
of cold water could bring her back to consciousness.


Chapter 6 - A Tiger by The Tail

The Warrior Queen lay spreadeagled on her back, cuffed at the ankles and
wrists to iron rings set in the stone floor. Pain from her ordeals still
lingered in her limbs, even if they were not being pulled, but her tormentors
obviously deemed that she had not suffered enough, because honey had been
smeared on the sensitive parts of her body and she had been left as the sole
food for an unknown number of biting insects, horseflies she would guess.

In spite of the bites, however, once she regained some sense the Warrior Queen
recognized that this was her first chance to rest her battered body, and tried
hard to ignore the occasional bite, with mixed success. She managed to
actually sleep, in fitful naps, and felt somewhat reinvigorated when heavy
footsteps approached. She had been aware of her exceptional stamina and
endurance before, and at the back of her mind was proud of how she endured the
torments, but she would not last without rest.

She had no illusions about the state of her body, however; she was covered
with wounds, welts and bruises, encrusted blood and a number of mild burns;
most of her muscles, including some which never would under ordinary
circumstances, were strained; her joints ached and her ligaments had been
almost torn; her private parts had bled profusely, and would probably become
infected unless treated in short order.

She allowed herself to gasp audibly when a fly bit her, as she planned to look
as weak and vulnerable as possible and wrench her chance at freeing herself
today, before another day of tortures left her forever unable to even try. She
would have tried yesterday, but for her racked body.

Their torches shed some light on the sinister devices in the torture chamber
and she noticed that it was just her three tormentors and the ever present
husk of Zhorun. She recollected smelling his presence during the days of her
ordeal, as he used to come closer when she was at the peak of her agonies. The
location of Lyral was apparently of such importance to him that he could
devote his entire day to witnessing her torture - maybe he no longer slept ?

When the Easterner freed her wrists, she feigned relief, hoping the man would
not notice her tension. He did not; when both her ankles were free, she sprang
up and kicked him savagely under the chin, sending him sprawling on the floor.

As she had hoped, everybody was frozen in surprise at this sudden turn of the
events, the Southerner gaping at her in disbelief. She longed for a weapon,
but none was within immediate reach and time was her only advantage, so she
rushed Grod, hoping to bring down the strongly built executioner before he had
time to assess the situation. Her wounded feet would not let her move with her
once proverbial quickness, but she managed to push her fist into his plexus
before he could dodge her. She had discarded a kick to the groin because he
wore a leather apron.

He half turned however, and her fist landed on his ribs, probably crushing one
or two, but she had missed her chance to take him out. The robed corpse behind
waved his hands and cold tendrils of magic appeared around her limbs, while
the Southerner turned and ran screaming for his life. Grod attempted a low
punch, but she dodged him easily, and landed a crushing blow on his nose,
although not strong enough to drive the cartilage up into the brain as she
used to be capable of.

Grod fell to his knees, blood spurting from his nose, and the Warrior Queen
moved a step toward the frail corpse under the black robe, hampered but not
held by the tendrils. Hate burned white in her eyes, and with a mighty effort
she tore the tendrils asunder.

The tendrils had bought the wizard the time for a more involved spell,
however, and six armored guards appeared around him, creatures of foul magic
brought from beyond the grave only in the direst of emergencies. "Seize her."
he hissed, furious now that he no longer feared for his wretched existence.

And seize her they did, at last, but only after losing two of their numbers in
the fight against a bare handed young woman. The Easterner woke cursing, as
the kick meant to snap his neck had merely strained it, while the Southerner
hid behind a rack until Zhorun's voice called him, "Come here, Hadrad. She's
no longer a threat." Grod was promptly dismissed so that he could be treated.

Zhorun moved limply near her, saying "Still defiant, still fighting. But your
little stunt failed. You won't be given a chance to try again, and I'll gladly
let my servants take their revenge on you with more tortures. Unless you have
something to tell me, that is."

She stood still, stymied at her failure but exalted by the fear she had for a
moment guessed under the black robes. So they had more tortures for her ?
"Bring them on." she spat, "You'll never put your clutches on Lyral, wretch."

Without a word, Zhorun receded. When Grod joined them again, his nose and ribs
visibly bandaged, he spoke to his three servants, "You have been careless, and
you paid for it. Make sure this does not happen again, and proceed with her
interrogation until she provides the information I want."

Grod produced an iron collar with a screw on its front and tied it around her
neck. Turning the screw tightened the collar and crushed the windpipe, so her
breathing was first restricted and then obstructed, her face turning pale
until the screw was turned back. "This will keep her spirits in check from now
on." he growled, his voice distorted by the nose bandage.

The Easterner tightened the collar some more before moving her to a wooden
trestle, bending her arms over an horizontal beam and cuffing them behind the
neck, and took similar precautions when doubling her legs outwards and cuffing
her ankles to another beam, where her lower back rested. Only when an iron
band was closed around her waist did he loosen the device, her belabored
breathing heaving her tantalizingly exposed breasts.

The silent torturer fetched a wooden thumbscrew and tightened it around her
left thumb, until she gasped, then did the same to her right thumb. There was
no counting, no mercy, as finger after finger was tightened in a screw while
the Warrior Queen agonized silently on the trestle, pain already gnawing at
her but her resolve emboldened by the obvious discomfort of his neck.

Each of her torturers had his pet peeves, and as she expected he proceeded
with her toes, tightening them almost to the point of breaking them in the
wooden vises. He then lambasted toes and fingers alike with a wooden cane,
wrenching but a gasp from her but bringing tears to her eyes already.

The next two screws he tightened around her nipples, watching her eyes shut
tight in pain and her clenched teeth suppress a scream, and then caned them at
length as she writhed on the trestle. He rummaged in his tray until he found
two screws about three fingers wide which he tightened on her outer labia,
pulling them apart with cords winding around her body and crossing behind her
neck to reach her nipple screws, which he pulled shorter and shorter until her
back arched, the cane landing between her legs and on her distended breasts
equally as she bravely stifled screams of utter agony, fighting dread at the
thought that he was torturing her harder than before.

The wry Easterner fetched a larger wooden vise and trapped her left foot in
it, tightening it savagely with his ear to the device, careful not to break
the bone. Her strong body glistened with sweat as she fought the mounting
pain, her thigh muscles flexing in a vain attempt to escape the world of hurt
rising from her constricted foot. When he did the same to her other foot, her
buckling exposed the pink softness below her raw mound, the Southerner
drooling at the thought of the delights he would soon enjoy.

Her forearms were next encased in vises, three wooden vises connected by an
iron rail, and the one in the middle tightened in the opposite direction, his
fingers probing as she writhed in deep suffering while her forearms were being
bent near breaking point. The wood bit deep in her flesh, cutting into the
muscles and digging creases of compressed flesh in her slender forearms.

He started caning her again, on the undersides of her distended breasts, each
twist and squirm sending more pain through her forearms, and then moved to her
side and encased her left leg and thigh in vises, connected by three iron
bars, one lying above the angle between leg and thigh, one below, and one snug
between the two and her knee. Again the middle vise tightened in the opposite
direction with respect to the other two, the longer bones of leg and thigh
visibly bent as the wooden vises dug in the firm flesh and hurt horribly as
she still attempted to stifle her cries, her blonde mane shaking frantically.

After caning the exposed flesh on the insides of her thigh, he pulled on the
iron bar under her knee, bringing it above the beam where her ankle was
cuffed, savagely tearing at her hip joint and bending her knee, her face a
mask of agony but her screams still muted behind clenched teeth. He then moved
to her right side, and leisurely applied a similar contraption.

Her nipples and cunt lips had turned purplish from the uninterrupted
compression, but he ignored her eyes widening in horror and pulled at them
with pincers, distending them until he could tighten another vise on each.
Another large vise was placed high up her abdomen, just below the ribcage, and
when it was closed her panting turned to wheezing as she could no longer take
deep breathes without hurting herself.

In this position she was caned at length, her tormentor tightening vises here
and there leisurely as she attempted to concentrate on matters distanced from
her predicament, but could only think about the searing pain from the
unyielding vises. He finally added vises to her inner lips and her love
button, and tightened them one turn at a time, her beautiful face contorted in
a muted scream of hellish agony which he prolonged intently.

When she passed out, her restraints were removed with great care, and then she
was revived and made to drink from a jug. The syrup tasted different, and her
tormentor said coldly "Longer pain." She felt her mind clear, but the collar
was tightened on her windpipe as she was being tied upside down, her back to a
pole, her ankles cuffed up at the top and her arms pulled along an iron rail
which was soon cranked to horizontal position, her arms painfully rotating in
their sockets as a consequence. An iron band was tightened at her waist.

A different vise encased her toes, built from four ridged rods inserted
between the toes and two pressure bars connected by paired screws, which when
tightened crushed the toes onto the ridged rods. The first agony of her
renewed ordeal shot down her leg, her head jerking as this was much worse than
even five screws on the same foot. A similar device was applied to her right
hand, and then her right foot and left hand followed, as she pressed the chin
on her chest in spasmodic agony and a suppressed cry hummed behind her tight
lips.

When she saw what he had fetched, her heart sank. The inside of the vises he
was tightening around her legs had been rasped and hacked, and would chafe and
wound her skin horribly when tightened. Her fears found immediate confirmation
as the vises around her legs started to hurt and bleed in places, cutting into
her distended muscles on each turn of the screws. To add to her misery, he
caned her feet in order to cause her legs to twitch and vises to chafe into
her already wounded flesh.

Similar vises were tightened around her ribcage, above and below the breasts,
and then her arms were similarly encircled by raw bracelets of wooden agony,
the cane landing on her breasts to force her to grind herself onto the rasping
wood more and more. Her thighs were not spared, either.

A wail of anguish almost escaped her lips when the raw teeth of a vise closed
on her left breast, cutting at the base into the soft underside. He tightened
it some and then applied the other, connecting them with a cord to prevent
them from sliding off as the actual tightening began. The pain soon brought
her on the verge of passing out, but dread mounted in her as no respite came
while the pain in her bulging and distorted tits kept increasing.

More vises where applied to her cunt lips, the blood already dripping from her
breasts was soon joined by blood from her nether regions, the raw wood
tightened mercilessly, and from her love bud, constricted almost to the point
of bursting in the rasping grip of another wooden horror, a scream at the top
of the lungs mounting behind her shaken resolve as droplets of blood descended
her body like rivulets of pain, eroding her determination.

Two more vises were tightened savagely on her purplish nipples, and the cane
was brought on her soles, palms and underbelly, her delightful body writhing
and grinding the vises into the wounded flesh. Her tormentor alternated
turning a vise to lashing out with the cane, at leisure, making sure she was
given no respite from the unyielding pain. She would soon lose her defiance
again, and her screams would delight the ears of the onlookers much as the
writhing of her delectable body delighted the eyes.

Kayleen lost track of time, pain shooting into her from all over her body but
not bringing about the release she desperately yearned for, now undeniably
late in coming as her resolve was being consumed by the blazing fire from her
nipples and clitoris, the vulnerable pieces of feminine flesh her tormentors
invariably targeted again and again.

Only after an excruciatingly long time was she given some respite, and only
because tightening a vise or caning a nipple produced a less pronounced
reaction, hinting at a deeper exhaustion which had not been overcome by the
drugs fed to her. Again, much care was exercised in freeing her and tying her
arms behind a beam placed under her shoulders, bent at the elbow in a
painfully unnatural position. Her ankles were cuffed together, and a
thumbscrew tightened together the big toes of her feet.

When her tormentor lowered the chain above her, she wished for a moment that
she could scream her anguish and dread, because a wide breast press of rasped
wood hung from the chain, and she knew instantly the fate that would soon
befall her breasts.

The vise was tightened across both breasts and tied into place with cords, and
then the chain was pulled, forcing her on tiptoes to reduce the strain on her
tortured globes. The thumbscrew actually allowed only her big toes to bear the
weight of the body, and soon blood encrusted it as it bit in their flesh under
her waddling weight.

Other vises where tightened at the base of her nipples, and a large one
encased her thighs one against the other, pushing the hips outwards, each step
now a jerk reverberating through her hip joints. The cane landed on her
buttocks, the strikes pushing her around on her big thumbs in a circle which
soon became a bloody trail, her breast purplish and swollen, occasionally
seared by the accursed cane.

He reached in the crease between her thighs and tightened a vise on her love
bud again, then added vises on the tip of her nipples and connected the two
with cords wound behind her back, which he shortened until her feminine flesh
looked on the verge of being wrenched away, the breasts distorted by the
concomitant compression from the press and pull from the nipples. And the
exposed undersides a soft target which the cane soon visited.

After adding vises around the ribcage, he selected a longer, thicker cane,
which Kayleen felt she had been subjected to before, and lashed at the soft
flesh behind her thighs. The recognition of the cane used when he was dunking
her was immediately swamped under a wave of pain, caused by the full weight of
her body bearing on her breasts as the strike from the cane had caused her
legs to pull close in reflex.

He started playing with her like a puppeteer, a strike on her striped ass
cheeks for a step forward, a strike on her belly for a step backward, a strike
behind her calves or thighs for an agonizing instant of white hot pain hanging
from her breasts while the legs grasped frantically for the floor. Lashing her
left arm caused her to painfully turn to the left, lashing her right arm
turned her to the right. Her toes left a trail of blood on the floor.

He moved besides her and tightened the screws, one by one, then grabbed her
left breast with pliers and pulled, twisting as if to wrench it from her body,
bile burning her throat as the scream to top all screams raged at her weakened
will, but actually just enough to add a vise around it and tighten it as she
hissed and shook her head. He no longer seemed to care about breaking her, his
cold eyes only intent on causing her as much pain as possible.

He resumed his puppet play, the extra vises adding new agonies to the endless
hurt which wracked her when her thumbs left the ground, and pulled her around
in circles and counter circles, her toes occasionally skidding over her own
sweat and blood before painfully regaining what little balance she could
muster. No blessed release reached her, nothing took her even momentarily away
from her ordeal; her torment was suspended only when the cane would no longer
get her moving.

The old Southerner stepped in as Grod was looking after her wounds, real
bleeding wounds, although the skin had been chafed but not deeply cut and no
major vessels had been damaged. She noticed a new callousness in Grod's touch,
but her gaze locked onto the preparations of the Southerner who was visibly
aroused at the thought of what he was about to visit on the delectable body of
this Northern goddess.

He was busying himself with a pole, mounted on a sturdy four beamed rest, on
top of which rested a wooden cone, about one inch at the rounded top and
tapering to ten or twelve inches at the base. The pole could be adjusted in
height, but what filled her with dread was near the bottom, a short spreader
bar with cuffs at the ends and a middle ring loosely encircling the pole.

She could barely breathe because of the collar, but she turned from Grod's
grasp when the old Southerner came to her, attempting a reaction which was
stifled immediately as she was still cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and
still cuffed she was brought to the pole and seated on it, the dull tip
nudging at her sphincter, her arms bent behind her neck but chained to a
savagely tight iron band at her waist and her legs distended along the pole
and cuffed to the bar, the balls of her feet on a pile of wooden slabs.

The Southerner, grinning, shortened the chain between her cuffs and the waist
band, bending her backwards and pushing out her full, firm breasts, his gaze
transfixed as they heaved while she breathed hard because of the collar,
which was finally loosened. But her respite was short lived, because he also
removed some slabs from under her feet, which dangled in mid air unable to
reach the pole. The pressure on her anus became immediately painful as the
rounded point pushed in, until she desperately clenched her thighs.

"Now, my dear butterfly, we've got you just where we wanted." he leered, and
brought forward a round glass jug encased in a decorated wooden and ivory
framework, its lower half heated by a sizable oil burner. Four hoses departed
from the the top, each ending in a bronze crocodile head, a valve. Each hose
hailed from a separate compartment, two apparently empty and two where leaves
of sorts were being heated.

"Some misguided fool removed your gag." he said. "The gag makes you more
willing to sing for us, among other things." he added, paying no heed to her
baleful stare. As disgust mounted within her, he brought a hose near her
nipple and opened the valve, a surge of hot air caressing her poor feminine
flesh. She jerked away with a gasp, the pain to the nipple compounded by a
stab from below her as her thighs had allowed the cone to enter her some more.
He contemplated her feet, now a few inches above the ground but frantically
searching for a rest, and savored her thighs clenching in fear as he brought
the crocodile head between her legs. The bronze head breathed on her vulva,
forcing her to open her thighs, writhe and buckle, rocking the pole as her
delicate skin turned pink. How she managed not to scream, she couldn't tell.

"Obstinate silence again." he muttered, then tightened the collar and pinched
her nose, but it took him many attempts nevertheless to push into her mouth a
strong steel gag, the extremities bending around her mouth like spider legs on
her scratched cheeks. When he moved the hose at her other breast and unleashed
it, however, he was rewarded by a steadily increasing wail of torment as the
hot air assaulted her nipple.

He emptied a jug down her mouth, the bitter taste of the drug mixed with the
honey as she coughed it up. The hose was brought behind her back and turned
loose on her ass cheeks, so he could solace himself with her screams and wails
as he slowly moved its head in broad circles, first left then right, grinding
the cone into her orifice with each gyration of her shapely buttocks and each
strangled cry from her sore throat.

Kayleen caught herself blabbering between screams, but the pain was beyond her
and the searing whiff of the hose gave her no respite, although he alternated
between the two hoses not burning leaves as they apparently took some time to
recharge between uses. The cone had distended her sphincter and reopened the
wounds from her previous ordeals.

Her nemesis was playing with her misery, and enjoying it immensely. Sometimes
he would target her thighs or groin, forcing her to lose her grip and impale
herself more on the hellish wooden tormentor, sometimes he would martyrize a
breast, forcing her to rotate her body to avert the fiery breath and once more
grind the cone into her savaged innards, but now and then he would place it
just under her private parts, so that to spare them she had to push herself up
at any cost with short sitting jumps, the cone jarring into her as she landed
on her torn sphincter after each.

Aroused by her writhing but still shapely body, he disrobed and penetrated her
in a rutting upwards surge, her outraged cry music to his ears, each thrust
pushing her up a bit and ravaging her distended asshole thereafter. Once
satisfied, he pushed a bronze crocodile into her vagina as her gagged mouth
babbled "No, No!" and opened it half way, the scalding whisper soon turning
her twitching body into a frantically screaming puppet of pain.

Her eyes opened wide in horror and disbelief when respite only came as he
penetrated her again, the sore walls of her love channel blazing at the
intrusion, her throat howling to high heaven as she was subjected to his
abject lust. Although his rut was soon over, her suffering was not, as his
game was now to keep a hose blowing on the same piece of flesh in spite of her
buckling and twitching, and her long wails of hopeless anguish turned into
howls of agony when the breath lingered on her clitoris or nipple.

She could not tell whether he finally tired of his games or her body robbed
him of further delights by withdrawing from further pain, but at last she was
lifted from the bloodstained cone, and let face down on the stone floor, still
savagely restrained. The jug was emptied through her gag, and a soothing
ointment was rubbed on her burns.

She had found respite but not mercy, however, because the Southerner pulled
her head up by her blonde hair and pushed his member through her gag, her cry
dying off in a gurgle as he had his way with her again. He then pulled her up
and positioned her vagina on top of the cone, guiding it as it entered her
while her sobs turned into wails and then a cry as her muscles were stretched
by the already bloodstained intruder and the wooden surface chafed the
blistered insides of her love channel.

She still stood on her feet, her back arched and the face staring into the
ceiling as her arms were still pulled down to the waist band, but her nemesis
grasped her leg and doubled it under the thigh, cuffing the ankle to an iron
band at the hip. Her body shifted and oscillated forwards, in search of
balance, and found it by swinging the thighs backwards and the chest forwards,
her whole weight on the wooden cone pushing upwards through her now vertical
love channel.

A rising howl of agony erupted from her gagged mouth as the cone entered her
with sober swiftness, visibly distending the muscles at the entrance of the
vagina, old wounds reddening again, until she savagely clenched her thighs and
managed to stop its progression.

His eyes engorged themselves on her generously proportioned breasts heaving
between her sobs, and as if in a dream he brought a hose to each and opened
the bronze valves, chasing her breasts as she buckled and twisted, impaling
herself further down the wooden cone.

The dull tip of the cone already pressed on her cervix, and the pain from the
chafed, blistering walls was enough to prevent her from finding respite
however she tried to move, so he just stood there and watched. Her blonde mane
undulated as she jerked her head, the eyes shut tight in a face beautiful even
in her agony, the tendons of the neck taut under the iron collar, the
delightful mounds of her breasts proud and firm, pink and angry red in places,
heaving as her ribcage fought for air, and the strong, slender thigh clenching
the wooden member in an obscene parody of the love act ... his gaze drank it
all up, the exhilarant wine of suffering sweet on his eyes and the symphony of
her screams delightful to his ears.

In her sobs and wails, Kayleen pronounced words at random, some sweet to the
ears such as "Mercy", others nonsensical such as "walkway". Leisurely, he
pulled at one of the hoses he had disregarded so far and applied it to her
left breast, laughing as she jerked in surprise at the soothing effect of the
herbal fumes. When he let hot hair blow on the soothed skin, however, her
screams soon resumed, at which he applied the soothing smoke again. Each time
she screamed longer and louder, as the soothing fumes actually allowed the hot
air to linger on the skin without damaging it.

He moved to the soles of her feet, and alternated the hoses on each, her
screeches interrupted only by tearful sobbing and exploding in anguished howls
whenever he lingered some more. He started teasing her, soothing places he did
not subsequently torment, to see her squirm in the vain attempt to escape the
fiery breath of the crocodile heads. Her legs and thighs were not spared, but
he found a special delight in the screams wrenched from her mouth when he
applied the torment to her armpits.

As always, he saved the best for the last. He moved before her and played with
her abdomen and front thighs somewhat, unable to meet the gaze of her teary
eyes as he would have liked to do, and then brought the soothing hose to her
left nipple and the fiery hose to the her right nipple. He chased them, as she
ground herself on the cone in spasmodic jerks to avoid the unrelenting pain in
her burnt nipples, and exchanged the hoses over and over again, keeping an eye
on the angry red pieces of feminine flesh which the three of them had agreed
to torment without causing permanent damage.

The soothing fumes worked well, but he would have liked to bristle and char
the delectable appendages all by himself now, resenting the obligation to
share the exquisite pleasure with the others. She was blabbering again, she
would in all likelihood break soon.

And then an evil thought struck his mind, and he whispered a cruel lie, "Talk
now, girl. Tell the old wizard what he wants to know. He promised that you
would be the prize for whoever broke you, and I want you for my pleasures
only." He saw his words had found his mark when her teary eyes bulged in
horror: she would not break just now, and he would be allowed to continue at
his game unimpeded. He had not thought out all the consequences, however.

He brought both heads blowing on her crotch, the fiery blow following the
soothing blow an inch behind, and followed the torn line of muscle at the
entrance of her vagina before nudging them under the fold above her clitoris,
her maddened screams all he wanted to hear from her as he slowly twisted the
two hoses so that he could keep them on without undue damage.

The cone had entered her to the point of visibly distending her lower belly,
and blood percolated down in tiny drops, yet she still yanked herself around
whenever the twin breaths licked at her, and he resumed his game of forcing
her to grind herself on the wooden tormentor. He played it onto her crotch and
inner thighs until she no longer reacted.

They still kept her restrained, but Kayleen was delirious and could not even
stand, much less fight. She was physically drained, yet neither exhaustion nor
unrelenting pain had allowed her the respite of unconsciousness. The thought
of refusing the jug occurred to her, although her parched throat craved it,
because they were adding some drug for prolonging her suffering.

Grod dragged her to a rack, grimacing when he lifted her. "I must have broken
his ribs," she thought. He had tightened the collar, and cuffed her wrists
and ankles with wide, padded cuffs before releasing it again. She shivered at
the thought of being stretched on the rack again, the pain in her muscles
almost rekindling at the thought in spite of the burns all over her body and
the agony from her torn passages.

He poured another jug down her gag, before she could resolve herself to refuse
it, and then started summarily treating her wounded orifices. She could not
tell why, but a "Thanks" came to her lips, and their gazes locked. She saw his
eyes harden when more pain shot from his ribs.

This rack was rather elaborate, consisting of a main bench and four
outstretched arms for the limbs, with a separate, complex winch at the end of
each. Each arm could be repositioned using a pair of cranks. She was currently
bound spreadeagled, the rack arms forming an X, and he tightened studded iron
bands at her hips, shoulders and waist, immobilizing her torso.

With steel in his eyes, Grod then moved between her legs and disrobed. Her
wail was half dread, half despair, as something within her soul shattered with
his first thrust. Her sore parts were ravaged again, with cold determination
and merciless strength, her wails and sobs falling on deaf ears as he pressed
on, the Southerner snickering at them in a corner.

Once done, he moved to the left upper arm and rotated it, twisting her arm in
the socket. He repeated the operation with the other arm, lowering them below
chest level, pushing her shoulder blades together and her martyrized breasts
proudly upwards. The muscles strained on the previous session hurt anew, and
others which had been spared flexed, her position not painful yet but her
future bleak in the hands of a connoisseur in the human body.

Pain arrived soon, when he cranked the rollers at the end of each arm and
pulled her arms, pulling the wrist against the bands at shoulder height and
stretching the twisted elbow and the arm out of its socket. He alternated the
left and right arm, the pain unlike the unyielding pull of her previous
racking but a white hot flash from the elbow, wrist and shoulder while muscle
and even ligaments were torn and released as her screams resounded in the vast
emptiness of the torture chamber.

What she could not see was that each roller had a device which reversed the
pull for a brief moment, so her limbs were steadily pulled, suddenly released
and then yanked back into traction. When her limbs were pulled taut and pain
burnt in her shoulder joints, he started whipping her breasts.

Her screams rose to new heights as each strike left a crimson stripe on her
firm flesh, the pain compounding the agony from her racked limbs as she pulled
on them in the vain attempt to escape the whip. Unlike before, now the torture
could be kept up, and at length her breasts turned into globes of crimson pain
while her arms hurt as if they were about to be torn from her body.

Putting the whip aside, he inspected her arms and fetched ominous iron clamps
which he proceeded to tighten on the tendons and muscles, either on sight or
after inspecting her arm with expert fingers, turning the screws until they
bit hard in the taut flesh.

He then poured on her arms cold water in quantity, and once this treatment
had knotted them cranked the rollers, her cold muscles cramping under the pull
and prevented from extending by the unyielding bit of the clamps. Each sudden
yanking of the hellish device wrenched another scream from her, and to her
disbelief he brought the whip down on her striped tits again, alternating a
crank on the roller and a lash at the opposing tit, drawing blood as the welts
crossed each other again and again.

When he moved to her legs, dread mounted in her and she started spouting words
at random, interspersed by cries as he cranked the lower arms of the rack to
spread her legs wider and down, twisting them at the hip joints and again
pulling not only at muscles which had been already strained on the flat rack,
but also at ligaments sorely tested by Chang's ministrations.

Grod worked intently, apparently neither moved nor thrilled when she started
to scream again as he cranked the rollers, distending her legs and sending
pain through her ankles, knees and hips. The cross rack was designed to pull
at the limbs without endangering the spine, and it was achieving just that,
the legs pulled against the unyielding iron band at each hip. The stretching
made the leg and thigh muscles exquisitely prominent, and tightening screws
on them was a much quicker affair.

He bid his time with the cold water, however, so much that she started to cry
again as cramps bit her muscles even without further pulling. When he deemed
her ready, he cranked the rollers in earnest however, her howls rising up the
vaults in bloodcurdling crescendo as he started whipping her crotch.

As with her breasts, each strike brought double pain from the muscles she
pulled by her jerks and twitches, and no respite came as she kept suffering
without interruption under the unrelenting torture. He would crank one leg,
whip at her striped groin, crank the other, and whip her again. Occasionally
the whip found its mark on her inner thighs, but its main target was always
her battered feminine parts.

He cranked her legs again, her hoarse screams still resounding in the chamber,
and then he tightened her collar, moved between her legs again, wore a leather
condom and penetrated her forcefully again, tearing at her ravaged channel and
bringing new agonies in her strained joints each time he pushed into her.
Blood from the spasming ring of muscles torn by the cone mixed with blood from
her whipped privates, and pain from her stretched limbs mixed with the brutal
humiliation of rape. Her fitful screams and sobs lasted her entire violation
and much more, as in pain and misery she twitched of her own accord in the
horrid embrace of the cross rack.

As the impassive Grod prepared the rest of her ordeal, the Southerner's gaze
feasted on her agony, enjoying the spasmodic jerks of the chest and pelvis
tearing at her stretched limbs. She was essentially racking herself, each
movement causing such pain that she could not help but jerk in response, thus
causing herself more pain in an exquisitely vicious circle. The Easterner also
appeared to appreciate the technique.

Grod encased her upper left arm in an iron contraption, did the same for her
upper right arm, and placed similar devices at her hips. Apparently their
operation depended on the rollers at the end of the cross rack arms, but it
was hard to tell their purpose. He then fetched a pair of large, wooden pliers
with the jaws rasped raw and closed it on her left breast, putting a boot on
the rack to pull and twist at it as if to tear it from her chest. Screaming
at the top her lungs she rotated her chest in response, pulling with all her
strength against the arm socket which would not follow.

Nobody could hear the sound, drowned by her demented screams, but all watched
as the flesh at the socket bulged and then sank as she dislocated her own arm,
and then started when the device sprang and reduced it on the fly, triggered
by the sudden drop in resistance effected by the dislocation. White hot waves
of pain rose from arm and breast, her screams uninterruptedly tearing at the
very stones of the chamber, the still impassive Grod waiting until her pain
subsided to rekindle it by moving to her other breast.

Again her screams burst through the gag, punctuated by bloodcurdling howls and
neither decreasing nor diminishing as she slowly dislocated her own arm again
and had the dislocation reduced by the device. Then he closed the pliers
around her left labia, and pulled savagely until her left hip joint underwent
the same dreadful fate, and repeated the gruesome operation her right thigh.

Kayleen floated on a searing wave of relentless agony which rose and fell
but never receded, still screaming uninterruptedly into her gag in spite of
her parched, hoarse throat, wishing she would die instead of suffering any
further. But even as the thought that they could do no worse to her crossed
her mind, she knew it was not over, because the jaws of Grod's pliers closed
on her left breast again.

Still unable to find respite, Kayleen found unending agonies on the cross rack
as each limb was slowly dislocated again, her right arm actually not reducing
correctly and requiring manual intervention from Grod before re-seating
properly. Her maddened screams had echoed in the chamber without interruption
for at least an hour, and no respite was given to her, neither from her
torture nor from her own body. Her other tortures had been suspended when the
pain was no longer being felt, but even the twisted mercy of ultimate cruelty
was denied to her as the pain of dislocation resurfaced fresh each time on her
devastated visage. Her voice waned to a wheeze, consumed in screaming for an
unmerciful audience, but her body still twitched in horrendous pain, racking
itself on the gruesome cross rack, as her repeatedly dislocated limbs radiated
agony into her once athletic frame.

After this nightmare went on for a duration she could not comprehend, Grod
repositioned the rack and fucked her again, slowly and deliberately, the final
humiliation before she was at last released.


Chapter 7 - The Slippery Slope

Kayleen's pitiful moans echoed in the darkness of the chamber under the ruins
of Zhorun's former castle. Nobody had removed the gag this time, but the ache
in the jaw and the scratches on the cheeks were not the reason of her anguish.

She lay spreadeagled, face up, on a bed of marble wedges. Each was actually a
tetrahedron, and as such behaved as a caltrop, a tip always pointing upward no
matter how you moved it. The tips and edges were not actually sharp, just
enough to make lying on them as uncomfortable as possible without drawing
blood. She had tried to push some away, but the chains at her wrists and
ankles only allowed her to move sideways, and the wedges were all linked
together so she was unable to sweep a place to rest her wounded body.

Her failed stunt had brought upon her the unbridled wrath of her tormentors,
leaving her burnt, bleeding, broken, and defeated. She could not even deny
them her screams now, as the gag deprived her of the easiest method, and she
would have had to possess superhuman will to utter no sound under the
atrocities perpetrated upon her. The Warrior Queen pondered her bleak future,
her only hope now lay in being found before she broke under the torture.

As she thought of that, she heard with horror the approaching footsteps. "No!
It's too early! Not already!" she sobbed through her gag. The drug she had
been fed had allowed them to prolong the last session horrendously, so her
respite had been shortened accordingly.

When their torches lit the chamber, it was the old Southerner who came to her
first. She closed her eyes, expecting the worst, and was soon confirmed in her
fears when he violated her on the spot, the wedges digging painfully into her
as he thrust his rutting member inside her. "The first screams of the
morning." he cackled, his hands on her hips as he came at last.

His subsequent preparations took a long time, then she was made to stand and
brought to a sturdy wooden grating, the beams crossing about half a foot
apace, where thorny vines and branches from some unknown tree had been
interwoven. As her wrists were cuffed to the upper corners of the frame, a
shrill cry rose through her gag when her nipples brushed against the leaves.

"Whore Queen, meet the original stinging tree." mocked her tormentor as her
ankles were spread and tied to the lower corners of the frame. He then moved
behind her and put his hands on her ass cheeks, pushing them up with his
thumbs and distending them as his member nudged her asshole. He paused, as if
to listen, then pushed in, crushing her into thorns and leaves alike.

As he had to avoid contact with the leaves himself, he mostly pushed upwards,
enjoying the recoil as she fell back down after each thrust, and as a result
her legs and lower half were comparatively spared, as was her face since she
bent her neck in agony and despair. But her front and breasts were brushed
repeatedly against the leaves and the thorny vines, gathering bleeding cuts
and angry red rashes until he was finally done.

But Kayleen's ordeal was not, and he produced a bundle of vines and branches
which his gloved hands tied to the frame just under her vulva, forcing her to
bend at the waist to get her pelvic area away from the protrusion. He then
moved behind her and fetched a strange whip, with three tails, each half an
inch wide, and covered in short, coarse bristles.

He lashed her thighs, the tails leaving angry red marks as a wail of agony
rose through her gagged mouth. In spite of the lashes, her legs and body
pushed back as much as she could to avoid contact with the grotesque
protrusion, and her tormentor thus enjoyed the enviable sight of her strong
frame writhing under the lash, the slender legs taut and the ass thrust back,
pushing her delightful buttocks toward the whip.

The soles of her feet were beyond reach, but her arms proved intriguing
because she turned when he lashed one, exposing the opposite breast and
brushing the other against thorns and leaves. In order to wind the tips around
her torso and lash the breasts with full force, he had to change his position
after each lash, so he soon started panting from the exertion.

Out of breath, but still burning with lust, he targeted her muscular back,
each lash wrenching a shrill scream from her restrained body. As he moved
towards the buttocks, it became harder and harder for Kayleen to keep her
distance from the protruding bundle, and fresh screams arose in mounting
anguish whenever it brushed against her.

Her tormentor started a new game, meant to push her onto the bundle at whip
point. He lashed her sides, the tails wrapping around to slap on her lower
front, until her position was just right, and then put all his lust behind a
vicious upward blow to the underside of her ass. As the blow landed she
actually pushed herself forwards, as he had hoped, but moved past the bundle,
which brushed her on the left side.

"Be nice to the stinging tree." he mocked as he tried again, hoping that she
would understand and oppose him. He was disappointed, as her buckling became
frantic whenever a lash pushed her against the protrusion, her thighs and
front angry red as not all misses had been complete. Exhausted at last,
covered in red rashes from calf to wrist, she was forced by hand against the
bundle and screamed pitifully through the gag, defeated and writhing.

Her tormentor pressed on for some time, lashing her with quick strokes meant
to prevent her from disentangling from the excruciating bundle whose thorns
and leaves were raking her groin. After some time, she was cautiously untied
and made to drink from the jug, then retied in the opposite position, her back
to the frame and her front to her tormentor, arching to avoid contact between
her striped back and the frame, offering her full breasts and spread thighs to
the whip.

The old Southerner almost purred at the sight, savoring each thorn cut and
angry rash before raising his arm and slashing her soft underbelly, the three
tails leaving angry trails on her irritated skin. She howled at the top of her
lungs, discovering how the blisters prickled mercilessly the rashes from the
stinging tree.

On stung skin, striking with full force was actually less painful, because the
bristles were less effective. Her tormentor started swinging the whip upwards,
the tails landing lazily between her spread thighs and leaving angry red marks
as her screams rose in unison with the whip.

He insisted on whipping her crotch until the area was brimming with angry red
spots, some bristles actually sticking in the skin, and then moved to her
legs, her supple, long legs now fully distended in the effort to keep her back
from the thorns and stinging leaves. No longer panting, he actually whipped
them with force and at length, her cries quieter but tinged with despair.

He targeted her belly next, again striking with reduced force to let the
blisters burn the stung skin, savoring each howl escaping from the spidery gag
as he watched her suffering face. He lowered his aim, striking her mons,
irritated at Grod for plucking it raw because he would have liked to do so
with the bristled whip now, so he struck her repeatedly until her anguished
screams soothed him somewhat.

His gaze feasted on the body being offered to him, from the long, slender arms
to the ample chest, the full, firm breasts heaving as she cried under the
whip, the sculpted ribcage, the muscular abdomen, the ample pelvis, the long,
supple thighs. He whipped each as he enjoyed it, savoring her screams and her
spasmodic buckling.

Kayleen's was drowning in a nightmare of burning agony, the stung skin hurting
terribly when the bristles caressed it, her strained muscles protesting her
stretched position, her violated anus throbbing in pain. She already craved
the merciful embrace of unconsciousness, although dread told her that she
would be denied it from now on.

The whip landed across her breasts, with force, and her tormentor dragged the
bristled tails over the stung flesh. This was a strike he had practiced at
length, and he repeated it, enjoying the bleeding welts and the red swathes of
irritated skin as each brought a new cry from her. For a while, he closed his
eyes, betting with himself that he could aim with the sole help of her
screams, but then he reopened them to enjoy the sight again.

When his victim's front was a crisscrossed mesh of welts and stripes, he
sheathed his member in leather and closed on her, pushing her whipped back
against the thorns and stinging leaves and enjoying her struggling twitches as
his member entered her forcefully, his gloved hands fastened on her hips to
guide this renewed violation.

Instead of thrusting into her, he wanted her to buckle and twitch him to
climax, so he tightened her collar and clutched at some branches behind her to
bring them to her front, wrapping her chest in burning agony as her breathing
was obstructed and her vagina muscles tightened deliciously on his erect
member. Her frantic contortions took a long time to sate him, so much that he
considered wiser to loosen her collar twice to prevent her from asphyxiating.

He left her twitching on the frame, her eyes shut tight, so when she was
untied and saw what he had prepared for her, she gasped in fear. A low
trestle, brimming with thorns and stinging leaves, where she would lie face
down, her front agonizing on the hellish surface.  He carefully cuffed each
ankle to an iron band in the thigh, cuffed elbows and wrists behind her back,
then lifted her and landed her belly down on the frame, ignoring the cry of
agony wrenched from her gagged mouth, from her crushed breasts to her mons.
Her thighs were spread painfully wide, and an iron band was tightened around
her waist so that she could not roll off the torturous frame.

He grabbed her head by the hair and thrust his member into her gagged mouth,
while his other arm whipped her vulva. Her gagged screams made him hard, and
he whipped her again, and again, intoxicated with sadistic pleasure at her
humiliation and despair. She gurgled when he came in her mouth, still madly
screaming from the stinging leaves, her only hope being that he had not fed
her the jug this time, so maybe she would be given some respite soon.

He pulled off her mouth, but her ordeal was far from over. He pulled leaves
and thorns up over her crotch, rubbing them forcefully with both gloved hands,
until he managed to tie some around her waist band, then started whipping the
soles of her feet. Each welt on the soft flesh caused her to twist and buckle,
further grinding the thorns and leaves into her wounded groin.

He then fetched a pair of clasps, pulled her up by her hair until her breasts
cleared the frame, clasped both her nipples and pulling at them kept her
bending backwards, whipping the stung undersides of her breasts, each strike a
new howl when the bristles brushed the irritated flesh. Her agonized face
aroused him again, and he thrust his member into her gag, pulling at one
nipple and then another until her screaming mouth sated him.

Fetching the whip again, he rained vicious strikes on her buttocks and her
inner thighs, then pulled her up by the nipples again, the sight a favorite of
his, and whipped her slowly, as if waiting for something. Kayleen screamed and
screamed, the pain overcoming her dread at what he was waiting for, but
instead of further humiliation she was subjected to a prolonged whipping of
her feminine parts, the bristled tails striking through the leaves and thorns
until he effectively removed the latter by force of whip.

Fetching more clasps, he used them to spread her labia and pulling them with
one hand forced her to bend her pelvis towards him, her cries turning to
bloodcurdling howls when the whip started landing on her now exposed innards
and resonating under the vaults of the chamber for a long time, her writhing
body a toy under his whip.

Kayleen craved in vain some respite, even the briefest, but she was spared
nothing, her tormentor in his lust alternating between pulling her up by her
nipples or pulling her crotch off the frame, the whip landing mercilessly on
abundantly wounded skin, the welts bleeding as they crossed each other.

He wanted to violate her again, but no arousal occurred, and using the drug
again would be risky, so he kept up whipping her, although her sensitivity was
obviously waning, and raged on her bleeding crotch until he had to stop and
catch his breath. Spent and unhappy, he whipped her breasts a few more times
and then finally gestured to the Easterner.

She was cautiously untied, and she drank avidly from the jug, her thirst and
exhaustion stronger than the realization that the syrup included something
which prevented her from passing out under the torments. The Easterner brought
her to a sturdy wooden seat and immobilized her on it, cuffing her ankles and
wrists but also tightening iron bands on her limbs and torso.

Her toes were also immobilized between wooden planks, and a knobbed iron rod
was placed under them. Kayleen, unable to enjoy her respite, watched in dread
his preparations until his intent became clear, as a large stone brick was
dropped on her left foot, its ridged underside crushing on her delicate foot.

She cried aloud through her gag, and she cried again when her other foot was
next, but horror rose to her face when she saw that he held a lead weight
above a brick, turning to agony when the weight was dropped in place. Each
time a weight was dropped pain shot through a foot, the knobs digging
painfully under the toes, but the pauses only brought dull, uninterrupted ache
as the weight crushed flesh and bone.

Slowly, the weight was increased to the point of the ache turning to pain,
with blood trickling from under her toes because of the knobs, and the rate at
which weight was increased slowed to a crawl. Her agony was rekindled when the
iron rods were twisted, the knobs mauling the soft flesh under her toes.

As she screamed under the unrelenting weight, the Easterner moved to her
hands, immobilized her fingers between planks, fitting not one but three rods
under them, and then dropped a brick on each hand, with the visible intent to
start another progression like the one which had brought her feet in their
present condition. Kayleen in spite of herself sought his gaze, defeated to
the point of begging and on the verge of breaking, but his cold stare spoke of
a painful revenge to be exacted first.

When he was done, her strong body shook the chair, bolted on the floor, and
her sweat soaked mane oscillated left and right in rhythm with her sobs and
cries. Dread and anguish echoed in her scream when he snug knobbed rods under
her thighs and then placed a slab on them, the ridges biting the welts from
her recent whipping and the weights soon exacting new screams from the
writhing young woman, which turned to howls when the rods were turned and the
knobs raked the flesh, digging painfully and sometimes drawing blood.

More weights were added on her forearms, and then her tormentor alternated
long pauses of unrelenting crushing agony to sudden twists of a rod here and
there, the pain radiating from the offended flesh forcing her to twitch and
renewing the agony from the crushing weight on her limbs.

After a nightmarish stretch of torment, he made it worse, placing a wooden
plank on her chest, shaped to fit the ribcage under the breasts and sustain
them. Her own generous but firm breasts flattened only partially when they
were made to lean on the plank, but when the ridged underside of the brick was
dropped, crushing them on the plank and the knotted rod forced under them, her
howl rose fully to the vaults of the chamber and resonated fully in the ears
of the onlookers.

Slowly and deliberately, weights were dropped on her crushed breasts, turning
the rod a half turn on each drop, alternating weight and twist in a litany of
screams and howls during which she often started babbling random words cut
short by a vicious twisting of the rods.

Her tormentor seemed to never run out of weights, although he now used lighter
weights intended to compound the pain, not break the bone, and dropping a
weight on some crushed part of her body, twisting a rod and then pausing while
the pressure unrelentingly dished out its measure of pain became the horizons
of her nightmare of suffering, her hoarse throat screaming in the gag until at
last her body no longer reacted to a twisted rod.

She was cautiously freed, her limbs and breasts covered with nasty, bluish
bruises which Grod treated exchanging a look with the imperturbable Easterner,
as if reminding him of their agreement. She was made to kneel on the ridges of
an upturned stone slab, placing half a dozen knobbed rods on the back of her
legs before forcing her to sit on her heels and cuffing her hands on a beam
behind her back, her arms leaning on the beam at the expense of her shoulders
which were put under strain again. The beam rested on sturdy legs which also
sustained a plank fitting under her breasts, and Kayleen followed the dreadful
preparations with teary eyes, losing herself what little rest they allowed.

The Easterner placed more rods under the full length of her stretched arms,
and then renewed the nightmare of dropped weights and twisted rods, brick by
brick, her tears mixing with sweat on her twitching, sumptuous body as he
coldly tormented her bruised limbs. Droplets of blood stained the wooden beam
where the knobs dug in the flesh, chafing the skin and reopening her welts.

After a agonizing hiatus, he distended her breasts on the plank, threading a
knotted rope around the base and through holes in the wood, and pulled her
nipples enough to tie another loop of rope around each distorted mammary, as
her face contorted in pain and shrieks for the full length of the agonizing
transformation of her proud breasts in distended cones of constricted pain.

When a ridged slab was dropped on her tormented breasts, she screamed to the
top of her lungs, unaware that something worse was in store for her. The next
weight was a wedge, placed between her chest and the slab, its weight stabbing
down as if to cut off her breasts from the chest. As the tendons on her neck
almost broke under the tension from her anguished howls, another slab was
placed on her thighs.

Her eyes bulged as the heavy slab compressed her doubled legs, the knobs
between thigh and leg digging in both and shooting white hot pain through her
as he twisted one and then the other, each twist reverberating through her
whole body as she tried to pull her breasts free and move her arms. As more
weights were added, bruises she could not see, but each wrenching a new scream
from her sore throat, appeared on her arms, thighs and breasts.

Kayleen's misery sank to new depths when the cane landed on her soles, the
thin red welt bleeding as more strikes followed, each causing a spasm which
brought fresh pain from her limbs and her trapped breasts. Each pitiful howl
wailed off as her chest was unable to expand and contract freely, the very act
of screaming tearing her breasts from the unyielding stone maws.

As weights were slowly added over her thighs, twisting a knobbed rod required
the use of a handle, the act unleashing a sequel of gasps and shrieks as the
wry Easterner protracted it, her head trashing madly each time he turned one
as the knobs bit the flesh of leg and thigh and each jerk in reaction brought
new pain from her arms and breasts.

Her tormentor's cold stare proved he was perfectly aware of the nightmare her
formerly voluptuous mammaries were suffering, and Kayleen screamed when he
fetched a weight and lingered over them. He dropped the weight when her scream
waned, and when her subsequent thrashing and screams subsided caned her soles
to rekindle them again, her breasts dripping blood where the ridged slab had
chafed open the crisscrossed marks from her recent whipping.

After more weights, as she thought that her breasts would be crushed to pulp,
he slashed her left nipple with the cane, a lance of white hot pain searing
through her up to her screaming throat, followed by another as he caned her
other nipple. Slowly, methodically, pausing to let her deepen her torment by
thrashing in response to each strike, he alternated between her nipples until
her response to each strike waned to a whimper.

When she was freed, her body and especially her breasts were a mess of bluish
bruises and bleeding welts, which Grod treated with little apparent success as
she drank from the jug again, her thirst her own undoing. As they brought her
to a trestle and started cuffing her ankles, she vainly tried to cover her
whipped private parts with her bloodied hands, dreadfully aware of what the
spread thighs would bring.

After securing her painfully spread legs to a beam with iron bands, her
torturer cuffed her wrists behind her and pulled them through a ring in the
floor, bending her arms back in their sockets, wrenching from her a cry of
anguished pain. Her breasts leaned upturned on a wooden plank, ready to
receive the dreadful weights on their soft undersides.

The Easterner first placed slabs over her spread legs and thighs, each bearing
the accursed knobbed rods right on the underside. When enough weight was added
to cause Kayleen to cry, turning these rods revealed new heights of agony to
the tormented young woman, because the full weight of the slab rested on the
knob during its entire rotation, chafing a nasty bruise in the wounded skin
which would bleed raw in a few rotations.

More slabs were placed over her arms, her screaming now devoid of interruption
as the weight on the legs tore at her hip sockets compounding the pain along
the full length of her lower limbs. She shrieked in dread when a slab was
placed on the underside of her breasts, the knobs digging in her flesh as more
weight was quickly brought to bear on her once proud mammaries.

Her left foot was caned again, sending pain through her leg and wrenching a
new cry of anguish as her restrained leg attempted to twitch away in response,
shifting dozens of knobs in their seats within her flesh. He then moved to her
right foot, and leisurely alternated between them, each strike bringing a new
scream as a tormented limb twitched in vain.

Words erupted between screams from her sore mouth as the unrelenting torment
was protracted, most of which the Easterner could not understand except for a
hoarse "Please! I was just trying to escape." at which his gaze hardened. He
fetched another slab, one he was ordinarily reluctant to use as its original
designer died in an asylum for the insane. This slab needed a rack mount for
sliding, which he set up around her groin, and the wedge was to be placed
inside the feminine parts of the victim.

The dread for his preparations managed what will could no longer accomplish,
for her screams of pain subsided while she stared at the wedge being mounted
and then lowered inside her, her tormentor's fingers separating the lips as
the wide tip entered her, its cold ridged surface soothing at first until
weight was applied. The wedge lodged its point in the upper recesses of her
vulva, so when weight was added instead of penetrating her love channel it
weighed upon the urethra, parting her lips and sliding down until its descent
was stopped at the joining of the lips, the tip crushing her clitoris as she
screamed like a demented animal.

Her tormentor twisted the rods on the slopes of the wedge after adding enough
weight to drive two knobs on top of her love button, each turn of the handle
wrenching a gurgling howl of unbridled agony on par with the worst resonated
during her suffering in this chamber of horrors. As if to draw a comparison,
he caned her protruding nipples, alternating caning and twisting as her body
shook in her restraints and blood flowed in rivulets down her mons.

When she was freed, Grod examined her at length, skipping the cautionary
tightening of her collar as she was obviously no threat, and treated her with
more thoroughness than usual. But his gaze was still hard as steel when she
looked between tears, and he dragged her to a chair brimming with spikes, her
moan of pleading unheeded as she was cuffed on the seat.

As her thighs weighed on the chair a scream erupted from her lips, as she felt
what her eyes would later confirm: instead of iron spikes the chair had
slender wooden wedges whose point had been hacked raw. Instead of piercing the
flesh, the wedges drove wooden splinters in her bruises and welts, a more
diabolical pain for much less actual damage.

Her collar was pulled against the back of the seat, driving the splintered
points in her wounded back. Kayleen gasped and screamed again, as the jerk
from the stabs in her back had unseated the points under her thighs, shifting
them inside her wounded flesh. Her screams continued as she sought to still
herself under the unrelenting torment.

A wedged plank was placed on her legs and tightened, driving the points into
her wounds on the front and back of her supple legs and launching her on a new
journey into agony as she jerked and twisted in her seat of pain, screaming
and sobbing as splinters entered her wounds here and there. Her heart sank
when she managed to still herself enough to open her teary eyes and notice the
brazier, where sinister instruments were being heated.

Her torment was renewed again and again when wedged planks were tightened on
each forearm, her tormentor intent on protracting her agonies and oblivious to
the pleading in her eyes. More meaningless words escaped her mouth between
sobs and screams, and on cue from Zhorun her gag was removed. In spite of the
haze and exhaustion, this stirred something inside her mind, an urgency to
keep from her tormentors something she no longer remembered clearly.

A wave of agony drowned any such thoughts when a wedged plank was tightened on
her thighs, her wounds bleeding anew as splinters seared their way into them
causing her body to twist and buckle in response, unleashing a sequel of jerks
and twitches punctuated by agonized howls and gasping shrieks that Grod
protracted by tightening the plank one bolt at a time.

Grod waited until her sight cleared to show her what was in store for her, a
pair of rollers covered with wooden wedges which he placed above and below her
wounded breasts. Her gaze pleaded, her distended mouth silently uttered
"Please" and "No" more than once, but her tormentor tightened the rollers onto
her breasts, her screams rising in pitch on each turn, and then cranked them.

Pain hitherto unimagined exploded in her mind as the rotation pushed the
wedges into her wounded flesh, the rollers tearing at her distended mammaries
as if to tear them off her chest. Her arms strained in their restraints to set
themselves free, wrenching the wedges inside her wounds, her legs stiffened in
the effort to lift her off the chair, and her torso twitched griding the
points in her wounded flesh. Her howls and screams resonated in the room over
and over, subsiding only as her voice dropped to panting sobs.

Another crank at the rollers renewed her screams and her agony, the hellish
seat now a seat of uninterrupted torment which Grod could unleash at leisure.
Her tormentor unleashed agony on her breasts slowly and deliberately, pausing
to listen to the words she uttered when her screams subsided, and cranking the
rollers when she caught herself and stopped. Kayleen was too mad with pain to
tell if he at last stopped because she had unwillingly told them what they
were after, or because she no longer reacted in full to the torture.

She was doused with cold water, which washed away the blood under Grod's
attentive gaze, and attempted to refuse drinking from the jug offered to her,
but failed as he pinched her nose and forced her to drink most of it. The
rollers were removed, replaced by a wedged plank which flattened the agonized
mounds on her chest renewing her screams of despair as her unspoken question
was painfully answered.

The heat near her left upper arm caused her to open her eyes just in time to
see in horror a heated, narrow copper strip about to be pressed onto a
bleeding welt from her recent whipping. For an instant, time stopped in
Kayleen's mind, then the pain from her seared flesh rose up to her throat and
escaped in a wail of agony, fed in fits and gasps by her hurt skin, as her
inevitable twitching in response again caused the points to renew the torment
of her back and limbs.

The searing pain bit her again and again, as the narrow strip was placed in
different places along the welt, each time bringing new agonies to her whole
body. With little pause, the tool was placed on another bleeding wound on her
right upper arm, and then on others, her screams uninterrupted as the smell of
her burnt flesh rose to her nostrils.

The smell awakened something in her tormented mind, something she could not
focus on and which escaped her as each searing kiss from the strip sent her
into new depths of agony. He stopped to remove the wedged planks from her
forearms, and the instant of respite was enough to let her remember: before
she could meet Kayleen, she used to have cuts cauterized with hot iron. The
pattern of his actions was unmistakable, he was cauterizing her wounds to
staunch the bleeding.

The heat kissing her forearm reminded her that he was also sending her to a
hell of searing pain, as no soothing ointment was being applied to lessen her
pain or prevent scars. A deep horror rose in her as she thought of her bruised
body, the sight of her formerly likable femininity forever replaced by a mess
of scars and burns. There was no mercy in her tormentor's ministrations, only
the grim achievement of the foul purpose of his master.

As if in confirmation, he removed the planks from her lower limbs and started
cauterizing the welts which crisscrossed them, the mounting pain reaching new
heights as he proceeded with swift efficiency without allowing her to recover
after each burn. Her howls and screams rose accordingly, in spite of her sore
throat and weak attempts at being brave as she used to be after battle.

No battle had ever prepared her to the pain which blazed through her when he
removed her breast plank and used the heated strip to cauterize her wounded
breasts, her chilling shrieks and anguished howls not deterring him from
repeatedly dragging the searing copper instrument over her bruised skin
following the line of each cut, sparing the nipples which had not been cut.

Her tormentor had to heat the copper strip over and over before completing the
cauterizing of the wounds of her breasts, leaving her hoarse and delirious
with pain but still fully conscious, enough to resume her screaming when he
moved to the wounds on her ribcage and abdomen. Nothing except the tightest
restraints could have kept her still as her wounds were cruelly cauterized,
and the back of her body had been painfully ground by her movements on the
wooden wedges for the whole duration of the unmerciful procedure.

Her screams rose to high heaven when he cauterized some wounds between her
thighs and on her mons and vulva, but in spite of the spread thighs the area
was not easily accessible as she was seated in the chair, and in the haze of
maddening pain she realized she was being freed to rectify that.

She was made to kneel on a post, cuffing her ankles to the platform and her
neck and wrists to an horizontal beam. An ointment was also applied to her
burns, but it brought no relief from the dull pain that she knew would mount
in the following hours.

Her kneeling position allowed Grod to start cauterizing the nasty welts under
the soles of her feet, each bringing a fresh scream from her sore throat and
shame in the little corner of her tormented mind where the pride of the former
Warrior Queen still lived as she compared the show she was offering to her
tormentors with her former bravery.

Her screams continued as he started on her legs, the slender legs stiffening
each time the heated copper rubbed her wounded flesh. In a corner of her mind,
the thought that Grod was safeguarding her from the worst crept up, because
she had been cut in the legs before and remembered a worse pain. Or maybe it
was just that an improvised hot iron had been used, but she thought that the
tool was as narrow as possible, to leave smaller burns.

She screamed again, a quieter scream this time, as the memories of her former
bravery put her to shame. Yet the sheer number of wounds yet to be cauterized
would make even the bravest warrior wince, because her recent whipping had
been but the last straw in days of unrelenting torment. She gasped repeatedly
as the heated copper strip was dragged over her ass cheeks, wound after wound,
reminding her of the beatings they had been subjected to.

Over time, her screams and shrieks subsided to gasps and sobs, and she thought
that maybe he would take this as an indication that she was again entering a
state where further torture would be pointless. He was almost done with her
crisscrossed back, and moved to her inner thighs.

The soft flesh of the thigh hissed as he the heated copper instrument was
dragged over the wounded areas, a hiss she matched by suppressing a scream.
She had never been wounded there, nor in her feminine parts, where too many
wounds to consider still bled and would have to be cauterized. Dread returned
her sole companion as the thought of the copper burning her intimate flesh
over and over crept on her, and turned to agony when it materialized.

She screamed at the top of her lungs when the copper strip followed the curve
of her left cunt lip, and screamed again trashing in her restraints when it
poked the spots along the rim of her sphincter which had been torn. Grod added
ropes to her restraints to prevent her from jerking, and using a pair of
tweezers opened her labia and brought the heated instrument inside.

A howl rose from her as he cauterized her wounded inner lips, and another when
she cauterized the torn fold of her clitoris. She gasped and shrieked when the
places where her vagina had been torn were also burned, one by one, wisps of
steam rising as the heat encountered what little moisture remained. She had
lost count of how much her tormentors had targeted her private parts, and Grod
slowly reminded her in earnest.


Chapter 8 - Under the Heel

Kayleen's whimpering and sobbing echoed in the vast chamber. She stood astride
a wooden rail, her slightly spread ankles cuffed to rings in the floor to
prevent her from closing them, her arms bent behind her back in a reverse
prayer position. The rail was high enough that she had to stand on the balls
of her feet, otherwise her entire body weight rested on the wooden edge of the
wedge shaped rail, grinding into her martyrized feminine parts.

Her supple legs, however, were no longer the coiled springs that she had
danced upon across many a battlefield; they had been turned to worn bundles of
dull ache and throbbing pain by the unrelenting assaults on her muscles,
ligaments and joints. Her groin was a smattering of angry burns and encrusted
blood from multiple wounds; some bled again, reopened by the cruel edge, but
the blood on the rail also trickled from her ravaged innards.

She had been wounded in the past, even badly cut, and her body had proved its
exceptional ability to recover more than once, but the uninterrupted torments
and the lack of rest had finally taken its toll. Her whole body was on fire
from the burns sustained during the unmerciful cauterization of her wounds by
hot copper. She would never be her former self again, even if by a miracle
Lyral would use her healing powers to mend her wounds, as she used to.

The Warrior Queen owed her life to the young priestess, who had placed her
powers at her disposal in the struggle to overthrow Zhorun in spite of her
order's disapproval. She would still lay down her life to shield her from any
harm, and in fact was doing just that, one torment at a time, but she dreaded
the day when her will would break.

Zhorun had ordered her gag removed, apparently interested in clearly listening
to words that she was not aware of uttering at the height of her torments, and
she knew what this would mean on the long run. Word by word, the wizard would
piece together the information he needed, her will unable to prevent herself
from caving in to her tormentors in a foolish attempt to end the pain. Or
maybe it was just that whatever she said, they paused to listen.

She jerked and sobbed at the footsteps, whimpering "They cannot be already
here. Please." Kayleen sought within herself the resolve to deny her
tormentors the pleasure of hearing her scream, but she had to bend her head as
she found only dread and despair.

The fact that Grod was first no longer meant anything to either of them, and
the burly executioner tightened the collar before moving behind her back,
freeing her arms and cuffing her at the elbows and wrists. He freed her left
leg, brought it over the rail and then cuffed her ankles to a short chain,
forcing her to walk in wobbling steps up to a dangling chain.

A knot formed in her stomach when the chain was tied to her wrists and pulled
up, her arms painfully bending in their sockets and her shoulder blades pushed
against each other as she had to stand on her tiptoes, her arms already in
pain and a low moan on her parched lips. As her tormentor bid his time, the
pain in her arm sockets, which had already been dislocated more than once on
the cross rack, mounted unrelentingly, and her moan rose to a fitful cry.

With a pull, Grod lifted her off the floor, her feet kicking in mid air in a
vain attempt to ease the traction on her shoulder joints. Needles of fire shot
through her strained muscles and she screamed, over and over, as the agony
raced through her already martyrized limbs.

Kayleen sobbed and screamed, already out of her mind with pain, but all Grod
did for a long time was watch her suffer. Then he moved besides her and yanked
the short chain connecting her ankle cuffs, releasing it immediately as her
screams rose to new heights. He then pulled it sideways, so that upon release
her stretched body started swinging.

New screams rose in rhythm with the swinging, as her twisted arms were pulled
upon at both ends of each swing. The sheen of perspiration already covered her
marked body, but her delightful silhouette still offered a lustful sight as
she swung back and forth in pain.

When he moved to yank the chain again, she screamed "Pl.." but bit savagely
on the "..ease" remembering how he had burned and raped her. There would be no
mercy, there had never been any. She started swinging again, tears mixing
with sweat on her contorted face as new screams escaped her lips.

After dozens of swings, Grod caught her left foot, tied a cord around the toe
and then hung a hefty lead weight on it. She attempted to kick him, but each
movement brought new agonies into her shoulders and she failed. When he let
the weight fall, a howl erupted from her lips, followed by gasping cries as
the pull added to the misery of her shoulders and rekindled the agonies of
racking in the strained muscles of her legs.

After listening to her cries at length, he moved to her other foot, tied a
cord around her big toe and moved the weight, avoiding a reckless kick which
wrenched a new scream as she oscillated in vain. Just hanging by her wrists
was agony for Kayleen, but each time he moved the weight to the other foot her
once strong body contorted and jerked in a vain attempt to relieve the
suffering in her arms and shoulders, bringing fresh screams to her lips.

When he left, she had been hanging long enough to hope that it would be over,
that the next tormentor would take his turn, but he was soon back, with the
bullwhip in hand. Her mind went back to the first day of her ordeal, when he
had whipped her naked with the long, heavy whip, trembling at the thought of
the havoc it would wreak now on her agonizing body.

Her fears materialized when the whip slashed across her calves, leaving a thin
bloody stripe which blazed in her mind like a white hot flame, her shrill cry
followed by a gasp and an agonized scream as the movement of her legs in
response to the lash sent the weight swinging, a pendulum of pain off her toe
whose pulls reverberated through her whole body up to her suffering shoulders,
each wrenching a new scream from her parched throat.

Long pauses followed each subsequent lash, during which the weight was allowed
to spend its momentum on her stretched body as hoarse screams punctuated each
swing, except when he lashed out at her breasts, tracing bloody stripes on the
firm flesh for no apparent purpose.

As the stripes accumulated on her body, she was lowered just enough to allow
the bleeding wounds to be summarily treated; she tried to turn her head to
avoid drinking from the jug, but his strong hands pinched her nose and she was
forced to quaff the contents again.

When he pulled her up again, he did not stop a few inches off the floor as
before, but pulled her a dozen feet in the air. The dull pain in her shoulders
was the same, but the reason was soon clear as the chain was suddenly released
and immediately pulled, her full weight yanking at her tormented shoulders in
a searing flame of renewed agony.

The longer the fall, the harder she was pulled when it was stopped, the risk
of dislocation very real when the fall was prolonged. She cried in despair
when she was pulled all the way up again, the harbinger of more suffering to
come, a cry she would utter again and again as he reiterated the devastating
drops, interspersed with further lashing of her breasts.

With blood dripping from her chest, she was raised again and dropped a short
distance. As an anguished cry erupted from her lips, she was immediately
dropped again, and she couldn't even catch her breath for a scream before the
chain was loosened and refastened again, the start of a staggered descent to
hell which rattled her savaged joints uninterruptedly until she stopped a few
inches off the floor, her wheezing screams mounting into a single howl as the
accumulated agony found its release.

If hell had stairs, she was descending them ramp by ramp. Few words has
escaped her lips among the screams, but as she was hoisted up again a few did,
bringing Zhorun closer. She was let down again, a rag doll bouncing down a
trail of pain, and again her whispered words brought her the briefest of
pauses. As much as her weakened will attempted to suppress them, the maddened
animal within her had found in them a way to find some respite.

On the next hoist she managed to stifle most of them, but this did not help
her as she was jarred to the bone on the subsequent staggered descent,
screaming in hoarse despair as the pain blanked her mind again without
bringing the craven respite of unconsciousness. Her arms had turned to fiery
bundles of molten agony, her elbows she could no longer feel, her shoulders
felt like pierced by thousands of white hot needles.

She screamed when the whip landed on her breasts, for no apparent reason, just
before she was hoisted up again. A word, maybe two, escaped between her sobs
before her subsequent descent drowned them in fitful screams. She lost count
of how many times this was repeated, her teary eyes mostly closed to shut off
the horrific sight of her bleeding chest and swollen shoulders, the latter
probably already dislocated beyond repair.

When he hung the weight to her left toe, Kayleen knew that if they were not
already, they would soon be. Unbelievable as it was, her next descent brought
new agonies, the sharper pain lasting longer as the weight swung below her and
then recurring on each swing of the weight below her. She screamed herself
hoarse, her vocal cords burning but not lost yet, a perverse joke of fate
considering that speechlessness might bring her the respite she craved.

No such luck befell her, however, as the occasional whipping of the breasts
punctuated the repeated hoisting and staggered dropping, a rag doll jerking
down the stairs of hell. Hoarse screams turned to wheezing howls, but like her
vocal cords her will endured without breaking.

When the lash savaged her tits and she barely jerked, she was lowered and
treated, including being force fed again, so at last she understood why he did
that. But this brought only a brief respite, because he fetched two ominous
iron vices and tightened them onto her shoulders, the jaws digging in the torn
muscles around the joint, and then tied each with chain to the opposing ankle,
pulling her legs up behind her and shortening the chain until she was
painfully bent, shivering from dread, exhaustion and pain.

She was hoisted up and dropped again, each stop along the way causing her legs
to pull on the vices and wreak havoc on her strained shoulder muscles,
pinching and twisting them as they were yanked under her own weight. It was
like Grod's hands straining her thigh muscles on the rack, but with inhuman
speed and unrelenting cruelty.

The pain did not subside after the final yank, the vices searing her with
white hot agony, and this told her that her shoulders had been dislocated and
she was hanging by her ligaments. She sank to new depths of horror when, in
spite of that, she was hoisted up again. She knew enough anatomy to tell that
she was now a cripple, and as her ligaments and subsequently her muscles tore
under the repeated yanking of her own weight, she would die an agonizing death
or survive as a freak.

He looked at Grod, attempting to look him in the eyes, but she found only
steely determination there. She was hoisted up, the pain much worse than
before and hearing her ligaments tear in spite of her desperate screams, and
she was about to shout "Enough!" but she lacked the breath and was dropped
again, a veritable hell blazing through her shoulders on her howling descent
into maddened agony.

She was spent, and as Grod came close opened her parched lips to speak, but he
just inspected the vices and forcibly reduced first one and then the next
shoulder into their sockets, helped by the adeptly positioned vices whose real
purpose was thus revealed, ignoring her cries and the horror on her face as he
moved back to the chain and hoisted her up again.

The subsequent descent was again a dive into unquenched agony, and the cycle
of hoisting and dropping repeated a few times before her shoulders dislocated
again. She was beyond herself, unable to think coherently, unable to react,
unable to tell them what they wanted to know, When he reduced her dislocated
shoulders once again, her scream rose momentarily, then wailed to a wheeze.

When he hoisted her again, her worn voice only managed a wheezing moan of
utter despair, her shoulders already hurting as if about to dislocate under
her own weight. When her fitful descent lent her screams new wind, the pain
returned to unbearable levels but somehow her shoulders held out. The whip
found her breasts again, but she barely whimpered, and Grod let her down on
the floor in a sobbing heap.

He knelt beside her, sensing her shoulders, and whispered, "You won't last
much longer, girl. Trust me, you've held out longer than anyone else in my
experience, but you're about to break. Talk while you can."

Her shoulders, her breasts, her private parts still smarting from a night on
the wooden rail, all screamed at her to talk, but something in her still
clung to her former pride and her dedication. She was not ready to give up
her frail friend, her people and everything she valued to a wizard returned
from the grave.

"You don't understand, my friend. She likes it." uttered the Southerner, eager
to get started. Grod rose and left, leaving her to the swarthy old man. He
offered her the jug, and the taste was different today, bitter and yet
reinvigorating. He did not free her wrists, but cuffed her ankles to rings set
in the stone floor, spreading her legs wide, then studied the cranks at length
before hoisting her up again, her screams resuming although her body now
sloped towards the floor instead of hanging vertically. Her tormentor verified
to his satisfaction that a staggered descent still wrenched a sequel of
screams from the helpless victim, then positioned between her legs.

His hands closed on her ass cheeks and spread them, her mouth forming a mute
"No" before he thrust into her, and his pushes rekindled the pain in her
shoulders as she swung from her arms in rhythm with his rutting lust, crying
and sobbing in pain and humiliation.

Once sated, he fetched a tray where many legged things wriggled in small
jugs, and showed her, saying "I have a number of old and new friends to keep
you company, until this old man gets ready to pull a stunt again." She closed
her teary eyes, wishing the critters would go away, but opened them again when
the sting of a wasp on her nipple made her cry in surprise.

"You knew that." he said matter of factly. With consummate ability he fetched
a spider like the one he had already used on her and brought it against her
other nipple, and savored the stiffening of her body in a hoarse scream as she
was bitten.

"That was better," he commented, "but this one is better still." he added
triumphantly as he fetched a writhing legged horror four inches long and
touched it to her left breast, until the irritated critter sank its mandibles
into her flesh, wrenching from her a hoarse scream which rose as she twitched
and buckled, rattling the chain holding her tortured arms.

He opened his robe to expose his member and positioned before her, saying "Now
we play a game, Whore Queen. If you swallow this gag here," at which he
produced the spidery steel gag Zhorun had wanted removed, "to help it fit, I
will have to put aside our legged friend there." he added, dangling the
centipede before her horrified eyes.

She shook her head in refusal, but the movement soon turned into a spasm of
agony as the creature was brought to bite her other breast, her howl on par
of the previous and the harbinger of others to come, as he brought the hellish
jaws to bear onto her belly, armpits and back, from her shoulder blades down.
They rose higher when he moved to her breasts again.

In spite of what was about to happen, she shook her head in refusal when he
brought the jaws onto her nipple, and then almost snapped her neck when the
bite seared through her jerking body as the jaws closed on the delicate flesh.

Frustrated, he fetched a fresh specimen and brought it to bite her other
nipple, shaking the gag at her as she convulsed in pain. Her head still
shaking, she managed to thwart his attempts to force the gag down her throat,
but at the price of hellish bites on her nipples, which were swelling from the
venom of so many bites.

"I'll make you beg for it, bitch." he snared, and moved between her legs
again, aroused by her screams, and violated her in a fit of lustful rage,
savaging her wounded love channel and pushing into her with the same rutting
hatred that he had used to bugger her before, her screams owing as much to her
violation as to the renewed pain from her bent arms.

When the Southerner moved to tighten her collar, an evil grin came to his face
as he brought the horror to bite her nipple again, and as she convulsed on the
verge of asphyxiation managed to force the gag into her mouth. Satisfied, he
loosened the collar again and pushed his member into her mouth, but being
spent he pulled out after a short time, reveling in her humiliation. He
tightened her collar again to change her restraints, dragging her to a bench
where her wrists were fastened to a winch and her legs spread painfully wide.

He produced a pair of clasps which he closed to her nipples and fastened using
fine chains to a pulley from the ceiling, then clasped her clitoris in the
same manner as her screams rose in pitch under his ministrations. When he
removed the bench from under her, she wailed as her weight now was carried by
her clasped feminine parts and her tormented arms.

He cranked the winch, pulling back her arms until she lowered her head enough
to allow him convenient use of her mouth, tears flowing from her eyes as,
between sobs, she realized her upcoming humiliation. But when he fetched his
jugs, dread at what torments lay ahead prevailed, and her sobs took a heart
wrenching pleading note, which her tormentor enjoyed to the point of arousal.

He stood astride her bent arms, his member ready to enter her mouth in spite
of her shaking head, and with both hands fetched a small jellyfish from its
water filled jug and dragged the tendrils on the taut skin or her muscular
abdomen, grinning as thin red stripes appeared and her body stiffened in the
jaws of pain, violating her mouth just as she started to scream at the top of
her lungs. He enjoyed her gurgling scream dying on his member, and her
subsequent muffled cries as he fetched more of the stinging creatures and
dragged them over her body, targeting the places where her burns still stood
out as he knew the pain would be much worse.

Kayleen was beyond herself from anguish and humiliation, the pain exploding in
waves from her burning body as he dragged the tendrils over her poor distended
breasts, and searing through her when he dragged them on her mons, her inner
thighs and her cunt lips. When he came in her mouth, she puked, and choked,
and almost drowned in her misery as he laughed at her plight and dragged yet
another jellyfish across her distended breast, as if attempting to clear her
throat scream after scream.

Sated, he proceeded to drag the stinging tendrils over areas of her body which
he could not reach from his previous position, and if this brought some
respite to her martyrized front, it did not spare her anything else, as the
hellish tendrils left their mark under her soles, on her legs, on her thighs,
behind her back and on her bent arms. The clasps gnawed at her flesh with new
agonies whenever she twitched or buckled under the caress of the tendrils,
soon biting into the flesh to the point of drawing blood.

With an evil grin, he carefully wound the tendrils of a fresh specimen around
a stick and pushed it inside her ass, most of the tendrils stopping at her
sphincter but a few being pushed inside, her back arching as she screamed at
the top of her lungs while he twisted it left and right.

He did the same with her vagina, smiling as this orifice allowed more tendrils
to enter. He twisted it at length, bringing new heights of agony into her
uninterrupted howling as each twist stung her insides and ravaged her vulva,
until her private parts started to swell and he had to pull in order to set
the stick free, with some fragments of the tendrils still sticking in and
stinging her to maddening pain until her bloodcurdling screams waned.

He freed her bleeding nipples and clitoris from the clasps and tightened her
collar before freeing her and dragging her between two pillars, where he
cuffed her ankles to chains, spreading her legs in a painful inverted
suspension, and twisted her cuffed arms up behind her, chaining them to a ring
in the floor as pain already coursed in her twisted sockets.

Kayleen looked up at what new horror her tormentor would produce, and saw a
small, bristled caterpillar held with his customary adeptness between thin
tweezers. He looked into her frightened eyes and brought the critter against
her left armpit, which promptly exploded into hellish pain when the bristles
brushed the skin, wrenching a hoarse scream from her sore mouth.

He fetched another and rubbed it under the sole of her left foot, her leg
stiffening and then jerking madly as she howled attempting to kick aside the
venomous bristles, whose painful sting was even worse when applied to burned
or wounded skin. Which her tormentor did, slowly and deliberately, along the
full length of her supple legs and slender thighs, laughing softly at each new
scream erupting from her parched lips and enjoying her wild buckling and
twisting under the caress of the hellish creatures.

He briefly moved to her arms, enjoying himself with her cries for a while, but
then targeted her ass cheeks, each brush causing her to arch and buckle like a
mad puppet and compounding the pain from the stinging bristles with the strain
on her martyrized arms. He picked up another caterpillar with his other hand
and started rubbing both on her buttocks, alternating them in a wild dance of
maddened pain and pitiful howls which aroused him again.

He moved to her front, straddled her and pushed his erect member into her
mouth, rubbing the irritated caterpillars on her breasts in rhythm with his
thrusts, until her gurgles and muffled screams brought him to climax again.

Too mad with pain to notice anything else, Kayleen registered the caterpillar
being applied to her vulva only when the stinging pain exploded from her
nether regions, screaming her lungs out in a long cry which resonated under
the vaults of the chamber, only to merge with the next and each subsequent
scream as he repeatedly tormented her feminine parts with the stinging touch
of the irritated caterpillar.

When he used a forceps to distend her sphincter and drop a caterpillar inside,
a new wave of pain rose from her loins as the writhing critter attempted to
wriggle free from inside her, his uninterrupted stinging swelling her insides
and imprisoning him. Her jerks shook the chains as she screamed herself hoarse
until the critter died, but her tormentor folded another under her left labia
and her howls resumed with renewed agonies, only to be rekindled yet again
when this also died, to be replaced by another under her right cunt lip.

He then rubbed a fresh caterpillar against her left nipple, toying with the
jerking piece of wounded flesh as she heaved her chest and twisted in her
restraints in a vain attempt to escape the stinging bristles, then fetching
another with his other hand to trace a double contour of pain on the stiff
buds at the top of her proud breasts.

When her nipples had no new screams to offer, he dropped a large specimen
inside her love channel, sending her buckling and twitching in yet another
paroxysm of howling agony, as the critter attempted to wriggle its way out and
stung her repeatedly. He used the forceps to insert the next into her swollen
vagina, and her howls rose to new heights as the creature died wriggling in the
twitching clutch of her vaginal muscles. Overcome by ecstasy at his
accomplishments, he repeatedly inserted more caterpillars, enjoying the sight
of his victim repeatedly torturing herself into maddening agony.
He stopped tormenting her when he could no longer force open the swollen rim
of her love channel, and let the silent Easterner take his place. She drank
again from the jug, craving the respite it brought, and moaned when a cold
soothing ointment was rubbed on her swollen flesh. He still tightened her
collar almost to the point of choking her when untying her and hanging her
wrists and ankles from chains dangling from the ceiling, about four feet off
the floor, her battered body slumping at the waist.

After loosening her collar, he put a hand behind her neck and tightened his
grip, looking into her eyes as he bent her head to look into a enameled box
containing hundreds of wooden sticks, sorted from mere slivers to toothpicks,
the points hardened in fire. He said nothing, but looked hard into her eyes
as tears filled them again before she closed them in despair.

He slowly pushed the first into the firm flesh of her left ass cheek, twisting
it as she gasped and sobbed, followed by a few others. She screamed when he
twisted one into the soft flesh between her ass hole and her vulva, and
screamed again when a sliver pierced her sphincter. As more were pushed into
the firm flesh of her derriere, blood started to trickle from the tiny wounds.

Her muscular back became a canvas of pain when he started pushing stick after
stick inside, reaching nerves whose existence she never suspected and building
up her suffering until she found herself screaming whenever she took a deep
breath, as the muscles of her back shifted the points from one agonizing
position to another each time they flexed and distended.

He had saved the thicker sticks for her legs and thighs, and he pushed each in
in earnest, deep into the muscles that were bearing the weight of her body,
twisting them as her body alternately stiffened and twitched as the stick
progressed, her gasps followed by shrieks and cries until he left her sobbing
and panting, gasping from the last stick and dreading the next.

Her arms were subjected to the same treatment, her cries louder not because of
the sticks themselves, which were somewhat smaller, but because each movement
brought new pain from her tormented back and legs. And then she found out that
the same applied to her chest, as the sticks were slowly pushed between her
ribs, turning each breath into a stabbing agony and each scream becoming the
first of a torturous sequel.

Having prepared her body, he could then move to the slivers. When he inserted
the first in the flesh between her thumb and finger, Kayleen was agonizingly
reminded of her tormentor's penchant for fingers and toes, her head shaking
in despair as she contemplated the searing pain recurring twenty times over.

But a new horror was wrought on her when he instead pushed a sliver under her
toenail, her scream tearing at her vocal cords as she attempted to jerk her
foot free from his grip. He did not stop at her feet, alternating between toes
and fingers as she alternated between howls and screams until her twitching
appendages brimmed with bloody slivers.

But the worst was yet to come, as he pushed a sliver into her left breast,
just under the skin, waiting until her agonizing jerks subsided before pushing
another in her other breast, unrelentingly adding new slivers at the slow pace
of her raucous fits of screaming agony. After decorating her breasts with
slivers, he twisted into the once proud globes a few larger sticks, stabbing
the quivering flesh with deliberate slowness.

Already swinging between sobbing twitches and crying jerks, Kayleen wailed
when he moved to her crotch and screamed in despair when he pushed a sliver
into her left cunt lip, the first scream of her descent into a deeper hell as
sliver after sliver were pushed into her martyrized flesh. Just as she thought
it could not get worse, he started pushing a sliver into her bleeding left
nipple, protracting the torment in spite of her mad trashing and unbridled
screams and then repeating it on her other nipple.

As he pushed two slivers under her clitoral hood, nobody could say whether her
frantic buckling was an attempt to stem what would come or just the maddened
response to unbearable pain, but when he inserted, another just under the
surface of her love bud, her howling, fitful scream left no doubt about her
condition, and the subsequent ones confirmed it.

As she hung in unbearable pain, her tormentor took to tapping the slivers
piercing her flesh, wrenching new screams from her quivering body each time a
tap drove a sliver a fraction deeper into the flesh. At length, he started
pushing more sticks through her tormented muscles, and her screams rose again
to the vaults of the chamber when he pushed another sliver in each nipple.

She briefly hung by herself when he left, dreading his return, with good
reason as he brought a jug of clear liquid. He filled a small cup and put it
against one of the slivers under her chest. At first nothing happened, and
then she started screaming as the dry sliver soaked the liquid and bulged
inside her wounded flesh, and then howled in pain as the alcoholic liquid
reached the wounded seat of the sliver.

Her tormentor now held in his hands the bridles of her ride through pain, a
flat stick for tapping the slivers in his left hand and the cup in the other,
and alternated between them, slowly at first and then increasing his pace each
time, bringing the screaming Kayleen to a frenzy of despair, unbridled agony
and pitiful screaming which he attempted to protract and, failing that, to
rekindle over and over.

As she hung there, sobbing and crying, he fetched a small steel blade and
put it against the tail of a stick in her heaving back. In a feat of dexterity 
he split the stick in half down to the point where it entered her flesh,
wrenching a new scream from her, followed by a louder one when he pushed a new
stick between the two halves of the existing one, widening the tiny wound in
her flesh and the gulf of pain which Kayleen was drowning in.

He pushed more sticks into her breasts, twisting each into place before
splitting it and inserting another, in preparation for what would follow. He
also skewered her cunt lips and pushed two slivers into her clitoral hood, to
expose her clitoris. Ignoring her maddened cries as the searing pain blazed
through her, he pushed another sliver just under the surface of her wounded
clitoris, tapping on it until it was firmly set.

Then he brought a candle to a stick under her armpit, and watched as fire
consumed it up to the point where it entered her flesh, which turned a fiery
red from the small burn. Her body stiffened and then jerked wildly as the
stick burned slowly, searing the flesh in a new deluge of unrelenting pain
which he soon renewed by bringing the candle against a stick in her back.

Then he paused, allowing the pain to subside enough for her mind to
contemplate what she would have to withstand before all the sticks and slivers
piercing her body could be burned away, one by one. When horror filled her
eyes, he set fire to a sliver in her left nipple, waiting patiently while she
screamed and buckled, until it was consumed. When he replaced it, her torn
voice rose in a scream where despair matched the pain.

Kayleen craved a moment of respite, but her tormentor set fire to the sliver
under the nail of her left pinky. Her screams rose again, on par with any
uttered in the course of her days of torment but maybe more desperate, because
she knew that fingers and toes would follow. True to his preferences, the
Easterner followed up, toe by toe and finger by finger, pausing between each
to let the pain sink in before rekindling it.

Convinced that a predictable pattern induced a deeper fear into victims, the
Easterner brought the candle to the slivers between her fingers and toes, one
at a time, each one wrenching new screams from Kayleen's convulsing body as
her extremities were being seared by the tiny flames.

Kayleen was already delirious, and the horror of having each sliver and stick
in her limbs and back burned away defied comprehension. She wished to whither
away, curl up and die, but all she managed to do was gasp when a stick in
her back was set to fire. Soon the Easterner started setting fire to more than
one, because sticks in her back and buttocks caused pain only at the end, when
burning near the skin.

When he set fire to a sliver under her left arm, instead, the burning agony
started immediately as the tiny flame rose to scorch the skin from the very
beginning and lasted until the sliver was consumed, a protracted agony which
sent Kayleen in a convulsing frenzy of maddened screams.

As more followed, she stiffened, and buckled, and twitchted in pain unlike any
she had suffered to this point, protracted and unbridled searing of the flesh
by tiny flames not being the kind of wound usually encountered on the field of
battle. But in spite of the tears, the screams, and the twitches, in spite of
her shattered pride, occasionally she could be heard saying "Rot in hell, you
bastards. I won't betray her."

Grod observed intently her ordeal, ready to admit that her endurance and
courage were unsurpassed. As she writhed and howled when a sliver in her
muscular abdomen was set ablaze, he noted that fire was effective, possibly
because like most women she was deeply afraid of anything which could mar her
beauty. The rack had also been effective, and he suspected this was because of
how much she valued her fitness.

Too deep in pain for dread, Kayleen still wailed incoherently when he neared
her breasts with the flame, trying desperately to twist her pained globes away
from their doom. All she managed was to solace the leering Southerner, who
smiled when a sliver in her left breast started burning and her screams rose
under the vaults of the torture chamber.

The Easterner set fire to one of the sticks piercing her cunt lips next, and
her howls reached new peaks of horror and agony as she clenched and spread her
thighs in a frantic attempt to extinguish the torment, unable to find respite
in the blessed unconsciousness which had delivered her previously.

With deliberate slowness, the Easterner would set fire to a sliver in the left
breast, one in her groin or inner thighs and one in the right breast, circling
between the most painful targets of his victim's body to maximize the pain
while giving each area of the body the barest chance of recovery.

Hoarse by her practically uninterrupted screaming, Kayleen still found in
herself the strength to snarl "Go to hell!" when he asked "Talk now, before
I set fire here." tapping her clitoris. In the haze of pain, she knew it would
come to that, and however much she wished she could give in, she would not.

Impassible, the Easterner set fire to a sliver in her clitoris, waited until
her heart-wrenching howls, gasps and screams, subsided, then did the same to
one in her left nipple, and then to one in her night nipple. He then set fire
to another in her clitoris, a sliver which had been blackened but was not on
fire yet, and repeated his trail of agony on her convulsing body until her
screams stopped because he had at last burned off them all.

Chapter 9 - The Cruel Hand of Fate

Kayleen hung by her toes in the dark chamber under the ruins of Zhorun's
castle, sobbing softly from the unrelenting bite of the screws gouging the
flesh around her swollen toes and crying occasionally when a fly bit her,
unaware that her tormentors had been woken up in the middle of the night.

She cried when a bite caused her to jerk her legs, sending her swinging slowly
and gasping as pain shot down from her toes, just as in a distant room her
three torturers bowed before the robed figure who addressed them. In the unlit
chamber, her strained arms were a bundle of dull pain, and the throbbing burns
from the slivers hurt even when she managed to remain completely motionless.

"The Priestess has been located, and a warband is on the way to seize her. She
had sent word that any news about the Queen should be relayed to Tharnall
Shrine, and I still have some bright elements in my service." Zhorun's voice
was but a whisper, but the gloating and anticipation were unmistakable.

In the chamber, Kayleen arched when a fly bit her left nipple, again, as the
encrusted blood made them preferred targets. Her cries did not reach the room
where her nemesis was explaining how how his plans would unfold, "Before
proceeding, I have to understand how the Priestess' powers operate, as her ilk
might become a menace to my plans. It is a matter of record that she used to
heal the Queen after battles, so I want her to do the same under my scrutiny.
I want you to really hurt the Queen today, I want the damage to be visible to
the eye and felt on touch, so that when our Priestess meets her friend, she'll
not hesitate to use her healing powers."

Hanging in misery, Kayleen could not hear the dreadful orders, her predicament
was torturous enough as she swung slowly from her bleeding toes. Her tormentors
bowed as more orders were whispered, "She'll be allowed some respite tomorrow,
as if her blabbering had led us to the hideout of the friend she is so loyal
to, and we no longer needed her cooperation. I want her to believe that her
sacrifices have been in vain, so that she'll have less reason to be stubborn in
refusing us the location where the Sorceress hides. With all three of them in
my power, nothing will stand before what once was mine."

When Kayleen heard the approaching footsteps, she almost felt relieved,
although she knew that her release would be brief and would soon result in
more suffering. They cleaned her with buckets of cold water, then the
Easterner tightened her collar, released her, and dragged her to a wooden
rail. Unlike the one where she had spent a torturous night, however, this had
had its edge hacked raw, with dents and notches brimming with ugly splinters.

It took Grod's help, even in her condition, to force her to straddle it. Her
arms were cuffed behind her head, the left wrist to the right elbow and vice
versa, an iron band was clinched on her waist, and then she screamed when they
pulled her legs from under her to fasten her ankle cuffs to an iron bar
hanging from the rail. Her feminine parts leaned on the torturous edge under
her full body weight, and the chains fastened on her elbow cuffs were designed
to keep her from falling sideways without relieving the pressure on her groin.

Her panting cries turned to a howl when the thin, barbed whip wielded by the
wry Easterner lashed her right thigh, her jerk causing her groin to chafe
against the wooden nightmare between her legs. After but three strikes, blood
started to trickle from her wounded privates as each twich and jerk ground
them on the slivers and dents of the hellish wooden device.

The whip landed on her back, leaving a thin stripe punctuated in crimson, and
she cried desperately when her reaction lodged a splinter in her cunt lips. The
next strike coiled around her back, causing her to bend and pull back on the
rail, chafing the soft flesh between the ass hole and the vulva. Her tormentor
then expertly lashed her ass cheeks, sending her pelvis forward with a
agonizing howl as the movement ground more splinters into her bleeding sex.

Slowly, deliberately, the Easterner alternated lashes to her shoulders, which
sent her pelvis forward, with lashes to her belly, which sent it back, or
lashes to her buttocks with lashes to her ribcage, for the same effect. The
bloody stripes crisscrossed her body, still shapely but now heavily marked
after days of relentless torment, and her cries of anguish rose and waned in
rhythm with the grinding of her feminine flesh on the hellish rail.

At length, he switched to a different target and landed the whip across the
soles of her feet, noting that this caused her to pull her pelvis forward,
then on her breasts, which caused her to pull it backwards again with a howl of
agony as the small barbs tore the firm flesh. Her torment rose to a new level
of agony, as the pain from her breasts and soles was sharper and deeper than
the pain from areas of thicker skin. Her cries rose accordingly, hoarse from
screaming and wheezing, her panting chest already glistening with the
perspiration of unrelenting torment.

Over time, her breasts transformed from full, firm globes any woman would be
proud of to striped, bleeding mounds of quivering, tormented flesh. To prevent
her from being overwhelmed, and protract her torment, he moved behind her and
lashed her right thigh, followed by her left armpit, attempting to cause her to
tilt on the torturous edge. After a few attempts her renewed cries told him
that he had been successful, and Kayleen found new agonies between her legs as
her private parts ground on hitherto undiscovered dents and splinters.

Scream after scream, her mind wandered off, in search of realms other than the
world of hurt she was going through, and words escaped her mouth, unimpeded,
foreign to her tormentor but duly noted from the ever present, silent corpse of
the former wizard. Although none had been of any use, he kept saying to himself
that they could carry important clues, blind to the true reason behind his
uninterrupted presence at the torture of his slayer to the detriment of his
other activities: he derived intense pleasure from her torment, her screams,
and was determined to see it protracted as long as possible. The woman he had
paid little heed to in life was now the object of a lust from beyond the grave
which reveled in pain and agony to soothe the torments of undeath.

Something churned in Zhorun's loins, now the province of graveworms only, when
her head bent back and cried in agony, the tendons of the neck distended as her
scream grew and waned. Something stirred when her delightful body twitched on
the rail under the whip, and her supple thighs lifted a bit as the barbs tore
at them. He wanted to savor each droplet of blood, each welt, each scream, and
his empty eye sockets feasted on her bleeding breasts heaving in pain.

The Easterner moved to her front and brought his attentions back to her mauled
breasts, landing a vicious strike on her left breast and waiting for her shrill
cry to subside before slashing at the front of her right thigh, leaving pearls
of crimson along the stripe reaching almost to the full length of her slender
limb. Front or back, the lashes still forced her to respond by tilting left and
right over the hellish edge, to her tormentor's satisfaction.

In a maze of maddened pain, Kayleen was still herself enough to notice that
all stops had been pulled, and as she howled from yet another lash at her left
breast, her eyes confirmed to her that even profuse bleeding seemed to worry
him no more. A new stabbing pain rose from her vagina as a splinter pierced
the rim, her yowl lost in the scream resulting from another vicious strike on
her thigh. In spite of the agony brought by the barbed whip, the grinding pain
from her private parts and the stabbing from the splinters lodging in her flesh
and then breaking when she jerked and twitched was the worst.

As if to contradict her, white hot pain exploded in her left breast as the whip
tore, not for the first time, across the bloodied nipple and a barb lodged in
it before being yanked away by the force of the blow. Her mind returned to the
horror of the burning slivers, the agonies of multiple dislocations hanging
from her twisted arms, or the humiliation of rape, each past horror competing
with the others in search of an escape from her current agony.

Her tormentor whipped her soles again, followed by her ribcage, and then her
buttocks, no longer attempting to cause her to move in some direction but just
intent on keeping her astride the hellish rail, now smeared with the blood from
her wounded feminine parts. Something told her he had a new torment in store
for her, an easy guess which he soon fulfilled.

The Easterner used his fingers to open her clitoral hood wide, then started
alternating lashes on her left and right breast, forcing her to turn sideways
on each blow and discover new agonies between her legs, as her love button was
dragged left and right over the torturous edge. Dread rose in her with the
pain in her bleeding breasts, only to be blanked by agony when her clitoris was
pierced by a splinter and she howled to high heaven.

With deliberate patience, her tormentor continued lashing her breasts until
another bloodcurdling howl rose from her, and insisted on the quest for these
peaks of agony until the lashes on her breasts resulted in little more than a
whimper. Then Grod was called upon to treat her wounds, and her cries rose
again as her bloody breasts were treated at length. She drank avidly from the
jug of her undoing, the consequences forgotten as her tormented mind wandered
in a labyrinth of pain.

The old Southerner was next, and he produced a pair of iron pliers with a grin
that brought the reinvigorated Kayleen new dread, as she compared the agonies
of wooden pliers with what iron pliers could do. Her eyes shut in a scream as
he closed the pliers on the flesh of her thigh, pulled, and twisted, each twist
a new cry as her flesh bruised and chafed under the merciless iron jaws.

He laughed aloud, ogling her heaving chest as she sobbed and panted, and then
closed the jaws on her left calf, enjoying her screams and protracting her
agony until her wheezing cries trailed to a sobbing wail. He moved to the soft
flesh of her left armpit then, savoring her despair as she could easily dread
where he would maul her sooner or later, and postponing the delightful moment.

Inspired by the Easterner's adeptness, he sank the pliers in the firm flesh of
her buttocks and pulled her backward, twist by twist, dragging her wounded
flesh on the rail again as she screamed in hellish pain, and then closed them
on her mons and pulled her forward in fitful screams of maddened agony. Aroused
but unable to satisfy his lust, he sank his own teeth on her left nipple,
twisting it in unison with the jaws on her mons, keeping his sanity just enough
not to tear it off as Grod stepped closer, silently remembering the old man of
their mutual agreement.

Still aroused, he mouthed and bit her once proud but still generously
proportioned breasts while twisting the jaws on her ass and groin flesh, unable
to reach a release and protracting the torment and humiliation of his victim
much longer as a consequence. He stopped the torment only to sink the pliers in
the wooden edge, pulling and twisting the bloodstained wood before her
horrified eyes, in order to raise new edges and dents before dragging her onto
them by her mons, again wishing her pubic hair had regrown, as he fancied
pulling it out with the iron pliers while she ground her slit on the rail.

With a crazed shine in the eyes, he closed the pliers on the nail of her pinky
and slowly twisted it out of its seat among her desperate cries, sinking his
teeth into her breast flesh again. Her despair rose to new heights as she
realized how her fate would unfold next, but the pain, as each nail was pulled
with agonizing slowness while his teeth savaged her breasts, seared her mind
and seeped into her screams and screeches, echoing in the vast chamber like a
chorus from the hell she was descending into.

When he moved to her toes he could no longer bite her, but this brought her
little respite because the pain was more intense and shook her to the bone,
always compounded by the relentless grinding of her bleeding feminine parts,
now punctured by at least a dozen hellish splinters which her own jerks and
twitches dug deeper into the tormented flesh.

Still unable to find release, he grabbed her face and closed the iron pliers
on her tongue, opening the gates of a new hell as the sensitive flesh was
mauled and twisted to the point of bleeding, her choked screams turning to
pitiful gurgles as he unrelentingly tore and twisted, stopping just short of
ripping her tongue out.

Kayleen was already drowning in the nightmarish pain rising from her groin,
where the unrelenting grinding in response to the torments visited on the rest
of her body had already resulting in chafing the skin raw and embedding more
than a dozen splinters, most of which broken or bound to be broken as she could
not help but jerk and twitch in response to the tortures.

The leering Southerner closed the iron jaws of the pliers on her pinky, right
on the seat where her nail used to be, and as blood squirted from the tortured
nail bed a cry of helpless agony erupted from her lips, followed by fitful
gasps as he twisted the wounded flesh in his grip. Finger after finger, he
visited this new horror on his writhing victim, her pain never receding as her
jerks and spasms were now grinding her flesh on the wooden rail, especially
between the sphincter and the vulva where the soft skin had been chafed raw.

Further agonies arose from her bloodied toes as the wounded nail beds felt,
one by one, the bite of the pliers. His bulging member allowed no doubt about
his arousal, and a corner of her mind almost hoped that he would rape her
instead of tormenting her wounded feet further, but it did not happen and she
had to suffer through the mauling of toe after toe in full.

When her tormentor suddenly paused, dread mounted in her and fought with the
urge to open her eyes and see what he was up to, and her fears materialized
when the pliers closed on her mauled breast flesh in a fiery wave of pain
which rose through her body and erupted from her mouth in heart-rending
scream. When her scream waned, her tormentor mauled her other breast, twisting
it a few times to see her face contort in agony each time.

He then pinched the soft undersides, which had been spared the worst of the
whipping, between the very tips of the iron jaws, pulling and twisting her
flesh down the stairs of yet another hell until he managed to rip off some
skin and flesh as she screamed like never before. Proud of his accomplishment,
he moved to her other breast and repeated it, slowly and deliberately, until
she howled in deranged pain again and blood flowed down the wound, which he
treated casually on the spot.

With a leering grin, he moved the pliers over her twitching body, in search of
soft flesh to subject to the same treatment, lingering over her nipples as she
cried in dread but then descending on the flesh of the inner thigh, careful to
keep away from major vessels but pulling and twisting as she buckled in agony
until another tiny morsel of tormented flesh was wrenched from her. The crease
between thigh and buttock was his next target, and again he visited untold
agonies on her until he managed to tear another bit of flesh from her now
bloodstained body.

He suspended her torment and called upon Grod to treat her wounds, and she was
released from the agony of the rail, curling in a ball of whimpering pain as
her hands attempted to soothe the agony in her breasts and between her legs.
She screeched like a maddened animal as the old Southerner cuffed her ankles
to bands tightened around her hips and dragged her under crossed steel bars
hanging from the ceiling, which she recognized when he clasped a fold of flesh
from her inner thigh and hung the chain to one of the hooks.

The renewed horror at hanging from the clasps again spurred her to a vain
attempt at resistance, but after a number of bitter cries and desperate gasps
she was lifted off the floor in a convulsing howl as the clasps pulled on her
wounded flesh. He savored her writhing and then, looking at Grod, encased
her nipples and clitoris in snugly fitting metal cups, securing them in place
with more clamps which added little to her suffering.

With a grin of anticipation he then moved to her head and tightened her collar
until she choked, enabling him to force the gag in her mouth again. He pushed
his hard member into her screaming mouth and, blocking her head between his
legs, closed a pair of pliers on each nipple in a frenzy of arousal, the cup
preventing the pliers from shredding the flesh but allowing them to effect
pain in abundance. Twisting and pulling, he forced her to scream his member to
climax, and such was his arousal that he continued until her bleeding mouth
was forced to scream him all the way through another release while the pliers
tormented her clitoris.

He then positioned between her legs, his eyes bulging under the influence of
some drug, and to her horror savagely pulled away the metal cups, clamps
included, before penetrating her with frenzied, jarring thrusts each of which
pulled off one or more clasp, incrementing her agonies as the remaining clasps
bore her weight by tightening on her whipped and wounded flesh. He closed the
pliers on her breasts, twisting and pulling, but stopped short of shredding
flesh or nipple, although he spared neither.

Still in a rut, his face pink red under the swarthy complexion, he next
penetrated her ass, her raucous screams now a mere echo of the agony she was
being subjected to as her spent voice was taxed beyond human endurance. The
last clasps gave by tearing at her skin and she fell to the ground with a cry,
but he turned her on her back and penetrated her again on the floor.

He pulled her up by her collar, still impaled on his rock hard member, and
brought the pliers to bear on her clitoris from behind, pulling and twisting
as she twitched on his member, twice sending Grod away with a snarled, "She
still feels it" punctuated by her anguished cry as the pliers twisted her to
renewed agony. Only reluctantly, panting, did he release her at last, her
clitoris shredded to the point of being barely recognizable and her nipples
only slightly better off. He rose, ignoring the disapproving look on the
faces of the other two.

Grod, obviously the most skilled of the three in keeping his victims alive,
treated her wounds at length, but then cuffed her left ankle to her left wrist
and her right ankle to her right wrist before dragging her under a chain from
the ceiling, at the end of which she recognized in horror a vise, sized to
crush the breasts of a well endowed woman. Her breasts.

She could not move her gaze from the wooden jaws of the breast press, cruelly
hacked and dented just like the horrid rail, and a muted "No" rose to her lips
as the waves of pain from her tormented body receded before the memories of
the torments wrought by similar instruments during her previous ordeals. The
image of Lyral writhing in its grip flashed through her mind, but brought
guilt instead of new resolve, because something deep inside told her that she
would break today, that her tormentors had been allowed to maim her body and
that she would never rise out of the resulting hell unless she conceded them
what their Master required.

Her fears materialized when Grod closed the device over her bloodied breasts
and tightened its jaws, sinking them into the firm flesh in an agony of wooden
jaggies, dents and splinters which sent new rivulets of blood down her already
bloody chest. She screamed and screamed again on each turn of the vise, only
to explode in a howl of agony when he pulled her up by her bulging mounds,
lifting her over two feet off the floor, all the wounds on both breasts
reopening under the painful pressure. Blood flowed down freely before
subsiding as circulation was reduced, but her screams continued unabated and
rose to new heights when he treated her wounds as she hung in agony.

She swung lazily in a nightmare of unrelenting pain until her gaze noticed
that Grod was up to something, He had fetched a bulbous wooden handle, like a
short club, and was testing that its three segments opened correctly when a
screw was turned. A smaller replica of the same device lay nearby, and he
tested that as well before folding it back and moving near her.

When he pushed it up her ass hole, realization hit Kayleen and the memory of
past violations surged within her and escaped her lips in a scream of horror
and despair. Something within her wanted to cry "No!" and "Please!" or
"Enough!" but only mangled nonsense resulted, her panic now beyond even the
rational option of surrendering the information they wanted.

The rough wooden head tore past her sphincter with some difficulty, and she
screamed mostly because any movement brought new torments to her constricted
breasts, but when he inserted the device in full she could feel its length in
her bowels and screamed in dread at the first creak of the screw, but gasping
at the pain from in her breasts breast. Turn after turn, the segments of the
device opened within her and tore at her insides, distending her sphincter
from the inside just like the cone had distended it from the outside.

He turned the device inside her, causing actual pain this time, the harbinger
of the agonies to come as the segments separated further within her and started
tearing her innards to the limits of their elasticity. A dull ache formed at
the rim of her ass hole as a ridge on each segment started tearing at it,
rising to higher levels of pain on each turn of the screw. Then agony mounted
turn after turn as her bowels distended and her rim muscle tore and bled, her
screams a nightmare of agony renewed whenever he twisted the device.

Instead of tearing her open to death, however, Grod walked her on the thin
line of agony by unscrewing the pear, twisting it, and then screwing it again,
each time wrenching unbridled screams of maddened pain from her parched lips,
even treating the tearing wounds on the rim of her ass hole between a twist
and the next in order to protract her agonies.

After removing the pear, he treated her and let her drink some more, but then
picked up another, larger wooden pear, its curving surface sporting dull
wooden studs and with jagged ridges at the base. Kayleen eyed it with
horrified incredulity, unable to believe at this new twist of her nightmare,
her mouth frozen in a muted "No" as her head shook spasmodically.

She screamed in despair as he forced the pear inside her love channel, her
bitter tears lost on his unmoved expression, her frightened eyes two liquid
pools of tormented madness which bulged with horror as he twisted the pear,
raking her insides and wrenching a scream of despair from her taxed throat.

As he slowly screwed the segments open, pain rose again in her screams, both
from her tormented breasts and increasingly from her ravaged insides, as the
dull points pressed against unprotected tissues and the segments distended her
innards. Fire surged inside the muscular rim of her love channel as the pear
opened to the point of tearing at it, reopening previous wounds which bled
anew and tormenting the places where the ridges crossed the distended tissue.

A new agony surged within her when the tip of the device touched her cervix
and started grinding into it on each turn of the screw, wrenching new screams
of unbridled agony from her in spite of there being no spike or blade, just
dull wooden points grinding on raw tissue. The whole device was now smeared
with blood, dripping from her wounded insides and from her torn muscle ring,
so much that he suspended her torment and treated at least the latter.

The resumption of her torment brought renewed agony as he started twisting the
device, the raking of the dull points a veritable agony as if a monstrous
infant clawed her innards raw, the whole device an obscene parody of
childbirth and a hellish replica of its travails with no outcome to follow.

With deliberate slowness he would unscrew the pear, twist it once or twice,
then screw it again. Unlike the anal pear, the vaginal pear could be screwed
open to a girth which had to be seen to be believed, a curse wrought upon the
victims by the necessities of childbirth. Kayleen had no mind for such
thoughts in her pain-wracked condition, but her tormentor was experienced in
the use of the device, and knew he could push her down a very long trail of
agony before reaching the limits of what even an ordinary woman could endure.

Turn after turn, twist after twist, he widened the segments, her screams
rising each time to unbelievable heights as she discovered new depths of her
personal hell. When he twisted the device, she shook in a fitful howl which
reverberated through her whole body like a chord from some diabolical
musician, and when he turned the crank her loins writhed as blood gushed from
her torn muscular ring.

Nearing the maximum extension of the device, he added a new torment by
fastening a chain to the free end of the pear and lifting her pelvis by the
chain, reducing the pull on her breasts but distending her vagina even further
in an uninterrupted pull which fueled a heart-wrenching howl the likes of
which had rarely resonated even in this chamber of horrors, but which was
topped when he disengaged the chain fastened to the breast press and let her
dangle from the pear, a slowly swinging pendulum of unbridled agony.

As intended, the upside down position stemmed the blood loss somewhat,
allowing him to protract the torment and even renew it by unscrewing the pear,
grab her by her shoulders and twist her body in a half turn, as the tortured
scream rising from the wasted husk of the former Warrior Queen covered the
sound of the wooden studs rasping at her innards and then rose in pitch as he
dropped her by a few inches, the pear yanking at her innards and tearing at
the ring of muscles which bore most of her weight.

In order to carry out his Master's orders, he dropped on her tortured left
breast a few drops of sizzling thin oil, which flowed freely on the skin
leaving an angry burnt trail which split in a web of agonizing stripes which
would certainly qualify as visible while causing little actual damage, and
forced her to twist sideways churning the studded pear inside herself for new
depths of agony.

Each sizzling droplet brought new howls above and beyond her uninterrupted,
hoarse screaming, and traced new trails of blazing pain over her tortured
skin, but also wrenched new howls from her tortured innards as she jerked and
turned under the sizzling heat. He no longer needed to drop her, which could
cause her muscles to give, and concentrated on the oil instead, dripping some
inside her thighs and then landing a drip on her bleeding clitoris which
resulted in a spastic jerk followed by a inhuman howl which trailed off in
fitful cries, to be rekindled when he dropped another, and the next, the first
two of a nightmarish sequel which ended only when she passed out.

It took more than cold water and smelling salts to bring her back, and when
she drank from the jug, she trembled and coughed. Her teary eyes closed in
despair when they focused on the leering visage of the old Southerner,
literally drooling at the prospect of torturing her again.

He placed her sitting against a post, her arms cuffed above her head and her
thighs opened wide, pushing her pelvis outward. When he added iron bands at
the knee and thigh to her ankle cuffs, it no longer rested on the seat and
hung exposed between her splayed thighs. Although she was already well
restrained, he added more bands at her elbows, shoulders, waist and chest,
effectively immobilizing her.

"A sudden move might get you hurt." he mocked, while his gaze wandered on the
canvas of hellish torment which was her once splendid body, now a tormented
bundle of marks, welts, bruises and burns, her mostly spared face the only
remnant of her former beauty. Blood dripped from her torn innards, and tears
dripped from her worn eyes, as she sank into mute despair awaiting whatever
horror the most sadistic of her tormentors would devise for her.

Grinning, he uncovered his flaccid member and awaited her cry of despair,
saying "Now, I know you would like it, but an old man has his limitations. I
would have thought that the pear would have satisfied you for a while, but it
seems you're insatiable. I will oblige you."

He sheathed his member in a rigid leather harness mimicking an over-sized
penis, and smeared a paste on its surface before rubbing it in sand, enjoying
the look in her eyes immensely. He then kneeled before her and nudged her torn
sphincter before pushing up into her, his hands on her hips forcing her down
as a howl of agony escaped her lips, followed by another as she pulled herself
free only to be forcibly brought down again. Scream after scream, he ground
her insides on the horrid device, the sand scraping her already torn innards
raw and the paste burning like liquid fire.

He pulled out, wrenching from her mouth a last wail of agony, and pushed up
her love channel. He fetched his pliers with a grinning "Remember these?" and
pulled her up and down by pulling on her nipples, almost face to face and
savoring every scream, every agonized gasp, drinking her tormented agony from
her very lips as her blood dripped on the stone floor. In spite of the
unearthly torments, however much she craved it, unconsciousness eluded her,
and her bleeding vagina was scraped raw as he protracted her torment beyond
any reasonable measure of endurance.

"What a mess, girl. It's time to fix it, I'd say." he mocked, pulling out of
her, panting, with a sated expression on his swarthy visage while his victim
screamed and trembled from the her burning insides, twitching and shivering
as blood dripped from her wounds. Her clenched eyes opened, possibly alerted
by the smell, to watch her tormentor heat ghastly implements in a brazier.

He examined a short, curved blade mounted on a ivory handle, then a thin
copper hook, and when satisfied by their appearance moved to her and touched
the hook to one of the innumerable tiny wounds caused by the barbed whip,
causing her to shriek in pain.

"Grod insists that bleeding wounds should be properly cauterized." he grinned,
savoring the horror on her face at the thought of how many tiny wounds brimmed
over her body. He put another hook in the fire and started stabbing wound
after wound, her gasps soon gathering into screams and fitful howls as he
unrelentingly poked her flesh with the burning copper hook.

She had withstood far worse than the small burn of the copper hook, but its
uninterrupted application on wounded flesh caused pain to mount without mercy
and rekindled the burns already inflicted on her skin during her previous
ordeals, something which her tormentor knew very well as he changed the hook
frequently to keep it hot and allow her no respite.

The worse came when he started on the larger wounds, such as scraping her nail
beds, causing her voice to rise in horrid, protracted howls of agony, or
circling her nipples, or sending her down yet undiscovered depths of depraved
cruelty by scratching the raw flesh of her torn sphincter and love channel,
cauterizing it one strip at a time while her howls resonated in horrendous,
protracted frenzies of unbridled agony.

Her tormented body writhed and trembled in its unyielding restraints, allowing
him unrestricted and accurate access to the places where he could cause the
most unbearable pain. With the heated hook he slowly traced each wound in her
exposed vulva, drawing new screams of gut-wrenching agony whenever the hook
sizzled on her burnt flesh. He opened the lips and slowly traced the insides
of each, enjoying her writhing to the point of adding two hooks, one to trace
the wounds and the other leaning on her love button, so that each tremor and
jerk dragged the point across the vulnerable flesh, proving that Grod was not
the only one adept at causing the victims to torture themselves.

After protracting her torment, to the point of faking the cauterization of
wounds which his imagination spotted in the most delectable places, he put the
hook aside and fetched a pair of tweezers. He added two iron bands, one above
and one below her breasts, doused his victim in cold water, closed the
tweezers around her left nipple and doused more cold water, until the bleeding
and burnt flesh stiffened.

"This is going to hurt." he whispered in repressed anticipation, and then
dragged the crescent shaped blade across the full length of the nipple,
careful to scrape without cutting, as her body stiffened and then heaved in
unparalleled pain. Her wail rose to a cry and to a heart rending howl, but he
kept scraping until he reached the end of the nipple as Kayleen banged her
head against the post in a desperate attempt to end the pain.

After restraining her head with another iron band, he closed the tweezers
around the nipple again, uncovering a different portion, doused with more cold
water and then scraped the exposed portion of the tormented piece of feminine
flesh raw in a deluge of burning agony. Her howl rose again in desperation,
to be followed by another as he repeated the procedure, and by others, until
her nipple was scraped and burned raw, a rod of agony nailing her chest to an
inescapable world of uninterrupted pain.

When he moved to the other nipple, her mouth pleaded and cried, offering to do
whatever he wanted, although still not revealing anything about Lyral, so he
looked up at Zhorun, who nodded silently. With an ecstatic grin on his face,
he proceeded to douse it with water and scrape it with the heated crescent
blade, peeling off the outer layers and exposing the pulsating flesh
underneath. Her screams rose again, on par with the screams caused by her
other nipple as far as intensity, but tinged with desperation as the
conscience of her failure crept under the blanket of pain she was wrapped in.

When he was done, Kayleen trembled and shivered, unable to move but free to
suffer, her broken voice wheezing after innumerable screams but ready to rise
again in a cry of despair as he blew on her excoriated nipples, rekindling
the ungodly pain they had just suffered.

And then he knelt between her legs and grabbed the folds of her clitoris, the
heated blade in the other hand, savoring her broken voice pleading him aloud
for a few moments of pure pleasure before dragging the hot blade over her left
fold, scraping it as the smell of burnt skin rose to his nostrils and her
scream of unbridled agony rose to his ears. He enjoyed the scraping of her
fold, but it was just a prelude to what he liked most, and he made sure she
never had a chance to stop screaming and ruin his masterpiece.

He pulled on the clitoris with the tweezers and doused it with cold water,
then scraped its short length with the heated copper blade as her voice jumped
at him in a howl of delicious agony, the first of a sequel as he kept scraping
in small increments, changing the blade very often to make sure it was always
hot and sharp. As before, they were face to face and he protracted her agony
so that he could raise his gaze and savor the suffering from her very face,
any accidental burns on his fingers a small price to pay for drinking at the
well of her agony, and licking her tears of pain as he slowly burned her love
button raw amidst her delirious howls and fitful screams.

When she was freed and Grod treated her burns, she barely noticed, wracked by
pitiful spasms of wrenching pain and coughing, her mind clinging to the notion
that she had lived through another day of torment, that now she would be given
some respite, albeit under some form of torturous predicament. So when the
Easterner dragged her to a table she screamed like a wild animal, trashing
madly and requiring all three of them to secure her to the table.

She was cuffed spreadeagled on a marble table, with iron bands on her
shoulders and thighs, the head encased in an iron mask which restrained it
completely, denying her the slightest movement. The cold marble was soothing
on her burned back, but above her forehead dangled a bronze contraption which
her gaze could not focus upon. She still moaned and cried as the pain from any
of her many wounds and burns roared its head again.

A droplet of cold water landed on her forehead, just above the nose. After a
while, another followed. Slowly, unrelentingly, but not at regular intervals,
a droplet landed on the exact same spot. The cold water soothed her somewhat,
in spite of the unrelenting pain from her ordeals, but after a while they
seemed to get heavier.

Her tormentors left, bringing the torches along and leaving her in the dark in
the sole company of the unrelenting droplets. Her head started to ache, and
she felt dizzy. In some corner of her mind she remembered the "water torture
from the East", and she sobbed in despair in the realization that she would
soon experience its effectiveness firsthand.


Chapter 10 - Machinations and Retaliations

The wizard once known as Zhorun listened without comment to the report from
his henchman about the capture of the Priestess, Lyral. When he left, however,
the circumstances troubled him. She was just a girl, and no warrior, yet when
the animated corpses lunged at her, it took her but an invocation to bathe
both in eerie white light which turned them to ashes. If he had not sent a
warband including living henchmen, the capture would have failed.

The tomes he had discovered on the subject of undeath, the origin of his great
triumph over the limitations of mortal flesh, hinted at the power of the Faith
over creatures from beyond the grave, so no further confirmation was required.
This meant he was at risk in her presence, at least until her maidenhood was
taken, as this was known to rob Priestesses of their powers.

This was a major setback. He counted on raising a host from the grave to fight
the armed forces still serving the Warrior Queen, but the Priestesses would
thwart this. If he started killing or abducting them, the rest would hide or
find protection exactly with those armed forces. Besides, sooner or later
someone such as the Sorceress, Shandra, would start drawing connections, and
he felt not confident enough to forgo secrecy yet.

His best option was to scrutinize her power and develop a spell to counter or
thwart it, although this would take time. He would raise corpses and study
their destruction at her hands, of course, but another thought hatched and
grew in him. Her powers had a common root, this was true for all forms of
power, and this root had to be in healing, because it was the effect other
forms of power, such as Zhorun's own wizardry, found hardest to replicate.

This was the core of her power, and this he would study by turning his three
torturers loose on her friend, the Warrior Queen. Something stirred within him
at the prospect of the delicious torments they could visit on her, once freed
from the need to preserve her life. They would still have to exercise some
care, as even a Priestess was helpless if the victim was already dead, but
they would be free to try most anything else.

Recalling the recent sessions, however, he concluded that the Southerner would
become a problem under the new circumstances. It was probably better to stick
to the notion of questioning both prisoners about the Sorceress, although this
was secondary now, and prohibit any activity which could endanger the
Priestess' maidenhood. He wrote down his orders and had them delivered,
impatient to proceed.

He silently entered the torture chamber, the lack of light not an obstacle for
a corpse whose eyes were long gone, and moved near the table where she was
still restrained. His henchmen had opposed his order to keep her under duress
even between sessions, as moments of respite were necessary to keep the victim
from dying or going insane, but her suffering was ecstasy to him and he would
partake of the nectar of her agony to the last drop.

The splendid woman lay in her restraints, sleeping in spite of the droplets of
water dripping on her forehead. Chang had explained that the water torture was
not really painful, it just played on the dread of the victim, and the ordeals
the woman had been through had left her on the brink of collapsing, so once
the effect of the drugs faded her body jumped at the chance of recovery in
spite of any dread her mind might harbor.

Her resilience and endurance were such, that she might even recover by
herself, although not to the point of regaining her former beauty. As his
netherworldly gaze wandered on her bandaged form, he heard footsteps and
receded into darkness to avoid the light of a torch borne by the Easterner.

The man operated a tap on the water torture device and let a flow of water
splash on her forehead, until she awoke sputtering. Her eyes closed as her
movements rekindled the pain from all over her horrendously marked body, the
extent of the damage partly revealed by torchlight in spite of the bandages.

Although most wounds and burns were in passable conditions, there were so many
of them that the others stood out. Some wounds oozed serum, some burns had
blistered, her breasts were swollen and her nipples were two sickly
protrusions of throbbing flesh, two flowers of crimson on her bandaged chest.
The bandages in her pelvic area were encrusted in dried blood. She sobbed in
pain and dread, grateful that her restraints did not allow her to see more.

"You kicked to kill me. Now you pay." said the Easterner. Kayleen's mind was
not at her best, but she gathered that this was not her ordinary questioning,
this was something personal. Her reflections were brushed away when intense
pain shot from her left hand, as the man had removed the bandage and was
rubbing rock salt on the bleeding nail bed of her middle finger. Her screams
rose in the poorly lit chamber and lost themselves in the darkness, to the
secret delight of the hiding Zhorun.

His hands crimson of her blood, he rubbed salt on her fingers and toes, one by
one, mercilessly, uninterruptedly, and then moved to her other wounds, even
reopening a few. She screamed and writhed in renewed agony, scratching her
face against the restraints still holding her head immobilized.

He circled his hands, crimson with her blood, until he saw in her gaze the
dread for the wounds he had not assaulted yet, and uncovered her nipples
before squeezing them between his salt covered fingers. As he twisted them,
her howl of agony rose on par with the loudest ever uttered in the dreadful
chamber, and more followed as he slowly tormented her flesh.

Tightly restrained, Kayleen could do almost nothing but scream in vain, her
existence again a nightmare of blazing pain targeting the femininity she used
to treasure intimately. Her tormentor protracted her agony, but without drugs
she soon found some respite.

She was reawakened by more cold water, and saw his bloody hands descend
between her legs one hair split before white hot pain blazed from her love
button, as salt burnt the raw flesh. She howled to high heaven again, but
nobody listened except the spawn of the grave hiding in the darkness, and her
subsequent howls found a delighted listener in the corpse of the former
wizard, who decided that this deviation from his orders could be tolerated.

She passed out twice under the unrelenting torment before the Easterner
decided that she had been punished enough, and left her sobbing and crying in
the darkness. She slowly drifted again into fitful sleep, another attempt from
her exhausted body to obtain some respite.

Zhorun stayed for hours, anticipating the events that would unfold upon the
arrival of the Priestess, then hid again as more steps approached and the old
Southerner's voice resonated in the chamber, "Wake up, Whore Queen! It's time
to play." To follow words with action, he grabbed her nipples and pulled up,
awakening her to a world of hurt as she screamed in despair.

Her eyes darted from under her head restraints to a sack he had put on the
marble table. His gaze followed hers, and he smiled cruelly, "Yes, I brought
stuff. Nettles, spiders, pliers ... I hope I've not forgotten anything." Tears
came to her eyes as he pulled out a jug containing one of the hairy spiders,
whose memory still haunted her mind.

He straddled her trembling body, disrobing and putting a leather sheath on his
erect member, savoring her wail of despair, and lingered on the entrance to
her love channel, the leather rubbing painfully on her wounded flesh as she
gasped and sobbed, then pushed in viciously with a snarl.

Her position and restraints were not meant for what he was doing, so he could
not penetrate her fully, but each thrust crushed viciously onto her vulva,
wrenching a scream of desperate pain as her wounds reopened and the remaining
grains of sand rasped her innards again. After coming at last, he leaned on
her sobbing chest for a while, savoring his own variant of paradise while his
victim sobbed in the hell he had imprisoned her into.

Another gate of this hell opened for her when he tore her bandages, fetched
some nettles and started rubbing them on her breasts, her screams losing
themselves in the darkness when he brushed the raw flesh of a nipple. His gaze
was fixed on her suffering mounds, following every tremor, every twitch,
protracting her cries and sobs until his lust aroused again.

He straddled her head and fetched two jugs, each with a hairy spider
scrambling inside, and waited to address her until her teary eyes widened at
the sight, "I'm afraid I forgot my tweezers. If I drop these on your tits,
picking them up will be rather difficult, considering how much they appreciate
raw meat. But if you make this old man happy with your mouth, I mean really
happy, not with the gag and stuff, he will be too tired to go on."

Kayleen could not prevent herself from staring at the hairy horrors inside the
jugs, gripped by utter terror at the thought of the unspeakable agonies they
would visit on her wounded flesh. But something inside her still refused to
submit, no longer strong enough for defiance, but not weak enough to concede
defeat. So she just kept sobbing, until disbelief replaced anticipation on the
swarthy visage of her tormentor and he growled, "Stubborn to the very last,
Your Haughtiness ? Let's see what happens if I rip your tits off."

He put the jugs aside, furious because he had planned to drop the spiders on
her breasts, after she caved in, and enjoy her fear while she discovered that
the spiders were not actually interested in human flesh, his little game
ruined by her stubbornness. His hand raced reached for the pliers, but another
hand, large and strong, closed on his wrist and pinned him to the table.

"Our orders are to let her rest." whispered Grod, his grip unflinching under
the hateful gaze of the old man. The two faced each other for a while, then
the Southerner, red with anger under his dark complexion, picked up his sack
and left without a word. Grod also left after a while.

Unseen, Zhorun waited silently, his mind now focused on the imminent arrival
of the new prisoner. He had given strict orders about how she ought to be
treated, but he wanted to be able to act personally if need be.

After less than an hour, he heard them approach, the three of them carrying a
single torch, as ordered. The Priestess was ... minute, or at least looked
minute besides Grod, as she was actually as tall as Chang. She wore flowing
white robes, and looked young and frail.

The three stopped early enough to keep the bandaged body of the Warrior Queen
outside the area lit by the single torch, and then forced the prisoner to
kneel. She was blindfolded and wore the wizard gag, a clamp on the tongue
which distorted pronunciation enough to make spell casting impossible but did
not preclude speech.

Under Grod's gaze, the Southerner started ripping off her white dress, the
only noise in the room coming from the torn cloth. He could not see her face,
but could see her lithe, slender body, the creamy skin and perfect shape now
revealed to all onlookers. The old man whispered something and his hands
manhandled her repeatedly, until Grod cleared his throat just as Zhorun was
considering incinerating the old fool on the spot.

When she was stripped naked, Chang placed cuffs on her ankles and wrists,
narrow and light cuffs quite unlike the heavy irons used for the Warrior
Queen. The trembling, pale body looked too frail for even a single session in
the torture chamber. When her elbows were cuffed together, a wail escaped the
gagged mouth and she shook the auburn head a few times.

When the Southerner pulled her wrists and ankles towards each other, bending
her in a hogtie, she cried in dismay, causing the Southerner to comment, "We
are going to have soooo much fun with you, girl." Once done, he sat enjoying
her contortions until she stopped, sobbing softly.

Zhorun waited until the three left, bringing the torches along and plunging
the chamber in utter darkness, then moved silently closer. Lyral wailed in
despair a few times, then fell silent as another moan echoed in the chamber.

"Help! Please help. Is anybody here ?" cried the young priestess through her
gag, her words distorted but understandable. She rolled on her side, yowling
at what she considered pain.

On the marble table, a voice she thought she recognized echoed in Kayleen's
mind, a safe haven in the rolling waves of pain. The voice called again, and
her own hoarse voice called out, "Lyral! Lyral, for heaven's sake, I'm here."

Lyral's voice trembled, "Kayleen ? Kayleen, is it you ? Answer me, please.
Keep talking." The gag made protracted talk fatiguing, and she assumed Kayleen
also wore one. Dread mounted in her at the thought that Kayleen might have
been here since her disappearance, and concern tinged her distorted voice.

"Kayleen, I'm blindfolded. Are you all right ? If you cannot move keep
talking, I'll find you." she offered. It turned out to be easier said than
done, because Kayleen spoke sparingly, her voice echoing in the chamber, and
wriggling on the cold stone floor in a hogtie was arduous and painful, but the
young priestess managed to come near the table where Kayleen lay, following a
long torturous trail punctuated by gasps and yowls.

On the table, Kayleen was shedding bitter tears as the world crumbled around
her. She had somehow betrayed her friend, unintentionally revealing her hiding
place, and now Lyral was another prisoner in the same hell she inhabited. Yet,
her first words had been a desperate call to be healed and freed from the
agonizing pain coursing through her body. The once proud Warrior Queen felt
unworthy of addressing her former friend, and yet craved her healing touch,
guilt and despair heavy on her chest as she answered her calls.

The table looked insurmountable for Lyral's hogtie, and she was panting from
the exertion and aching all over the body, so she stopped for a pause and
attempted to get a grasp the situation.

"Kayleen, how long have you been here ? Since your disappearance ?"

"Yes, almost. Days." whispered Kayleen, stifling a cry as pain rose again from
between her legs.

"Are you all right, Kayleen ? Your voice sounds awful." said Lyral in garbled
words, full of concern at the smell of blood.

"Yours is not much better, either." coughed Kayleen, a feeble attempt at some
humor to avoid facing the inevitable.

"Kayleen, please! There's blood on this table. What did they do to you ?" said
Lyral, her concern palpable in her words in spite of the gag. She tried to get
up, but failed and rolled on the floor with a yowl. Kayleen kept still.

"Please, Kayleen, you must tell me. I can help you. Are you wounded ?" these
were the words which she used to say when she came to her tent after a battle,
to heal the wounds she had honorably sustained in a fair fight.

"A little." answered Kayleen, using the same words she used then, but the
bitterness of her tone did not escape her friend.

"Angels of heaven, if you're admitting it ..." she said, leaving the rest of
the sentence unspoken, and doubled her efforts to get up, but fell on the
floor again, hard. She attempted to stifle her sobs, but failed.

"Sorry, Kayleen, but of the two of us the gymnast has always been you. I
cannot reach the table. My wrists are cuffed to the ankles and I cannot do
much more than wriggle about blindfolded."

Small as it was, this chance to be of help tore through the pall of guilt that
hung on Kayleen's chest, "Try to circle the table and feel for some torn
bandages, they would be near my left foot. If you put your back against the
leg of the table and hang onto the bandages with your teeth, you should be
able to get up on your knees."

Lyral was nowhere near the physical fitness of her friend, but she was young
and dedicated, and after many painful failures managed to pull herself up,
leaning against the table and gasping at the pain in her knees. The smell of
blood and sweat was intense, and she also recognized the sickly smell of
wounded flesh. Her nose, probing blindly, touched Kayleen's bloodied nail bed
and jerked as her friend screamed briefly before stifling her pain.

"Kayleen, you're wounded! I can smell it, your foot is wounded." she said,
almost falling back on the floor. She had somewhat expected it, and she
dreaded that her friend was hiding the worst, but she was not prepared to face
it. She knew what to do, but in order to heal her she had to touch her, and
there was no way her hands could reach her friend.

"I would heal you, Kayleen, but I cannot reach you with my hands. I'll try an
older technique, but I've not used it since I was a novice. Please be still."
she said, attempting to bring her lips to touch Kayleen's flesh. This form of
healing had always reminded her of a mother kissing a scratch on a child's
knee, but for significant wounds wasted much of the healing potential.

Lyral touched her friend's flesh, and noted with concern that it was hot and
dry, and the concern deepened when Kayleen flinched in her restraints as her
lips brushed an angry burn. Lyral concentrated, her lips barely touching the
skin as she gathered her power, and then let it flow to Kayleen, a warm
soothing glow barely visible in the darkness.

But the act of healing was not one-way, as the healer absorbed unto himself a
fraction of the woe of the healed, and the old technique was not the best for
sheltering the healer. Although no physical damage carried over, Lyral was not
ready for the depths of agony coursing through Lyral's wracked body, and broke
contact with an anguished cry, falling to the floor, while Kayleen wailed in
despair as her too briefly suspended agony resumed.

"Kayleen! Oh, Kayleen, what horrors have you been through ?" sobbed Lyral,
still shaking and panting. Overwhelmed, her horror took the shape of a
pressing urge to know, the irrational need to put words around the unspeakable
agonies she had a glimpse of, a urge she would later regret after
understanding how much answering weighed on her friend.

"Tell me, Kayleen, please. I felt it. The burns, dislocations ..." she pressed
on, her own voice trembling, "Tell me, please. They tortured you."

"Yes." whispered Kayleen, "They've been torturing me for days." Hearing those
words spoken aloud in her own voice hurt, but the worst was yet to come.

"They ... they raped you." said Lyral, her voice trembling. "They burned you
there. They did ... things." she sobbed.

"Yes." whispered Kayleen again, wishing she wouldn't.

Lyral sobbed by herself for a while, then fell silent. After a long while,
Kayleen called, "Lyral ?"

"Are they going to torture me, too ?" she asked quietly. Kayleen felt a stab
to the heart as her worst fears were spoken out loud, and could not bring
herself to answer.

"Then I've better heal you before they rape me," said Lyral flatly, wriggling
towards the table. Another stab went through Kayleen's heart at the words of
the friend she had betrayed, but she said nothing. Getting up a second time
turned out to be as difficult as before, but at last Lyral managed it and
neared her lips to Kayleen's foot again. She was ready this time, and
sustained the onslaught with but a tear under her blindfold.

The warm feeling of healing, of Lyral's healing, suffused Kayleen's body and
soothed the dull pain, reaching every recess of her body and regenerating
tissues and skin. Her moan of relief rose to a cry as her nails grew back, her
wounds closed, even dislodging the sand rasping her womb, and her body was
restored to its former glory.

Lyral, exhausted by the effort, barely managed to keep from falling down
again, but whispered with a smile, "You sound better now." Herself again, the
Warrior Queen rattled her restraints in vain, but managed to touch her friend
briefly and say, "I already owed you much, but this goes beyond everything you
ever did for me. Whatever I can manage to keep you from harm, I hereby vow to
pursue at any cost."

"Well, just thanks was enough, but thanks." said Lyral, then managed to lower
herself on the floor with little harm done. She was exhausted by the effort,
and felt like sleeping for a week, but she still had questions.

"Who is behind this ? When you disappeared, we considered kidnapping but ruled
it out because we could not think of anyone with the motives and the means to
perpetrate that."

"Be careful, Lyral. There is Zhorun behind all this, he used his magic to
cheat death, and he might be using his magic to listen. Watch your words."

"He did what ?"

"I don't know the proper term, but he's like a walking corpse, rotten and yet
animated. He can see even if his eyes have been eaten by grave worms, and he
can speak even if he no longer has a tongue. Some of his former associates
flocked to him, and he can raise the dead to do his bidding."

Lyral lay still for a long time, then said, "I dispatched two such creatures
before the warriors captured me. Zhorun was a powerful wizard in life, and he
must have located some ancient text which escaped the cleansing of the land
from these abominations. Undead. Unable to rest in their graves and full of
hatred for the living, and the worst were the wizards who chose this fate of
their own will, to cheat old age, or defeat."

"You'll see for yourself. He's always present at my interr ... torture."

"He's probably exacting his revenge, and enjoying it. I remember reading that
the undead had this insatiable impulse to cause the living to suffer. In past
times, a bitter war was fought against them, and my kind played no little part
in their ultimate defeat and the eradication of the foul knowledge concerning
how they could be spawned. Not thoroughly enough, apparently."

"He hinted at armies he would use to conquer the kingdom ... how many corpses
could he raise from their graves ?"

"I don't know, but he has not started yet. Your disappearance caused quite a
stir, but such an army would not go unnoticed. So he wants the kingdom for
himself, and he wants to take his revenge on you, and he'll let me know why he
had me kidnapped sooner rather than later ..."

Suddenly, Kayleen heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and knowing what
this meant whispered intensely, "They're coming. Lyral. Do not let them find
you beside me, and don't tell them anything, don't speak a word. No matter
what they do to me ...  or to you. Heaven knows I wish I could spare you this,
but you'll have to be strong."


Chapter 11 - Interwoven Fates

When the three torturers arrived, a soft wail of fear rose through Lyral's
gag. Kayleen felt her stomach knot at her friend's despair, but tried to hide
her dread, not wishing to give them any further reason to harm her friend.
Her weakness had wrought Lyral into this bloody nightmare, and she had hid it
to get her own wounds healed, but she was now resolved to amend for it all.
Above her restrained head, Grod's voice asked summarily about the location of
Shandra, just as she expected. She would not answer. She would not fail
another friend. She would endure, this time, to the very end.

"Look at this tiny little morsel," murmured the Southerner while gazing at
Lyral's pearly breasts. He removed her blindfold and dragged her to the
ladder, where he cuffed her hands and feet, impatient to begin, "Maybe you're
more talkative than your friend there, girl. Anyway, our host would like you
to tell him where he could find a Sorceress by the name of Shandra. Would you
like to oblige ?" Lyral shook her head, trembling and closing her eyes.

"I hoped so," said the Southerner mischievously, then wore a pair of leather
gloves and rubbed a bundle of fresh nettles under Lyral's left foot, smiling
in anticipation when she gasped and shrieked in surprise and pain.

Grod and Chang were silently studying the Warrior Queen, still restrained on
the marble table, her renewed body a feast for the eyes, but also a force they
feared. She felt defiant, and was about to insult them, but thought better
not, not while they were on guard. Grod tightened her collar meticulously, and
removed her restraints one limb at a time, cuffing the wrists and the ankles
to the waist band. Only then did he drag her to a bench, her knees chafing on
the stone floor, and cautiously cuffed her wrists and ankles to it.

The cautiousness of her tormentors was of some consolation to the Warrior
Queen, and also tilted the scales of the dilemma she was facing. If she
allowed herself to scream and plead, Lyral might lose heart, but the three
would not lower their guard. She'd have to put on her best show.

Meanwhile, Grod was tightening iron bands on her arms and thighs, then around
her forehead and cheeks, effectively immobilizing her head. The band at her
waist was removed, and she would soon understand why. At the corner of her
vision, Lyral shrieked through her gag when the Southerner rubbed nettles on
her belly, and Kayleen thanked the bands for preventing her from seeing more.

Grod's hands searched Kayleen's nether regions and pushed something cold into
her urethra, painfully distending it while she buckled in her restraints.
Lyral's eyes widened as she saw the burly executioner insert a bronze plug
into her friend's privates, but immediately filled with tears as the old man
rubbed nettles behind her left thigh. Through tears, she saw Grod wheel over a
post, with a large tank hanging from the cross beam.

Tightening Kayleen's collar, Grod managed to forcibly push a spider gag into
her mouth, then produced a linen strip with a knot every inch or so and
dropped it into her forcibly open mouth, causing her to gag to in vain. When
he lowered a pipe from the tank and started pouring water into her immobile
mouth she buckled, wildly straining to escape the pouring water. Panic rose in
her mind as the primal fear of drowning bubbled under her newfound resolve.
She gurgled and sputtered, her soaked blonde hair sticking to her cheeks.

As more and more water was poured, the devious strip was forced down her
throat, growing inside her as it soaked water, and causing Kayleen to gag
spasmodically in order to expel it. Her gurgles and chokes increased, as the
strip had reached her larynx, allowing water to enter her trachea down into
her burning lungs. Lyral cried as the old man rubbed nettles under her
armpits, distracting her from the suffering of her friend.

When Kayleen entered a fit of coughing and turned pale, Grod pulled the strip,
knowing that it had entered her trachea, but did not stop the water, watching
her bulging eyes lose focus as her lungs screamed for air. He poured more
water and let the strip sink further down, the knots now clogging her
esophagus and causing her spasming throat to burn in the combined effort to
expel the intruder and drink the water.

Lyral, in spite of her own predicament, could not help looking at what her
friend was undergoing, unable to clearly understand what caused Kayleen to
gurgle and choke, buckling in her restrains under pitiful fits of coughing and
sputtering. The Southerner, following her gaze, smiled and dragged nettles
under her breasts, obtaining her instant attention and an anguished cry.

Grod pulled out the strip almost all the way, satisfied himself that the white
cloth was pink from watered down blood from her chafed innards, and rose to
resupply the tank. Although not all the water poured into Kayleen's mouth had
been actually ingested, her belly was already visibly distended.

When Grod dropped the strip into her aching mouth and poured more water, her
body started buckling savagely and her gurgles rose in pitch as she tried with
all her forces to expel the heavily salted water, but her tormentor poured
more and more until the strip entered her esophagus again. Kayleen's body
convulsed in her restraints between stifled screams, pitiful gurgles and
repeated fits of coughing as she vainly attempted to expel the knotted strip
while the liquid burned in her throat, lungs and esophagus.

Grod continued pouring more salt water, keeping an eye on her heaving chest
and tormented face, then pulled out the strip and pressed with all his
strength on her distended belly, causing her to expel salt water mixed with
blood in a pitiful gurgle which could not completely hide an anguished scream,
which she stifled with the last ounce of her resolve as she saw him bring the
pipe into her mouth a second time. The torment was repeated a third time, a
fourth time, and then Kayleen lost the count in a watery hell of saline agony.

Lyral cried in despair while the Southerner dragged nettles along her soft ass
cheeks, lingering on the flesh between buttock and thigh, savoring her creamy
body withering in torment, so unlike her blonde friend and yet so enjoyable as
it twisted in its bonds.

"Tell the Master where he can find the Sorceress, girl. You can't hold on
forever. It gets worse from now on," said Grod to Kayleen. No answer came.

When he changed the contents of the tank, her nostrils flared as the acrid
smell of bile reached them. Horror swept over her face at the thought of what
awaited her, but her frantic efforts to shake her head were thwarted by her
restraints and the strip entered her gaping mouth again.

The foul liquid caused her to vomit, but Grod increased the flow and she
started drowning in bile, gagging and choking as the nightmarish liquid burned
bitterly her throat and carried the strip farther and farther down her
scorched esophagus. Her desperate heaves shook the bench and the iron bands
cut deep bruises into her newly pristine flesh, but she was forced to swallow
bile until the strip slowly disappeared down her mouth.

She vomited again when it was slowly extracted, spitting bile and blood as
Grod pressed onto her belly to empty it. When the cloth was dropped into her
mouth again, she closed her eyes in silent despair, sliding into the second of
many cycles of suffocating agony to follow. until she finally passed out.

Kayleen came to with the acrid smell of salts in her nostrils and a funnel in
her stuffed mouth. It was not just a gag any more, but a stuffing of cloth,
felt and some kind of tar, and her anus and vagina also felt stuffed, plugged
watertight as she would soon find out. Three pipes ran from the tank above to
her orifices. She closed her eyes, gathering her will, just as water flowed
from the tank, forcing her to gulp or drown.

Her attempts at drinking the water flowing into her mouth were derailed when a
short braided whip landed across her breasts, taking her by surprise and
wrenching from her a gurgled scream, followed by a fit of coughing and choking
as the water disallowed her from catching her breath, and invaded her lungs.
Another strike of the whip landed under her soles, followed by another on her
front thighs, each spaced apart to allow her ample time to drown herself on
the uninterrupted stream of water.

Water was also flowing into her nether orifices, and her bowels were already
cramping because of the cold water filling them. Grod poured more water into
the tank, bucket by bucket, occasionally whipping her into frenzies of
sputtering, coughing and choking. Her plugged bladder was starting to burn.

Meanwhile, Lyral wept bitter tears as the Southerner kept her arched on the
ladder, nudging her nipples with the hellish nettles so that she had to strain
her muscles to keep the burning leaves from the delicate buds which had never
known pain before this day. "Sooner or later, girl, you'll tire. And I doubt
you have the resilience of your blonde friend. Of course, you might want to
let us know about the Sorceress," cackled her tormentor.

Kayleen's eyes filled with bitter tears as the pain from her belly, bulging
under the amount of water she was ingesting, rose steadily. As more water was
added, her bowels felt like freezing, shot through by cramps from the cold
water, and more and more inflated as her throat frantically gulped the pouring
water to avoid drowning, each occasional failure causing another torturous fit
of sputtering and coughing.

She watched in horror as her belly distended to alarming proportions, like she
was months pregnant, her muscles screaming as she felt about to burst under
the pressure. The water was also painfully distending something within her
womb which ached terribly, although she could not name it. After careful
consideration of her distended abdomen, Grod fetched a hefty wooden club and
with all his might smashed it onto her belly.

The blow sent water back towards her mouth, but was also transmitted all over
her insides, reverberating in a wave of pain which caused her to gurgle and
sputter, her scream stifled by pure force of will. The next blow taxed that
will, and the same did the next, but she managed to hide her pain from her
friend, wishing Lyral could do the same as the Southerner dragged nettles over
her inner thighs, leaving red rashes on the pale skin.

When her belly was forcibly returned to less horrific proportions, the water
pouring uninterruptedly from the tank found its way into her again, and her
eyes widened at the realization that her tormentor had placed salt water in
the tank, and her throat and lungs would soon burn with saline agony as each
repetition would increase the proportion of salt over fresh water.

Lyral could no longer afford the luxury of concerning herself with her friend,
since the Southerner was dragging nettles across her soft breasts, and the
shrill pitch of her young voice echoed under the vaults as if she had been
screaming for both herself and her friend.

As the devilish torment was repeated over and over, Kayleen's newfound
strength was sorely taxed and only her will endured, in spite of the agonies
reverberating inside her when the club landed on her bruised belly. Her bowels
and womb were bursting with water, and she was on the brink of unconsciousness
because of prolonged oxygen deprivation. Her lungs were screaming for air and
her throat was ablaze, and when Grod started over again, she passed out.

She woke up again, the first thing in her ears being Lyral's screams as the
old Southerner was twisting nettles around her friend's nipples. Grod was
tightening a tourniquet around her lower belly, having already placed one on
her waist and another just under her ribcage. The knotted hemp rope bit her
skin already, and the bench had been tilted so that her feet were now about a
foot above her head. Her bladder burned with the urge to relieve herself.

Her bowels and womb had been emptied, but were now being rapidly filled again,
the liquid flowing with much higher pressure from two separate tanks looming
large, well above her feet. Exhausted, Kayleen tried to fight dread as the
growing discomfort in her womb and bowels suggested that it was not ordinary
water that she was being invaded with, but soon she had to fight pain instead,
as her insides started itching and then burning.

When she started twitching, her tormentor opened the tap of the pipe flowing
into the funnel in her mouth, and salt water poured down, compounding the pain
inside her with the renewed torment of her lungs and throat. She gurgled,
unable to drink the saline concoction, and sputtered in fitful buckles of
breathless pain, discovering that the tourniquets were digging into her flesh
as water distended her insides again.

"The water inside your womb is distending it, girl. This is only the
beginning. You'll feel when it bulges, when the tubes burst, and then you'll
expel the water and it starts over again," said Grod quietly.

Two searing nuggets of pain started blazing in Kayleen's womb, feeling as if
the mounting pressure of the scorching liquid was distending some pathway,
forcing its way down channels never meant to sustain such agonies. Her belly
was now pushing against the ropes, the knots digging deep and chafing the
skin, and more water was being poured down her throat as she choked onto it,
each gulp a spasm which sent shivers through her restrained body as her lungs,
more and more compressed as water pushed up her diaphragm, screamed for air.

Most of the liquid was entering from her mouth, in spite of her position, and
soon she found herself coughing to asphyxiation as water seemed to fill her up
completely, gushing in her windpipe. Her muscles pushed helplessly against the
ropes, attempting to gulp down more water, but this only increased her pain as
her compressed belly bulged through the deeply set ropes.

When her face turned blue, Grod removed the funnel and started tightening the
tourniquets, sending her into coughing fits of agony as the water was forcibly
expelled from her mouth in desperate bursts. Out of her mind in pain and fear,
Kayleen was prevented from screaming only by the gushes of water and fits of
coughing, because her insides were still experiencing the unrelenting pressure
and now the nuggets of pain in her womb were blazing in agony from the tight
constriction of the tourniquet.

As her stomach was emptied, allowing her the breath of air she craved, it let
some room for more water to press into her bowels and womb, increasing the
unrelenting pain from her insides. Ignoring the suffering in Kayleen's teary
blue eyes, her tormentor pushed the pipe into the funnel again. The foul taste
of salt water caused her to retch, the vomit unable to escape the throat and
mixing with the downpouring liquid as she sunk again in the watery hell.

Lyral twitched on the ladder while the Southerner laughed at her screams of
fear and pain, teasing her "You sing like a summer bird, My Pearl! If some
nettles are all it takes to hear you sing, what are we going to hear when we
start with some real torture ?"

Over the subsequent iterations of the torment, Kayleen almost cursed the
renewed endurance and strength brought by her healing at Lyral's hands, as she
had to endure them one by one, the salt water scorching her womb and pressing
into her uterus and tubes with unrelenting, mounting pain each time more water
was pressed in, until finally she lost consciousness.

Kayleen came to while the Easterner was cuffing her elbows together, bending
her arms over a beam crossing the top of a wooden post she remembered with
dread. He pulled her arms down until he could cuff her wrists to the back of a
wedge pushing into her lower back, arching her body outwards. Her legs were
doubled over and bent painfully outwards at the knee, the ankles cuffed wide
apart to another cross beam.

The pain of her restraint and even the bruises on her belly were nothing in
the aftermath of her previous ordeal, as her insides from throat to womb still
burned and throbbed, while the collar tightened by the cautious Easterner did
not allow her to breathe normally and even drink some of the contents of the
jug offered to her, the burn in her throat stronger than her sense. Yet, as
her gaze focused, her eyes widened in dread at the sight of the implements
heating in a brazier before her.

Once she had been secured, the wry Easterner loosened her collar and wore
thick gloves, which allowed him to pick up a thin, red hot steel needle and
push it into her left thigh, its sizzle covered from a scream she managed to
turn into an agonized breath drawn through clenched teeth. A cold needle
pierced her other thigh next, followed by another red hot needle in her
distended calf.

Her tormentor alternated cold needles and red hot needles, each causing her to
writhe in agony while attempting to stifle her screams, pausing between each
to let her experience the pain in full. Her ears picked up screams which were
not her own, and her tormented gaze fixed on the pale flesh of Lyral, pulled
tight on the rack by Grod. For a moment, her horror at the thought of the
innocent girl suffering the agonies of the rack overcame even the pain of the
needles, but her call of "Lyral" turned into a scream when her tormentor
pinched her belly and pushed a red hot needle through her flesh.

The call caused Lyral's gaze to focus on Kayleen's twitching form, sending her
further into despair at the sight of her friend's tormented face while the
Easterner pushed tiny hot needles in her tender soles, each causing her to
stiffen, twist her visage in the effort to resist the pain and buckle wildly
in her restraints. When her head hung, she was doused with cold water.

Kayleen could not keep her eyes on Lyral's distended limbs as Grod cranked
back the rack, just like he had done with her, sending the atrocious pain of
sudden release through her limbs, because her own tormentor pushed a red hot
needle under her left toenail. Dread combined with pain behind her mounting
scream, which left her lips as a tormented hiss, as this rekindled the
memories of her past ordeals and signaled the start of the assault on her toes
and fingers.

The assault followed, and brought her down untraveled roads of mounting pain
as needles were also driven in the soft flesh between fingers, while each nail
was tormented by either a red hot or a cold needle, which turned out to be
barbed when he pulled out one to replace it with a red hot one. So another
cruel pain was visited on her as each cold needle was bloodily pulled out and
replaced by a red hot one.

When he started pushing needles into her torso and chest, Kayleen let out a
stifled scream as dread as the recollection of past ordeals overcame her, but
her tormentor continued slowly pushing cold and hot needles into her writhing
form. After her back, his attentions lingered on her ass cheeks, which needle
after needle he turned into a bloody pincushion.

Kayleen, in spite of herself, trembled when the wry Easterner looped a thin
silk cord around her left breast, followed by another around her right breast,
tightening them until her mounds turned into turgid globes of taut flesh. When
the first needle, a cold barbed one, was pushed into her flesh, it took all
her newfound resolve to stifle a scream which would have risen up in the
vaults of the chamber, just as the garbled screams from the stretched Lyral
rose as she trembled under the pull of the rack.

Slowly, the Easterner pushed more cold needles into each globe, delaying his
recourse to the red hot ones to bring her to the ultimate brink of agony
before sending her down a new level of torment. After pushing a needle into
each nipple in spite of her spasms and jerks, he pulled out the very first
needle inserted into each breast, slowly, the barbed tip tracing a searing hot
trail of agony through her flesh which the subsequent insertion of a short,
red hot needle in the same spot reopened immediately, dragging Kayleen into in
a nightmare of gasps, hisses and burnt flesh from which no respite was allowed
until much later, when her breasts were so thick in short needles, most
already cooled off, that her tormentor found awkward to insert any new ones.

She was released from her restraints, her body still brimming in needles, and
made to drink again, the pause allowing her to hear again the desperate cries
from the rack where Lyral quivered as Grod cranked her yet another notch, her
neck and mouth distended in a drawn out cry of unspeakable agony.

Her breath constricted by the collar, Kayleen was pulled up by her ankles
cuffed to chains from the ceiling, then the Easterner doubled her at the
waist, pulling her arms to her front between her splayed thighs until, helping
himself with a boot on her crotch, he managed to pull them forward enough to
bend her elbows under her knees and tie her wrist cuffs behind her back to a
rope, which he proceeded to shorten until he could cuff her wrists to each
other.

Kayleen's bent position exposed the tendermost part of her athletic body while
pushing the needles all the way down into her compressed breasts, bringing new
tears to her contorted visage. Just hanging there would have been torture
enough, but her tormentor pinched a fold of soft flesh from under her left
thigh and started piercing it with fine, red hot needles, so fine that he
could push dozen in the folded flesh in the grip of his leather glove. The
nonstop torment caused her to gasp and hiss, her breathing a wheeze as her
body glistened in perspiration, which mixed with the crimson rivulets of blood
and the smell of burnt flesh as the sizzling mixed with her stifled screams.

The fine needles caused little blood loss, the wound cauterizing as it formed,
but kept her in searing pain far longer, compounding the stabbing from her
breasts which got rekindled upon each jerk with the agony of burnt flesh. His
hands gripped the now exposed crease between buttock and thigh, repeatedly,
first left then right, slowly pushing needle after needle through the soft
flesh in a trail of agony which reverberated on her contorting face as she
strove to keep her anguish from bursting in screams.

Her tormentor's hand pinched a fold of flesh under her thigh, and a new pain
seared through her as the first hot needle pierced it, while Lyral's agonies
on the rack echoed through the room drowning her stifled gasps and the
occasional cries escaping her clenched teeth. With leisurely relentlessness,
the Easterner pushed more and more of the accursed needles through her thighs
and calves, drawing a canvas of agony on her slender, exposed limbs as a
prelude of the worst to come and splashing her occasionally with cold water.

Lyral's cries rose to a pitch as the rack pulled her taut, and then waned as
she passed out. Grod suspended her torture and slowly cranked her distended
body back to normal, inspecting her pale limbs for signs of dislocation.

Kayleen's mind wandered in a hell of searing pain and burnt flesh, attempting
to escape what she reckoned would follow. Within her, the dread of the torment
in her feminine regions grew needle after needle, her shame deep at being
unable to face the specific pain with the same bravery she exhibited in
combat.

A wail of despair grew behind her teeth when the Easterner pushed the first
needle through her left cunt lip, followed by the first actual scream of the
day, although promptly stifled, when the next pierced the rim of her vagina.
In her restraints, she could barely writhe as each needle was pushed through
her cunt lips, the tips fiendishly pointing inwards as the heat seared her
feminine flesh. In spite of the unrelenting agony, she managed to stifle her
screams yet again, buttressing her resolve on the pitiful shrieks escaping
Lyral's gagged mouth under the unrelenting pull of the rack.

In spite of the needles in her ass cheeks, the wry Easterner returned his
attentions to her buttocks, but focused on the rim of her sphincter, piercing
the tender flesh with more of the fine, red hot needles, driven through the
muscle parallel to the surface. Instead of sinking into the flesh, endangering
blood vessels, the needles dug through one, one and a half inch of muscle and
then emerged, the tip ready to cause further agonies on each jerk and twist of
her tormented body.

To Kayleen's dismay, however, the torment of her sphincter was just a break in
the assault on her femininity, because the Easterner pulled open her cunt lips
and pinched them to her inner thighs with more fine, red hot needles, ignoring
the blood trickling on each jerk and her anguished hisses as each needle
caused her head to shake in unspeakable agony.

When he pulled open the folds of her clitoris and pierced the left one with
another red hot needle, Kayleen's body stiffened before shuddering in a long,
drawn out breath of sibilant agony which she renewed when another needle
seared the flesh of the right fold, exposing her love button as more needles
stitched the folds to her flesh.

"Tell where Sorceress is," said her tormentor, dousing her with cold water
after waiting for her answer, "More pain now".

More needles were driven in the muscle at the entrance of her love channel, in
the fashion used on her sphincter, the tips still hot sizzling on contact with
the dry wall after piercing the fleshy rim, each a stab of unremitting agony
which shook through her hung body, bubbling into a scream which she refused to
let out of her mouth as her face contorted in untold agony.

Her resolve staggered when a red hot needle was pushed into her clitoris, her
mouth opening in a helpless, silent cry before closing under pure force of
will as the smell of burnt flesh rose again to her nostrils and the needle was
pulled out. Even Lyral, stretched on the rack, turned her head when the next
was placed on her love bud, the tip burning into the flesh, but was held firm
instead of pushing it in, until her tormentor's finger forcibly pulled it,
slowly elongating it into the atrocious burning needle, sliding it in one
hairsplit at a time while Kayleen's hisses and gasps rose in pitch and her
shaking blonde mane revealed her unspeakable suffering, which was repeated
until her tormentor had to admit to himself that there was no longer room on
her tormented feminine flesh for more needles.

Her tormentor removed swiftly the mostly cooled needles from her, ignoring the
occasional drops of blood as most wounds had been cauterized by the heat, and
then lowered her on the floor, releasing her from her restrained position only
with precautions far beyond what Kayleen's trembling body would suggest.

After a litany of pitched screams, Lyral passed out again, unable to withstand
the pull of the rack. Grod tried reviving her with cold water, without
releasing her, but she woke up between screams and passed out again when he
cranked her another notch.

The Easterner cuffed Kayleen's elbows and wrists together, fastening the
latter to a ring, then cuffed her ankles to a six foot steel bar, spreading
her legs wide and adding iron bands at the knee and thigh before pulling up
the bar using another chain from the ceiling, her body arching as her hips
were pulled above her head while her arms were twisted in their sockets.

The Easterner moved to the brazier and verified the implements heating there,
oblivious to the dread mounting in his victim as she strove to look inside,
and to the despair echoing in the room as Lyral shouted her lungs out while
her limbs were stretched again on the rack. Kayleen closed her eyes, praying
softly to herself, as her tormentor pulled from the coals a red hot four-inch
skewer, bringing the forked tip near her restrained arms.

Her body stiffened and then exploded in a frenzy of buckling and shaking as
the skewer pierced her flesh, its sizzle drowning in her desperate hiss of
agonized despair, the first herald of the screams crowding in her throat. The
pain was far worse than what she had withstood so far, because the searing
tips reached to the bone and scraped it inside her burnt flesh.

After her pain subsided, her tormentor inserted another skewer into her arm,
sliding it slowly along the muscle instead of stabbing down, the pain mounting
unrelentingly as her throat burned with bile and her jaw ached as she tried to
keep her howls from breaking out. One after the other, he also skewered her
forearms, in spite of her frantic buckling and spasmodic jerks.

Next were her fingers, again, but on an unprecedented level of agony as a
short skewer was slid into her first finger, scraping the small bone in the
first agonizing step of a descent in hells she had not visited yet, as each
finger and toe was slowly subjected to the agonizing treatment. Her throat was
sore and burned with puke, her eyes had shed all her tears, and the cries of
Lyral were distant echoes of her own suffering as the skewer slid into her
last toe, her leg convulsing along its entire length as she managed to stifle
an agonized howl, clinging to her determination because it was the only thing
left she could cling to before sinking in an ocean of pain.

The skewering of her long, supple legs with long, searing hot needles which
bent inside her muscle as he pushed the tip into her bones dragged her further
into that ocean of pain, sending new waves of agony bellowing behind her
clenched teeth and crashing on her resolve with the unrelenting, excruciating
agony of searing hot metal. During a brief instant of respite, she heard
Lyral's garbled voice cry "I won't talk! Oh, Kayleen, I won't fail you."

In her torment, her friend's words were a stab at her heart but also a much
needed source of new resolve, just as the impassive Easterner pulled a six
inch skewer from the brazier and inserted it under her left breast, dragging
the forked, red hot tip inside her, scraping one rib after the other as she
twitched and buckled, bile rising into her mouth and fanning the blazes of
more agonized howls, her hisses now so desperate and frothing that they would
count as screams to anybody but her, rekindled by a bucket of cold water.

After repeatedly skewering her breasts, the wounds bleeding moderately as the
heat cauterized them as they formed, her tormentor allowed her a pause and let
her drink from the jug, the liquid clearing her mind and bringing new strength
to her pain-wracked body. That strength was soon taxed when he slid short
skewers onto her ribs, causing more gasps and hisses to issue from her
clenched mouth, and even more when he skewered the sides of her breasts to
bring the tips to slide on her sternum in yet another nightmare of pain and
burnt flesh, which he protracted until her hisses waned into wheezing sobs.

But instead of releasing her, he brought the jug to her lips again and then
pushed another hot skewer into her crotch, piercing her left cunt lip and
scraping the tip onto the pubic bone, her desperate cries gurgling behind the
dam of her resolve as she stifled them into hisses. Her tormentor fetched a
short skewer and slid it into the soft flesh between her anus and vagina,
followed by another as she spat and gurgled in unspeakable agony.

Slowly, he pushed a longer skewer through the whole length of her right cunt
lip, sliding it over her pubic bone, the twin tip scraping it on each jerk and
twitch of her tormented body. Drool frothed at her mouth, which opened in a
rasping, silent scream when another skewer was slid into her vulva, sizzling
her small lip and the vaginal wall before scraping bone as she jerked in
renewed agony and gasped desperately.

Instead of continuing, her tormentor paused to bring a sloping bench under her
belly, raise it until she leaned on the wood and then fasten the bands at her
thighs and waist to it. Out of her mind with pain, Kayleen enjoyed her brief
respite, unaware that he just wanted her restrained for further torment.

He took care to heat the next skewer until it turned bright red, then pushed
it into the lower rim of her vagina, piercing it on the left and then on the
right, stitching the sides together while the sizzling heat caused wisps of
smoke and her body shuddered in unbridled agony and her mouth twisted her
features as she desperately clenched her howls behind her gritting teeth.

When Kayleen's twitches subsided, he slowly slid another skewer through the
upper rim, piercing its walls and stitching it close while her contorted face
trembled under the effort to stifle the scream mounting in her throat as the
twin tip scratched bone again. Her mouth opened in gasps and hisses when
another thin, bright red skewer was driven through her swollen lips and under
her clitoris, with his fingers pulling and bending the bud so that instead of
piercing through, the needle traversed the full length of its underside
stitching it to her mons before entering the flesh above and joining the
others in scraping her pubic bone as she trembled in agony.

With the sizzling needles in place, her tormentor used both gloved hands to
skitter two or even all three at the same time into her bone, pulling them out
a bit to drive them in from a different angle, plunging Kayleen into
unexplored depths of uninterrupted agony. Her gasps, hisses and gurgles rose
almost on par with the pitiful cries from the racked young body of her friend
Lyral, and lasted until the skewers cooled off.

As she was released, she heard Lyral's hysterical sobs as the Easterner
approached her, while Grod treated her wounds and the jug brought new strength
to her parched lips. The thought of asking Lyral about what was in the jug
coursed briefly through the pain wracked paths of her mind, losing itself in
dread when she realized that it was now the Southerner's turn, and he was
ogling her body while poring over a small collection of knives and blades.

Unable to avert her teary gaze, she lingered in horror on the implements. Most
had been built from bone, some gleaming new and some yellowish, or reddish,
she shuddered. These were not blades designed to dispatch an opponent, quite
the opposite, they were short and poorly honed to cause shallow wounds.

Meanwhile, the Easterner was tightening a tourniquet around Lyral's waist, her
sobbing eyes awaiting the impending pain, and Kayleen saw in her friend's
countenance all the weight of the ordeals wrought upon her young, frail body,
her limited strength spent, her endurance consumed already, a nightmare of
pain unlike anything she had ever sustained in her formerly sheltered life.

Kayleen paid little heed when the Southerner dragged her to a platform, made
her kneel on it and cuffed her ankles wide apart, forcing her to open her
thighs painfully wide under her own weight. Her eyes sought Lyral's eyes, now
shut in pain as she screamed under the tightening grip of the tourniquet, and
ignored the Southerner cuffing her wrists above her head to a chain hanging
from the ceiling. But when the swarthy old man fetched a yellowish, cracked
bone blade and pushed it into her left shoulder blade, her attention returned
to her predicament and a scream escaped her lips before she could stifle it.

Grinning, her tormentor pushed the blade further down, tracing a jagged wound
in her muscular back. Although he had stayed clear of major blood vessels, the
wound bled immediately, yet he followed up with another cut into her right
forearm, along the muscle, her own jerks and twitches trashing the blade
inside the wound as she gasped and hissed in agony.

"Oh my, who would have guessed that a little knife would cause Your
Haughtiness such discomfort ? I thought you were a proud warrior," mocked her
tormentor, cutting into her muscle.

The cut of blades in battle she knew already, and it hurt, but this was
nothing of the sort, this was devilish torment, and dread mounted in her as
her horrid experiences allowed her to recognize these first cuts as just
preliminaries.  She closed her eyes as his fingers traced and probed the place
where he would stab and cut her next, and soon her anguished intakes of breath
could be heard almost as clearly as Lyral's screams of despair, while blood
oozed lazily from her cut flesh.

After a dozen cuts, all delivered with excruciating slowness while pressing
the dull blade on the skin to cause its uneven edge to cut jagged gashes, the
old man protracted the pause between a cut and the next, watching her bleed
before making her drink again and treating the cuts, smearing a thick paste
which slowed the blood flow somehow, and stitching them summarily.

Lyral screamed in uninterrupted agony as the Easterner tightened the grip on
her fingers, her soaked body trembling in fear between a turn of the
tourniquet and the next. Tears streaked her pale face, and after crying her
lungs out she passed out and had to be revived with cold water.

The Southerner placed his finger on Kayleen's left calf and then pushed the
blade into the flesh, dragging it slowly along the length of the leg as she
twitched and hissed, turning her head under the foolish compulsion to watch
the blade dig into her. The yellowish white blade was crimson with blood, and
the edge was dull enough to require considerable force to cut through muscle,
tracing shallow creeks of crimson through her flesh as the howls she wanted to
suppress crowded behind her clenched teeth.

"You could still entertain us with news about that Sorceress," said the
Southerner, dousing her with cold water while she clenched her lips.

With time, Kayleen's and Lyral's bodies started looking similar, both crossed
by reddish lines, but while Lyral's where but rashes and chafed skin,
Kayleen's were ugly, bleeding gashes, although the occasional treatment
reduced blood loss. While Lyral screamed with abandon through her gag as the
Easterner tightened a tourniquet on her left breast, Kayleen managed to just
hiss, gasp and buckle as the Southerner pushed the blade under the nail of her
left ring finger, compounding the torment of her hands already bleeding from
the cuts in the soft flesh between the fingers.

But the true measure of the difference in the torments became obvious in the
comparison between Lyral's tear streaked visage and Kayleen's contorted mask
of agony, as the Southerner dragged the blade on the tender sole of her left
foot, and then pushed it under the nail of her big toe as she jerked her head
back, her mouth open in a silent, drawn out scream at the indifferent vaults
of the torture chamber.

Even Lyral, in the pauses her tormentor dispensed lest she passed out too
often, watched with horror between her own tears when the Southerner stabbed
the soft flesh inside Lyral's thighs, pulling the blade up and lifting her
from her kneeling position at blade point while blood flowed slowly, and she
gasped through fits of unspeakable pain, still clinging to her resolve as the
howls she refused to let out resonated in her chest.

When her leering tormentor sunk his blade under her breast, she screamed
briefly, a lapse which was followed by a long, agonized breath as the blade
cut her flesh, but which did not repeat when he stabbed her other breast.
Stymied, the swarthy Southerner gripped it and pushed the blade into the soft
underside, enjoying her eyes clenching in agony, but unable to exact another
scream from her in spite of the repeated gashes slowly dug in the pulsating
flesh of his trembling victim, wet from occasional buckets of cold water.

Undaunted, he gripped her left nipple between two fingers and started dragging
the blade along its length, careful to scrape rather than cut, first pulling
away from the breast, then turning the blade down through the tip of the
delectable flesh and then reversing the cut along the underside of the wounded
nub. Kayleen's hisses rose to a feverish pitch while he ravaged her nipple,
and she gasped and shook her head to no avail. When he moved to her other
nipple, her jerks and twitches prevented him from achieving a clear wound, but
not from trying repeatedly, so her right breast slowly became a canvas of
bleeding pain drawn in stifled screams and agonized jerks.

The Easterner resumed Lyral's torture by tightening a tourniquet around her
plump left breast, causing the girl to tremble and shriek in dread, trashing
in her restraints at the prospect of more pain.

"Your friend does not seem to like Chang's attentions, Whore Queen. I fancy
laying my hands on her again. Later," said the old Southerner.

Smiling, he brought the blade on her crotch and traced with his fingers the
contour of her cunt lips, enjoying her jerks and spasmodic attempts at turning
the blade, which littered her privates with small cuts of her own doing. When
she stopped jerking, not buying into his little game any more or just
exhausted, he placed the blade on the muscle around her vagina and cut,
smiling at the tormented hiss which shook her splendid body.

After repeatedly cutting the rim of her love channel, and its walls in places,
her tormentor disrobed and smiled before pushing her down on her back,
penetrating her wounded sex on the platform in short, rutting thrusts, each
one sending blazing pain through her bleeding body as she barely managed to
deprive her tormentor at least of the satisfaction of hearing her scream.

Lyral instead screamed and howled as the Easterner tightened the tourniquet on
her breast, and passed out again when the pain became unbearable. She was
revived with smelling salts, and started sobbing immediately, crying and
quivering when her tormentor tightened the rope again.

Exhausted, Kayleen drank blindly from the jug offered to her while they
treated her wounds, none deep enough to endanger her life but so many that she
would be unlikely to survive. In the haze of unprecedented pain, she thought
that her tormentors had picked Lyral as the one which could be scared into
talking, and as such no longer needed restraint in torturing her.

She ignored the Southerner when he cuffed her elbows together and pulled
painfully her arms from under her back, fastening her wrist cuffs to the
platform and forcing her to arch her back and push her hips up in the air,
exposing her wounded crotch. Her collar was fastened to the platform, and only
when the Southerner tried to force a spider gag into her mouth did she mount a
feeble attempt at resisting, which he tried to stifle by twisting her wounded
nipples in the vain hope of forcing her to accept it. It was Grod who
tightened her collar, until she went blank from lack of oxygen and the gag
could be forced in when she was allowed to breathe.

The old Southerner straddled her head and fetched a different knife, the blade
apparently the fish-bone of a large fish, which he examined at length before
pushing it into one of the gashing wounds he had cut on her slender thigh,
cutting her agonized scream short by pushing his flaccid member into her
throat and enjoying her gurgling and coughing.

"Now I am going to reap the reward of all this hard work", he whispered.

Lyral, who had been allowed to see the scene, closed her eyes in horror, but
could not close her ears as the laughing Southerner slowly dragged the blade
through the wound in her thigh, reopening it while Kayleen's muffled screams
surged through her stuffed mouth. He waited until her cries subsided, then
stabbed another wound on her other thigh, pushing encrusted blood aside and
drawing fresh blood and fresh howls of unbridled torment from his victim.

The small blade visited many other wounds, each one a new fountain of agony on
her tormented body which oozed fresh blood until her tormentor cared to
staunch it again. Now that she was tightly restrained, however, he could use
it to carry through his original intent, so he brought the blade against her
right breast and started tracing the contour of her areola, cutting a red line
around it with the tip as she shouted into his already hardening member.

He pinched her right nipple, pulled it out and traced its entire length with
the blade, outwards, around and backwards, so enjoying her jerks and cries
that he immediately repeated the feat on her other nipple, reopening the cut
he had been so proud of. Kayleen screamed into his member, repeatedly, feeding
his arousal as he tormented her wounded breasts, protracting her agonies until
her cries brought him to come into her mouth.

Lyral was spared the sight of her friend's violation, because she had fainted
again while the Easterner tightened the tourniquet on her heaving chest and
was taking longer than before to revive.

Spent, the swarthy Southerner poured more syrup into Kayleen's choking mouth
and summarily treated her wounds, then moved between her legs and placed the
tip on her mons, pushing the blade into the flesh between her pubic hair in a
short, shallow cut, wrenching a short cry from Kayleen's sore throat. He
followed up with a second and a third, observing the three form a bloody
triangle on her mons. With his other hand, he grabbed the curls of blonde hair
and pulled, drawing a pitched shriek of inhuman agony from the trembling
Kayleen as the pulled hair slowly wrenched away the triangle of skin.

"I guess you're not going to tell us about the Sorceress," he mocked. When her
cries subsided, he cut another triangle in her bush and pulled it away also,
just like the subsequent ones, smiling as each little scalp brought new howls
of unbridled agony from his twitching victim, savoring each one as Lyral
watched in horror, unable to avert her gaze, almost forgetting the tourniquet
being tightened around her chest.

The Southerner protracted the flaying of Kayleen's mons long enough to achieve
another arousal, and when his member hardened he interrupted it and penetrated
her, grunting as he viciously pushed into her torn sex, enjoying her fitful
jerks when he brushed the flayed flesh. On each thrust, her cries rose through
the gag under the vaults of the chamber, and turned into anguished howls when
he stopped just before coming, pulled out and ejaculated on the raw flesh.

After catching his breath, he resumed the flaying of her pubic area, and when
nearly done stopped to consume something he had prepared, smiling as Kayleen's
eyes widened in recognition. In a few minutes his member hardened, and
penetrated her in a rutting frenzy of vicious cruelty, pulling out at the last
moment and spraying his salty semen on her to compound her torment again.
Kayleen cried aloud in despair when he thrust into her yet again, and
withstood his third assault howling to high heaven, but on the fourth time her
eyes glazed over and, in spite of the drugs, she passed out.

She returned to the hell she had just left with the strong smell of salts in
her nostrils, hanging upside down with her legs painfully spread wide and her
arms bound in a reverse prayer position behind her back. The Southerner
cackled at the thought of how this position, intended to curtail blood loss,
exposed her sex, and tightened an iron band around her waist to prevent her
from jerking around too much. More cold water was splashed on her.

The Easterner had also started to douse Lyral regularly, attempting to keep
her awake while he tightened the tourniquet on her chest while she screamed at
the top of her lungs.

The Southerner also closed tight bands around Kayleen's knees and thighs, and
finally screwed two iron rings tight around her breasts, wrenching new screams
from her sore throat as her wounds reopened. He fetched both the dull and the
thin blade and started cutting the sole of her left foot, the thin blade
following directly into the gash dug by the large one, delighted as he could
at last enjoy her howls of agony as they were meant to be heard.

When her screams subsided, he smeared some paste on the gash and then
rekindled her pain by clipping together the edges with small, vicious clamps,
staunching the loss of blood while plunging her another step down the
staircases of agony. The clamps were too small to allow for a spring, so he
had to tighten them using pliers. Immensely satisfied with his own cleverness,
he started clipping the bleeding wounds on her breasts, savoring her pitiful
screams as each clamp dug into her quivering flesh.

"Now, now, we don't want too much spilled blood, do we ? Unless our Whore
Queen changed her mind, I mean. Too much spilled blood means we have to stop,
and we still don't know where this Sorceress is," mused the Southerner.

Having contained blood loss for the time being, he proceeded to dig red lines
of agony through Kayleen's slender legs, protracting her torment by pausing
often, then moved to her buttocks and started cutting across the existing
wounds, lingering on the soft underside near her thighs and in the crease
between the cheeks. Each time, once her cries subsided, he clipped the wound
dutifully. Later, he delighted when her screams rose to new heights as he
scraped her ribs to the bone under Lyral's horrified eyes.

Leaving her ribs to bleed, he slowly traced a few lines of crimson agony
through her muscular abdomen, clipping each shut meticulously before starting
another, then reached for her breasts. He pushed the dull blade into the
quivering flesh, dragging the thin blade back and forth as she howled in pain
and wheezed, short of breath as each scream caused further pain from her ribs.

He briefly paused her torment to smear her nipples with the yellow brown
paste, but soon resumed, tracing another deep gash in her firm breast, as if
drawing in each a star of red lines pointing to the nipple. Her screams were
now hoarse, wheezing, but she twitched and jerked in agony whenever the blade
bit her flesh, so he slowly protracted her torment until her nipples swelled.

He pinched one, savoring her cry as the wound reopened and dread rose within
her, pulled it and traced the dull blade outwards, around the tip and
backwards on the underside, proud of his technique and enjoying her spasmodic
jerks, inhuman cries and pain-wracked visage. She was now properly restrained,
and he was able to repeat the hideous torment on her right nipple, slowly
savoring her hellish cries. Noticing that she was starting to lose it, he put
the jug at her mouth and pulled her head up in order to let her drink.

Lyral was still screaming her lungs out, her wet body writhing as her plump
pale breasts turned crimson under the grip of her tormentor's tourniquet. Her
parched cherry lips stood out in her pale, contorted visage as she drowned in
unprecedented pain and misery. The Southerner called at her, "Look, girl,
watch as I carve open Your Haughtiness here. Maybe I can find what she's so
full of. Just remember you're next."

Kayleen's newfound strength was immediately taxed as her tormentor brought the
dull blade on the soft flesh of her inner thigh and dug another line of
bleeding agony in it, cutting across her previous wounds and protracting the
torment while avoiding major blood vessels. Her cries rose shrill when he
clipped the wound, and rose even more when he cut her tender flesh again.

After tormenting her thighs, he returned to her swollen nipples, fetching two
elongated bronze clamps which he clipped along the length of the left nipple,
on the edges of his previous cut. When both nipples were so clipped, his hands
both free, he plunged Kayleen into yet another level of horrific agony by
tracing a new gash along the full length of each nipple with the dull blade,
back and forth, the thin blade following immediately inside the throbbing
wound as she bellowed in nightmarish pain, consuming her voice in hopeless
howls of utter despair as he protracted the gouging of her feminine flesh.

She was given a brief pause and more syrup, but her screams soon rose again
when the wound was clipped and he traced another line of hellish agony in the
tender flesh between anus and vulva, clipping it quickly in impatience at what
he had in mind next and dousing her with more cold water.

After reviving her yet again, the Easterner released Lyral from the
tourniquet, letting her hang in tears and watch the torment of her friend.

The Southerner started cutting Kayleen's cunt lips, first one then the other,
slowly dragging the dull blade along their length and following up with the
thin blade as she buckled so spasmodically that he cut himself once. When her
desperate howls subsided, he smeared her clitoris with the brown paste,
smiling in anticipation while she cried in dread.

He traced another gash to the left of her cunt lips, and another to the right,
then started practicing shallow perpendicular cuts on the edges of her cunt
lips, pulling them open and clipping each against the outer edge of the gashes
on each side, while Kayleen's maddened cries echoed in the torture chamber.
Slowly, he did the same with the folds of her clitoris, pulling them open and
clamping their bleeding cuts, revealing her swollen nub of feminine flesh.

He pulled it out and traced its length with the dull blade, savoring her cries
and twitches as he practiced the same technique he had visited on her nipples,
pausing often to let her catch enough breath to renew her cries between a fit
of coughing and the next. When her gut-wrenching howls subsided into wheezing
screams, he leaned over her and penetrated her torn and distended sex, from
above, with a enraptured expression on his swarthy visage as each thrust
wrenched new howls of maddened agony from Kayleen's devastated throat.

When he was done, Kayleen hung in utter pain, her body wracked by spasms as
rivulets of blood coursed down her shaking chest. He used the pliers to clip
her wounds, smiling as this ministration intended to staunch blood loss caused
her to howl with new pain, then rested the dull blade on her clitoris,
savoring her cries of dread and despair. He bid his time until her voice
waned, then started digging with both blades, rekindling the flames of
previous hellish agonies and slowly protracted her torment as long as he
could, while her body trashed in her restraints and her howls of unprecedented
agony echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber.


Chapter 12 - Lyral's Fears

In the darkness of the chamber below the ruins of Zhorun's former castle,
Lyral's sobs subsided slowly as the pain from the day's ordeal receded. She
was sitting on the floor, her legs wide open, cuffed at the ankle and knee to
iron bars crossing behind her neck and continuing up to her wrists. Legs and
arms were braided along the bars, rekindling the agonies of the rack in her
strained muscles whenever she flinched because of the rash from the nettles.

As her mind cleared, and her sobs waned, she took notice of a noise in the
room, a pitiful moan occasionally bursting into wheezing cries of helpless
agony. Horrified, she called through the gag, "Kayleen! Where are you ?"

She thought she heard the words "Lyral, help me please" slip between moans,
but her concern and the uninterrupted litany of her friend's agony were enough
to bring her in the vicinities, although pain shot through her muscles each
time she ambled crablike on the stone floor. Unable to see, she was close
enough to smell her friend's presence, and prodding about bumped her face into
cold rock, so she started circling around what she thought was a pillar.

Only after searching at length, taxing her tormented muscles, did she realize
that the rock was where her friend should be, so she called out, "Kayleen, do
you hear me ? I am near, I can smell you, but all I can touch is this rock."

Kayleen's rasping whisper sent shivers down Lyral's spine, "It is ... me. The
rock hangs off my feet." The rest of her words, if any, died in a cry. Unable
to make sense of this nightmare, Lyral forced herself to calm down to call
upon her powers, concentrating until a pearly glow started to light the area.

A gasp of horror rose from her throat at what the soft light revealed. The
Warrior Queen hung from her wrists, her slender figure pulled taut by a large
rock fastened to her ankle cuffs. Her body was wound in coils of knotted,
coarse hemp rope, cruelly tightened over her wounds and compressing her
breasts onto her chest. The nipples protruded through the rope, tightly bound
with thin cord to her love bud, pulling it up and exposing its wounded flesh
to the chafing of a savagely tight crotch rope.

In the darkness, Zhorun receded before the pearly glow, its pure light burning
his undead skin even at distance. He silently cursed before the revelation of
the power Priestesses wielded, largely unused today but presumably strong
enough in the past to completely cleanse the kingdom from his ilk. He watched
as Lyral managed to grab onto the hanging rock, at which Kayleen pulled up her
strong legs and helped her up, jerking and twisting as the effort rekindled no
end of agonies in her wounded flesh.

Lyral put her tears aside and concentrated again, kissing her friend's blood
encrusted leg to deliver her power, grasping at Kayleen's bonds as her
friend's body shuddered while the wounds stopped bleeding and healed, the skin
reforming on her mons and even the blonde curls of pubic hair growing back.

The healing coursed like fluid bliss through Kayleen's body, leaving her again
her former self, although once the effect subsided her wrists started aching
as the cuffs supported her own weight, part of Lyral's and the slab. She could
speak now, "Lyral, heaven knows I owe you my life again. Are you all right ?"

Lyral was still in pain from her ordeals, unable to heal herself as her power
was spent, but she did not want her brave friend to know that. A strange
feeling stirred within her as her lips lingered on Kayleen's muscular thigh,
and her nostrils smelled her sex, a deep tingle Lyral could not quite pinpoint
but which merged with her relief at perceiving her friend whole again. She let
herself slide on the floor and asked, "How late do you think it is ?"

"Early night, I'd say. We have a few hours of respite" answered Kayleen.

"Then it begins again, Kayleen ? Every day ? Bloody torture by day and
merciless restraints by night, until either of us caves in ?"

"Until the tables are turned, Lyral. I almost managed to set myself free once,
but Zhorun summoned more guards by magic and I was subdued. Our only choice,
at present, is to endure whatever they visit on us. By holding on, we buy time
for our friends to locate us and prepare our rescue."

"Maybe we could tell them where Shandra was. By now, she should have guessed
that something is wrong, and they would find nothing."

"And then what, Lyral ? They would think we lied and start all over again. And
if they found her, what would be our fate once we were no longer of value ?"

"I'm sorry, Kayleen. I am ... scared. I've never been through a pain like
today, and I was about to tell them where Shandra is at least twice. I cannot
understand how you managed to endure the horrors they are putting you through
for over a week, but I know I'll never be able to."

"Don't underestimate yourself, Lyral. Initially my torments were not as horrid
as those you witnessed, yet at the time I also thought I could not stand
another day. We must be strong, Lyral, because if Zhorun is putting off the
conquest of the Kingdom to capture the three of us, we must prevent him from
succeeding even if we don't understand why."

Lyral could find no fault in Kayleen's reasoning, and in any case was so tired
that she didn't even try. Healing by itself was tiring, and her strength had
been sorely sapped during the day. Maybe, if she managed to rest, she would be
able to heal herself before daybreak.

When the torches from the three tormentors brought light to the chamber again,
Lyral was still sleeping, but Kayleen was fully awake. When the Southerner
approached her, not even bothering to ask her to talk, she tensed, considering
her chances to catch the old man off guard, but her eyes betrayed her intent
and he smiled evilly, "Plotting nasty tricks, Your Haughtiness ?"

He lowered her on the floor and without untying any rope dragged her by the
nipple cords across the stone floor, her strong body wriggling to keep up as
pain distorted her features. Tightening her collar, he pushed her face down
onto a sloping wooden platform, its surface crisscrossed by creases drawing a
diamond pattern of pointed wedges. He cuffed her wrists and elbows behind her
back, pulling them up painfully before allowing her to breathe normally again.

He tightened an iron band around her waist, then clamped her nipples and
pulled the cords around her neck, elongating her firm breasts into distended
cones.  When he let go, the wooden points dug painfully in the soft undersides
of her firm breasts, while he bent her legs wide above her back and cuffed
them at the far corners of the post, pushing her front ever more onto the
wedges.

"Now, I hope you can wait telling us about that Sorceress," he mocked.

After contemplating the twitching rosette of her anus, he disrobed and
penetrated it viciously, enjoying the muffled shriek of pain and humiliation
which shook her. He kept pushing violently, each thrust rewarded by his victim
impaling herself on his member in order to pull away from the pointed wedges.

Lyral watched in horror the violation of her friend, unable to avert her gaze,
essentially ignoring Grod as he unfastened her from the crossed bars and
cuffed her elbows, ankles and wrists together, then fastened iron bands around
her knees and thighs. She was forced to drink from the same jug which she had
seen used for Kayleen, wondering at the purpose of the syrupy liquid.

Meanwhile the old Southerner, spent but not sated, fetched a wooden club,
sculpted like a large phallus and nudged Kayleen's reddish sphincter, drooling
as she trembled, pushing it in only after teasing her repeatedly. Her body
convulsed on the wedged surface as a hiss of agony escaped her clenched lips.

This protracted humiliation was but the first. He fetched a larger device and
pushed it in with vicious abandon, distending her sphincter as she hissed and
shook under the unrelenting assault. He moved the other devices before her,
and waited until her eyes widened in fear before picking up one of frightening
girth, which he pushed in and pulled out with his full strength, tearing her
sphincter while she managed to stifle her howls into gasping hisses.

"Now that we've found the right size, we start the fun." he said, pushing it
in with intoxicated abandon. The pain in her ass was unbearable, the muscles
of the walls straining and chafing while the relentless tearing at the
sphincter widened its bleeding wounds. New waves of agony shot through her
buckling body, prodded by the pointed wedges as she tried to stifle her
screams and howls.

Lyral's attention returned to her own predicament when Grod tightened a thin
iron chain around her plump breasts, filling her eyes with terror as she
begged, "Please, not this. Please."

"Tell the Master about the Sorceress, girl. You'll spare yourself and your
friend there further pain," answered Grod quietly. When she sobbed silently,
he pulled the chain taut, lifting her on her toes as she screamed in fear.

The Southerner pumped the device tirelessly, a feat for his age, enjoying
Kayleen's protracted suffering while blood trickled from the tearing wounds on
the rim of her sphincter. Cramps surged in muscles which seldom saw any, and
the torment continued uninterrupted until his member hardened again.

Drooling, he changed the device with one which he wore around the waist, and
penetrated her vagina with his real member while pushing the wooden one into
her bleeding asshole again. He felt his victim's body shake under the scream
of outraged agony she would not let out of her lips, grabbing her hips as he
repeatedly thrust into her, until his semen mixed with blood.

Still excited, he picked up another wooden implement, three inches wide and
proportionately longer, teasing her chafed love channel repeatedly and
enjoying her jerks before pushing the device in with both hands. He protracted
his thrusting with gleeful abandon, painfully distending the rim of muscle at
the entrance and scraping the walls as she hissed in agony.

Lyral wept and shut her eyes before the ravaging of her friend, not realizing
that the desperate hisses of stifled agony would be no better, but opened them
when the chain around her breasts tightened painfully as her flailing feet
left the floor and she hung by her constricted breasts, screaming from a pain
unlike any other she had encountered before.
Kayleen's tormentor angled the wedge so that each thrust crushed the sensitive
tissue inside the upper cleft of her vagina, wrenching desperate hisses of
agony from her clenched lips. Each thrust ripped her torn wounds wider while
she convulsed between gasps and hisses, hiding the unbearable pain behind her
contorted visage but unable to still her convulsing body.

He let the four inches of the next implement dangle before her teary eyes
until her mouth formed a silent "No" in absolute horror. With triumph in his
voice, he whispered, "Beg for the flesh, if you want to be spared the wood."

Kayleen shut her lips, her features hardening like her resolve, clinging to
something she did not want to give up. Her tormentor, enraged, grabbed the
monstrous phallus and pushed it in, slowly and deliberately, savoring her
jerks as it tore her apart while she ground her front on the pointed wedges.

To increase her pain, he tightened her collar, pushing the device in only when
he saw the muscles clutch it, savoring the sight of the tearing wounds along
the rim widening under his thrust as a scream wheezed through her constricted
throat. With unrelenting cruelty, he alternated thrusting while her spasming
muscle clutched the device to pulling when she caught her breath, rending the
torn muscle while she convulsed in unbridled agony.

"I haven't heard you beg, Whore Queen. It won't stop, you know. I'm in no
hurry," whispered the old man as he pulled out the wedge again.

He deliberately protracted her torment until the sensitive flesh on the upper
cleft of her love channel tore, stopping just as his victim stiffened and
jerked in unbelievable pain, clenching her teeth and pressing her face on the
platform to keep her surging howl from breaking out in earnest. Kayleen shook
and buckled as the agony from her torn femininity mounted and waned, while her
tormentor doused her trembling body with cold water.

Meanwhile, Lyral had been watching the horrid violation of her friend while
hanging from her soft breasts, now turned into purple globes of constricted
agony. Occasionally Grod prodded them with a pointed wooden stick, sending her
into jerking frenzies of fitful screaming, but the mounting agony did not
blind her to how much harsher were the torments inflicted on her friend.

Kayleen was briefly freed from her restraints, only to be turned face up, her
back on the wedges and her legs pulled up by cuffing her ankles to her wrists.
Her nipples were two blazing embers of clamped agony, and her front bore the
bruises of dozens of wedge points.

But her voice rose in tormented hisses only when the Southerner penetrated her
exposed vagina, deliberately pushing his member into the wounded cleft at its
top, ripping it a bit wider with each frenzied thrust, savoring the hellish
pain on her contorted face while her body convulsed in agony. When at last he
came, he smeared his salty semen on the wound to enjoy a last gasp from her.

Lyral watched the scene in absolute horror, forgetting the pain from her
constricted breasts momentarily, unable to avert her gaze until she puked at
the Southerner's last act. Unable to believe at what Kayleen was enduring
without passing out, her thought returned to the syrupy liquid the torturers
fed them, recalling from her apprenticeship that sugar was to be avoided when
under pain, and recognizing the taste of stimulant herbs. She realized that
the same beverage had also been fed to her when Grod stabbed her left breast
again and she screamed in agony herself, instead of passing out.

Kayleen failed to hide a sob of despair when her tormentor, while pouring more
liquid into her parched mouth, fetched another sick instrument of violation, a
wooden phallus whose surface was studded with knobs, but managed to stifle her
agonized scream as the Southerner drove it into her bleeding asshole, each
knob gouging her innards after violating the sphincter.

"Take this, Whore Queen. Let me see your hips dance!" he shouted.

Instead of pushing it back and forth, the swarthy Southerner twisted the
device left and right, wrenching a new agonized hiss on each turn and enjoying
the sight of her hips turning accordingly, frantically attempting to lessen
the pain. Although the knobs were not sharp, the slowly protracted twisting,
punctuated by Kayleen's gasping hisses, gouged her innards, drawing blood in
trickles which washed away when she was doused in cold water.

Her mind wandered off in the haze of hellish pain as he switched to a larger
implement of torment, still obstinately refusing to scream as the knobs dug
new creeks of blazing pain into her wounded innards, but unable to prevent the
abysmal suffering from surging through her clenched teeth.

Lyral kept screaming whenever Grod prodded her bulging breasts with the wooden
fork, no longer seeking Kayleen's eyes in the pauses her tormentor allowed,
not aware of the fact that her friend felt each scream as a stab of guilt
straight into the guts, a little thing before the agonies of torture but
painful on a deeper level.

Kayleen registered a new blazing pain when the swarthy Southerner introduced a
knobbed wooden monstrosity into her ravaged love channel, pushing it deep in
before twisting it so that the knobs crowding the tip tore at her cervix,
shooting new waves of hellish pain up her body as she shook, her teeth
chattering after drawing a loud, agonized breath.

Each twist of the horrid implement compounded the agony of her torn flesh with
deep gouges on the inner walls, which started bleeding when the torment was
cruelly protracted in spite of her pitiful, wheezing hisses and labored
breathing. She was given some of the accursed beverage laced with drugs that
her parched throat nonetheless craved, but she sputtered most of it as the
swarthy Southerner twisted the device while she was drinking.

"If one is not enough, let's see if two can make you sing," he growled.

When he inserted both implements, doubling her pain, and started twisting them
in opposite directions, bile rose to her mouth as she tried to contain an
inhuman howl of agony, managing only to stifle it into a wheezing scream full
of despair. This man, with his fixation on sexual tortures, was her true
nemesis, the one she dreaded had guessed her deep fears and could one day
break her will. But rage surged in her at the thought, and between two
agonized hisses she spat a "Not today!" whose meaning nobody guessed.

Lyral could not see her friend's reaction, because the pain shooting from her
purplish breasts when Grod prodded them overwhelmed her, her legs flailing in
mid air unimpeded by the loose chain connecting her ankle cuffs at the same
rhythm of her desperate, anguished screams.

The Southerner so enjoyed tormenting Kayleen that it took him some time to
notice her new resolve, and he was taken somewhat by surprise. His hands
slowed in their relentless assault, and his gaze inspected his victim's
visage, her clenched teeth now almost smiling in triumph as she managed to
contain the horrible pain into mere gasps.

For a while, Kayleen exalted in her little moral victory, gritting her teeth
when he started rasping both implements back and forth, ravaging her orifices
as the knobs gouged the flesh and drew abundant blood, so much that Grod put
aside the torment of Lyral's bruised breasts and neared. But the Southerner
smiled evilly, and suspended the torture.

"I'll wipe that smile from your pretty face, girl!" he whispered.

Kayleen's legs were doubled under her thighs, cuffing the ankles to the iron
bands clenching them, and her arms were bound behind her back in a reversed
prayer position. She was now bleeding profusely, but the Southerner produced
more of the clips he had used the day before to staunch the loss from her cuts
and started clipping the wounds inside her innards, smiling as this turned
into a new torment for Kayleen's ravaged sex, at least where the wounds could
be reached. She was doused in cold water again.

He then moved her under a metal post and started pinching folds of soft flesh
from her inner thighs and closing clasps on each, smiling as he could see in
Kayleen's eyes the recollection of her nightmarish suspension from the same
clasps a few days ago. His member hardened when he pulled her off the ground,
her stifled cry of despair music to his ears. He pulled her up until her
wounded feminine parts reached a slender steel band jutting from the post.

Her eyes widened when he fetched two wooden wedges of frightening girth,
deeply creased along their tapering length and viciously knobbed. She had
already experienced in earnest how the alternating creases and ridges tore at
the rim of her orifices, and the knobs promised even more dreadful torments.
He inserted both halfway into her rectum and vagina, in spite of her buckling,
and fastened their base to the steel band.

With an evil smile, he started using the pliers to tighten more clips on her
wounds and her cunt lips, her clitoris, and her pubic hair, which he evidently
was obsessed with. Kayleen cried silently as each clip brought new stabs of
agony to her wounded flesh, but buckled and hissed when he used the pliers to
tighten them on the torn edges of her ripped vagina.
"No longer so high and mighty, are you ?" he mocked.

The room fell silent, except for Lyral's sobbing wails, and the silence
brought even her eyes on Kayleen's hanging body. Her mouth opened wide at the
sight of her friend's predicament, unable to grasp the nature of the torment
but trembling in horror and dread at its wickedness.

With swift confidence, the Southerner wound together the fine chains hailing
from the clips into bundles, joining bundle to bundle until all bundles joined
onto two handles, preparations which brought tears of despair to Kayleen's
eyes, on whose mouth Lyral recognized the words of a prayer. He wrapped the
handles around pulleys from the ceiling.

With his full weight, the Southerner pulled down on both handles, pulling his
victim by her clipped wounds up the serrated girth of the wooden implements,
wrenching such an anguished howl of torn agony from Kayleen that even her
supreme effort at containing it only managed to reduce its volume and pitch,
but not its blood-curling intensity. A second scream followed, the equal of
the first as he released his pull and she fell down, the knobs rasping her
innards while her position limited the loss of blood but not the pain.

Kayleen was pulled onto the serrated girths again, still howling in sheer
agony behind clenched teeth and renewing her repressed bellow when pulled
down, trembling in devastating fits of coughing while her tormentor paused to
savor her misery. He poured some syrup onto her mouth, then pulled her up
again, laughing as the clips wrenched curls of blonde hair from her
bloodstained mons while her torn vulva bore new deep gashes caused by the
clips digging through the flesh.

"Now we're starting to hear you sing, Your Haughtiness," he growled.

The swarthy Southerner pulled his victim up and down with unrelenting,
inebriated abandon. but in spite of his enthusiasm, or maybe in its wake,
paused frequently, repositioning the clips on the parts where they slid out of
place, turning each pause from a moment of respite into a new agony as the
pliers tightened the iron clips all over her wounded flesh.

Kayleen's battered nether parts turned slowly into a mounting hell of searing
pain, shaken by howls and cries which crowded behind her clenched teeth and
seeped through in drawn out hisses of gut-wrenching torment, which shook her
resolve just like her body convulsed from the wracking pain of the
uninterrupted torture. Biding his time, her tormentor started shortening the
chain leading to the clips placed on her most sensitive parts, such as the
clitoris or the horrid wound above the vagina, increasing her torment notch
after notch and protracting it unrelentingly beyond all boundaries of cruelty.

When her reaction to the hellish pain subsided into stupor, the Southerner
removed the wooden devices from her bloodied innards and then, as she breathed
in relief, penetrated her violently, ripping her torn vagina even wider and
savoring the despair in her primal, agonized howl before she caught herself in
a supreme effort and stifled those which followed.

"Hah! Feel it, Whore Queen!" he shouted repeatedly in a frenzy of thrusting.
Lyral witnessed this last violation of her friend while being released from
her breast suspension, and shrieked in terror through her gag at the sight,
curling in a ball of trembling flesh, too scared to do anything but sob when
Grod asked her to reveal the location of the Sorceress.

Kayleen floated in a sea of utter agony, lost in maddened pain, but recovered
a little after drinking from the jug brought to her lips by Grod, enough to
realize that her wrists had been cuffed to a short steel bar, and her ankles
to another, and she was hanging in a slump. Below her was a rectangular tank,
and Chang was lowering her into the liquid.

The tub was full of water, soothing cold water, and her sigh of relief sounded
incongruous even to herself until it turned to a surprised scream as her
wounds started burning, because the water was so saline that she didn't even
sink, so she pulled herself up in a jerk, distending her long, slender legs
and the strong arms to avoid touching the surface.

Meanwhile, Lyral's shriek of unbounded terror echoed in the torture chamber as
the Southerner grabbed her, in spite of her frantic attempts to avoid him by
wriggling on the cold stone floor. Had he been able, he would have probably
ignored Zhorun's orders and raped the little frightened morsel on the spot,
but in his conditions he just cuffed her ankles together and closed iron bands
around her knees, thighs and waist. He bent her arms behind her neck before
cuffing her elbows and wrists together, pulling her ankles until he could
fasten them to her wrists in a hogtie which arched her back and exposed her
soft, plump breasts, still trembling under his touch.

Kayleen's back burst in searing agony when three barbed strands of thin
leather traced bloody welts across her shoulder blades, causing her to jerk
and contract her muscles, splashing into the salty water. A second strike
landed on her side and coiled around her buckling torso, leaving three angry
welts on her muscular abdomen.

She stifled a scream when the salt reached a place in her pubic area where the
clips had pulled hair and skin, and pulled herself up spasmodically at the
thought of the agony she would face if her privates got immersed in the salt
water. Another lash coiled around her thighs, causing her to twirl in her
bonds and receive the next one on her firm breasts, the three lines of fire
leaving a bloody mark which caused her to hiss in sheer pain and turn again.

Without pause, the three strands raked her shapely ass cheeks, each strike
tracing three crimson lines of intense pain. Although lighter than the
bullwhip, this whip had steel barbs every inch or so, and the Easterner
wielded it with skill and surprising strength. Once dozens of bloody welts
marked her buttocks, he sent the whip coiling around her side, pulling so that
she whirled in mid air, exposing her front.

On the next strike, the barbed tips raked her torn mons, and she contracted
her legs involuntarily, plunging her bloodied ass cheeks into the salt water.
Her body stiffened and a protracted hiss escaped her mouth, and she pulled
herself up, twitching in the vain attempt to escape the harsh caress of the
concentrated saline solution.

The whip drew three crimson lines across her taut belly, and she drew a breath
of suppressed agony in the effort to keep her muscles in tension and avoid any
further contact with the accursed liquid below her. Her tormentor lashed her
breasts again, and she almost fell as her face contorted in pain, but at the
last moment she managed to push herself up again. She had to distend her body
in order to keep it away from the harsh bite of the salt water, and this
position exposed her exquisitely to the harsh kisses of the whip.

Her breasts quivered when he lashed them again, and she stiffened desperately,
receiving the next three lashes on her breasts rather than falling in the
water, then he coiled the whip around her side and turned her around, lashing
her strong back and occasionally her arms. At the third strike on her left
arm, her muscles gave and she fell into the salt water, jerking and trashing
as she stifled a gasping howl of burning pain and managed to pull herself up
again, trashing as the salt burned her whipped front and breasts.

Her tormentor moved to her soles, not because they could contact the water but
because each lash caused her taut leg to twitch, and she clenched her teeth to
avoid falling with her bleeding feminine parts into the saline agony below.
He lashed her calves, and her legs twitched, and he lashed them again. She
turned in her bonds, receiving the next strikes on her front thighs.

Lyral writhed on the cold stone floor, moaning in pain from her strained
muscles and sobbing in dread of what the Southerner would do to her arched
body. Deep inside her, she thought that he would ask about the Sorceress, she
would cave in, and it would be all over, and yet she knew it would not. But
the old Southerner fetched a pair of wooden pliers whose jaws were covered in
stiff boar bristles, and waved them before her teary eyes.

The wry Easterner coiled the whip around Kayleen's upper chest and pulled,
raking the barbs along her breasts to force her to turn again and lash the
soft back of her thighs, a strike which wrenched from her a deep, rasping cry
of suppressed agony as she brushed the water. He lashed her soles again, and
then sent the tip flying between her legs, forcing her to spread her thighs in
response, the legs bending at the knee and plunging her into the salt water.

She tried to suppress a howl of utter agony, managing to turn it into a
hissing breath of despair, but took a few seconds to pull her convulsing body
up again, and kept buckling and gasping in mid air as the water burned at her
wounded privates, almost ignoring the lashes of the whip on her back as the
pain from the concentrated salt in her open wounds surpassed it.

The worst thing about this torment was that salt water continued to burn after
the initial immersion, seeping into the wounds and wreaking its harsh caress
with unmerciful persistence. Kayleen tried to stiffen her muscles and keep her
body distended, in spite of the barbed whip, but the Easterner knew where to
strike to cause her limbs to give.

Lyral screamed when the jaws of the pliers closed on the soft flesh of her
thigh, pricking it with hundreds of bristles. In spite of her experience with
the memory of her friend's torment, she had rarely been exposed to pain before
and found the pricking of the bristles unbearable, not realizing how her
tormentor laughed at her, anticipating her real torture once Zhorun's
restrictions about her maidenhood were lifted.

Kayleen's body, especially her breasts and ass cheeks, had been slowly turned
into a crisscrossed canvas of bleeding welts, spottily encrusted with salt
from over a dozen plunges caused by the whip rending her breasts, her soles,
her armpits and her bleeding crotch. She cried to herself, sinking her mouth
in her arm to stifle the scream, when her tired muscles gave and her whipped
nipples brushed the saline surface.

Her tormentor pulled her up, tightened her collar and cautiously changed how
she was bound, pulling her arms painfully behind her. The ramifications of
this simple change became horribly evident to her when he pulled her up again,
because now she had to stiffen her legs and her arms behind her back to avoid
plunging her loins into the water, lewdly exposing her full front to the whip.

"Talk now", said the Easterner, impenetrable as always.

"Now our friend from the East had a really nice idea," said the Southerner,
interrupting the torture of Lyral to savor the sight of Kayleen's strong,
athletic body writhing under the whip while trying desperately to keep her
slender legs and strong arms straight, arching away from the liquid and
exposing the firm, striped breasts and the crotch, where encrusted blood stuck
to the blonde curls above her sex.

When the tips slashed between her cunt lips, Kayleen's limbs contracted and
she fell into the water, a scream of rage and agony hissing through her lips
and turning into a suppressed howl of trembling torment as the salt water
washed over her wounded flesh. She managed to pull herself up again, but now
the water had seeped into her wounds and she hung in midair, jerking and
buckling, her head shaking back and forth and her eyes shedding bitter tears
while she stifled the world of hurt roaring up from her violated orifices.

The Easterner brought the whip onto her arms, pausing between each lash as she
tried to cope with the pain and jerked as her loins still burned relentlessly,
until her buckles caused her to turn in mid air and her pubic area plunged
into the water, her clenched mouth suppressing another gut wrenching scream.
Her buckling and hissing became frantic as she splashed about in agony, no
longer able to pull herself up because her bent arms offered no leverage.

He lashed her twitching shoulder blades, and the cleft between her striped
buttocks, watching her writhe in a haze of maddening pain until she tried to
turn around again, failing with a suppressed howl as the tips of the whip
raked down the breast which she had exquisitely offered, a masterful strike
which incurred Grod's silent approval as the Easterner had managed to bring
the steel tips to brush her breast flesh at the edge of their downward arch.

Lyral's voice rose in a frightened scream as the Southerner crushed her left
nipple between the bristled jaws, twisting and pulling while she jerked in
pain. Drooling, the old man cupped her other breast and closed the jaws around
its plump softness, dragging the bristles over the pale flesh while she
quivered and howled in anguish.

Still agonizing from the harsh bite of the salt water all over her wounded
orifices, Kayleen trashed about, screaming into her clenched teeth, trying
again to turn around and encountering again the searing pain of Chang's whip
on her breast. But the pain in her feminine orifices, the unrelenting bite of
the burning salt, hurt her on a deeper level, rousing terrors she had never
encountered before, so after several more attempts, which resulted in further
bloody cuts across her left breast, another thought occurred to her and she
pushed her ass up, plunging her head and torso into the cold water.

The little relief she gained for her smarting wounds was immediately
overshadowed by the sting of the salt water on her whip marks, especially the
cuts on her left breast, and bubbles rose under the water just as her head
jerked up in a sputtering scream which escaped her will just as it had escaped
her lips. The movement brought her wounded loins back into the water, washing
a new wave of agony into her wounded orifices.

Unable to find respite, Kayleen's body buckled and splashed, alternating
between plunging either the chest or the groin into the saline torment, each
dive increasing her own misery as the salt clung to her skin and seeped into
her wounds. The Easterner lashed her back and her buttocks when her lower part
was underwater, and her thighs and calves when she submerged her chest,
occasionally bringing the tips to coil around the crease under her ass cheeks
and swing into her wounded sex.

When she looked on the verge of drowning, his whip coiled around her chest
and, dragging the barbs across her breasts, forced her to turn around,
offering her an apparent chance to relieve her wounded femininity from the
salt water, at the price of straining herself into an exquisitely exposed
position. The lash immediately exploited her vulnerability, landing on the
blonde curls above her sex and wrenching a strained hiss of abysmal torment
from her parched throat.

Lyral shook spasmodically in her restraints when the Southerner's hand closed
on her pubic hair, pulling her off the floor with one hand around and the
pliers crushing her right nipple with the other, enjoying her twitching while
she screamed in abandon. Laughing, he started to pull her higher and let her
fall, to rip at her pubic hair and trash the nipple.

Kayleen's unrelenting agony found little respite from lifting her privates
above the salt water, because the repeated immersions had allowed the water to
seep into every wound and crevice, including her dripping blonde curls, and
now the salt kept biting unrelentingly at her open wounds, causing her to
buckle and strain in mid air, an inviting target for the whip which landed on
her legs, her stiffened belly, her breasts and her arms, pausing after each
strike as a new fitful hiss rose from her convulsing body.

The intermittent whipping protracted her torment long enough to let her get
some relief as the salt in her wounded privates diminished somewhat, long
enough to cover her from hand to toe in bleeding whip marks, and long enough
to tax her muscles under the strain of keeping herself above the water. Dread
mounted in her face at the realization that the Easterner's recent lashes had
been targeting her tired limbs instead of the soft spots of her slender body,
and dread tinged her gasps when a limb trembled as the barbed whip raked it,
compounding the ache of protracted fatigue with the bite of wounded flesh.

Her strong body faced the barbed whip in a protracted contest of
determination, her resolve strong enough to hold herself up even when the tips
landed on her feminine parts, clanking on the iron clips still keeping her
wounds from bleeding too much. She held out when her tormentor tried again, so
he started coiling the whip around her and pulling to turn her around, but she
resisted even that. When the tips cracked on her left nipple, however, she
turned in reaction, and each subsequent strike forced her to turn some more,
until she turned around and splashed into the salt water with a cry of
defeated despair she could not stifle, although she managed to turn the
subsequent howl into a desperate hiss as salt washed over her wounds again.

Lyral continued screaming desperately as she was now being lifted and dropped
by her nipples crushed between the Southerner's bristled pliers, almost
joyfully playing with her pale, soft body now marked by the rashes left by the
relentless application of the blisters.

Unlike before, the wry Easterner used the whip to keep the twitching Kayleen
from escaping the harsh bite of the salt water, by countering not only her
attempts at turning around, but also those at lifting her pelvic section above
water, slashing the back of her thighs and the cleft between her legs whenever
she attempted to pull herself up. Her saline torment continued unabated until
her labored breathing turned to a wheeze, at which she was finally lowered on
the floor, still gasping and convulsing from the salt in her wounds.

Ignoring her pitiful wheezing, Grod tightened the collar onto her windpipe as
he dragged her to a heavy three-plank bench, placing her with her back leaning
on the sloping middle plank. Her arms were twisted up behind her, the elbows
tightened together in some restraint she could not see.

For the first time in days, her wrist cuffs were removed, although her wrists
immediately fared no better than her elbows. Her ankle cuffs were also
removed, and her ankles encased in heavy wooden stocks, so she surmised that
the same had occurred to her wrists. Against her better judgment she drank
avidly when the jug was brought to her lips, and the constant harsh sting of
the salt rekindled somewhat as her mind cleared.

Grod moved behind her, busying himself with her wrists, and she felt the
stocks tighten and dull wooden knobs dig into her joints. Dread mounted in her
as she recollected how Grod had a penchant for tormenting bone and muscle.

She heard the sound of wood knocking on wood just as pain shot from her wrists
through her body, wrenching a low gasp from her tired throat. Now the knobs
dug mercilessly into her wrists, in spite of her attempts to relieve the
pressure by twisting herself in a slightly different position, and she drew a
long, desperate breath realizing that this new torment was just being started.

Lyral sobbed softly, her pale curves marked by rashes from the bristled pliers
still encased in iron bands, although in a less strenuous position. The
Easterner produced a swath of damp white cloth, which he soaked abundantly in
a red powder before wrapping it tightly around her calves. As he tightened it
in a knot, Lyral started twitching from the sting of the hot pepper on her
sensitive skin, crying in fear at the sight of reams and reams of cloth.

Instead of continuing the torment of Kayleen's wrists, Grod set up a pair of
stocks around her knees, allowing her frightened gaze to inspect the devices
at length. Each knee was encased between twin wooden planks, each with three
wooden knobs, and four steel rods ran through the corners, keeping the four
planks in line.  After setting them up, Grod drove with his hands a wooden
wedge between the two planks pushing on the inner side of her knees,
tightening the device into a source of harsh discomfort. The next wedge he
pushed down with a mallet, each strike wrenching a gasp from her while the
pain in her constricted knees increased and the knobs pressed onto bone.

Again, instead of pursuing the torment of her knees further, he moved to a
different position, and pain started shooting from her elbows, trapped in what
she assumed was a similar contraption. Her ankles were next, and Kayleen
hissed furiously as each strike of the mallet sent lances of hot agony through
her pain wracked body.

But the real pain started once Grod started pushing thinner wedges along the
edges of those already in place, increasing the pressure slowly and gradually,
moving from the ankles, through the knees and the elbows, to the wrists, each
time pausing to let the pain compound the unrelenting grip of the other stocks
as Kayleen sank in a waves of unrelenting torment which wrenched gasping,
shivered moans from her clenched lips.

Meanwhile Lyral was delirious from the burning hot pepper on her soft legs and
thighs, twitching in her restraints and screaming her lungs out as the
uninterrupted pain brought her over the edge, filled with dread at the thought
of what the pain would be like once the Easterner finished wrapping her body
in hot pepper. She writhed and jerked with such intensity that the Easterner
decided to put aside the caning of her soles, as there was no need to force
this victim to grind the powder over her own skin.

Wedge after wedge, Grod trapped Kayleen's joints in a circle of searing pain
where the smallest movement brought unbearable torment, engendering further
jerks which pulled the victim in a vicious spiral of agony which ended only
when she passed out or was unable to jerk further. Since the drugs fed to her
kept Kayleen awake, her exceptional resilience proved her worst enemy as each
thin wedge driven into her restraints plunged her in a protracted frenzy of
gasping hisses, spasmodic jerks and unrelenting agony.

"The pain will get worse, girl. You'll break eventually," whispered Grod.

Her tormentor only needed to drive a wedge in a while to push her down one
more step on the staircases of hell, and he protracted her torture, splashing
her occasionally with cold water, until no more wedges could be added without
crushing the joints or causing her to crush one in her agonized buckling.

Again she drank from the jug, and then Grod fetched four wooden planks which
he placed around her slender legs. In spite of the unrelenting pain, her eyes
widened at the thought of how these would crush her legs, and soon her fears
proved correct as wedges were driven between them, encasing her legs into twin
slabs of wooden agony whose grip engendered new hopeless howls behind her
gritting teeth, her face contorting from the pain and the effort to hide it.

Her forearms were next, and the pain from the limbs she could not see was if
possible even worse, her head shaking left and right as her body convulsed in
the vain attempt to find a position which provided any relief. She was no
longer subject to intermittent frenzies of jerking agony, now the compounded
pain was so intense that she just buckled and quivered in uninterrupted
torment, her gasps and hisses following one another as fast as they escaped
her mouth. Her body was covered in perspiration and short, wheezing breaths
racked her lungs between a suppressed scream and the next.

Her tormentor let her suffering run its full course, biding his time until he
produced another set of planks, which ignoring the dread in her eyes he
proceeded to set up on her thighs. The inside of the planks, instead of knobs,
bristled with raw wooden wedges of different sizes, the larger meant to press
onto the bone and the smaller to grind the soft flesh of the female thigh.

Lyral's body was now wrapped in hot pepper soaked cloth up to her ribcage, and
she was still convulsing in horrible pain, in spite of her physical
exhaustion. Her voice was hoarse from the protracted screaming but still
rising in occasional pitched shrieks as the grinding pain from the red hot
pepper waned and waxed according to her twitches.

When the wedges crushed Kayleen's thighs between the planks, she had to cling
to her resolve in order to suppress the urge to beg for mercy, for a moment of
respite, for no more pain. She had to allow herself a fitful scream, which
echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber, somehow more intense and
gut-wrenching than Lyral's uninterrupted cries.

In the haze of uninterrupted torment, Kayleen suddenly felt stabs of intense
pain rise from her right elbow, and the echo of a cracking sound convinced her
that her jerks had broken it, adding another drop to the world of hurt she was
drowning in. She saw through teary eyes that her once slender legs were now
horribly swollen, and her gaze fixed in horror the sight of her tormentor
starting to encase her left foot in some wooden contraption.

The device, not unlike the ones presently tormenting her, consisted of raw
wooden planks, bundled together with iron bands which could be tightened with
a screw. The inside of the planks had been roughly hacked raw, and creases on
their outside allowed the insertion of wedges under the iron bands.

As he hammered wedge after wedge, the device tightened and her foot turned
into a searing furnace of white hot agony, where each movement chafed the
skin, scraping the raw flesh between wood and bone, and slowly crushing the
creaking bone. She was still able to suppress her screams while the hellish
torment of her foot plunged the rest of her body in spasmodic jerks, which
wrenched ominous creaks from her crushed limbs, and when Grod put her other
foot through the same torment managed to withstand even that, but her face hid
nothing of the unbelievable agonies she was going through, and her contorted
features tightened around each suppressed scream in the supreme effort not to
let it escape, her will to endure the last defining trait of her very self.

Lyral jerked spasmodically as fear gave her new energies, shrieking as she
attempted to prevent the Easterner from wrapping her pale, ripe breasts in the
burning cloth, but her efforts were doomed to failure and the cloths were
savagely tightened around her mounds, sticking them together as the hot pepper
started burning the delicate flesh.

Kayleen craved the respite of unconsciousness, but she was offered the jug
instead, and she drank from it, regretting it when the pain deepened as the
drugs in the beverage took hold. Her tormentor wanted a last attempt at
breaking her will, and produced a bundle of wooden tablets held together by
thin cord which he wrapped around her chest after pulling up her breasts by
the nipples, so that the roughly hewn and splintered inside of the tablets
rested on the underside of her breasts.

When the tables were in place, he placed two wooden planks on the sides of her
ribcage and tightened three iron bands around the whole contraption, at which
Kayleen recognized that the tablets had creases where wedges could be placed,
the device being an enlarged variant of those tormenting her feet.

Grod placed the first wedges by hand, and then started hammering them in, each
one crushing her breasts onto her chest and compressing her ribs, causing her
breathing to become rasped and shallow as deep breaths turned increasingly
painful. Instead of continuing with wedges on her ribcage, however, Grod moved
back to her wrists and hammered another thin wedge between them.

Now fully wrapped in cloth, Lyral kept screaming and twitching with abandon as
the Easterner fastened her ankle cuffs and neck collar to rings in the stone
floor and lifted her in order to push a wooden pyramid under the small of her
back, wrenching new screams from her as the weight of her buckling body rested
painfully on the wooden tip of the wedge.

The unrelenting pain shooting through Kayleen's tormented joints was fanned to
new heights, her mind spinning in dread as she thought she had heard the noise
of cracking bone and her chest burned in agony from the effort to draw in
enough air to fuel the howls surging from the depth of her agonies. Her
tormentor let her convulse through the new wave of pain, and then, after
dousing her in cold water again, drove a wedge between her elbows.

She would have been screaming her lungs out now, if not for her constricted
ribcage and the last vestiges of her resolve, so the sounds escaping her
gaping mouth turned up as wheezing, almost inaudible wails of pitiful torment,
busting into fits of sheer agony when a wedge was driven between her ankles,
and then into choked gurgles when another was forced between her knees.

When he started driving wedges between her limbs, after pouring syrup into her
mouth, Kayleen's convulsed jerks reached new heights of intensity as her
wheezing screams burst through her clenched teeth in spite of her incredible
resolve in the face of the creaking sounds from her joints and limbs, each
marking a place where the bone cracked under the pressure.

Lyral's screams rose in pitch as she felt the cloth tighten around her limbs
while she writhed on the wedge point, unable to withstand the relentless burn
of the hot pepper ground all over her body by the tight wrapping and by her
own uninterrupted jerks. She was so engrossed in her own torment that she had
lost track of what was happening to her friend.

With devilish ability, Grod had managed to place the wooden restraints so that
Kayleen's bones were always on the point of cracking, without actually being
pushed beyond, so that her own jerks caused multiple small cracks instead of
actual fractures. As he added new wedges, new agonies shot through her
constricted joints and limbs, and when she jerked in reaction some constricted
bone or joint would crack as a result.

To protract the torment, all he had to do was to keep her jerking, because she
was now too exhausted and short of breath to keep twitching under the pain of
her crushed bones alone. He reached the saltwater tank where she had suffered
at the hands of Chang, and tested the water, but then, faithful to his
technique, just kept adding wedges between her limbs and around her ribcage,
discarding the thought of pouring salt water on her wounds as unnecessary.

His head rose in surprise when a robed figure neared and turned a ladle,
pouring a trickle of salt water over Kayleen's lap and then moving above the
breasts. She buckled and jerked as the salt stung her wounded skin, and then
hissed in sheer agony when the water reached her devastated crotch. Her
gasping wails and convulsed jerks lasted until the robed figure was satisfied
that salt water no longer caused her more pain than she already was in.


Chapter 13 - Zhorun's Discoveries

In the echoing darkness of the unlit torture chamber under the ruins of his
former castle, the undead corpse of the once powerful wizard Zhorun stood
silent and motionless, his unearthly gaze savoring the plight of his captives.

Kayleen had been bent over a wedge-shaped steel bar, her spread legs trembling
as the cuffs at her ankles kept the balls of her feet resting on wooden wedges
while her arms cuffed at the elbows and wrists were painfully twisted above
her shoulders and fastened to a ring in the floor.

Lyral's ankles were also cuffed to rings in the floor, spreading her thighs
just enough to let her hands slide out under the buttocks and placing her face
exactly under her friend's bleeding crotch. A fine chain ran from her wrists,
through a number of pulleys, to hooks piercing Kayleen's nipples, so even the
slightest movement from her hands wrenched screams of pain from her friend.
Lyral could not help jerking and crying in horror when a drop of her friend's
blood splashed on her face.

Deviously, Lyral's restraints prevented her from healing Kayleen except by
arching herself to reach the inside of her thighs, but doing so could tear her
friend's nipples off, and Lyral could not find the resolve to try again.

Fighting the urge to let the torment continue, Zhorun put his plan in motion
with a silent command from his mind and soon a new noise could be heard in the
room, the clanking of metal and the shuffling of feet.

"Who goes there ?" asked Kayleen, an edge of dread in her voice.

No answer came, and Lyral also focused on the noise, and when a whiff of
rotten stench reached her nostrils, concentrating, she caused a pearly glow to
diffuse around them, and gasped in horror at the sight of a rotting corpse
walking towards them in halting steps, a hapless prisoner judging from the
broken chains at his wrists and ankles, a crude wooden stalk making what
remained of his member rigid and protruding. "No, please, no. Not this,"
whispered Kayleen, her voice trembling.

Horrified, Lyral watched as the corpse widened his steps to avoid her and
bring his member in line with Kayleen's bleeding orifices, but then she shook
herself and let her power surge in a blaze of white light, which tore through
the corpse, hurting Zhorun's inquiring sight even a hundred paces away.

"There's another!" cried Kayleen, her hearing still keen, fear in her voice.

Lyral dispatched the second corpse before it got near Kayleen, but now that
she was back to some semblance of her former self, dread gripped her mind.

"Kayleen, you must be healed immediately. Even if this means to tear your
nipples off, the wounds in your ... privates are awful. But if more corpses
were to come, I might find myself lacking the power to destroy them all, and
even a single one would ... kill you, I mean."

"How many could you get rid of ?", asked Kayleen, Warrior Queen again.

"If I heal you now, maybe two or three. More than a dozen, otherwise. I wish I
could do the same with Zhorun, but I'm afraid he is far too powerful for me,
even if I were to get rid of this wizard gag still in my mouth,"

A dozen. Being ravaged by corpses, repeatedly. Kayleen trembled in dread at
the thought, but her pain-wracked body craved Lyral's healing touch, and she
really had no choice, "Do it now, Lyral. I'll try to make things easier"

Lyral gathered her resolve and arched, reaching her friend's thigh with her
lips while her friend's attempts to stifle the pain in the nipples failed with
a scream, and the healing power diffused into the wounded body of the blonde
warrior. Zhorun's mind rejoiced, as he now knew to what extent Priestesses
could be overwhelmed by numbers. He had ordered to gather information about
them, and although they were somewhat secretive, they were by no means
prepared for what he had in mind. And there were not many, much less than in
the past. He left, to investigate the new strategies thus made feasible before
the torture of the prisoners resumed in the upcoming morning.

Shaking under the impression of her friend's horrid torments, gathered during
the healing process, Lyral asked, "Kayleen, when the swarthy old man ..."

"Raped me ?"

"How did you withstand that, and what he did thereafter ?" sobbed Lyral, with
fright in her voice, "When he set his hands on me, I was so afraid that I
would have told him anything. How can you be so brave ?"

"I am not as brave as you think," whispered Kayleen, stabbed by guilt.

"But my tortures are nothing before the torments you face! And the old man is
the worst, the things he does, ..., angels of heaven, he ripped you apart!"
cried Lyral, her warm tears dripping on Kayleen's legs.

"Don't dwell on it, Lyral. They want that, they want us to quiver in fear and
betray Shandra. Maybe they're trying to scare you into talking, and maybe
tomorrow they'll force me to watch you being tortured. We're toys in their
hands, they can do anything they want with us, but as long as we hold on, they
lose.  Remember, Lyral, we must not give up. For ourselves, for each other,
for all our friends out there. They will rescue us, if we buy them some time."

Lyral pursued the matter no further, and Kayleen considered her own words,
brave words for someone who had betrayed an innocent young girl into this hell
of unrelenting torment. Words backed by hard facts, however, and in order to
amend her misdeeds she had to find an angle somehow.

Kayleen spent the rest of the night pondering their predicament, until she
recognized the footsteps which announced another day of torment. She called
Lyral's name, waking her up from her fitful, tormented sleep, and whispered,
"Lyral, wake up! Heal yourself, time is running out."

Lyral woke with a yelp, her mind heavy with dread, but as always Kayleen's
pragmatic suggestions spurred her to action and she managed to heal herself,
while Kayleen kept still. Their captors probably knew how Lyral helped her,
but she wanted to concede nothing.

The Easterner dragged Lyral away, while Grod tightened Kayleen's collar and
released her, dragging her muscular body under two chains where he fastened
her wrist cuffs, twisting back her arms at the shoulders and cuffing each
ankle to the corresponding wrist with another chain, pulling her legs off the
floor, horizontal and spread about two feet.

Before her, ten paces away, Lyral was having her wrists cuffed to a chain over
her head, and the Easterner then cuffed her ankles to another chain hanging
from the ceiling, pulling her legs up as if sitting in mid air.

Grod placed three buckets on the floor, and picked up a flogger from the
first, at the sight of which both girls cringed in dread. Each of its nine
strands ended in a heavy lead clip, and the thin leather, knotted every two
inches and soaked with liquid from the bucket, glittered menacingly.

The wry Easterner produced instead a long, slender cane and swinging it in a
wide arc slashed Lyral's thin arm, leaving an angry red stripe and eliciting a
shrill cry from her gagged mouth. Grod flexed his muscles and landed the
flogger on Kayleen's shoulder blades, obtaining a stifled gasp which turned
into a low hiss as the strong vinegar soaking the flogger seeped into the
bleeding welts left by the knots. While Kayleen shook her chains, the cane
slashed Lyral's ass cheeks, causing her to cry aloud and start weeping.

The flogger raked Kayleen's buttocks, leaving half a score of parallel red
stripes punctuated by bleeding welts. Again, the vinegar started stinging
fiercely, causing Kayleen to twitch and the Southerner nearby to savor the
sight of the Northern beauty buckling in her bonds. Lyral cried when the cane
struck her back, averting her gaze from Kayleen's plight.

Kayleen hissed in suppressed agony when the flogger slashed the soles of her
feet, first one then the other in quick succession, trembling as she realized
that this flogger was worse than the bullwhip and dreading what could happen
if it were used without long pauses after each strike. Lyral cried in rage as
the cane tore at her armpit, drawing a thin cut.

The flogger struck Kayleen's left calf, coiling around and raking the skin, a
vicious lash, meant to draw the howl which took all her resolve to stifle as
her muscles stiffened and flexed in silent agony, the burn from the first lash
still tormenting her shoulders because of the vinegar, so each lash added more
and more pain to her misery.

While Grod lashed Kayleen's other calf, Lyral was buckling in her chains, in
the vain attempt to safeguard her breasts from the cane, shrieking in despair
each time the Easterner slashed her soft flesh. Kayleen drew a long, agonized
breath when the flogger tore across her thighs, masterfully striking the
crease between buttock and thigh and the soft flesh behind the upper thigh.
That strike was followed immediately by another on the small of her back, the
breath turning to a gasp and her buckling to a frenzy, as the compounded pain
deeply taxed her resolve. Cold water was splashed on her face.

Lyral howled when the cane slashed the soles of her feet, and Kayleen's fists
clenched as she helplessly witnessed her friend's torment, and then opened
spasmodically as Grod raked the flogger across her front, slashing her abdomen
and breasts in a single strike which caused her to arch her back, throwing her
head back as she forced the howl surging from her throat into a seething hiss.

Lyral wept, lost in her own pain, while the flogger slashed her friend's
dangling body again. Slowly, Grod lashed Kayleen's soles, her calves, and the
front and back of her thighs, biding his time in order for the vinegar to
wrench new hisses and buckles from her pain-wracked body. In a corner of her
mind, she cursed him for forcing her to put up quite a show before the leering
eyes of the old Southerner, which ogled her heaving breasts, buckling hips and
slender legs as she contorted under the flogger.

While Lyral was allowed frequent pauses, Kayleen's only respite were short
sips of syrupy liquid. As her torment was protracted, rivulets of blood
started crossing on her flesh, each strike of the flogger causing a frenzy of
buckling agony as it landed on already smarting flesh. She was repeatedly
splashed with cold water, and her gasps rose in pitch when the flogger landed
between her legs, her thighs flexing deliciously under the harsh slashes of
the leather tails as Lyral turned her gaze in tears.

When Kayleen's convulsions under the flogger waned to twitches, Grod suspended
the torment and lowered her to the floor. He cuffed her elbows and wrists
together, then slid a low bench across the small of her back, lifting it about
two feet from the cold stone floor and cuffed her ankles wide at the corners
of the bench, twisting her legs painfully open. A chain was fastened to her
wrists and used to pull her in a tight hogtie, arching her back and exposing
her full, striped breasts. She tried to shun the beverage brought to her lips,
but Grod pinched her nose and poured it down her mouth.

The burly executioner circled her panting form and picked up a flogger which
had been soaking in a different bucket, one with nine long, heavy tails of
twisted animal hair. Unlike the previous, the tails were heavy with dripping
liquid. He swung it in a wide arc and brought it down between her folded leg
and thigh, causing her to buckle spasmodically as the knots tore the skin and
a curtailed scream screeched behind her clenched teeth.

Her contorted face relaxed only briefly, and then set again as she stifled a
gasp from the strong ammonia soaking the flogger, her bent leg twisting under
the mounting sting in the welts. Tears flowed from her eyes as another scream
was contained behind her clenched teeth when her tormentor brought the flogger
down on her abdomen, tracing bleeding stripes of torn skin.

The next strike fell under the already wounded sole of her right foot, and her
tormentor soon followed with another on the other foot, causing her restrained
body to twitch delightfully as hissing gasps escaped her clenched mouth. The
mounting pain under her soles rose to unbearable agony as no inch of the soft
flesh was safe from the tails and the caustic, and the repeated strikes
brought her desperate hisses to new heights on par with Lyral's unbridled
screaming as the cane trounced her nipples.

Unlike the vinegar, which protracted the pain of the wound, ammonia actually
irritated it, and thus repeated flogging of the same area caused the pain to
increase without bounds, as Kayleen found out when her tormentor targeted her
upthrust belly, drawing stripe after stripe of agonizing torment as she
buckled in her restraints, her body covered in sweat and her chest heaving as
she fought to stifle the screams rising from her tormented throat.

When her tormentor brought the flogger crashing on her proud, full breasts, a
scream of raw animal agony escaped her clenched lips and resounded in the
torture chamber, turning Lyral's teary gaze in time to see her friend's
convulsing body arch as new bleeding stripes graced her chest. For an instant,
Kayleen felt the grip of sheer terror at the thought of her breasts under a
succession of strikes like the one visited on her belly, and was about to
plead mercy, but Lyral's scream as the Easterner caned her soles reminded her
of her own brave words.

She managed to find her resolve just in time for the next strike, a vicious
slash across her quivering breasts which almost caused her to let out another
scream, followed after a long pause by a third, angled to rake across the
first two to maximize the pain from the ammonia. Strike after strike, pausing
only to soak the flogger every few times, the burly executioner slowly whipped
her proud breasts raw, ignoring her convulsing jerks, the mounting hisses of
unbridled agony and the occasional howling scream.

Trapped in a world of hurt, her breasts two globes of burning pain, Kayleen
found a new depth of agony when he targeted her nipples, which thus far had
been wounded only by accident. She managed to stifle her screams at first, but
as he protracted the torment the pain overwhelmed her and she cried out her
misery at the top of her lungs, sputtering when cold water was splashed on
her, spasmodically convulsing in her restraints after each lash as her ankles
and wrists bled in the tight grip of the iron cuffs.

Instead of respite she was given more laced liquid, and had only the time for
opening her eyes wide in horror before the flogger came down between her
splayed thighs, drawing new bleeding lines of searing agony in the soft flesh,
Lyral's gaze was as glued as the Southerner's on her twitching thighs as the
flogger tore through her nether regions, tracing bleeding welts which hurt
like hell as the ammonia seeped in the wounds, both new and old.

Kayleen's convulsions reached a new peak when her tormentor, after protracting
the flogging of her thighs beyond any measure of human endurance, concentrated
on her bleeding vulva, targeting the mons and sending the tips of the tail
cracking inside her cunt lips, wrenching from behind her clenched teeth howl
after howl of desperate agony. Slowly, splashing her with cold water
occasionally, Grod dragged her down the staircases of hell, whipping her groin
raw just like her breasts, a canvas of crisscrossing purple stripes, rashes
and bleeding welts smarting under the pungent bite of the ammonia solution,
whose smell testified to the number of lashes she had endured.

When her jerks subsided, and only then, Grod interrupted his ministrations,
bringing more laced liquid to her mouth while her mind waded through a haze of
pain, incongruously considering how she could gain some respite by pretending
to no longer feel the pain from the lashes. Grod unfastened her legs from the
bench and pulled them up and wide, cuffing each ankle to a chain from the
ceiling and pulling her up until her torso was almost vertical, sending pain
through her shoulders as her arms twisted in their sockets, while the back of
her neck rested on the cold floor.

Dread filled Kayleen's teary eyes at the thought of what her position entailed
while Grod produced yet another flogger, one consisting of nine long and thin
tails of snake hide, with knots every inch and nasty lead tips. The prospect
of facing it burned through the veils of her suffering just as Lyral's cry
echoed in the room when the cane lacerated her breasts.

The burly executioner flexed his muscles and sent the flogger coiling on her
bare buttocks, tracing half a score of thin cuts across the delectable flesh
and causing her to push her loins forward, opening her thighs even more to the
leering gaze of the omnipresent Southerner. The pain caused her to gurgle as
she managed to suppress a howl of agony and dread at the thought of what the
nine-tailed horror would do to her next.

Instead of following up with another strike, Grod scooped up a ladle of liquid
and dribbled it onto the wound, sending her in a frenzy of hissing gasps and
spasmodic jerks as the bleach burned into the open wounds in her ass cheeks,
its limited cleansing effect of no consolation to Kayleen's agonizing flesh.

Grod walked back to his original position before sending the flogger raking
across her ass cheeks again, causing her to twitch and hiss as more bleach
trickled on her wounds, both old and new, revealing to her new depths of
torment as the liquid flowed down her torso, finding no end of wounds to burn
through and wrenching new desperate gasps from the agonizing Kayleen. The
snake hide flogger inflicted too many cuts for uninterrupted use, so Grod's
technique was to alternate its strikes with bleach aspersions, cleaning the
wounds while deepening the torment of his victim.

The smell of bleach reached Lyral's nostrils after the tip of the cane slashed
her left nipple, and her cry was part her own pain and part horror at her
friend's fitful jerks as the whip traced thin cuts across her arms and
shoulders, each strike bringing new hisses and occasional gurgles from
Kayleen's drooling mouth. Her back was now a bright crimson wash of blood and
irritated skin, each lash tracing a new cut whose blood trickled down as the
bleach seeped in the wound and she writhed at the pain, still determined
enough to keep her silence but inching closer and closer to breaking.

Her torment found new depths when Grod started lashing her distended legs, the
soft, martyrized flesh quivering with thin cuts and trembling as bleach
trickled on it, turning it a fiery crimson every in the increasingly rare
place not yet marked by the horrendous flogging. Kayleen's screams surged
between clenched teeth, harder and harder to tame, and escaped her mouth in
fitful hisses, each drop of bleach bringing new convulsions of her body under
the leering gaze of the Southerner and Lyral's horrified stare.

When the snakeskin tails started coiling around her torso and slashing her
striped breasts, Lyral could no longer stand it. She averted her gaze, too
late to miss the droplets of blood spraying from the raw breast flesh, but
could do nothing for the agonized, hissing gasp erupting from Kayleen's mouth
when bleach trickled on her striped breast. Lyral tried to keep in mind
Kayleen's brave words, but each crack of the whip on Kayleen's bleeding
breasts shook her, and her friend's hisses and gurgles would not go away no
matter how much she shook her head.

"Stop! I'll tell you! Spare her and I'll tell you!" spat Lyral through her gag
after a shrill cry escaped Kayleen's resolve as her bleeding nipple was cut by
a vicious strike from her tireless tormentor, and a series of pitiful hisses
followed as the bleach flowing on her breast started burning the wound.

"Very well," whispered Zhorun, getting nearer to Lyral.

"No! Lyral, don't!" cried the agonizing Kayleen.

"I cannot stand still and let them torture you like this," sobbed Lyral.

"That's nothing! I can stand it! Don't tell them anything, Lyral!"

"If you don't talk, her torture will be immediately resumed," said Zhorun.

"Go ahead! Try your worst! I can take it! Lyral, please, don't tell them,
don't waste all the agonies I withstood thus far!" spat the Warrior Queen.

Sobbing, Lyral closed her eyes and shook her head. On Zhorun's cue, the
Easterner slashed her nipple with the cane, causing her to cry briefly but
still shake her head. Zhorun receded, after gesturing to Grod to proceed.

Grod lashed Kayleen's breasts again, repeatedly, until he managed to cut her
other nipple also, dribbling bleach all over her convulsing body as his victim
hissed and spat "You're not ... hurting me. Try ... harder."

His expression impenetrable, Grod moved to above her head and with his full
force flogged her displayed crotch, causing her thighs to twitch as the snake
skin cut the soft flesh and she suppressed a howl of agony, while Lyral
screamed in dismay. Instead of dribbling more bleach, Grod flogged her again,
at an angle, so that the cuts crossed the others, and then flogged her a third
time, at the opposite angle. When he trickled bleach on her crotch, her
convulsions shook the chains she hung from, just like her desperately
suppressed screams shook Lyral's innocent soul.

The Easterner caned Lyral's soles, first left and then right, pausing between
each strike to let her witness the suffering of her friend and striking each
time Kayleen was splashed with cold water.

Grod circled Kayleen's twitching form and placed behind her back, flexing his
muscles and aiming the next strike so that the tips wound over her crotch and
slashed into the lips, cutting thin bleeding wounds in the soft flesh as her
hung body jerked and twisted, her will turning a scream of agony into a cry,
"I can stand it! Don't tell them!". The next strike wrenched a gurgle from
her, and the next one a hissing gasp as her lips were cut again, so that when
Grod dribbled bleach her entire body shook in atrocious convulsions as the
liquid flowed down her front and back, but also seeped into her wounded lips
and entered her orifices. Lyral watched in horror as Kayleen's agonized jerks
tore at the chains, while she cried "Don't talk!"

Grod placed clamps on her cunt lips and on the folds covering her clitoris,
pulling them savagely and fastening them with taut cords. The snakeskin tails
cracked inside the splayed lips, slashing the soft flesh with the tips at the
top of their speed, spraying droplets of blood on her thighs. He dribbled more
bleach, and then flogged her vulva again, and kept alternating bleach and
flogging while Kayleen's hissing gasps merged into a single, uninterrupted
wail of sheer agony, interspersed with desperate cries of "Don't talk!"

When Kayleen came to, she realized that the flogging of her sex had been
protracted until she passed out. Her wounds had been treated, but a spider gag
had been placed in her mouth, and was soon used to pour laced liquid in her
parched throat. Her eyes sought Lyral's, but her friend's horrified gaze was
glued to the Southerner's preparations. Kayleen's heart sank as her gaze
followed Lyral's, and she saw the man laying out a selection of the wooden
wedges carved into implements of violation he was so fond of.

Lyral was being fastened to a large vertical waterwheel, her feet above her
head, but Kayleen was lying on a bench, with her legs pulled up at shoulder
height, the ankles cuffed wide apart to a cross beam. Her arms cuffed at the
elbows and the wrists had been pulled back, and the Southerner was coiling a
thin knotted cord around her left breast, tightening it at the base. Ignoring
Kayleen's gritted teeth he did the same on her other breast, then lowered a
chain from the cross beam and pulled her off the bench by her breasts, smiling
as she clenched her teeth and fought back tears.

"Soon, Your Haughtiness, we'll see what you can really stand. But let's have
some fun first," he said, and moved to her crotch. He smeared some powder on
his fingers and started rubbing it inside her vagina, following up with a soft
sponge to reach deeper inside. Kayleen trembled in dread because there was no
pain, not even itching, and when he disrobed, pulling something onto his
member, she closed her eyes before the inevitable rape.

Lyral cried out in pain as the waterwheel was cranked a few notches, pulling
her body taut and digging dozens of dull iron points in her soft back and
buttocks. Grod splashed her with cold water, allowing her to watch in horror
the brutal rape of her friend.

When the old man's member rasped Kayleen's love channel in a fiery surge of
blazing pain, a scream of agony and surprise escaped her mouth, fueled by the
scraping of the walls parched dry by the white powder. Her violator smiled at
the scream and pumped harder, delighting in wrenching more howls from her, now
that the gag deprived her of the easiest means of stifling them. Her violation
was soon over, as if he could not force himself to wait for what would follow,
but he did not forget to smear his semen on her whip cuts.

He immediately produced a collection of wooden wedges, of increasing size but
all deeply creased, oddly reminiscent of wooden doughnuts on a stick. He
pushed the first inside Kayleen's ass, slowly, the alternating creases and
ridges tearing and pulling at the sphincter as she cried and shook in her
restraints. The last ridge had tiny knobs, which wrenched a deeper wail from
her as they tore at the muscle when it was distended at its maximum.

"Scream all you want, Whore Queen! There's more coming," he growled.

He started pushing and pulling the device viciously, wrenching helpless cries
from his restrained victim as she swung from her breasts under his thrusts,
the mounting pain blazing through her striped body and surging unobstructed
from her distended mouth. Lyral shriveled under the barrage of Kayleen's
cries, torn between the desperate urge to put an end to the horrid torture and
the dedication to her friend.

"She will be tormented until you reveal the whereabouts of the Sorceress,"
whispered the corpse of the former wizard in Lyral's ears, "so there is no
point in protracting her agony. You'll break before her."

Panting, the old Southerner paused, poured the contents of the jug in
Kayleen's mouth, and fetched another wooden horror, whose frightening girth
disappeared in her parched vagina, bringing a blood-curling scream from her
sore throat. Her body swung in fitful jerks as her tormentor drove the wedge
back and forth, relentlessly tearing at her muscles and rasping her dried
channel. Her screams rose even higher when he switched to a larger implement,
and then to the next one, which ended up smeared with blood from her wounds
and the scratches being inflicted on her insides.

Her screams turned to sputtering gurgles when she was forced to drink, and
then subsided until he resumed the violation of her bowels, grabbing her pubic
hair with one hand and driving the wedge with the other, protracting her
convulsing jerks and pitiful cries until her sphincter was torn, wrenching a
howl of unbridled pain from her mouth as her body stiffened in sheer agony.

"Next one will make you squeal like the sow you are," he panted.

Without removing the wedge from her bleeding ass, he pushed another into her
sore vagina, renewing her cries as the implement was so large that he could
not push it inside. Drooling, he put a foot on the wedge and grabbed her pubic
hair with both hands, pushing it inside by force as she howled in unparalleled
agony while each ridge tore through the entrance, the knobs ripping bleeding
wounds in the distended muscle just as her screams rose under the vaults of
the torture chamber.

Lyral's own cries joined her friend's as her joints creaked under the pull of
the rack and the iron studs raked her back, but most of the dread in her cries
was still at her friend's violation, although the shame was fully hers as she
was proving unable to withstand a torture which to her eyes was nothing before
what her friend was enduring.

"Your friend has endured only two weeks of torture so far, and she's already
near collapse. What will be of her after two months ?" screeched Zhorun.

Aroused, Kayleen's tormentor smeared a reddish powder on two wedges and pushed
them into her orifices, then fixed a plank to the bench at crotch height and
circled her while her moans turned to shrieks as the hot pepper burned her
insides. The swarthy Southerner positioned at her head, disrobed his member
and penetrated her screaming mouth, pushing into her so that the bottom of the
wedges crashed into the plank as she swung from her breasts under his thrusts.

He protracted her humiliation until her fitful screams brought him to climax,
savoring her choked humiliation and bitter torment while the powder blazed her
insides and each thrust sent the wedge against her cervix. After coming, he
lazily kept pushing, wrenching new spasms of torment from her swinging body.

When her buckling subsided, he lowered her on the bench and made her drink,
then inspected at length her orifices, without following up with any
treatment. She was turned face down, her arms pulled up vertically behind her
back, and he clamped her nipples. Her legs were spread wide and her ankles
cuffed to rings in the floor, at shoulder height, while the clamps of her
nipples were pulled to a ring set at crotch height, forcing most of her weight
on her twisted shoulders and exposing her orifices to further violations.

"Maybe you think you can get away with it, but you won't. You'll just keep
screaming until you break, " added her tormentor.

He smeared oil on another wedge, and then repeatedly rolled it in rough sand,
his preparations not visible to the sobbing Kayleen but in plain sight for
Lyral, who averted her gaze when her friend's cry of despair rose in the
chamber as the wedge was thrust into her bowels. The old Southerner pushed it
in with both hands and twisted it, savoring how her body buckled with each
twist in the desperate attempt to lessen the scraping of her innards by the
sand, while the hot pepper oil burned them like searing flame.

After protracting her violation until he ran out of breath, he paused and
switched to a larger wedge, confident that the oil would help it slid in at
the price of more scraping torment. The next larger slid in with agonizing
difficulty, and Kayleen's howls now shook her body in rhythm with the thrusts
and twists of the devilish implement, each jerk tearing at her nipples.

Lyral caught her breath after screaming her lungs out from the sudden release
of her racked limbs, her gaze racing to her friend's convulsing form and the
horrors the old man was inflicting. Her mind twitched like a worm on a fish
hook before the sexual depravity of the torments he came up with, scared sick
of their viciousness and yet unable to keep her mind off them.

"Either of you will break, sooner rather than later if your screams are any
indication, and once I had the Sorceress properly dealt with, no one would
stand before me." whispered the corpse which had been a powerful wizard.

After another pause, the old Southerner scooped up some sand and smeared it
inside Kayleen's vagina, then pushed a dreadfully large wedge inside, twisting
its raw girth specifically to grind the sand inside the sensitive upper part
of her love channel. Kayleen screamed repeatedly in agony as the minute
particles of sand abraded the dry wall behind the upper part of the vaginal
rim, turning the pink source of female pleasure into a grinding hell of bloody
agony. Howls of torment escaped her parched lips as her hips convulsed with
each twist of the sand encrusted wedge, twitching as blood smeared the wood.

The amount of oil burning Kayleen's innards was such that even when he paused
for breath she found no respite, twitching in her restraints as waves of fire
rose from her insides and the pain compounded the ache in her arms and the
mounting pain in her nipples, subjected to harsh pulls whenever she jerked.

Her torment was resumed with a larger wedge, so large that it would never fit
if not for the oil, and when he pushed it in she cried in despair, still
herself enough to know that her torture was not even halfway. After splashing
her with cold water, the old man protracted the scraping of her vagina until
her anguished screams turned to pitiful wheezes.

"Look at yourself, Warrior Queen. You thought you had me defeated, and now it
is you who tastes bile in defeat. Once your pride has been shattered, I'll
manage to repay you of your deeds in full," said Zhorun.

Kayleen was lowered to the floor, still twitching and crying because of the
burning oil in her insides, and placed face up on the bench, her arms pulled
up behind her and tied to a ring on the floor, her thighs pulled wide by iron
bands at the knees and cuffed at the ankles. The laced liquid was poured down
her mouth again, and a thin cord was tied around her nipples and used to pull
her off the bench, turning her cries into a single, fitful wail as this
rekindled torment compounded the horrors she was undergoing.

Lyral paid little heed to her friend's predicament this time, as the rack was
tearing at her joints with unprecedented viciousness and the iron points in
her back and buttocks were drawing blood. She screamed in sheer agony as the
pain from the points caused her to twitch again, sending blazes of white hot
agony through her joints already near the point of dislocation.

"Now we see if Her Haughtiness can stand this," said the Southerner to Lyral,
holding up a wedge hacked raw, bristling with cuts, dents, and loose slivers.
Lyral saw the horrid device through a haze of bitter tears, and could not
bring herself to waste her friend's incredible endurance, but the thought of
her friend suffering that horror weighed on her mind.

Eager to get going, the Southerner moved back near Kayleen and watched as she
shut her eyes, her mouth forming a silent "No," which he enjoyed immensely, at
least until her head rose defiantly and she shouted "No, Lyral, don't talk!
Whatever they do to me, don't talk!"

Stymied on one hand, yet secretly pleased, he pushed the horrid device into
her swollen anus, scratching and tearing the walls while she shouted her lungs
out in a fitful howl of unbridled agony. Clutching her pubic hair with one
hand, he started pushing and pulling rhythmically, abrading her sphincter and
puncturing the inner walls of her rectum with dozens of tiny wooden splinters.

This, the sweat, the blood and the screams of this northern beauty suffering
at his hands ... this was his elixir of youth. After a protracted scraping, he
slowed his rhythm and started twisting instead, savoring the twitching of her
splayed thighs as blood soaked the wedge. Her head shook left and right as her
torment continued unabated, serving gut-wrenching screams of absolute agony on
the plate of his rekindled arousal.

To prevent her from bleeding too much, he pulled the wedge out and pushed in
another, smeared with the paste used to staunch open wounds, smiling as this
also caused her to gasp at the new intrusion. He splashed her with more cold
water, then his smile turned to an evil leer, and Kayleen's screams rose to
new heights when he squirted salt water into her ravaged rectum.

Kayleen's mind reeled in a sea of rolling waves of pain, no longer able to
cling to her last measure of defiance as he had robbed her of the ability to
deprive them of her screams. A new howl escaped her mouth as bitter tears flew
from her eyes when another raw wedge penetrated her vagina, digging deep
gouges on its walls and puncturing the rim with countless thin slivers in a
searing invasion of unparalleled cruelty.

"Now scream your lungs out, Whore Queen!"
He started twisting the wedge, and her bellows rose in frenzied agony as her
buckling spasmodically attempted to second the twists of the device to avoid
the dents on the wooden surface from cutting new gashes in her swollen love
channel, each jerk bringing stabs of tearing pain from her bound nipples also,
in a symphony of torment of which the old Southerner was director, composer
and enraptured spectator.

Lyral sobbed, as she was also the unwilling spectator of her friend's agonies,
unable to offset them and vaguely clinging to the hope that night would bring
a chance to soothe them. Her own suffering no longer looked tame to her, as
the pain in her joints increased mercilessly on each crank of the rack, but
she was still deeply ashamed of her inability to withstand the torture.

The Southerner paused, panting while Kayleen convulsed in a frenzy of screams
after he had dribbled bleach inside her wounded womb, and then resumed the
torment of her ass, twisting the wedge as she buckled spasmodically. He kept
alternating wood and bleach, womb and bowels, until she no longer reacted, at
which he sighed and called upon Grod for some much needed treatment of her
wounded innards and a sip from the jug.

It took longer than usual before she was deemed ready for further torment, but
she was placed with her back on the ground, and then her legs were pulled up
and above her shoulders, bending her until she rested on her shoulders, her
arms still painfully cuffed at the elbows and her ankles cuffed wide to rings
set in the floor.

"She will be tortured until you talk," whispered Zhorun to Lyral, "because she
is too proud to break, unlike you, and because her idea of the Sorceress'
whereabouts might be out of date. I want you to talk, and her to suffer."

Kayleen's body still twitched from the accumulated pain of the horrid ordeals
she had been subjected to. Her respite had been a cruelty of sorts as she had
hoped her torment was over, but had been plunged in hell soon thereafter. The
old Southerner pushed yet another wedge in her martyrized rectum, an horror of
splintered shards glued together, which wrenched a desperate howl of sheer
agony from her raucous throat as he wound the device deeper and deeper.

Another bundle of slivers was pushed into her swelling love channel, each
twist drawing another agonized scream of frenzied torment from her shaking
body, her gaping mouth drooling as her screams surged without interruption
while the slivers punctured her womb. Her position allowed him to twist and
turn the bundle with both hands, and his full force raked her womb mercilessly
while her restraints no longer allowed her hips to turn and stem the assault,
which was repeated over and over until he tired of her screams.

"She must suffer, my esteemed guest. Proceed, unless our Priestess here has
something to tell me," screeched Zhorun's voice when the old man paused.

The old Southerner produced a slender wedge and put the tip against a crack at
the bottom of the bundle violating her anus, then with considerable force
hammered it in, distending the bundle and pushing it against the swollen walls
of her rectum while her body stiffened for an instant and then convulsed in a
jerking frenzy of unspeakable torment. Buckling in her restraints, she caused
herself further agonies as each movement displaced dozens of tiny slivers
inside her hurt bowels and womb, engendering further spasmodic jerks in a
vicious cycle of inescapable, uninterrupted agony.

Lyral almost puked at this new horror, but her quivering body could not manage
that under the tension caused by the rack. She saw through tear-filled eyes
the robed figure of the former wizard lean over Kayleen's twitching body, as
if to savor every detail, and shuddered at the recollection of what she had
been taught about the wizards who chose to defy the grave.

When Kayleen's exhaustion diminished her twitches, her drooling tormentor
drove another wedge into her rectum, rekindling the spasms of her torment and
the concert of agonized screams. Wedge after wedge, each one smaller than its
predecessor but still distending her bowels among her howls of sheer animal
agony, he protracted Kayleen's torment farther than Lyral thought possible
even after what she had seen him doing.

Drooling and aroused, he moved to Kayleen's head and viciously penetrated her
mouth, leaning on her to drive a wedge in the bundle martyrizing her love
channel, enjoying himself immensely as her mouth gurgled her agony onto his
stiff member, and bringing the hammer down repeatedly, driving the same wedge
deeper and deeper before fetching another and protracting the unrelenting
torment until her desperate, choked screams made him come.

Keeping his member in her mouth, he savored her choking fits of jerking agony
as her buckles racked the slivers against her innards, smiling as he felt the
chance for another arousal in his aged loins. To achieve it, he refrained from
using more wedges and instead poured distilled grain spirit on her twitching
nether regions, soaking the wood.

Her screams reached new heights as the alcoholic liquid seeped into her open
wounds with a burning fury rivaling bleach or saltwater. He let her scream and
buckle until the wood was thoroughly soaked, then leisurely drove more wedges
in, each one squeezing out more alcohol to compound the pain from the slivers,
wrenching Kayleen through convulsing fits of spasmodic jerking and hopeless
screams of demented agony, but failing to rekindle his arousal.

Stymied, the old Southerner fastened a chain to the wooden implement in her
ass and pulled her up from the floor, savoring her renewed howls as the device
slowly receded from her bowels, splintering and tearing the tormented flesh
until she fell down. When a chain was fastened on the bundle in her vagina,
her parched mouth whispered something, which Lyral couldn't quite make out as
it turned into a heart-rending howl of harrowing agony, because the splintered
horror was pulling her vagina inside out, tearing at its stretched walls and
drawing the rim out of its seat in her blood splattered vulva.

With a demented laugh, her tormentor started pulling and releasing the chain,
tearing off her vagina but also breaking the splinters as they ripped through
the muscle while she howled in mindless torment, foaming at the mouth and
shaking as wave after wave of blazing agony blazed through her ravaged
femininity, her teary eyes searching Lyral's gaze in the determined attempt to
convey her desperate message, "Don't talk."

Grod and the Southerner took immediately to treating her profusely bleeding
wounds, wrenching more cries from her as they plucked splinters, smeared paste
and clipped shut the worst wounds. Lyral wept at her friend's abuse, but her
concern was shifting to what kind of restraint they would be left in and how
to reach Kayleen before she died of her wounds, when a screeching whisper
grated on her ears, "Her interrogation is not over. Unless our Priestess has
something to say, that is."

Her eyes bulged in horror at the thought of Kayleen being tortured to death,
while a cold shroud of dread tightened on her heart at the thought of
remaining alone in their hands. As she shook her head, weeping, she heard
Kayleen's whisper something again, unable to believe that she was still brave
enough to face more torture after what she had been put through.

Crying, Lyral said, "Kayleen, you cannot stand any more of this! How much
longer can you hold on ? I cannot let you die like this."

Kayleen's response was cut short by a kick to her face by the Southerner, who
said, "If she feels like it, I say we oblige."

But Lyral's eyes had caught the words on her friend's lips, and she lowered
her head, sobbing and crying, "Torture me! I am weak, I can't stand the pain,
please torture me and spare her. She'll never give up."

With a sickening smile, the Southerner, anticipating the torture of this
victim who cried in despair at mere words, neared Lyral and said "Well, unless
I'm mistaken, it's my turn, so I guess it won't be long, girl,"

Without removing her from the rack, he fetched the bundles of wooden splinters
still smeared with Kayleen's blood and started plucking some with pliers, well
aware of how deeply the horrid device scared the innocent Lyral. But the
orders were to preserve her maidenhood, so he just drove a splinter through
the soft flesh of her armpit while she screamed at the new pain.

Meanwhile, wearing an expression even more impenetrable than usual on his wry
face, the Easterner cuffed Kayleen's ankles together, cuffed her arms behind
her back and pulled her up by the ankles, half a foot off the floor. He
produced a collection of candles, and placed a kettle over a small coal fire.
He lit a candle, letting it burn for a while on the floor before her eyes, and
then picked it up to drip molten beeswax on her left ass cheek.

The brief illusion of respite suggested by the sweet smell of honey was torn
from Kayleen as the burning wax seared her flesh, sending her buckling and
wrenching a yowl from her savaged throat. Another drop followed, landing on a
whip wound, and so did the subsequent ones, tracing the thin cut in an
unrelenting stream. Although individually each burn paled before what she had
been subjected to so far, the mounting pain wrenched from her a sharp cry of
agonized despair as she recognized the first signs of another ordeal.

Somewhat unusually, the Easterner targeted her torn orifices right on, using
two candles to drip beeswax on her bleeding crotch as she twisted and screamed
under the unrelenting progression of small burns, buckling in the attempt to
obtain some pause as each drop stuck in a gouge or cut and kept searing it in
spite of her writhing attempts to dislodge them.

Her screams mounted as the uninterrupted dripping moved to her bleeding
sphincter, circling the torn rim in spite of her agonized jerks and sending
drops of molten wax down her swollen insides, where they stuck in the recesses
dug by the wooden splinters and seared her relentlessly, causing her to rattle
her chains as she buckled in the vain attempt to stem the pain in her bowels.

Lyral screamed in demented agony as splinters were driven under the nail of
her middle finger and soaked in wood spirit, her jerks tearing at her strained
body even if it was no longer pulled near dislocation. The pain was so intense
that she was sure she would not survive it, but when more were pushed under
her other fingers she found out how wrong she was.

"Our esteemed guest is hopefully fulfilling your wish, Priestess, so I hope
you'll fulfill mine soon. Your friend sounds near breaking anyhow, so you
might as well talk now," screeched Zhorun's voice.

Fetching a new pair of candles, the Easterner targeted the devastated rim of
Kayleen's vagina, dripping wax on the flapping folds of torn flesh around the
rim, the drops lodging where the ripped folds of each tear joined and sticking
there while she jerked in agony, bending at the waist enough to bring her
sweat soaked blonde mane at waist height and then arching while her thighs
twitched open as her femininity burned under the merciless wax.

The dripping of more wax inside her love channel resulted in a frenzy of
hoarse screams, each overlapping its predecessors as the drops fell faster
than she could scream, burning her without mercy as the searing droplets
nudged in the gouges dug by the wooden splinters.

In spite of her buckling and jerking, the Easterner protracted the searing of
her orifices until the area was covered in wax droplets in various stages of
cooling, slowing the dripping as it became harder and harder to find spots of
open skin. Kayleen found no respite from this as the wax took time to cool,
and her world become one of uninterrupted searing agony from dozens of tiny
wax burns no amount of twitching or screaming could dislodge.

Coldly, the Easterner wound a thin cord around the base of her breasts and
used it to pull her chest up in a reclined position, suitable for dripping
beeswax on her full mounds, initially following the thin cuts left from the
tails of the flogger, taking care to let drops lodge inside each wound while
Kayleen's screams were fanned anew and her twitching resumed in earnest.

More wax was dripped on her nipples, and mounting pain raged from her mouth as
the distended tendons of her neck looked on the verge of breaking while she
howled like a mad animal. Drop after drop crowded on her proud breasts until
these also became so covered in wax that further drops would no longer reach
Kayleen's martyrized skin, and her tormentor moved to dripping wax on the
exposed soles of her feet, engendering another sequel of frenzied jerks before
stopping and letting his victim twitch and cry until the wax cooled.

Lyral panted as she had been allowed some respite, shivering from the cold
water doused on her, no longer interested in comparing her torture to that of
her friend as the pain from the slivers under her fingernails was worse than
anything she had ever experienced, but still deeply frightened at the thought
of being in the hands of the man who had been capable of coming up with the
agonies visited on her friend's body.

More syrupy liquid was poured into Kayleen's mouth, and then the Easterner
picked up a bronze cruet, lit a oil burner in its base, and filled it with hot
honey from the kettle. He placed the sprout between her ankles, just under the
cuffs, and tilted it, releasing a thin stream of searing honey down her leg.

Kayleen's knees jerked away and she turned sideways, bending as the liquid
flowed slowly down her crisscrossed leg and along the soft flesh of the inner
thigh, leaving a burning crimson trace while she screamed her lungs out at the
protracted torment. The honey reached her hip and flowed down her belly, the
last drops reaching her bosom after first searing her at the calf.

When he shed some on the sole of her left foot, part of the liquid flowed down
her leg, wrenching a new scream from her sore throat, but most sunk in the
cool wax, melting slowly until it dug through and reached the skin beneath,
already smarting from the beeswax and now seared by the liquid trapped by the
surrounding wax. She screamed when the liquid first burned her, and kept
screaming while the heat persisted until her wild jerks caused it to flow in
rivulets of hot pain. The Easterner poured honey on her other sole, and waited
until it ran its full course before pouring more on her left foot again,
intent on melting away the wax encrusting her seared soles.

Lyral screamed again as slivers were pushed under her toenails, the promise of
ten being eventually driven home already bringing her on the verge of madness
after two. The recollections from her friend's agonies she had picked up
during healing had not prepared her to the intensity of the torment, and in a
corner of her she wondered how her friend could stifle her screams.

"Stubbornness will not help you, Priestess, but it will further your friend's
torment. She will be spared nothing," whispered Zhorun, an edge in his voice.

Kayleen was offered to drink from the jug again and then the Easterner
refilled the cruet, placing it against the back of her left thigh as she
trembled in dread before bursting in a scream of desperate torment as the
liquid flowed down the soft flesh, seared the ass cheek and lost itself in
rivulets of fiery agony down her welted back.

Each pouring of the liquid brought a protracted hell of searing torment as the
viscous liquid flowed slowly down her body, leaving a trail of burning pain
while she screamed and twitched in the frantic effort to keep it from the soft
spots of her tormented body. After repeating the torment of her thighs, the
Easterner started pouring the honey on her ass cheeks directly, searing
already burnt flesh while she cried in demented pain and twitched wildly,
pulling at the cord binding her breasts as if ready to tear them off.

Lyral howled while trembling with an intensity which would have caused her to
shake wildly if not for the pull of the rack, unable to withstand the pain of
the splinters her tormentor was driving in her breasts and soaking with wood
spirit. Her mind was now spinning in circles, unable to think about anything
else beyond her unprecedented torment.

When the Easterner's arms tired, he paused and let Kayleen drink again. In
spite of her unparalleled endurance and the drugs in the liquid, she was
nearly exhausted, her mind sliding into madness as her world folded into a
hell of searing torment. Although the honey was somewhat helpful in the
treatment of her bleeding wounds, the burns most certainly weren't, but her
tormentor gave her no further respite and started releasing hot honey on the
inside of her thighs, letting it flow down her crotch and belly as she buckled
and jerked between screams of unabated agony.

After protracting this further torment, he brought the cruet at chest height,
lingering as she wailed in dread at the horror about to be inflicted on her
tormented chest and then burst in a howl as the honey was poured on the
underside of her left breast, a thin stream of steaming liquid circling the
base of the breast and flowing down her ribcage while she twisted in mad pain
and her cries rose through the vaults of the torture chamber.

The cruet was then moved on top, circling along the full mound in order to let
the stream fall on the encrusted wax and melt swaths of it, leaving angry red
skin underneath as the honey oozed down her mounds and she screamed her lungs
out from the devastating torment. Unbelievably, her howls rose in pitch when
he dipped the honey onto her nipples, melting the wax off them and letting the
honey flow until her breasts were mostly free from wax and her voice had
turned to a wheeze from her uninterrupted screaming.

But the horrors of hell descended on her in earnest when he refilled the cruet
and started pouring honey on her crotch, because part of the liquid would melt
through the wax and form a pool onto burned skin from which it could be
dislodged only by spasmodic jerks and buckles, punctuated by heart-rending
howls of appalling torment which found neither consolation nor respite as her
tormentor occasionally dribbled more honey on her orifices.

The Southerner was starting to enjoy tormenting the young Priestess, drooling
at each sliver he managed to push into her nipples, already brimming in wooden
shards and at each scream he wrenched from her mouth when he poured wood
spirit on them. Her plump, pale flesh was delightfully easy to wound, and her
screams bore the sense of despair and anguish he craved in his victims.

Kayleen's torment was protracted until most of the wax melt away, leaving her
crotch area a crisscrossing of angry crimson burns, buckling in despair as the
liquid seeped inside her orifices kept searing her from within and causing her
to scream and cry in helpless agony, which found respite only when the liquid
slowly cooled off while her body was racked by frenzies of coughing.

She was given more syrupy liquid and her breasts were untied, wrenching
another scream from her as normal circulation was restored in the pain-wracked
mounds, but a post was placed against her back and her waist was fastened to
it with an iron band. Her legs were then doubled at the knee, cuffing the
ankles to the respective thighs, and her arms were cuffed together and pulled
up behind her back, arching her and exposing the breasts and crotch which were
the favored targets of all her tormentors.

As more iron bands were added above and below her breasts, Kayleen found
herself completely immobilized, unable to oppose her tormentor as he tightened
a screw around her nipple and pulled her right breast into a cone of burnt
pain, fastening the screw to the post with a fine chain and repeating the
operation with her other nipple. More screws were tightened on her cunt lips,
spreading them painfully wide, and the same fate befell her clitoral hood,
while she cried helplessly, more from dread from what the preparations
entailed than from pain.

A bronze container, heated by burning coals, was lifted above her head, with
over two scores of tiny hoses dangling from it, each ending in a clamp shaped
like a crocodile head. The Easterner placed two clamps on the soft flesh of
the crease between buttock and thigh, ignoring her yowl, then waited.

After a few moments, Kayleen started to scream as hot honey flowed down from
the container onto her clamped flesh, searing it and flowing down her ass
cheeks and her strong back in a thin uninterrupted stream of blazing agony
which engendered a frenzy of screams, while her strong body shivered in the
restrains, shaking them with the strength of utter desperation but unable to
throw them off. Unlike the torment effected by the Easterner's own hand, the
crocodile heads poured hot honey always in the same place, searing already
burnt skin, turning it crimson from angry red and unleashing a blazing hell of
unrelenting pain on Kayleen's screaming frame.

Her tormentor clamped her inner thighs, and then the soft underside of her
breasts, protracting each ministration of uninterrupted burning agony until
her fitful howling wheezed to a pitiful wail and then pouring more syrup into
her parched mouth. When he clamped her cunt lips her jerks actually shook the
post to the point of cracking it twice, and her screams gained in pitch what
they lost in volume as her voice failed to carry the full measure of her
unabated agony, but he kept them clamped and seared until the skin started
peeling off under the uninterrupted flow of searing liquid.

Her nipples were clamped next, and her torment was rekindled in full after the
briefest of respites, her twitching body glistening from the syrupy liquid and
madly straining against her iron restraints while she screamed uninterruptedly
between gasps and coughs as her nipples were slowly seared to peeling and her
breasts turned into mounds of burnt agony from the overflowing liquid hell.

Lyral howled in desperate agony as her tormentor drove more splinters into
those already piercing her breasts and nipples, splitting the old ones and
pushing the new between the two halves which would bulge in the wound just
before the new tip drove deeper.

"She will be tortured mercilessly, you know. The skin can only stand so much
heat before peeling away, but raw flesh takes longer," whispered Zhorun.

Kayleen's mind, wandering in a haze of pain, still clung on the last concept
she had formulated before pain became her sole master, and with unbelievable
bravery she managed to cry a desperate, "Don't talk, Lyral!" before drinking
the laced liquid offered to her, as if she knew what awaited her next.

Her tormentor clamped her clitoris, and the burning liquid trickled on her
love button, wrenching another howl from the bottom of the hell she had been
dragged into, and then engendering a fit of frenzied screams as the honey
dripped unrelentingly on her feminine flesh and seared it, adding burn to burn
and slowly peeling it raw.

Kayleen's torment was protracted beyond all boundaries of endurance, pouring
more syrupy liquid in her screaming mouth and alternating the crocodile clamps
between her nipples and the nub of her femininity, until, in spite of
everything, she slipped into unconsciousness.


Chapter 14 - The Pangs of Guilt

In the unlit torture chamber under the ruins of Zhorun's former castle, the
silence was frequently broken by moans and sobs, and the occasional cry of
bitter despair. Both occupants suffered because of the tortures inflicted on
them during the day, and because of the restraints they were placed under.

Kayleen's ankles had been cuffed high up behind a pillar almost too large for
her legs to encompass, forcing her to open them painfully, and her arms had
been bound together and twisted up above her head, fastening her cuffed wrists
to a ring on the floor. Both restraints conspired in squashing her burned
front, including the peeled nipples, on a rough carpet of bristles which
tormented her mercilessly at the slightest movement, for which the remorseless
bites of the flies all over her battered body provided incessant incentives.

Lyral's arms had been folded behind her neck, placing a knobbed steel rod
under her elbows and cuffing her wrists to her collar. Her legs had also been
folded under her, nudging another knobbed steel rod behind the knees and
fastening it against the one behind her elbows, with chains pulled shorter and
shorter until her soft breasts could not be compressed further. Her legs were
painfully bent outside her thighs, cuffing the ankles to a band at her waist.

In spite of the agony wrought on the muscles strained on the wheel, Lyral had
wasted no time in wriggling on the floor to reach her friend, unable to
dismiss the memory of the horrid torments inflicted on Kayleen and spurred by
her friend's occasional cries. The three tormentors had left them widely
separated, and Lyral soon lost any notion of time as she paused and resumed
her agonizing endeavor, until she reached Kayleen at last.

"Kayleen, I'm here. It'll be over soon, don't worry," she said through the
wizard gag as she felt the burnt skin. She concentrated briefly, causing a dim
glow to come into being and gasping at her friend's predicament. Since she was
again unable to use her hands, she delivered the healing with her lips, and
trembled when Kayleen stiffened. Soon her friend started weeping as her wounds
healed and closed, while the burns receded and new skin replaced them.

Although she had expected it, Lyral found the exposure to Kayleen's
accumulated agonies almost overwhelming, and started weeping herself. Back at
the top of her strength, Kayleen asked, "What's wrong, Lyral ?"

"The rack," lied Lyral, raising her head as Kayleen gasped and yowled because
one of the splinters in her womb had punctured her again, and asking "Is there
something not healing well, Kayleen ?"

"No, but I guess your power does not remove splinters," said Kayleen in a
feeble attempt at humor.

"They should be pushed out as the wound heals, but if they encounter an
obstacle this stops. Ordinarily I would help them out with my hands, but now
I'll have to use my mouth ..." she said tumbling on her own words, remembering
where the splinters were in Kayleen's supple body and feeling her cheeks
suddenly turn red in embarrassment.

"Go ahead, I'll try to help," said Kayleen matter of factly, attempting to
lift herself to allow her friend's head to reach between her legs. Dizzy,
Lyral wriggled and twisted, unable to concentrate as the smell of her friend
overwhelmed her senses. Incongruously, Kayleen giggled, "You're tickling me."

Concentrating on her power, Lyral renewed her healing, trying to dislodge the
wooden splinters and remove them with her tongue, stopping to heal herself
when a sliver pierced it. The process took time, because those beyond reach
had to be brought outside by forcing the wound to contract, causing them to
lodge in the flesh again and wrenching new yowls from her friend.

At length, they both stood still, panting hard, and the double sided nature of
their activities became clear to both, causing embarrassment and some
awkwardness as Lyral dreaded what she was discovering about herself and what
Kayleen would think of her. She hurried through the last splinters, eager to
see the end of the ungainly predicament, wounding Kayleen repeatedly and
cursing herself for her clumsiness.

"Kayleen, I should really have listened to you before speaking up, today. It's
just that ... I could not stand the sight of your torture. When they saw that
I could be broken by torturing you, they subjected you to the most abominable
torments in order to force me to speak. If you had not been so brave, I'd have
doomed us all. Will you ever forgive my foolishness ?"

Kayleen could not believe her ears, as the friend she had betrayed into this
hell and kept healing her wounds at the expense of her own begged for her
forgiveness. Overwhelmed by guilt, she spoke the words that should have been
said from the beginning.

"Lyral, I ... am not as brave as you think. I wish I were. The reason you're
here, in this hell of bloody torture, is because I was not brave enough. They
tortured me to know your location, and obtained it. It's me that should beg
for forgiveness," said Kayleen, her voice trailing into desperate sobs.

Lyral stood still, shocked, and then started weeping softly, each sob a stab
to Kayleen's heart as she cursed herself for attempting to cover up her
cowardice instead of speaking up at the beginning. In the darkness, Zhorun
thrilled at the exchange, seeing his little game come to fruition.

Lyral's shock was so deep that she ignored Kayleen's pressing advice to heal
herself as the approaching footsteps announced the start of another day of
torment, nor did she try to move away from Kayleen when the first torch shone
its light on their chained bodies. Crying softly, Kayleen swore to herself
that no word would ever escape her mouth again, even if she had to shed her
pride and squeal like a stuck pig all the way to hell.

Finding the prisoners close together did not engender any reaction from the
three torturers, noticed Kayleen. Grod tightened the collar on her windpipe
before freeing her legs and dragging her under a chain dangling from the
ceiling, which Kayleen recognized as the one used for the torment of the arms
twisted behind the back. True to form, her tormentor fastened her wrists to
the chain, but before pulling her up he cuffed her ankles together.

Meanwhile, the Southerner finished cuffing Lyral to the ladder, and with a
flourish uncovered his collection of biting and stinging insects. The young
girl shrieked at the sight of the critters twitching in the jugs, but he
mocked her, "Squealing already, my pretty ? I haven't even started yet."

He picked up a wasp with consummate ability and placed it behind her left
knee, smiling when Lyral's voice rose in a shriek from the vicious sting. As
he had done with Kayleen, he moved the insect down her leg, letting it sting
her repeatedly while the girl screamed in terror.

"Your friend there already knows these, of course, but with you we're just
getting acquainted," he said, taking the wasp under the sole of her feet to
increase the pain. He planned to land some serious stings before pausing to
let the girl witness the torture of her friend, so he next brought the wasp
against Lyral's nipple and laughed when she arched crying from the sting.

Kayleen screamed when Grod pulled her wrists up, a scream of pain and despair
as the accursed gag would again let her agonies vent for all to hear and enjoy
in spite of her efforts to salvage some dignity. Like last time, just the
torment of hanging from the wrists was mind numbing, and Grod let her hang
while pain rose in her shoulders and blazed in her twisted joints, while she
screamed and cried in waves of agony and misery.

Remembering her previous ordeal, Kayleen tried to be as still as possible, but
the unrelenting agony in her sockets wrenched new screams and gasps from her
mouth and her head started shaking as the mounting pain tore through her,
while the sight of her supple body trembling, the legs contracting and
distending slowly, was a feast for the eyes of her tormentors.

When her screams subsided, Grod neared and started smearing thick grease under
the soles of her feet. Once done, he wheeled in a brazier of hot coals and
placed it under her feet, then started lowering her until she felt the heat
and pulled her legs up with a drawn breath of tormented desperation, as she
realized the grisly fate awaiting her.

"You guessed right. Talk, girl, this is just the beginning." said Grod.

He let her hang with her legs folded, well aware that she was no ordinary
woman and with her endurance and physique could have held on for a long time,
but he was prepared. He uncoiled the bullwhip and lashed her calves, causing
her to buckle and distend her legs. When the heat licked her feet she pulled
them up again, only to jerk when the whip cut the front of her thighs, causing
her to scream in pain and despair as she measured the ordeal facing her.

After repeatedly whipping her lower limbs, however, Grod paused. He did not
want her to become so exhausted that she would no longer be able to pull her
feet up once they slipped into the fire the first time, so he lowered her
closer to the heat, forcing her to bend her legs and letting the scorching
heat lick at her limbs as she twitched in agony from her torn shoulders.

He pulled her up, allowing the heated grease to bubble under her soles while
she convulsed in her chains, flailing her legs and screaming from the pain in
her shoulders and soles. He lowered her again, over a dozen times, pulling her
up after a few seconds and pausing while her legs jerked spasmodically. Now
that she was getting tired, he resumed the lashing of her limbs, and this time
she reacted by distending her legs, slipping into the heat.

Lyral watched with tear streaked eyes as the splendid body of her friend
contorted in pain, her supple legs flailing and the ample chest glistening
with perspiration as she screamed when the bullwhip traced thin cuts on her
silken skin. She watched as her friend's leg muscles slowly gave, lowering the
slender feet into the heat, where they twitched and trembled for a few
seconds, the toes curling spasmodically while the skin turned angry red and
then glistening crimson, until, with an anguished scream, the tired muscles
managed to pull the feet away from the roaring heat.

Kayleen's howls of torment rose and waned as her tired muscles and the whip
forced her feet to slide closer to the heat, bursting in screaming agony when
the scorching of her soles caused her to jerk her legs up again. The grease
under her feet had provided some protection at first, but over time turned
into another means of torment as it started heating and bubbling, searing her
singed skin even when removed from the raging heat.

Each convulsing spasm shot new agonies in her sockets and tore a new scream
from her mouth, but was the only way to pull her feet from the fierce heat as
the grease boiled under her soles, blisters forming where a bubble burst
exposing the skin to the full heat of the raging brazier.

Slowly, the time her feet spent in the raging heat increased, as even the
unbelievable endurance which had enabled her to save them from the brunt of
the heat, at the price of unbearable agonies in her arms and shoulders, waned.
Grod removed the brazier after she managed to pull herself up again only after
flailing her feet in the raging heat longer than usual, and brought the jug to
her lips, in spite of her attempts to refuse.

As if on cue, the Southerner picked up a spider and pressed it inside Lyral's
armpit, wrenching a surprised shriek of terror and pain from the young girl as
she was entirely absorbed in her friend's ordeal. The spider, irritated by the
tweezers holding it, bit her repeatedly as he dragged it from the armpit onto
her quivering breast, each bite causing her to arch and buckle over the ladder
as the Southerner ogled her soft, creamy body.

Grod cuffed Kayleen's ankles to a pillory, pulling her legs up horizontally as
she cried in pain from the additional twist on her shoulders. The pillory
forced her to almost sit in mid air, hanging by her twisted arms and unable to
turn on herself to relieve her shoulders. He fetched an iron lamp, filled it
with oil and set it alight, then waved it at some distance under her thighs,
moving slowly back and forth as she cried in pain while he singed the skin.

He then smeared more grease on the now red skin and raised her a little,
enough to insert a narrow brazier under her thighs. When the fierce heat
reached her, she immediately jerked herself up, sending a wave of blazing
agony through her shoulders and screaming at the top of her lungs, as she had
to arch her body in order to avoid the heat.

Unlike with her feet, even her formidable physique could not hold continuously
that position for long, and she soon had to lower herself on the brazier
again, howling as the grease started heating and bubbling on her soft flesh,
and renewing her howl when she managed to pull herself up again only to fall
back in the heat immediately thereafter, screaming aloud when a bubble burst,
exposing a patch of skin which blistered under the heat.

The Southerner paused Lyral's torture, allowing the spider a last bite at her
pink nipple which brought her to howl like never before, and stood, unsure as
to which of the suffering victims delighted him the most. Lyral kept twitching
from the abject pain in her breasts for a long time, sobbing and coughing,
aware of her friend's ordeal but overwhelmed by her own.

Grod let Kayleen howl and scream, arching and buckling for the delight of the
onlookers, then turned a screw in the pillory holding her feet, pulling them
farther and distending her from a sitting to a reclined position, bringing the
heat under a so far untouched area higher up the thigh, which required her to
arch ever more and resulting in more agonized cries as her shoulders suffered
the consequences of her frantic efforts to keep clear of the heat.

Lyral sobbed at her friend's agonies, cursing herself as they were obviously
torturing her friend while leaving her almost unmolested. Incongruously, she
asked herself why they didn't torture her directly, as what little endurance
she could muster would shatter before the torments faced by her friend.

Kayleen's cries continued without interruption as the screw slowly dragged the
brazier along her thighs, the only respite being from the occasional sip from
the jug. Over time, a lingering smell of singed flesh materialized, while her
supple body writhed and buckled in pain over the brazier, her hellish torment
protracted until it reached her shapely ass cheeks.

Another brief sip from the jug was all the respite she was given before her
greased buttocks were also exposed to the heat rising from the narrow brazier,
a heat her muscles could deliver her skin from only briefly, because her body
was distended almost horizontally in mid air with her arms twisted behind her
back, and the only way to lift her buttocks was to arch her loins, a feat she
paid with rending spams of blazing torment in her arms and shoulders.

Unable to avert her horrified gaze from her buckling friend, Lyral suddenly
realized the perversity of the torment, because on any victim less physically
endowed it would quickly result in burns so severe that the victim would pass
out. Kayleen's astounding endurance and physique, instead, allowed her to
temporarily interrupt her exposure to the raging heat, at the expense of her
tormented arms and shoulders.

Still able to lift herself after a protracted sequel of agonized jerks,
Kayleen shook and trembled while the heat lapped her buttocks, crying and
howling as the boiling grease seared her skin and the blisters turned to
oozing, crimson burns. The screw moved the brazier back down, searing already
singed flesh, and she found the strength to raise herself again, sparing her
thighs the brunt of the heat at the expense of horrendous torment in her
shoulders, while her face contorted in agony and her screams raged from her
parched throat in frenzies of unbridled pain.

When the brazier was removed and she was offered the jug again, she drank it
avidly, twitching from the pain in her shoulders. Her eyes widened in horror
when Grod started searing her legs with the lamp, ignoring her cries of agony
and meticulously singing them bright red. She screamed when he closed iron
bands around the seared flesh of her thighs, folded the legs under the thighs
and cuffed the ankles to thigh bands, pressing burnt flesh against burnt
flesh, in a nightmare of pain which caused Lyral's eye to widen at the
perversity of the torment and sent her twitching and jerking, unable to
prevent her convulsions from inducing new agonies in her arms and shoulders.

The pain from her singed flesh mounted instead of subsiding, causing her to
scream and howl as she jerked spasmodically, and brought further torments to
her taxed shoulders. Her elbows were a single knot of blazing agony, her arms
ached fiercely, and her sockets felt like tearing off any time as waves of
blazing pain shot through them, each wrenching a new cry from her mouth.

Lyral's scream joined her friend's as the Southerner pressed the spider under
the soft underside of her right breast, letting it vent its anger at being
grabbed by his tweezers on the soft flesh of the screaming girl. Under strict
orders to preserve her maidenhood, the old man decided that her breasts, soft
and plump, the pink areolas standing out against the creamy skin, were the
next best target, so he fetched another spider and placed it near the base of
the nipple, following each twist of her panting chest to make sure new bites
wrenched new screams from his young victim.

When Kayleen's jerks subsided, Grod started smearing grease on her crotch and
inside her thighs, pausing to look her in the eyes to make sure she understood
what would come next, and continuing when he found resolve beyond the dread in
the bulging blue eyes. With one lamp in each hand, he brought them up against
the inner thighs and started methodically heating the grease, moving the lamps
up and down as her thighs jerked open spasmodically, twitching invitingly as
she howled in sheer agony at the repeated pulls on her torn shoulders and the
mounting heat under her tormented thighs.

When done, he lowered her on three lamps, their flames placed at different
heights, two searing her inner thighs and the middle one poised to scorch her
feminine parts. Supposedly, her twisted arms and torn shoulders could not do
anything to spare her nether parts from fire, but after the first anguished
cry from the pain in her tenderized thighs, her incredible physique proved his
worth again by allowing her to pull herself up, bending at the waist, gaining
one or two inches off the lamp lapping at her crotch at the price of a
gut-wrenching scream of protracted desperation from the pain in her muscles.

However incredible was her feat, her muscles soon gave and the flame lapped at
her groin, her cunt lips gaping because she had jerked her thighs open as the
other lamps seared them. A howl of desperate agony rose to the ceiling, and
she pulled herself up again. When her muscles failed another howl followed,
this time followed by harsh cries as the heated grease scorched the soft skin.

Hanging from her twisted arms, Kayleen screamed again when the flame lapped
her femininity for the third time, and her howls rose higher and higher as
each time the heat persisted longer, her straining muscles still incredibly
managing to deliver her, but not from the bubbling grease, except when a
scream of anguish bespoke a lapse exposing her crotch to the blistering heat.

Lyral watched in sobbing pain as her friend fought her howling battle against
the lamps, the thighs twitching spasmodically as she spread them wider in the
spasmodic effort to spare the places already scorched crimson. When the strong
arms failed, her friend's body convulsed in howling torment as the flame
licked the spread cunt lips, blistering them mercilessly to the point of
causing the rim of the vagina to twitch visibly in spasmodic agony.

Kayleen was given some respite when Grod removed the lamps and offered her the
jug, from which she drank as if it were the finest wine, but then her ankles
were cuffed to another pillory and her legs pulled back, causing her dangling
body to slump, a position allowing Grod to conveniently smear her front with
grease. Fear rose through the haze of pain in her mind as she realized what
this entailed, looking at the narrow brazier nearby.

Lyral's renewed screams turned her friend's head when the Southerner placed a
fresh wasp on her swollen nipple, drooling at the sight of the contorted
visage of the young Priestess. He let the wasp sting repeatedly, and then
replaced it with another, well aware that wasps liked to sting again where
another had stung. Smiling, he decided to keep stinging the same nipple again
and again as Lyral's screams intensified deliciously.

Grod singed meticulously Kayleen's front, ignoring her yowls and cries, well
aware that heat on singed flesh was more painful. His intent was to let the
brazier torment her right from the start, while her muscles were still strong
enough to lift her away from the worst of the heat, so that she would rise and
fall repeatedly instead of holding on up to a final collapse.

Her uninterrupted howls of exhausted agony proved that the method met the
intent. As each turn of the screw moved the brazier under a new section of her
front, a fitful nightmare of scorching agony was visited on her flesh, a
nightmare she could spare herself from only by pushing spasmodically on her
strained muscles, exchanging the unrelenting pain from her twisted shoulders
with the lapping torment of the burning brazier.

When the brazier reached her bosom, the heat assaulted her with roaring fury
as she found between heart-rending howls that her muscles would have to
provide for the extra inches afforded by her generous breasts, in order for
her nipples to be spared from blistering in the unrelenting heat. Scream after
scream, she managed to, her whole body aching as the grease on her nipples
bubbled, cooling partially only when her incredible physique managed another
feat of endurance, but preserving them from being scorched raw.

Lyral was given some respite when the Southerner stopped holding one spider
against each of her nipples, not because he was sated with her uninterrupted
screaming as the legged horrors bit her tender flesh repeatedly, but because
he was drooling at the sight of the splendid body of her friend contorting
over the braziers, unable to lift his gaze from the proud, quivering breasts.

Over time, whenever Kayleen's fatigued muscles found increasingly difficult to
preserve her from the searing heat, even her strong body slumped and tiny
blisters started appearing on her nipples, each wrenching a higher shriek of
sheer pain and spasmodically jerking her shoulders into deeper agony.

Another brazier was placed under her crotch, and soon its heat set the greased
blonde curls of her mons alight, dragging her down a new pit of frenzied
torment as her hair burned slowly while her buckles rattled the chains and her
inhuman screams tore through her throat one after another, faster than her
lungs could fuel them, each reaching Lyral's ears and stabbing at her heart.

Grod protracted her torment mercilessly, only removing the braziers
occasionally to smear more grease on her breasts and crotch, too little
respite for her scorched nipples or her seared cunt lips to stifle her
frenzied litanies of screaming agony. Only when one shoulder first, and then
the other, dislocated under her spasmodic jerks did he finally remove the
braziers and her ankle chain, pulling her up by her devastated shoulders and
leaving her swinging and crying in bitter pain.

Smiling in anticipation, the Southerner left the sobbing Lyral and circled
Kayleen, disrobing and thrusting his throbbing member up her ass while
grabbing her by her hips, savoring her cry of humiliation and pain as the
recoil tore at her dislocated shoulders, a cry which was but the first of many
to follow as each thrust jarred her and pulled at her pain-wracked limbs.

With a chilling glee on his swarthy visage, he opened a holder and laid out
the contents, dozens of needles of various lengths, each tip dipped through a
cork cap into the fluid of a thin vial. Kneeling, he picked a long needle and
slowly pushed it through her twitching calf, savoring her shriek and the gasps
which followed, as the spider poison irritated the wound, sending her leg
twitching and rekindling the pain in her shoulders.

"How come Your Haughtiness is crying like a sow already ?" he mocked.

"It is her voice we wish to hear, remember," whispered Zhorun's silent figure,
shutting up the swarthy old man. Lyral jumped at his words.

The Southerner pushed the next needle pushed the nail of Kayleen's little
finger, twisting it as she screamed hoarsely, to make sure the poison seeped
in, then without waiting slid another under the nail of her right thumb,
following up with more as the venom took effect and she started gasping and
crying, twitching her hands spasmodically in the vain attempt to relieve the
torment under her nails.

Drooling, the old man drove a short needle from under the areola of her left
breast through the full length of the nipple, and in spite of her screaming
jerks of torment followed up with two more, pausing as if to drink at the
fountain of her agony while her face contorted in harsh gasps at the mounting
pain from her fingers and toes.

Lyral watched in dread as her friend trembled from the awful torment, still
hanging from her dislocated shoulders and jerking her head up in agonized
cries when her tormentor started driving short needles in the soft flesh
between her fingers, and between her toes thereafter. Undoubtedly the needles
carried different kinds of venom, because her nails bled a reddish foam while
her nipple was swelling horrendously.

The Southerner started tightening a thin cord around Kayleen's swelling
nipple, a wet strip of leather, and lingered with another needle of the same
type near her other breast, teasing her panting chest and pulling back when
she twitched away desperately, screaming on each jerk of her dislocated
shoulders. The needle pierced her scorched flesh only when he tired of her
pitiful attempts at escaping his little game, and the others followed after
many screams and hisses from the desperately twitching Kayleen.

He fetched another long needle and pushed it down the length of her other
calf, using his full strength to drive it through the muscle while her buckles
shook her whole body, from the blemished toes to the arms agonizing under the
uninterrupted strain. Similar needles were driven up her aching forearms,
causing them to spasm in burning agony as her muscles were shot by renewed
pain because of the venom coursing through their strained fibers.

Noticing the swelling of her other nipple, her tormentor tightened on it a
cord not unlike the one already tormenting its twin, digging in the scorched
flesh as the venom caused it to swell to over twice its proportions. When he
fetched another needle dipped in the same venom, the simple act of kneeling
before her sent Kayleen in a frenzy of dreadful screams and pain-wracked jerks
as her hips buckled and turned in the frantic attempt to spare the femininity
he targeted, as testified by his leering smile and lustful eyes.

After protracting his game while she jerked her dislocated shoulders into new
depths of screaming pain, he put the needle aside and fetched a wedge-shaped
steel bar, which he fastened under her elbow cuffs. He then bent and pulled
her left leg up, cuffing the ankle to a ring at the left end of the bar while
she screamed and flailed from the new pain in her torn shoulders. With effort,
he did the same to her other leg, suspending her in a position which increased
the pull on her arms and shoulders but also allowed unhampered access.

He kneeled before her, almost overwhelmed by the thrill at her desperate
scream of pain and despair, pulled her clitoris upwards with his thumb and
then pushed a needle into the pink flesh at the base, while Kayleen's voice
rose in an abominable scream, and drove it along its short length, following
up with another while her howls scorched her already parched throat and then
with a third from above, the three points jutting out from the tip of the
feminine organ now punctured into a horrid mockery of a tiny male penis as
Kayleen screamed in uninterrupted, helpless agony.

He poured laced water in her sputtering mouth while the pain from her pierced
femininity still raged through her body, and allowed herself to contemplate
her twitching body as it hung from the strained arms, wracked by her screams
of desperate agony. When her jerks subsided, he rose and tied a thin cord at
the base of the swelling clitoris, then drove another three needles along its
tiny length, elongating it further while Kayleen's voice rose in another
frenzy of agonized howls from the unbearable pain.

Whistling, the old Southerner fetched a needle of a different kind, a four
inch barbed needle dipped in a greenish serum, and thrust it in her leg,
forcing it along the fiber of her twitching muscle while she screamed her
lungs out as the tip overcame the fierce resistance of her flesh. Lyral gasped
in horror at the sight of the dozens of such needles awaiting nearby.

Another nightmare of unbearable pain and fitful screams descended over
Kayleen's twitching form as the Southerner started driving the long needles
through her taut muscles, because after the excruciating torment of the steel
tip piercing the taut flesh came the burning agony of the venom, which caused
recurring spasms in the strained muscles, strong enough to bend the steel
needles twisting them through her flesh. The last needles he drove through the
inside of her thighs, letting the tips protrude near her burned crotch.

Kayleen's merciless tormentor paused only to let her drink again, then started
pushing shorter needles between her ribs, each one making her breathing more
painful and compounding the torment of each scream, including the one it
caused. But he really started enjoying his task again when he got started on
her buttocks, where he could alternate between short needles, pushed deep in
the flesh, and long needles, pushed along the length of folds pulled from the
burned skin by his old but still strong hands, while his helpless victim
screamed herself hoarse from the unimaginable pain.

The old Southerner put on a pair of thick leather gloves and started driving
nasty, short needles with a forked tip and dipped in yellowish venom through
the soft skin of her sides and belly, sending her screaming and convulsing
again as his hands pinched the flesh into folds for the needles to pierce. Her
screams rose even higher when he drove a couple through her lips and tongue,
trapping it outside her teeth and laughing at the horror in her eyes.

The venom in these needles burned like wasp venom, and the dozens of short
needles he drove through her torso, buttocks and thighs started burning in
waves of devastating pain which rekindled the torment of her strained muscles
from the longer needles still piercing them, a cruel combination of agonizing
torments which sent Kayleen's body into alternating frenzies of spasmodic
jerking and uncontrollable convulsions, punctuated by howling shrieks.

While Kayleen waded through the waves of agony from his last torment, the old
Southerner was already preparing the next, driving needles deep under her
burned breasts and wrenching new screams from her as the spider venom coursed
through her punished flesh. When his gloved hands started pinching her tit
flesh and driving the short needles in, the pain from the forked tips made
Kayleen almost delirious, her screams growing so desperate that she ripped her
tongue open, tearing the needles through.

With almost religious fervor, the old Southerner started a new torment, using
needles which he measured and cut to size before savagely grabbing her breast,
driving the needle through the base and letting the forked tip jut out at the
areola, resting on the swollen, bound nipple while Kayleen's howls reached new
peaks of unbridled agony. Needle after needle, he turned her breasts into
distended cones of quivering torment, because whenever she breathed out the
tips sunk into the swollen nipple, cutting her breath into a new scream.

He poured abundant water into her sputtering mouth, smiling in anticipation at
what he still had in store for her. Grabbing her cunt lips, he pushed them
onto the tips of the long needles still piercing her thigh muscles, four on
each side, and used smaller needles to braid the bleeding flesh around the
tips, leaving her cunt lips pulled obscenely wide. More needles were driven
into the inner lips and the rim of flesh of her vagina, opening them as much
as possible, while her howls crowded in her bleeding mouth faster than she
could utter them as air whistled through her tormented lungs.

In spite of her spasmodic convulsions, he grabbed her punctured clitoris and
twisted it, wrenching from her a howl of inhuman agony as the needles tore
through her throbbing femininity. He kept twitching it, pausing to let her
howling convulsions subside, until her screams diminished. He then twisted it
again and stitched it to the seared flesh of her mons with a needle through
the tip, drooling as she screamed from unexplored pits of agony

Circling her, he uncovered his member, sheathed it in leather, grabbed her
cunt lips with both hands, pulling her loins up from behind while she howled
from the pain descending from her dislocated sockets as much as from the agony
rising from the needles ripping through her feminine flesh, and rammed it into
her vagina, violating her again with a rutting growl of absolute pleasure
while she shook in the throes of howling shrieks of sheer agony.

Time brought no respite to the gurgling Kayleen, because his arousal, probably
because of yet another recourse to his drugs, showed no sign of subsiding and
his frenzied thrusts protracted her howling nightmare beyond belief, until at
last he pulled out and let her hang in convulsed torment.

When he brought the jug to her lips, she cried desperately at the prospect of
further torments, so he poured the liquid into her sputtering mouth until her
cries rose in pitch again and started driving needles coated in scorpion venom
under her soles and into her armpits, pushing her on the brink of madness as
new torments soared from her burning flesh, rekindling the pain in her
bleeding nipples on each breath intake. Methodically, he pushed more needles
into her thighs and buttocks, each time pausing after each one until her cries
and jerks subsided, and then into her breasts, stopping to admire his work
while she cried spasmodically, foaming at the mouth in utter agony.

When her cries started waning into pitiful wheezing wails, he drove a needle
through each nipple, pushing it slowly through the bud swelling painfully
against the cord tightened according to its original size and adding new blood
to the rivulets caused by the needle tips. Even this protracted her agonies by
a handful of minutes, so he pushed another nipple through her twisted clitoris
and was satisfied in seeing her jerk spasmodically again and hearing her
renewed howls of gut-wrenching agony, at least until these waned too.

Although Kayleen was not allowed the blessed respite of unconsciousness, she
slowly slid into a tormented exhaustion, punctuated by occasional wheezing
cries when she breathed out deeply and the needle tips stabbed her swollen
nipples, or when a spasm coursed through her dislocated shoulders twisting the
long needles inside the strained muscles of her limbs. She hardly noticed that
the Easterner had took over her torment, and her arms found no respite when a
sloping plank was placed under her loins because it was a hair split too low
to take some weight off her arms. Only the cursed water revived her somewhat.

Lyral, however, moaned in horror when the Easterner brought near the plank a
cart where rats of various sizes squealed inside weird metal cages, causing
Kayleen to dart her own bulging eyes around in dread. Although hanging from
her arms prevented her from seeing them behind her, just the effort of
twisting back her head wrought fresh cries from her, renewing the torment in
her shoulders and nipples.

The Easterner adjusted the plank so that it lapped Kayleen's pierced groin and
fetched a small rat, twitching in a leather body harness, and placed it with
the muzzle against her sphincter, wrenching a cry of pain and dread from the
hanging victim as she trembled before this new horror.

The rat hesitated before the needles piercing the area, or maybe smelling the
venom, but the Easterner fetched a flaming stick from the brazier and brought
it against its hind quarters. The terrified squeal of the rat rushing from the
fire was drowned by Kayleen's bellow of agony as it clawed its way into her
rectum, plunging inside in spite of the needles as her body stiffened in sheer
agony before entering a frenzy of howling jerks as the rat raked her bowels,
frantically attempting to escape the fire in its tail.

The Easterner had not let go of the two leather cords trailing from the rat
harness, whose purpose became apparent as he used them to prevent the rodent
from plunging too deep, but also to protract Kayleen's torment by pulling it
back towards the flame, causing it rake her frantically. Blood started
trickling from her torn orifice, while Lyral watched in horror as the shape of
the rat bulged inside Kayleen's flesh, each twitch causing a convulsed scream
of unspeakable torment to surge from her mouth.

After slowly pulling the frantic rodent halfway out and letting it claw its
way back in several times, wrenching a fresh litany of heart-rending screams
from his convulsing victim each time, the Easterner pulled it out for good and
let Kayleen hang, shaking from the unbearable torment, the foam at the corners
of her mouth dripping on her shoulders, red and swollen from the protracted
dislocation alone since they had been spared the needles.

She sipped the laced water, eagerly at first, but its effect was no longer a
jolt of energy, just a rekindling of self awareness and a refocusing of the
sight, hazy from the harrowing ordeal. With awareness, numbing pain also
returned and the rest of the water was poured into her mouth between pitiful
cries as the torment from her dislocated shoulders took its toll again.

Her cries rose again to pain-wracked howls when another rat was forced to claw
its way into her bleeding bowels, a larger specimen whose frantic digging was
readily visible to Lyral as it bulged inside Kayleen's innards. Overwhelmed by
the abominable cries of her friend, beyond horror at the sight of the torments
being wrought upon Kayleen's body, Lyral wept bitterly at her helplessness.

Kayleen's torment was brought to new depths of depravity when the Easterner
started pulling out the rat, because the critter had been chosen for its
proclivity to bite and it bit her bowels mercilessly, wrenching new convulsed
jerks of howling agony from her trembling body as it opposed the pull of the
leather cords. With calculated cruelty, her tormentor repeatedly pulled it out
just enough to let it sink its teeth into the muscle ring of her sphincter,
gnawing at it frantically to keep away from the flame and pulling Kayleen's
spasming body another step down the stairs of her howling hell.

When the echo from her last anguished scream waned, Kayleen drank the water
poured down her mouth in pitiful gurgles, still twitching from the pain in her
ass which had been treated rather summarily, and started trembling when a
bronze cage where another rat squealed in discomfort was hung under her
distended left breast. A vise was tightened around the base of her once proud
mound and another near the top, crushing the needles onto the nipple and
wrenching a scream of hoarse pain from her shaking chest.
When the flaming stick was brought under the cage, the rat jumped up and sunk
its teeth into the underside of the distended flesh, frantically trying to
gnaw its way through but unable to find a grip other than from its teeth.
Kayleen jerked her head at the ceiling in a maddened shriek while the rat fell
down and climbed back up, wounding itself on the needles still stuck in her
flesh. The raging torment in her dislocated shoulders fanned more cries of
desperate agony while she jerked spasmodically, vainly attempting to dislodge
the cage from her bleeding breast.

Mad with terror from the licking flame, unable to gnaw its way through, all
the rat could do was reach up and bite, tearing at her flesh but unable to
grab a full morsel. All Kayleen could do was howl in unparalleled agony as her
breast was being chewed to shreds one bite at a time, jerking in convulsing
pain when the teeth tore at the flesh and the blood flowed. To protract the
torment, the Easterner started pulling back the flame when her eyes showed
signs of exhaustion, only to bring it close again after a brief respite.

When the flaming stick was consumed at last, the Easterner removed the cage
and treated her wounded breast, staunching the blood loss with clips and a
thick paste. She drank with dread in her eyes, and an inarticulate scream of
dread shook her chest when a fresh cage was hung on her other breast, even
before than the vise crushed the needles onto the nipple.

The dread in her voice was replaced by helpless agony when a flaming stick was
put under the cage and this other rat found the same solution to its
predicament found by its predecessor, sinking its teeth into her breast for a
precarious but devastatingly painful bite. Kayleen's screams rose and waned as
the rat jumped and chewed, tearing morsels of soft flesh in the frantic effort
to get away from the licking flame.

When blood started flowing, the Easterner pulled the flaming stick, allowing a
first instant of respite before bringing it in again, listening at her screams
and monitoring her panting breath to protract her agony. Over a dozen bites
marked the underside of her once proud breast, but by biding his time he was
able to bring the rat to sinking its teeth into her flesh at least twice as
many times, before her delirious screams turned into wheezing moans of
mindless exhaustion.

Out of her mind, Kayleen sipped the laced water and hung in crying agony from
her dislocated shoulders when he treated her wounded breast. Her eyes returned
to focus with a scream of unabridged horror when he placed the plank under her
crotch and fetched a large, vicious black rat.

Spurred by the flaming stick, the rat plunged forcefully into the opening of
her vagina, clawing its way in while twisting the needles aside and wrenching
from Kayleen's mouth a howl the likes of which had not been heard in the
chamber so far. In spite of her strained muscles, in spite of her dislocated
shoulders, in spite of hanging for hours from her twisted arms, she arched and
rose from the plank, in a mad effort to distance herself from the horrid
intruder, screaming at the top of her lungs while the rat, caught halfway,
clawed further into her womb, a visible bulge moving under her flesh.

Instead of pulling it out, however, the Easterner let the rat trash inside
her, singing its tail occasionally when her screams subsided, knowing that the
creature was looking for a way out. When her eyes bulged and her body arched
in stiffened agony before bursting in another heart-rending howl of unearthly
agony, he was satisfied that it had found her cervix.

Watching intently the shape of the rodent bulging inside her womb, like a
horrid progeny of hell, the Easterner started alternating between pulling out
the rat and scaring it in with the flaming stick, always pausing to make sure
she was given time to recover from one pain before drowning into the next.

When the rat was being pulled out, it dug its clawed limbs into the walls of
her love channel, raking it frantically while her tormentor pulled at the
leather cords fastened to its harness. Twisting the cords made the rat twitch
inside her in search of a better grip, rekindling Kayleen's screaming agony
and preventing the rat from always clawing the same places.

When the flame spurred the rat in, it reached her cervix and bit at it, in a
frantic attempt to dig its way out from the licking flame, wrenching howls of
demented agony from the convulsing victim as her innards were chewed through
not unlike her breasts. Slowly, masterfully, the Easterner protracted her
agony, watching her bleeding womb, until at last he pulled the rat out and
called on Grod for help in treating her wounds.

The corpse that once was a wizard neared, and watched as the Easterner hung
two bronze cages from her bleeding breasts, while Kayleen's gaze wandered in
the empty eye sockets, crazily searching for a sign of mercy before clenching
as a scream of agony contorted her features when a caged rat, mad with fear of
the licking flame held by the Easterner, bit under her breast again.

Alternating the flame between the left and the right cage, the Easterner set
Kayleen on a path of uninterrupted agony as her breasts were being slowly
chewed off, one bite at a time, each bringing a spasmodic jerk of unbridled
torment as the sharp teeth tore her flesh, followed by a frenzy of fitful
screams as the pain from her dislocated shoulders blazed through her body.

A third cage was inserted in her vagina, pulling the lips over the cylinder
and fastening it by tightening the bronze vises over the needles still stuck
in the delicate flesh, compounding the pain from the bitten breasts for a
number of hoarse screams and slowly turning into dread at the thought of what
the cage was for. When the flaming stick was brought down, the rat inside
jumped and bit at the rim of her vagina, facing the same predicament faced by
the rats tormenting her breasts but wrenching a deeper, wailing howl of
desperate agony from the raving Kayleen.

Alternating between the three cages, the Easterner kept her convulsing through
an uninterrupted peak of unbridled, screaming agony, shortening his pauses to
reduce the damage but deny her the slightest respite and protracting the
torture beyond belief, pausing occasionally to pour laced water in her
sputtering mouth to keep her from sliding into unconsciousness. Bite after
bite, the underside of her breasts had been chewed into a bleeding pulp of
pulsating raw flesh, while her inner lips and the rim of her vagina hung in
bleeding shreds from dozens and dozens of small bites.

When Kayleen's face turned pale, and the howls escaping her foaming mouth
waned into wheezing moans, her tormentor removed the cages and looked up at
Zhorun, who nodded. She found the voice for a sputtering scream of despair as
more liquid was poured in her mouth, hinting at further torments, and shook
pitifully in her restraints when another rat was forced up her womb, a large
specimen curled into drug-induced stupor.

Horror and pain wracked her hanging body when the Easterner started sewing her
cunt lips shut, trapping the rat inside, her screams punctuating his needle
work while her swollen shoulders trembled from the hours of hanging torment.
When he was done, instead of tormenting her further, he left with the other
two, and dread descended upon the prisoners when the last torch disappeared.


Chapter 15 - At Zhorun's Own Hands

As soon as the three torturers left the chamber, Lyral, worried sick at her
friend's conditions, called out "Kayleen! Try to keep still, I'm coming".

She did not need light to home in on her friend, this time. Kayleen's rasping
sobs and occasional desolate screams provided ample guidance, but Lyral's task
was not easy. She was cuffed at her ankles, elbows and wrists, and iron bands
had been added at her knees, thighs and waist. Her pale skin chafed already
under the restraints, and walking proved so difficult that she gave up and set
about dragging herself on the cold stone floor.

"Please, Lyral, hurry! It's moving! I can feel it moving," cried Kayleen, her
voice on the brink of panic as the rat sewn in her womb started waking up from
its drug-induced stupor. Lyral's eyes shed bitter tears when the scene of her
friend's torment flashed before her eyes, the needle stitching together her
cunt lips while her womb bulged with the drugged rodent.

When she was close enough to smell Kayleen's bleeding wounds, she realized in
horror that just healing her friend would be of no use, since it would not
dislodge the thread stitching her lips. Besides, while some needles would be
pushed out by the wounds closing, those whose tip was free would not. But as
Kayleen's sudden scream confirmed, the problem was the rat.

"Lyral, please! It's awake!" screamed Kayleen, shaking in her restraints, an
edge of terror in her voice which turned into an anguished yowl when the rat
claws raked her womb. Lyral was paralyzed, unable to speak, at a loss about
what to do next, "I ... my power is useless. I don't know what to do!"

"Chew it open! Lyral, pull the thread with your teeth! Hurry!" cried Kayleen,
buckling as the rat turned inside her, still not completely awake but
irritated at his imprisonment. Lyral just stood, unable to bring herself to
act, until Kayleen screamed in sheer agony at the first bite.

"I'll do it! Angels of heaven, help me. Try to be still, Kayleen ... I am
going to hurt you," whispered Lyral, mostly to herself, and then sought her
friend's stitched cunt lips, tears flowing from her sore eyes. Kayleen's cries
found a new source as her friend's teeth sought to pull the thread, and Lyral
almost retched at the taste of her friend's blood in her mouth.

"Please, Lyral, bite them off!" screamed Kayleen when the rat bit her again,
stifling her cry when Lyral's teeth tore at her cunt lips, weeping bitterly
while pulling with new-found determination at thread and flesh. After what
looked to both as an eternity of torment, the rat noticed the opening being
torn open and tumbled inside Kayleen's womb to take advantage of it, pushing
through with his head and sending Lyral sprawling in horror on the floor.

Kayleen's screams rose again when the rodent, unable to progress, raked her
insides, pushing and tearing at her half sewn cunt lips in a horrid parody of
childbirth, the sight of which was spared to Lyral, but whose noises would
haunt her forever. Only when it managed to tear free did Lyral shake herself,
smelling her friend's profuse bleeding.

Stifling her concerns, she stood and managed to touch her friends with her
cuffed hands, concentrating into channeling her power into Kayleen's ravaged
body. Healing with the hands, even in that awkward position, was much more
effective, and she heard her friend's breath deepen and steady as she moaned
in relief while her wounds healed.

Kayleen's relief, however, proved premature when pain shot through her flesh
and shoulders again, because some needles would not dislodge, preventing the
wounds from closing, and her dislocated shoulders could not heal while still
being twisted and torn from supporting her weight.

"Kayleen, please be patient. I staunched your bleeding, but I'll have to pull
out the needles. All of them, and I'll hurt you. We'll take care of your
shoulders then," said Lyral, suddenly awkward at the touch of her friend's
warm body against hers. Pulling out the needles, some barbed, with her mouth
proved an ordeal not only for Kayleen, who managed to stifle her screams in
spite of the spider gag, but also for Lyral, as her cheeks and lips bled from
the punctures caused by her friend's involuntary buckling while she pulled out
the needles with her teeth.

In saving her friend, Lyral found the courage that had eluded her so far, as
she put aside the pain and concentrated on healing Kayleen. To heal her
shoulders, she pushed her head under her crotch, allowing the athletic Warrior
Queen to raise her hips and bring her body in a position which put much less
strain on her arms, while Lyral supported enough of her weight to allow the
healing of her shoulders to succeed.

"Now you just have to stay there until morning", chuckled Kayleen, refreshed.

"I would, Kayleen," said Lyral, and Kayleen perceived the embarrassment in her
voice. She considered the matter carefully, as she had never been attracted to
women, but did not find her friend's affection repulsive, and maybe some kind
of .. consolation was deserved. But she also deserved respect, she decided.

"Rest, instead. Unless my memory fails me, you'll be unable to heal yourself
unless you replenish your power with sleep," said Kayleen tactfully, unaware
of how important this information was for the silently listening Zhorun.

"My reserves are almost spent, but I could manage another night," said Lyral,
with more assurance than she actually felt, "I will try to get some rest,
Kayleen, since my restraints are less harsh than usual. But let me tell you
that ... should a choice be needed, my choice would be to heal you. I cannot
blame you for slipping under torture, not after seeing what they did and
thinking about what you have withstood far longer, and alone."

Lyral went on, tears streaking her cheeks, "Pray accept my forgiveness,
Kayleen, and my services, because you are my only hope of being delivered from
this hell. Don't leave me ... alone ... in their hands."

"I will, Lyral. Sleep now," whispered Kayleen, moved beyond tears, almost
forgetting the pain as her twisted arms bore her full weight again as Lyral
slid on the floor, exhausted. Kayleen's fresh mind, with at least half of the
night before her, started pondering their predicament, attempting to find an
angle to reverse their fortunes.

The Easterner savagely crushed Kayleen's collar on her windpipe before
lowering her to the floor, cuffing her ankles and dragging her near a sinister
iron bench, narrow but heavily built. He left her on the floor, gasping for
air, until her face turned blue, and only then did he pull her up and lay her
on the bench, cuffing her ankles to rings at its bottom end. Then he freed her
arms, ignoring the chafe marks from a night of strained suspension, and cuffed
her wrists to rings on the opposite end, pulling her slender body taut on the
ominous black device before allowing her to breathe normally again.

Silently, the Easterner fetched a thin needle, dipped it in a jar and then
drove it into Kayleen's left nipple, causing her distended body to arch
voluptuously and wrenching a gnarled scream from her mouth, tired at the
continued tear of the spider gag. Remorselessly, he drove another in her right
nipple and followed up with more, with little pause between each and stopping
only when over a dozen stuck out from the delectable tips of her generous
breasts. But the pause was followed by more howls as he pushed another needle,
dipped in the same substance, into her clitoris, pulling at it for some time
before driving another along its length while Kayleen screamed in agony.

Meanwhile, Lyral wailed as Grod pulled her up from her cuffed ankles, allowing
her to watch as the Easterner furthered the torment of her friend. Impassible
as always,  he fetched a narrow strip of white cloth and wound it around
Kayleen's left forearm, followed by another on her other forearm. Lyral was
not close enough to see that the cloth brimmed with thin wooden slivers, each
hardened in fire, but Kayleen felt the pricks on her forearms amidst the pain
from her throbbing nipples and the agony in her love bud.

Out of her sight, thin cords were wound around the slivers and tightened by
repeated twisting, flattening them onto the skin almost to the point of
driving them in. Kayleen screamed in pain when the Southerner moved by her
feet and started turning a screw which elongated the bench, and her body by
pulling at her cuffed feet, driving dozens of hardened slivers under her skin.

Her tormentor let her scream subside, then turned the screw another quarter,
causing the slivers to sink fractionally deeper and wrenching a new scream of
torment from her distended body. Lyral, unable to perceive the exquisite
finesse of the torment, gazed frantically at her friend and at the cloth
strip, but Kayleen felt each sliver slide just under the skin, drawing little
blood as it pushed along the surface instead of entering, but searing new
nerves on each quarter turn of the accursed handle.

Instead of elongating her further, the Easterner paused, then circled to her
hands and started wrapping cloth strips around each finger, apparently
unconcerned with his victim's panting torment which so attracted the gaze of
the old Southerner, who ogled her slender, distended legs, the supple thighs,
and the full breasts rising and falling on her heaving chest as each breath
caused her to yowl from the stabbing pain of the slivers.

Biding his time, the Easterner returned by her feet and turned the screw,
wrenching a new scream of dreadful torment from her mouth as slivers slid
under the skin of her fingers, while those in her forearms dug deeper. When
her screams subsided, he wrapped two more cloth strips around her forearms,
wound the thin cord around them and then elongated the bench another quarter
turn, raising new screams as she arched in pain.

Alternating between adding more strips and turning the screw, he wrapped her
slender arms in searing necklaces of wooden agony well before the pull on her
muscles caused any discomfort, and Kayleen realized that by the time the
strips reached her feet she would also feel the unrelenting pull of the rack.
While the strips added last still allowed the slivers to slid for a fraction
of their length, those nearest her cuffed wrists advanced the least, although
each turn still brought a wave of searing torment from hundreds of pricks.

The strip he wrapped under her armpits brimmed with longish, charred slivers,
and wrought fresh screams from her gaping mouth when he turned the screw,
while the Southerner neared to savor the application of the next strips. Still
biding his time, the Easterner pulled one tightly around her breasts, and when
he turned the screw another quarter Kayleen's howls rose under the vaults as
the hardened sliver slid under the soft skin of her full mounds.

Mercilessly, he waited for her screams to subside and then added another
strip, flattening her breasts on her chest, followed by a third, whose slivers
slid just under her areolas and caused a gut-wrenching scream of desperate
torment as their progress was just at the beginning. With the addition of a
strip just under her proud breasts and one under her ribcage, her torment rose
to a new level as each breath drove the slivers farther along the soft skin.

Lyral watched in horror as her friend's panting chest started twitching
whenever she breathed out, guessing at the stabbing pain coursing through her
rib muscles from the gasps punctuating her wheezing breathing. The Easterner
splashed Kayleen with cold water, but otherwise let her twitch and scream
while droplets of blood formed where the slivers had been twisted back and
forth, forming thin rivulets which slowly flowed along her heaving ribs.

When her cries subsided, he tightened another strip on her abdomen, crushing
her toned muscles and putting more misery into her labored breathing, then
turned the screw another quarter, driving a garbled scream from her parched
throat as she started to feel the pull of the rack on her limbs.

As he resumed alternating new strips and turning the screw, her screams became
harsher and longer, trailing into fits of raucous agony as the pain from the
slivers never receded and intensified at the slightest movement. When he
poured syrup into her sputtering mouth, most went wasted, so he had to start
over a few times. This done, he added more strips, until the writhing Kayleen
found herself effectively wrapped in slivers, a mummified victim of
uninterrupted pricking which turned into stabbing agony at the slightest
movement, including each torturous breath.

Her voice, whose endurance had been tested already over and over, carried her
torment in vibrant tones of feminine agony, her will prevented from exerting
even the little restraint she had clung to before to preserve her dignity and
lessen the burden on her innocent friend.

Lyral watched in horror the uninterrupted twitching of her friend's wrapped
body, gaping in horrified disbelief as the torment continued and no relief was
given, unable to grasp the depths of agony Kayleen was going through, but
cursing the laced beverage which prevented her from passing out. The strong
woman could have endured the torture on her own for a few minutes, and the
repeated splashes with cold water could have revived her a couple of times,
but Lyral realized the duration of Kayleen's uninterrupted torment when new
torches had to be lit in order to replace those brought in the morning.

After replacing the torches, the Easterner pulled the needles still piercing
Kayleen's nipples. He produced two long strips of cloth and crossed them just
under her left nipple, using thin cords to flatten them onto her compressed
breast. After trapping her other nipple between two analogous rows of wooden
torment, he turned the screw again, the pull at her ankles elongating her
wrapped body and dragging her nipples, swollen and sensitized by the venom
carried by the needles, between the rows of wooden slivers.

Kayleen howled in sheer agony as the abject torment of her nipples compounded
the uninterrupted stabbing of the thousands of slivers slid under her skin,
and renewed her howls on each turn of the screw as her limbs and joints
started to shoot blazes of pain through her body.

Another two strips of cloth were nudged under her swollen clitoris, while
dread tinged her rasped screams as her fate of torment unfolded to its by now
customary end, and a few turns of the screw added her pricked femininity to
the sources of her torment, causing her to jerk spasmodically on each turn of
the screw as her sensitized love bud was unrelentingly stabbed by dozens of
hardened wood slivers.

Biding his time, the Easterner interspersed long pauses between a quarter turn
and the next, frequently dousing her in cold water and pouring syrup in her
mouth now and them. She oscillated between gut-wrenching howls of sheer agony
when the screw was turned another quarter and frenzies of twitching screaming
thereafter, which subsided only when her exhausted body stopped convulsing
from the increasingly abject pain and unrelenting tearing of her limbs.

Lyral's horror whirled deeper and deeper as her friend's torment was
protracted mercilessly, and her mind shriveled between tears at the
increasingly pitiful howls from the writhing form wrapped in bloodied cloth.
To her disbelief, the wry Easterner started busying himself with more, dipping
the loose ends of some cloth strips in salt water.

As the torment continued, after the torches had to be changed again, the water
diffused in the cloth and started soaking the slivers, bringing a new pitch in
Kayleen's desperate screams as the pain between each turn of the screw took on
a new quality and slowly intensified, turning her twitches in spasmodic jerks
which induced further woe from the shroud of livers sliding under her skin.

Lyral could not believe that any human being could endure such lengths of
uninterrupted torment, but her friend's convulsing body and fitful frenzies of
howling agony spoke by themselves. How could Kayleen, brave as she was, endure
such horrors without breaking, where did she find the resolve to defy her
tormentors ... questions she could not answer hammered her weeping soul as the
torture of her friend was protracted for yet another round of torches.

Her sobs turned bitter when Kayleen's screams drove home the notion that her
friend was being tortured to force her to talk, that if she had not proved a
weakling by fainting all over her friend would be on equal footing with her,
and that ... being subjected to what Kayleen was suffering was her worst fear,
and she would do anything to avert it. If heaven still had mercy of its fallen
daughter, she prayed silently, her tormentors would never know that.

Silent as ever, the corpse that once was a wizard neared the convulsing body
and gestured to Grod, exchanging a few words with the two tormentors, as if to
overcome their objections. Grod left without a word, and the Easterner turned
the screw twice, a quarter only, inspecting his victim for signs of
dislocation of the spine.

"You defy me in vain, woman. I'll wrench what I need from your mouth or your
friend's, sooner or later. But I welcome the occasion to start repaying you
for your gift," hissed Zhorun, bending over her, almost brushing her quivering
nipples as they slid two or three slivers down the crossed strips.

Grod returned with the strong bands of leather he had already used to prevent
his rack from snapping Kayleen's spine, and wrapped them around her writhing
body, shaking his head but tightening them with all his strength. When he was
done, Zhorun gestured and the Easterner started turning the screw, one quarter
a time, pausing between each turn as Kayleen's screams increased to inhuman
howls of searing agony as her joints neared the point of dislocation.

An arcane whisper rose from inside the shriveled skull of the former wizard,
and misty tendrils of magic brushed the distended body. With a heart-wrenching
howl, Kayleen stiffened and then jerked in unparalleled agony as all the
slivers started elongating and thickening, spilling blood over the white cloth
as her muscles jerked spasmodically.

One after the other, her joints dislocated in quick succession under the pull
of her own convulsed jerks, first the left shoulder and then the right hip,
while the full measure of her unbelievable agony escaped from her mouth as she
howled her anguish straight unto the gaping emptiness of Zhorun's eye sockets.

Visibly thrilled, the former wizard gestured to the Easterner, who shook his
head before turning the screw again, each quarter wrenching a new frenzy of
gasping howls from the foaming mouth of the convulsing Kayleen, whose
suffering found an end only when the screw reached the end of its course.

Grod loosened the screw slowly, with little consideration for Kayleen's hoarse
screams, poured the syrupy contents of the jug in her sputtering mouth, then
started removing the sliver strips with great care, one at a time. When done,
he carefully reduced her dislocated limbs, but still tightened her collar
before unfastening her legs and cuffing the ankles together, then cuffed her
arms to the iron band at her waist, one at a time.

Lyral screamed in fear when the Southerner pulled her up by her ankles and
dunked her unceremoniously in a tub of cold water, whipping her soft ass
cheeks mercilessly while she gurgled and gasped for air. When he pulled her
up, the whip wrenched new screams from her by slashing her soft breasts, in a
frenzy of quick strikes before she was dropped again in the water.

Kayleen rolled down from the iron bench with a wail containing an equal
measure of pain, relief and dread, but in her mind she bore no illusions about
her immediate future. Grod dragged her by the collar to a pair of chains
hanging from the ceiling, and twisted her arms up behind her before fastening
each wrist to the middle of its chain and pulling her off the floor. He then
cuffed each ankle to the end of the chain where the corresponding wrist was
fastened, leaving her spread in mid air, about four feet off the floor.

In spite of her own agonies, she sobbed silently when she made out the
whimpering cries of her innocent friend as she was dunked and whipped, intent
on hiding from their tormentors how much this affected her. Meanwhile, upon a
gesture from the former wizard, Grod neared a brazier, picked up a iron poker
and neared Lyral, whose eyes widened in fear.

"Your friend will soon make the intimate knowledge of hot iron because of your
refusal to talk, my dear, so it is only fitting that you taste it first,"
whispered the robed corpse before Grod dragged the poker under Lyral's left
breast. Her mouth flared open in a scream of demented agony while her body
jerked in her restraints, although Grod did not press the iron for too long.

It was more obvious than ever now to Kayleen that she would be tortured to
pressure Lyral into talking, and she cursed her friend's weakness at first. On
second thought, however, she considered that maybe she preferred to be the
target of torture rather than witnessing the agony of her innocent friend, as
if by suffering in her friend's wake she could redeem her failure.

Grod neared with the red hot poker, and Kayleen steeled herself just before he
pressed it into her muscular abdomen, causing her to buckle and scream from
the searing pain. Unlike her previous torments with fire, no attempt was made
to stem the brutal application of heat, causing a wide, deep burn, charred
beyond recovery. Then Grod smeared some grease on the other side of her
abdomen and brushed it with the poker, causing her to jerk again from the
pain, but also to keep buckling as the heated grease kept bubbling over the
skin, her fitful, hissing gasps protracting until the pain subsided.

Having made his point, Grod brought the brazier nearer, allowing her to see
the wicked implements being heated inside, and sought her eyes for an answer
to a question which needed nod be spoken. When he saw resolve in her eyes, he
smeared grease on her legs and dragged the poker on her left calf, letting her
buckle and scream while he repeatedly scorched the skin.

Lyral shut her eyes and shook her head, muttering to herself between harsh
sobs and bitter tears. Hating herself for being the cause of her friend's
torments, she nonetheless dreaded the results of giving in, as her knowledge
of Zhorun's nature had led her to form dire suspicions on his ultimate
motives, suspicions she had kept to herself. This left her without any
recourse before her friend's screams, however, although when she was dunked in
the cold water or felt the dreadful bite of the whip on her buttocks, pain and
fear overcame guilt.

After scorching Kayleen's legs, Grod greased and burned the palm of her hands,
twisting the poker as her fingers closed reflexively on it, leaving tatters of
burnt skin on the red hot iron while she screamed her lungs out. Her cries
subsided when he started smearing grease on her breasts, dread creeping in her
eyes at the impending torment she could only hope to withstand.

Using cold pliers in his left hand and a hot poker in the right hand, Grod
started pinching folds of greased breast flesh and scorching them slowly, each
time wrenching from the convulsing Kayleen a tattered scream of desperate
torment, which waned into fitful cries when he paused to let the bubbling
grease protract her suffering or when he splashed her with cold water.

Grod then returned to her calves, searing the reddened skin to blistering
agony while her buckles rattled her chains and she sputtered in sheer pain,
then greased the soles of her feet as tears filled her eyes. Lyral could not
stand the sight of her friend's contorted face when her tormentor started
dragging the red hot iron on the soft flesh, leaving angry red traces
punctuated by Kayleen's hoarse screams, which rose to howls each time he
pressed the iron between her toes.

Lyral kept sobbing to herself, her eyes clenched since she could not close her
ears, desperate at the thought of the protracted torture her friend had
withstood so far, but overwhelmed with dread at the thought that she was only
halfway from the relief which usually nightfall brought, if switching from the
searing agony of unbridled torture to the unrelenting torment of whatever
cruel restraints they would be put in could be regarded as relief.

Kayleen drank from the jug in sputtering gulps, and trembled when her arms
were greased, but howled in surprised torment when the poker returned on her
breasts and seared blisters into the firm flesh, lingering on the scorched
nipples while her gasping howls crowded one after another in an uninterrupted
litany of sheer agony. When a fresh hot poker started burning her arms, she
was crying, her body wracked by convulsing sobs as she jerked in her chains.

After a splash of cold water, her muscular back was greased next, the start of
a protracted nightmare of scorching agony as it became the canvas of dozens of
angry red burns crossing each other following the line of her shoulder blades
and ribs, each marked by a scream or a hissing gasp where the less pronounced
pain of the single burn was amply compensated by the mounting agony of the
accumulated torment. When he started greasing her buttocks, the act offered
her no relief as she was still shaking and screaming from the grease bubbling
over the last few burns.

He used the pliers on her ass cheeks, pinching swaths of flesh for the kiss
of the red hot iron, preventing her frantic buckles from removing the scorched
skin from under the searing heat, wrenching harsh gasps and pitched screams
from her hurting mouth. Again, the repeated crisscrossed burns kept her
torment fanned while he greased her thighs, but not to the point of preventing
her from shuddering at what would follow.

Lyral started praying in whispers, to keep her mind off her friend's screams
of agony, "Angels of heaven, make her strong. Uphold her bravery before the
agonies she endures, make me worthy of her bravery. Angels of heaven, make her
strong." Somehow, her voice could still be heard against the backdrop of
Kayleen's anguished screams as her friend's soles were slowly turned into a
blistered canvas of pain.

When her tormentor dragged a fresh iron behind her thigh, Kayleen jerked in
unbridled agony, rattling her restraints and screaming her anguish to the
vaults of the torture chamber. Undaunted, Grod continued pinching folds of
flesh with his pliers and scorching them with the iron, bringing about new
howls of raw agony as her soft flesh turned crimson under the bubbling grease.

He interrupted the searing of her inner thighs twice to douse her with cold
water, but her head was shaking aimlessly as the torture was taking its toll,
so he lowered her to the floor, cuffed each wrist to the ankle and then to her
horror closed a vise around her breasts, tightening it while she screamed at
its grip on her burnt flesh. Her screams rose to twitching anguish when he
pulled her off the floor by the vise, leaving her to hang in mid air while he
applied grease to her crotch and belly.

He closed the pliers around a swath of curly pubic hair and lifted her crotch
while her screams intensified, dragging slowly the red hot iron at the base of
the hairs, searing them off while the grease bubbled and her hips shook in
convulsed jerks of screaming agony. The Southerner gazed approvingly at
Kayleen's twitching thighs and bulging breasts, while the iron alternated
between scorching the inside of her thighs and searing her mons.

She sputtered as the jug was emptied in her mouth before the scorching of her
mons was resumed, her new-found sensitivity screaming to high heaven as the
poker burned her soft flesh and the last blonde hairs were torn off. He let
her hang, screaming from the bubbling grease, then fetched a smaller pair of
pliers and pulled open her left cunt lip, revealing the pink slit inside.

Lyral's prayer waned into a "No, no ..." as she could not prevent herself from
gazing at the angry marks striping the soft flesh above her friend's sex, a
patch of pulsating crimson burns where her modest blonde bush should have
been. The worst tortures always targeted Kayleen's femininity, and had
worsened once their tormentors noticed how deeply they also scared Lyral's
innocent soul.

Kayleen howled in deranged anguish when a fresh poker was dragged along the
greased fold of feminine flesh, her jerks tearing at her constricted breasts
for added pain, and kept screaming as the torment of her vulva was slowly
carried on, scorching the lips and then the folds of the clitoris before the
poker was pushed up inside her ass. She arched in demented pain at this
horror, twitching on the searing hot poker as her tormentor pushed it deeper
in, raising her up as she rode the wave of her agony before falling back down
in convulsing jerks of crying helplessness.

Her screams rose again in desperate pain when Grod dragged the poker over her
inner lips, pulling them over the red hot iron with the pliers, alternating
between left and right with ample pauses in between. She shuddered when more
cold water was splashed on her just before bringing the poker up against her
love bud, causing her to arch in helpless agony while the pliers closed on her
femininity and elongated it for the fiery caress of the hot iron as her howls
of absolute torment rose in vain under the vaults of the torture chamber.

After the scorching of her love bud was repeated over and over, she was
splashed with more cold water, and Grod greased her breasts again before
fetching a pair of red hot pliers. He closed their jaws on her left breast,
causing Kayleen's head to jerk back as a bellow of inhuman agony escaped her
sore throat. The jaws closed on her other breast next, compressing the
constricted flesh while she howled from the unbearable torment, and squeezing
the heated grease into the blisters left on the scorched skin from the recent
ministrations of the hot poker.

Unable to escape the screams of her friend, Lyral started wailing, venting her
anguish and frustration as her mind found no escape from her predicament. She
sought in vain a way to convince their tormentors that she would not give in,
but she could not even convince herself because she dreaded the opposite
whenever the Southerner lashed the back of her thighs, wrenching from her a
sputtering gurgle of raw anguish.

Pausing after each scream, and splashing Kayleen often with cold water, Grod
protracted the searing of her constricted breasts beyond all boundaries of
cruelty, tearing repeatedly at her nipples until the blisters on the scorched
pieces of feminine flesh started bursting under the heat, wrenching insane
howls of unspeakable agony from his convulsing victim.

Grod lowered her to the floor and cuffed her arms behind her back, in the
reversed prayer position, then cuffed her ankles to chains wound around two
pillars and cranked a winch, raising her off the floor and spreading her legs
horizontally almost to the point of tearing the thighs from the sockets.

Red hot pliers descended on the soft crease between Kayleen's thighs and
buttocks, wrenching screams of tormented agony from her as she attempted to
jerk her blistered flesh away from the scorching jaws. After emptying the jug
in her mouth, he closed the pliers on her cunt lips, causing her body to
stiffen in utter torment as she screamed from the deepest pit of hell, sinking
deeper and deeper into pain as he pulled repeatedly at the scorched flesh.

Lyral was allowed to watch, finally aware that her torture was often paused to
let her witness the agonies inflicted on her friend, but could not bring
herself to avert her gaze. She started praying in whispers again, but her
tormentor cut her words short by suddenly dunking her.

Unmoved by Kayleen's pitiful screams, Grod splashed her with cold water and
fetched a pair of smaller pliers, whose jaws at the end of a goose neck he
closed on the rim of her sphincter, bringing another scream of unbridled agony
out of her sore throat as he started her descent into new depths of howling
torment by tearing repeatedly at the blistered flesh all around her sphincter.

Lyral trashed madly in her restraints, thinking of a way to let them turn on
her and grant her friend a moment of respite, forgetting her deep fears in the
wake of her friend's horrendous agonies. But the best she could come up with,
had already proved of no interest to their torturers.
Kayleen sputtered when the jug was emptied in her mouth again, after her
repeated screams of insane agony subsided, but soon her head snapped into a
new howl when the entrance of her vagina was twisted between the searing
irons, blistering the muscular rim and wrenching a protracted howl of hopeless
agony each time its twitching flesh was torn in their red hot grip again.

When the jug was brought to her mouth she cried in dismay at the furthering of
her torment, which promptly followed as the hot tips of a pair of pincers
closed on her clitoris. Her convulsing jerks rattled the chains, pulling her
thighs open in spasmodic torment, but the noise was lost in the litany of
howling screams which wracked her body as her tormentor pulled on her scorched
femininity, raking the hot points mercilessly across the scorched bud.

After repeatedly wrenching howls of tormented agony from the repeated
blistering of her clitoris, her tormentor fetched another pair of pincers with
his left hand and closed the points on her raw left nipple, pulling on nipple
and clitoris in opposite directions, as if to tear her between them, while she
convulsed in unspeakable pain and screamed her lungs out in a fitful howl of
hopeless agony.

Lyral's head reeled as if physically impacted, and each subsequent howl from
her tormented friend rocked her head as if she was being slapped, while her
own cries waned into desperate sobs as the only prayer she was allowed, a mute
one, rose to her lips. But no one seemed to listen when her friend's tormentor
pushed the red hot poker down the scorched love channel, reaming it back and
forth amidst gut-wrenching howls of inhuman agony, while tearing repeatedly at
the clitoris with the hot pincers.

When Kayleen's voice waned after repeatedly reaching unparalleled depths of
deranged agony, Grod splashed her with cold water and then rekindled it by
pulling her up by her nipples, torn raw in the grip of the red hot pincers,
and keeping her there as she jerked her head spasmodically. He kept
protracting Kayleen's screaming agonies, in a show of calculated cruelty,
until Lyral's shattered expression made it pointless.

The Southerner dunked Lyral again until her body started shaking, and pulled
her up as she gurgled and sputtered, no longer unaware of her surroundings.
After a confirmation gesture from Zhorun, he kneeled by the young Priestess,
who shrieked in terror at the sight of the hacksaw in his hands. Actually, the
instrument consisted of fish teeth stuck in a wooden handle, but the
Southerner used it on the soft flesh of her breast with a sawing motion while
she howled in the throes of a pain unlike any she had previously experienced.

"Was it you who asked to be tortured in place of Her Haughtiness there ? If
so, I am afraid you just don't cut it," mocked the swarthy Southerner,
ignoring her cries as blood flowed down her chest. The wound was very shallow,
since the teeth were quite short, but horribly lacerated because of the
pressure needed to cause the teeth to actually cut into the skin.

"If you make such a fuss for a nick on hale skin, there is no way you can
stand it on a burn, like she's going to" he added, dragging the blade on the
burn under her other breast while Lyral jerked spasmodically, her mouth agape
in a howl of absolute agony as her young face contorted in a mask of anguish.

Kayleen recovered, after being splashed with cold water and sipping from the
jug, just in time to shudder at her friend's howls and at her impending fate,
about which she bore no illusions. There was no limit to the cruelty of their
captors, but her own and Lyral's resolve had their limits, and Lyral had
reached them. Looking at the Southerner's expression while he pored over his
latest implement of torture, she shivered at the thought that this time the
agony could be such that even her own will would collapse.

The Southerner reached her and tightened her collar, although she was in no
shape for stunts, then dragged her between two pillars and cuffed each wrist
to a ring up in a pillar, with the short chains painfully twisting her arms
but allowing unobstructed access to her scorched back. Her ankles were
similarly cuffed to rings set at knee height, leaving her dangling in mid air
with her loins thrust forward and her thighs spread, showing how much the
crimson burns marking her supple body extended to her feminine parts.

Meanwhile, the Easterner lowered the whimpering Lyral on the floor and
clenched iron bands under her knees, fastening them together, then pulled her
up by her ankles again. He freed her wrists and cuffed each to a separate
chain hanging from the ceiling, pulling her up so that her breast was at the
same height as her feet while she slumped, hanging from her feet and wrists.

Lyral screamed suddenly in anguished torment as the Easterner dragged the
three red hot points of a copper cat's paw across her creamy ass cheeks,
slowly ripping the skin which sizzled under the heat while she jerked after
stiffening in surprise and pain.

The old Southerner grabbed Kayleen's middle finger and started dragging the
toothed blade under her nail, until he managed to rip it away while she
shrieked in helpless pain. Panting, he grabbed another finger and repeated the
operation, bringing about new screams of torment from his victim. After a
brief pause, he did the same to her ring finger, and savored every shriek and
gasp he extracted from her while sawing under her fingernails.

He splashed her with cold water and slowly dragged the jagged teeth down her
left shoulder blade while she howled from the pain of her blistered skin being
torn open, inch by inch. He let her scream and jerk for a while, then wrapped
her bleeding fingers in cured cloth to reduce blood loss and dragged the
toothed blade across her burnt mons, savoring the expression of unspeakable
torment her face contorted into as she howled her helpless agony into his
smiling face, coughing and gasping in anguish.

His left hand pinched a fold of scorched flesh behind her left thigh and with
the other hand he pressed the toothed blade down, his grip unflinching while
she arched in deranged pain, shaking as a fitful howl of despairing agony
escaped her tired lips. He let her convulse for a while before pinching her
other thigh and cutting it also, leaving a lacerated wound, bleeding slowly as
she trembled from wracking pangs of blazing torment, because he always took
care to stay clear of major blood vessels.

Smiling, he cupped her left breast and started dragging the toothed blade on
its upper side, his gaze looking for hers as she screamed in hellish agony,
her mouth foaming while her body jerked spasmodically in the vain attempt to
pull herself from his grip and the protracted sawing of her blistered flesh,
which splashed droplets of blood all over tormentor and tormented alike.

He brought the jug to her lips, and she drank in fitful gulps interspersed
with gasping wails, but then her voice spoke bravely, "Pray for me, Lyral.
Give me strength."

Lyral shook her head, sobbing at her own torment and amazed at her friend's
endurance and resolve, comparing the parallel gouges left by the cats paw on
her buttocks, legs and back to the patchwork of burns, blisters and cuts which
hardly left any of her friend's skin unscathed. She started praying softly.

Annoyed, Kayleen's tormentor grasped her other breast and started dragging the
blade back and forth, wrenching new howls of raw pain from her shuddering body
as he lacerated the blistered skin, taking care to inflict only shallow dents
on the quivering flesh which he planned to torment again later. While she
convulsed from the agony in her bleeding breasts, he used pliers to tighten
small clips over the wounds in her back, always careful to minimize blood loss
once a wound lost its pain potential.

He reached for her toes, and started dragging the toothed blade across her
toenails, holding her foot in his grip while Kayleen screamed her lungs out at
the pain. After the third toe, however, he started sawing through the soft
flesh between the toes, ripping at the flesh blistered from the hot poker
while her body stiffened in unbearable agony before entering fits of spasmodic
jerking and unbridled howling which he watched in delight, splashing her
occasionally with cold water before continuing.

Still smiling, he pressed the blade into her strong biceps and started sawing
through the burnt flesh, enjoying the sight of her head shaking in unspeakable
torment as he pushed back and forth, ignoring the droplets of blood splashing
his white desert robe. He let her whimper and scream from the jagged wounds as
he clipped the cuts on her breasts, but then returned at the torment of her
arms, digging over a dozen of excruciating cuts in her muscular limbs before
her litanies of howling agony waned into gasping whimpers.

He was never short of flesh to torment, of course, so he brushed some drool
from the corner of his mouth and started drawing a jagged cut on her taut
abdomen, ripping open the blistered skin with some difficulty as her body was
wracked by never-ending screams of unbearable agony.

Her voice rose to new peaks of anguish when he dragged the toothed blade under
her soles, scorched raw by the pliers, digging rough cuts of bleeding pain in
the soft flesh of her once exquisite feet. No longer able to see her face, his
gaze lingered on the delightful buckling of her shapely body as he pulled the
blade back and forth, drooling when he pressed harder and her thighs twitched
open in response to the excruciating pain.

He unfastened her, let her sip from the jug, then cuffed each wrist to the
corresponding ankle and fetched the iron vise which had already been used to
suspend her from her breasts, at whose sight she produced a guttural moan of
despair which caused his member to bulge under his robes. He proceeded to
tighten it on her breasts gleefully, it in spite of her buckles and cries,
reopening some wounds which he clipped shut again when done.

Lyral's screams rose again as the Easterner scratched the soles of her feet
with the red hot cats-paw, slowly tearing through the soft flesh while she
convulsed in her restraints shrieking in fits of maddened torment. Lyral found
herself wishing that her friend's torture was resumed soon, as she had
understood this would mean the pausing of her own, only to gasp at the horror
of the thought immediately thereafter.

The Southerner pulled up Kayleen with a series of short, vicious pulls of the
chain she hung from, each wrenching a scream of demented agony from her as her
wounded breasts were jerked viciously, and then brought the toothed blade into
her vagina and proceeded to saw through its rim, savoring the expression of
unspeakable agony contorting her face as she screamed her lungs out, her mouth
spread to the point of bursting in a howl of harrowing pain.

"There are many other places I can cut, Whore Queen. You'll beg me to stop
much sooner than I would need to, and I won't. I'll let you beg all the way to
hell until you'll beg to suck my manhood, and you'll have to suck really hard
because the pain won't stop until I come, and I'll be rather spent by then,"
he whispered, adding "Unless you tell us about the Sorceress, of course."

He disrobed his member and thrust it into her bleeding vagina, pushing against
her dangling body as she swung in convulsing agony, twisting in the vain
attempt to escape his hands grabbing her hips in a rut of frenzied violation
which wrenched pitiful howls of outrage and torment from her parched throat.
He protracted her violation by pausing occasionally, letting her convulsions
massage his arousal and tightening the iron collar on her windpipe to cause
her muscles to clutch his member deliciously as he resumed his thrusts, until
he finally came while she shook in a frenzy of howling screams.

The Easterner wrenched Lyral from her gasping fascination with her friend's
violation by dragging the red hot points of the cats-paw on her ribs, causing
her to twist in mid air as she jerked and screamed her lungs out, her eyes
shut as his hand followed her movement to rip through her flesh to the bone.

Spent, the Southerner splashed Kayleen with cold water, then started dragging
the toothed blade on the soft flesh of her thighs, tracing shallow, lacerated
wounds which rekindled her screams, pausing to catch his breath and obviously
preparing for a new phase in her torture. The pain was on par with the worst
Kayleen had faced so far, and white blazes of searing agony flashed in her
mind when the teeth lacerated the blistered skin.

She convulsed in maddened pain as her tormentor started pinching folds of
flesh in her legs and dragging the toothed blade across them, cutting shallow,
lacerated gouges in the stiff muscles as the teeth were too short for deep
cuts but long enough to rip the burned skin. He bid his time, pausing after
each cut and dragging the blade slowly, but soon rivulets of blood started
trickling down her legs and he had to clip her wounds shut with the pliers.

Undaunted, he moved to her muscular back and repeated the procedure, pinching
the flesh with his hand in order to raise a fold which he could saw through
with the toothed blade, slowly and forcefully, while she screamed and buckled
in harrowing pain at each pass of the teeth trough burnt skin and cut flesh.

He kept her screaming almost uninterruptedly until the torches had to be
changed, allowing no respite except for occasional splashes with cold water,
patiently tracing a crisscrossed pattern of excruciating torment on her
twitching back which he often paused to admire, as if he were striving for a
specific effect which eluded him.

He let her sip from the jug again, pouring the refreshing liquid down her
gagged mouth in short gulps interspersed with brief screams. She was aware
that the beverage was another devious instrument of torment, because beyond
keeping her refreshed and nourished it prevented her from passing out and
possibly even amplified the perception of pain, but in spite of herself her
body craved the liquid and the energy it brought to the point of being
dependent on it, and in any case they would pour it down her gagged mouth if
she refused it.

Lyral could have helped her friend in understanding the nature of the liquid,
but as always, once her friend's torture was paused hers would resume, and the
Easterner pinched her nipple, pulled her breast up in a distended cone and
dragged the red hot points of the cats-paw on the soft underside, while she
howled and jerked spasmodically, lost in torments unlike any she had
experienced so far. As if to make up for the long pause, her tormentor moved
immediately to her other breast, renewing her agony and turning her gasping
breath into a wheezing scream of sheer anguish.

Kayleen was let down and freed from the breast vise, but he cuffed her wrists
behind her neck and pulled her up by her ankles, drawing them open in a
painful scissor spread in mid air which lewdly exposed her suffering nether
regions.  She cringed in sobbing despair, bracing to face the bloody wounding
of her feminine parts in view of which her tormentors usually chose to
restrain her in upside down positions. He removed the clips from some wounds
in her back, smiling cruelly and watching Lyral's expression.

Confirming Kayleen's fears, the old Southerner dragged the toothed blade
through the soft crease between thigh and buttock, pushing it forcefully while
she shrieked in mind numbing pain and rattled her chains in the spasmodic
attempt to escape the jagged blade. After a pause, he started tracing shallow
gashes in the soft flesh behind her thighs, pausing to let her convulsions die
off with each scream before starting each.

He inserted the blade in her ass hole and dragged it back and forth, sawing
through the sphincter as she screamed in utter agony. When her screams waned,
he smiled, twisted the blade somewhat and pulled it again, sawing another gash
in the rim of her anus. After ripping through the muscle repeatedly, pausing
to enjoy her pain-wracked screams, he pulled out his member and thrust it
forcefully in her ass, tearing at the ripped muscle with sadistic glee,
renewing her violation in a rut which consumed him quickly as his thrusts tore
through her wounded bowels while she screamed in harrowing pain.

Drenched in perspiration, Lyral watched between tears the bloody rape of her
friend, quivering in her loins at the thought of the horrid violation yet
unable to avert her gaze, shrinking from the thought of the same happening to
her and almost forgetting the pain from the gashes left from the cats-paw.

The Southerner splashed Kayleen with cold water, then returned to pinching
folds of flesh and sawing through each, drawing the blade back and forth with
slow, deliberate viciousness as her screams echoed under the vaults of the
torture chamber in long, protracted frenzies as he cut gash after gash in her
thighs, belly and buttocks.

He let her sip from the jug, then picked her up by the collar, lifting her
head before his member with one hand, and resting the blade on the rim of her
vagina with the other, then said, "Now use your tongue, or you'll taste mine."

Somewhere in the depths of her agony, Kayleen found the resolve to shake her
head, causing him to let go of her collar and cut her in rage. While she
howled from pain, he pinched her left cunt lip and started dragging the teeth
of the blade on the fold, sawing back and forth through the soft flesh while
her screams rose to a frenzy of howls, which resumed after a brief pause when
he did the same to the other, sawing along its edge as if to spine it.

While she still convulsed in pain, he reached for her breasts and pinched her
left nipple, distending it and dragging the toothed blade along its scorched
surface, rather than sawing through, his technique of cutting into feminine
flesh reaching new peaks of agonizing torment when employed using a jagged
blade on blistered flesh. She convulsed in his grip, howling pitifully as
blood marked her breast and his hand, and kept howling as he methodically
traced new jagged gashes in her nipples, distending each one in turn and
slowly drawing the blade along its length.

He let her sip from the jug again, then pinched her clitoris, rubbing it
between his fingers and pulling it out, slowly at first and then with vicious
strength, until his other hand dragged the blade up in a sawing motion along
the distended piece of feminine flesh, wrenching the first harrowing scream of
sheer agony from her spasmodically jerking body. The small piece of blistered
flesh became the eye of a maelstrom of pain which engulfed Kayleen's mind and
dragged her through hells she had not faced yet.

Lyral realized in horror that each time the Southerner dragged the toothed
blade across her friend's femininity, the howling convulsions caused the
wounds he had unclipped on her back to bleed again, forming the words "Help me
Lyral" in trembling crimson letters which slowly dripped along her friend's
back as her spasmodic jerks subsided fitfully.

The Southerner pulled at Kayleen's clitoris, rubbing the raw flesh and
ignoring her cries as his fingers raked its scorched surface to distend it,
then dragged the teeth across its short length, not quite bursting it open but
sawing through the blistered flesh in flares of blazing pain which sent her
jerking spasmodically while she howled at the top of her lungs in harrowing
agony. He repeated this torment until the small piece of feminine flesh had
been raked completely raw, a throbbing piece of bleeding flesh sending waves
of pain through his victim's convulsing body.

After splashing her with cold water, he reversed his grip on the toothed
blade, slid it down her vagina and pulled up, slowly ripping through the
sensitive portion of the love channel near the upper rim while she convulsed
in demented agony. Her screams rose to pitiful shrieks when he twisted the
blade and pulled again, starting an unprecedented hell of abysmal pain tearing
the rim of her love channel into bleeding folds of flapping flesh.

To Lyral's horror, he put the blade aside, but only to pull out his member and
push it into her friend's ripped vagina again, an enraptured expression on his
face while his thrusts tore the gashes in its rim wider, each causing Lyral to
quiver in her restraints, sobbing in the realization of having heard a sickly
ripping noise in spite of her friend's ear-piercing howls of desperate agony.


Chapter 16 - A Cruel Dream Fulfilled

Hanging upside down in the dark chamber, Lyral sobbed bitterly while the cord
her toes hung from gouged her soft flesh. The pain in her toes compounded the
pain from her burns of her day-long ordeal, but she hesitated to heal herself,
overwhelmed by concern for her horridly tormented friend.

She had not been able to see under what torturous predicament Kayleen had been
put this time, and she could only hope that her friend could reach her hanging
form and receive her healing. Lyral had called her friend's name through her
gag repeatedly, but moans and sobs had been Kayleen's only answer.

Worried sick as the image of her friend's ghastly torments recurred before her
eyes, she finally heard the clanking of irons. Something was moving with gasps
and stifled cries, dragging slowly on the stone floor. It took ages, but then
she heard a whisper, "Lyral ... I am almost there. Please be patient."

Lyral could not see that Kayleen was folded in a hogtie, her elbows cuffed
together and the ankles cuffed to the wrists, and her wounds were clamped with
tiny iron clips, causing the slightest movement to tear at them painfully. She
had been doused with freezing cold water and left shivering, but had retained
the sense to look for her friend in spite of the horrendous agony.

Lyral's toes ached fiercely when she turned left and right, straining her neck
to reach the friend she could finally smell nearby, then she finally touched
her hot, dry skin. A stir surged in her, a heat as close to joy as this dark
chamber had ever seen, and she rushed to heal her friend's devastated body,
but Kayleen pulled back from her kiss.

"Lyral, heal yourself first!" whispered Kayleen, smelling her friend's blood.

"Kayleen! Your wounds must be healed immediately. I can heal mine later, but I
need my full power to heal yours," said Lyral through her gag.

Kayleen sighed, craving Lyral's healing desperately, and nudged close, weeping
as her friend's power infused her body and wiped away the horrendous pain.
With a sigh, Kayleen fell back, so relieved that even the pain from her
strenuous restraint looked bearable.

"I can't believe we held on, today. The tortures you're being subjected to get
more horrendous each day," said Lyral, her voice trembling, omitting that the
her own torments were also getting harsher.

"We do what we must, Lyral. As long as we keep something from him, Zhorun will
have to enforce some restraint on his goons. But once we were of no further
use ..." said Kathleen, so bent on inspiring courage in her poor friend and to
some extent in herself that she realized only after the fact that the prospect
would scare her friend sick.

"However, if we stand united we'll defy him. If they concentrate on me, well,
I can put up with whatever they come up with, as long as you support me. You
must be brave, both facing what they do to you and what they do to me, and
they will not prevail. Heal yourself, now, and rest, my dear friend"

"I'll try, but it's going to be difficult hanging upside down," chuckled
Lyral, missing the false note in her friend's brave words, "I'll have to
expend some of my power to achieve that."

Kayleen consented silently, fully refreshed but already facing the pain of her
torturous position and the prospect of enduring it all night long. Their
predicament was worsening day by day, as Lyral was being put through harsher
and harsher torments and all restraints had been lifted on what herself was
being subjected to. She couldn't deny to herself that she's never been closer
to caving in, and it was only a matter of time before they put her through a
torture horrid enough to push Lyral into revealing Shandra's secret abode.

Although Lyral's healing restored the body and even made up for the missed
sleep, it was of no help with the unceasing abuse, humiliation and anguish
they were being put through, and heaven only knew how they had managed to
retain their sanity. Enduring the torture until rescued looked less and likely
to succeed as time passed, and yet she could find nothing with better
prospects. When she heard the footsteps announcing another grueling day of
ordeals, a heavy sigh of despair escaped from her lips.

Grod tightened her collar, constricting her windpipe, and freed her ankles in
order to lead her to the dreadful cross rack. She tried to resist, but finding
herself immediately out of breath had no choice but let him cuff her ankles to
the device, savoring the brief instant of freedom from the tight, heavy cuffs
she had worn for days as he favored a variant which spread the tremendous pull
of the device over a larger area.

The Southerner woke Lyral up unceremoniously, cuffed her wrists and ankles
together and suspended her from her wrists, clinching her knees together with
iron bands. To Kayleen's horror, he then produced a wide, studded leather
strap and lifted it in an arch at whose end it found Lyral's thighs, snapping
with a crack which was echoed by the young girl's scream of sheer agony.

Only after restraining Kayleen fully did Grod loosen her collar, proceeding
then to tighten iron bands at her shoulders, waist and hips before cranking
the rollers at the edges of the cross rack, pulling each limb taut almost
audibly while the strap cracked on Lyral's creamy skin, leaving bloody welts
while the young girl screamed in demented anguish.

Kayleen's eyes left the jerking shape of her friend when Grod produced a pair
of wooden pliers, hacked raw like the ones she remembered with dread, but with
clawed jaws curving into vicious points. His steel eyes met the dread in the
blue of hers, asking again for a surrender she was not ready to concede, and
then moved to her left breast. The claws cupped its firm flesh as he tightened
the pliers, drawing a scream of anguish as her strong body pulled at her
distended limbs in the effort to lessen the tear on her breast flesh.

Without releasing the pliers, he kept pulling, letting the points dig a row of
angry red scrapes on each side of the generous breast, elongating the pliant
flesh into a cone of agony before finally pulling clear while she screamed in
pain as the points fractured into splinters which lodged in the torn flesh.

Only when he replaced the broken implement with another did Kayleen realize
that the points were designed to flake away in splinters as they were forcibly
dragged through soft flesh, and dread crept in her scream as he slowly scraped
her other breast, the wooden points splintering in the gashes dug as she
howled in fitful agony from the vicious tearing.

He cranked the four rollers at the extremities of the rack, causing it to
start pulling at her distended limbs and joints, then produced a variant of
pliers which could be raked along limbs and closed them on her left forearm,
dragging them slowly along its length while the points dug into the distended
muscle and she screamed in fitful frenzies of tormented agony.

She screamed again for the entire duration of the raking of her other arm,
trembling in her restraints from the exertion and coughing as each movement
brought additional stabs of pain from her other joints, which had no slack to
accommodate her frantic attempts to stem the tearing of her arm.

For her left leg, he used a larger variant of pliers, with more claws which
dug angry chafes along her strong, muscular legs and nasty, bleeding gouges in
the softer flesh of her thigh, wrenching pitched shrieks of deep anguish from
her convulsing body as the pliers took a long time to reach her hips. Her
other leg was soon subjected to the same torment, rekindling her screams as a
fresh pair of pliers dug its way along her supple limb.

Lyral shook her head, still trembling from the pain of the strap and the
myriad bleeding welts it left, unable to fully grasp the torment being visited
on her friend as her experience on the rack had not included any tearing of
the distended muscles. As soon as cold water was splashed on her friend, the
strap cracked on the small of her back, sending her spinning and trembling
while she screamed fitfully from the horrendous pain.

Grod cranked the rollers again, enough to repeatedly wrench a scream from
Kayleen's parched mouth as the pull tore through her joints and ligaments, her
fully distended limbs now painfully elongated into harrowing rods of blazing
agony quivering from the tension and the pain, the muscles slowly straining
under the unyielding pull.

When he dragged the shredders along her forearm again, she convulsed in a fit
of howling agony as the points raked through the strained muscle and dug
bloody gashes where the chafed skin gave or had been pierced by a splinter
which was now being dragged along by their grip. Methodically, he slowly
dragged the shredders along her stretched limbs, lingering while she screamed
in tormented pain from the strained muscles and the bloody gashes.

Without a word, he loosened the nut in the roller pulling her left arm, which
caused it to loosen for a second before becoming taut again, wrenching a howl
of tormented pain from her lips as the arm was rattled mercilessly. One after
another, he meted out the same torment to each limb, proceeding to drag the
wooden shredders along each thereafter. He continued alternating the cranking
of the rollers, the shredding of her limbs and their sudden release until her
screams waned into pitiful wheezes of exhausted anguish.

The strap took flight and landed across Lyral's breasts just as she realized
that the raking of her friend's limbs had been suspended, the pain was so
intense that she gasped for air before screaming in agony. The Southerner
targeted her left breast first, and then the other when she turned under the
impulse of the blow, striking both in quick succession as bleeding welts
started marring the creamy skin while she howled in unceasing anguish.

Grod brought the jug to Kayleen's mouth, and she sputtered as drinking was as
difficult as breathing under the merciless pull of the cross rack. As her
sight cleared, her eyes widened when he closed the shredders around her right
breast and started pulling, raking it mercilessly while she shrieked in
demented pain. Her screams had not even subsided that he did the same to her
other breast, and then started back from the first, pulling and twisting as if
to tear her breasts from her chest.

After a litany of frenzied screams, she was splashed with cold water and her
lip trembled as her gaze wandered on the throbbing mounds of bruised flesh
bleeding from dozens of lacerated gashes which stood in place of her once
proud breasts. Fear and despair seeped into her scream when her tormentor
raked her left breast again, but dwindled quickly in favor of sheer agony as
he pulled it from her right, bracing with a boot against the rack frame and
twisting it viciously, causing her body to twist to the right in the vain
attempt to stem the tearing of her breast flesh until her shoulder, torn
between the opposite pulls, dislocated with a snap and a shriek of agony.

Her tormentor let her cry and tremble in shock, then circled and closed the
shredder on her other breast, raking it as her screams rose anew, pulling and
twisting, fighting her spasmodic attempts to contain the tendency of her body
to pull against her arm, until at last she jerked her other shoulder out of
its socket in another frenzy of fitful screaming.

Lyral added her voice to her friend's agonies when the Southerner slashed her
buttocks with the strap, tracing dozens of bleeding welts in the soft flesh of
the young girl, brutally wrenched from her unwilling fascination with her
friend's ordeals by the harsh caress of the studded leather.

Without a word, Grod busied himself with some levers under the rack, then
circled Kayleen's twitching body and positioned above her head, wielding a
fresh pair of shredders. In the haze of pain, her eyes bulged in horror when
she realized that he intended to pull on her breasts in order to dislocate her
hips, as he would tear them off her chest well before the hip joints gave.

Her mouth distended in a gaping scream of unparalleled agony when he used two
pairs of shredders, one on each breast, pulling and twisting mercilessly and
bracing with one boot and then the other while the wooden points dug into her
flesh and elongated her once generous breasts into gouged cones of throbbing
agony, causing her to pull against her racked legs, but not nearly strongly
enough to cause them to dislocate.

As he alternated between a boot and the other, she started to twist her upper
chest accordingly, and thousands of needles of white hot agony shot through
her dislocated shoulders as the movement put new strain on them. When he saw
this, he rested his boot on a lever which, when he switched his pull from the
left to the right breast, released the nut in the roller pulling at her left
leg, yanking it with a snap while he pulled savagely on her breast with all
his weight and she howled in unparalleled agony as the spasms in her muscles
almost managed to dislocate her left hip.

Undaunted by the failure, he tried the same with her other breast, and failed
again, dragging her down a hell of spasming muscles and torn flesh at whose
end she could only foresee the wrenching pain of having her hips dislocate
like her shoulders. Her breasts were two distorted cones of dark bruises and
bleeding gashes, throbbing and burning with unrelenting pain. Neither bravery,
nor resolve, nor cunning, nor prayers, nothing had delivered her from days and
days of unrelenting torture and the future offered more of the same.

Lyral's gaze found her friend's blue eyes and saw the hopelessness and despair
in them, and widened in fear as she saw that the resolve behind them was about
to shatter, because her friend was her only hope. She would later regret her
selfishness, remembering how bleeding raw flesh showed through the shredded
skin under her distended breasts.

Kayleen saw the terror in Lyral's eyes just as the latter had seen the despair
in hers, and the thought of failing her again brought her new resolve just as
he raked a fresh pair of shredders along her breast, causing her to twist and
convulse in a mounting frenzy of anguished howls as the flesh of the underside
of her breast tore in a wave of unparalleled agony and her hip joint snapped
when the nut was released and retensioned as Grod pushed on the lever.

She kept twitching and screaming in fits of coughing agony, bleeding profusely
from her half torn breast as Grod left his position to treat the wound, but a
robed figure neared silently and whispered, "The other, too."

Grod hesitated, then fetched a fresh pair of shredders and closed them on her
other breast while her screams rose higher in fear. He started to pull but, as
her mouth distended in a howl of agony, paused and said, "Tell us about the
Sorceress, girl. Nobody ever endured what you have been through, but even you
have reached your limits,"

Lyral watched her friend's perspiring body tremble and the breasts rise in a
protracted sigh, then the blue eyes locked with hers as she shook the head and
the blonde hair partly covered the face, although not enough to prevent Lyral
from seeing her lips form the words, "Pray for me". Then pain exploded in her
own breasts as the Southerner lashed them with the strap.

After pouring the contents of a jug in Kayleen's gasping mouth, Grod clenched
the jaws of the wooden shredder on her other breast and pulled viciously,
bracing with his boot on the lever releasing the nut in the roller racking her
leg. In spite of her anguished scream, the limb jerked and flailed but did not
dislodge from the hip joint. He circled her quivering form to crank it another
notch, making her scream even louder, then returned to his original position
and tried again, unflinching at her inhuman howl when the wooden points dug
new bruises into her breast flesh.

Bent on carrying out his master's wishes, he tried repeatedly to dislocate her
limb, tracing deep bleeding gashes in her breast, each one wrenching a litany
of gut-wrenching howls as the points drove new splinters in the wounded flesh
and dragged those already present in bloody gouges, but had to pause in order
to examine the torn underside of the once proud mound, where the skin had
ruptured and the flesh itself was being torn by the repeated pulling.

Sternly, he splashed her with cold water, moved to the roller and cranked it
repeatedly, inspecting her swollen hip joint while she screamed herself
hoarse, bringing it to within an hairsplit of dislocating, then circled her
and closed the bloody wooden jaws on her breast again, pulling at the torn
mound of flesh while his victim howled in unparalleled agony and delaying the
release of the nut, waiting for her body to distend in the spasmodic attempt
to relieve the tear on her chest. Her hip joint dislocated with an audible
pop, which after an instant of silence was overwhelmed a shriek of anguished
pain which wracked his victim's convulsing body.

Lyral withered under her friend's screams, but soon joined her with her own as
the pause brought the Southerner into action again, the strap landing
mercilessly on her soft pale flesh and leaving nasty bleeding marks while she
screamed in terrified agony and twitched spasmodically in her restraints.

After letting Kayleen's pitiful spasms subside in a litany of screams, Grod
let her sip from the jug again before circling her, placing himself at her
crotch and cranking the rack into distending her dislocated thighs into a
scissors spread, each crank soon wrenching helpless shrieks of demented agony
as the dislocated joints were put through this new torment.

Her shrieks turned to blood-curling bellows of raw anguish when he clenched
the wooden jaws of the shredder on her cunt lips and started pulling and
twisting, causing her to react by jerking and buckling her dislocated joints
out of their sockets in the attempt to relieve the tearing of the soft flesh.

Slowly, the repeated tearing of the shredders turned bruises into gashes,
wrenching inhuman screams of demented pain from her convulsing body. Then the
gashes were raked into bleeding gouges, as she jerked in sheer agony and the
pain from the hip sockets surged out of her mouth in a frenzy of fitful
shrieks, which waned only when her voice turned into a wheeze.

She was splashed with cold water before applying the shredder again, slowly
turning the gouges to rips as she bellowed in fits of howling torment while
the soft folds tore where the strain was beyond the ability of the flesh to
endure, ripping in flashes of unbearable pain and mad howls of sheer agony.

Lyral could not bring herself to avert her gaze from the bleeding rips in her
friend's labia, gasping in horror each time the shredder was applied again and
they were agonizingly widened while her friend convulsed in demented pain not
only from the shredding, but also from the pull on the dislocated limbs. In
spite of her prayers, the torment was protracted beyond belief, until the jaws
of the shredder could no longer find a good grip.

Grod was about to treat Kayleen's bleeding wounds, but the Southerner stepped
in and gestured that he would instead. Licking his lips, he positioned between
her thighs, and pulled out his aroused member. A sob wracked her body as she
clenched her eyes and dread contorted her visage, the sight of which he
enjoyed so much that he inserted his member very slowly, almost delicately,
his hands on her ribcage while she sobbed and heaved in pain and dread.

Then he reached for her iron collar and tightened it, constricting her
breathing and causing her vagina to clutch spasmodically his member, a grip he
enjoyed for a long instant of anticipation before pulling out viciously,
tearing at the ripped lips while a scream surged from her mouth. Laughing, he
started lunging forcefully into her racked body in a rut of growling thrusts,
enjoying her screams as this wracked her hip joints.

Only when tired of feeling her convulse in agony on his throbbing member, did
he start treating her wounds, by using pliers to tighten small iron clips on
the edges of the wound, a technique he favored because it was brutal enough to
qualify as torture and somewhat effective. He slowly released her from the
rack, then smiled when she screamed from the pain in her dislocated limbs, as
he intended to take full advantage of such condition.

Lyral cringed as the Easterner encased the big toe of each feet between the
jaws of a wooden vise, trembling in dread at the torment to come as much as
the thought of what her friend was going through. When the vise was tightened,
she tried to be brave but only managed to hold on for mere moments before she
let the pain escape her mouth in a scream of hopeless agony.

The Southerner cuffed Kayleen's ankles together, then doubled her legs and
pulled her arms so that he could cuff her elbows together above her ankles,
wrenching from her scream after scream as the position pulled cruelly at her
wracked limbs. He then clamped her nipples, and tied them with a fine chain to
her ankles. A similar chain connected a clamp on her clitoris to her cuffed
wrists, pulled taut while she screamed helplessly, so that when she tried to
lessen the tear on her joints, her nipples and clitoris would be pulled
savagely. He then sat on the floor before her and pulling her by her collar
forced her mouth, still distended by the spider gag, onto his flaccid member.

He then put on heavy gloves, grabbed her left foot and started rubbing his
gloved hand on the tender sole, which turned red while she convulsed in his
grip and screamed her agony onto his member as the sharkskin on the gloves
abraded the soft skin, causing her to wrack her limbs in reaction and pull at
her clamped nipples and clitoris at the same time. He bent his neck in
pleasure as her tongue twitched spasmodically under his manhood, while her
sole started bleeding under the unrelenting caress of the sharkskin gloves. He
trembled in ecstasy when her muffled screams of agony enveloped his hardening
member as he started to excoriate the sole of her other foot.

Panting, he kept dragging the gloves on her feet, scraping the skin raw and
drawing blood while she convulsed in agony, choking between muffled screams as
he sought his arousal, waiting for the drugs to achieve the intended effect.
After protracting the attempt at length, he exploded in her mouth, laughing as
she choked and gurgled in pain and humiliation. Now that she was but a rag
doll because of her dislocated limbs, he would have her as he always meant to.

Lyral almost puked at the sight of the semen drooling from her friend's torn
mouth, her skin crawling at each convulsion of the once magnificent body, now
trembling from the long bleeding lacerations left by the shredder, the pain in
her unhinged joints and the humiliation of the brutal rape. Her sight blanked
as she screamed in agony when the Easterner, sensing the pause, tightened the
vise on her fingers, crushing them between wooden jaws.

The Southerner cuffed Kayleen's elbows and wrists together behind her back,
then cuffed her ankles to her wrists, spreading her thighs painfully while he
dragged her to a reclined mattress he had prepared the day before, where he
lied after disrobing and where he forced her to climb by pulling her nipples
with the sharkskin gloved fingers. He forced her to straddle his manhood, her
disarticulated limbs preventing her muscles from opposing him but not from
straining in the attempt, resulting in more frenzied screams of raw agony.

He closed his sharkskin gloved hands on her curly pubic hair and pulled
upwards viciously, ripping it off and lifting her up a few inches while she
bellowed in humiliation and pain, only to let her drop onto his member
immediately thereafter, the instrument of her own violation compounding the
blazing pain from the jarring tug on her dislocated thighs.

As if his cruelty demanded further satisfaction, he pulled her up again and
tightened clamps on the flapping tatters of her cunt lips, spreading them
agonizingly wide and winding the fine chains around her thighs and behind her
back until he could fasten them to the folds of torn skin on her breasts,
shortening the chain until her moans turned to fitful screams before letting
her slide down on his member again.

Unbelievably, his member was hardening already, and she slid up and down its
wrapped length according to the thrusts imparted by her violator's pelvis or
the ripping of the pubic hair, as her unhinged thighs could exert no force and
just bent wide while she howled in maddened pain. Smiling cruelly, he kept her
bouncing and convulsing, building up his arousal and slowly ripping the blonde
hair from her mons, protracting his bliss as she agonized on his manhood and
repeatedly tightening her collar, crushing her windpipe until she turned blue
in the face while her vagina spasmodically clutched the shaft piercing her.

Lyral, still sobbing from the dull ache in her crushed fingers and toes, could
not help but yelp at each scream from her friend's convulsing body as it fell
on his stiffening member, her gaze transfixed by its girth tearing the vagina
open with the sole lubrication of the crimson droplets from the mons, where
the ripping of the hair and the abrasion from the sharkskin had removed more
skin and exposed the throbbing flesh underneath.

Only when her friend stopped howling, after repeated self impalement on the
leather wrapped member, did she realize that he had climaxed again and was now
just enjoying the sobbing jerks of his humiliated victim, just as a vise was
placed around her breasts and the Easterner started tightening it. With a sob,
the young Priestess shifted her gaze from her friend's breasts, bleeding from
the gouges left by the shredder, to her own creamy mounds of tender flesh,
already bulging between the jaws of the wooden vise.

The Southerner cuffed Kayleen's ankles to chains from the ceiling, spreading
them wide, then produced a dozen of tiny clamps which he clenched on the edges
of torn skin under her breasts, wrenching new screams of agony and dread from
her sore throat. He then pulled the chains from the clamps together and
pulling her up by the collar said, "Get ready to clamp your mouth around my
manhood here, girl, unless you want to rip the skin off your breasts,"

He forced her mouth onto his half-aroused member, then tied the chains from
the clamps on each breast on a handle which he fastened to her ankles, using a
chain which was barely long enough in her bent position. When he let go of her
collar, she immediately screamed as the fine chains stiffened and the clamps
started ripping the torn skin of her breasts, reopening dozens of bleeding
lacerations. She had not played into his game, in spite of the price.

Annoyed, her tormentor grabbed her collar and pulled her mouth onto his member
again, pinching her clitoris between abrading fingers and rubbing it,
wrenching an immediate howl of demented agony from her and repeating the
attempt to let her suck his manhood while she convulsed in abject torment from
her bleeding love bud, which he was slowly peeling raw. Unbelievably, she
still refused to debase herself before her tormentor.

He let go of her collar and let the clamps rip some more skin from her breasts
before catching her descent, savoring her howl of desperate anguish but still
deprived of his ultimate prize. He inspected her breasts, and concluded that
there was still skin enough for more attempts, so he resumed rubbing her
clitoris and watched her twitch madly, glistening with perspiration and
bleeding as the clamps widened the gouges left by the wooden shredder and
rivulets of blood flowed, feeling his member harden again.

He repeatedly tried to force her to suck, but she kept screaming and twisting
from the torment of her bleeding clitoris and the piecemeal skinning of her
breasts, rather than submit to him. His pleasure at her pitiful gurgles and
spasmodic twitches grew however to a drug-engendered climax, which caught her
mouth wide open in a gut-wrenching howl which broke into sputtering coughs.

Lyral screamed as the Easterner tightened her breast vise again, twitching in
her restraints as the pain assaulted her from her toes, fingers and now
breasts, waxing and waning as she shook in howling torment. Even if they had
decided to force her to talk by torturing her friend, they had not neglected
to cause her as much pain as her young, frail body would stand.

Enraged, the Southerner let Kayleen down and cuffed each ankle to the opposite
wrist, then lowered a thick hook fastened to a chain from the ceiling and
wrapped it in sharkskin. She screamed madly when he lifted her, both from
dread and from pain in her disarticulated shoulders, and her scream turned to
a shriek of terrified agony when he impaled her vagina on the upturned hook,
rasping it raw, and then pushing his member up her ass and thrusting while his
sharkskin gloved hands crushed her bleeding breasts and rubbed her nipples.

Growling in a frenzy of maddened lust, he drove his member up her ass while
the sharkskin reamed her womb into raw bleeding pulp and his fingers peeled
her nipples raw, his grunts punctuating her pitiful shrieks in an obscene
parody of lovemaking. After his initial rut, he protracted his pleasure by
pausing his thrusts and letting her spasms massage his member as she twitched
in screaming agony on the hook, dancing spasmodically under his fingers as
he tore alternately at one and then at the other nipple.

Once sated, he lowered his trembling victim on the floor and pulled her left
ankle behind her back until he managed to cuff it to her right wrist, behind
her neck, wrenching new screams of pain from her throat as her limbs protested
in vain. Her screams doubled when he pulled her right ankle and left wrist
until he could fasten their cuffs together on her right side, leaving her
folded in a position which pulled savagely at her dislocated limbs.

Lyral kept screaming from the unyielding grip of the vises, reaching new
heights when the Southerner tightened either of them, her own pain distracting
her from the unrelenting violation and humiliation of her friend. Yet, the
sight of the straining position her friend's disarticulated limbs were
repeatedly forced into still made her pause in horror, as she was well aware
of the horrendous torment they entailed.

While Kayleen jerked on the stone floor, the Southerner wrapped his member in
leather and knelt besides her, then grabbed her by her collar and wrist and
dragged her near, pushing his member into her vagina again while her cries
from the agony in her torn limbs turned to howls as his member rasped her
abraded insides. He started rubbing his sharkskin gloved hands down her
ribcage, forcing her to react by following the movement, first impaling
herself on his member, then pulling away in quivering disgust until his hands
stroked her skin into a rasping nightmare of burning agony again.

It took a long time for him to rasp her ribcage and hips raw, but he
protracted the torment so that her convulsions on his member would reawaken
his arousal. As this started to happen, he started tightening her collar to
cause her vagina to clutch it, wrenching new howls of unbridled agony as its
abraded inside was exposed to the searing rasp of the leather.

Lyral watched in horrified disbelief as the old man's rut seemed to know no
bounds, going beyond what nature and even drugs could make possible. He had
done something to himself, as his face was congested and his eyes bulged, in
order to be able to possess his victims for hours in a single, uninterrupted,
brutal rape. And where the most devious torments had proved unable to break
the proud Warrior Queen, the unceasing violation, the brutal humiliation of
being powerless in his hands, the intimate excoriation of femininity were
driving her friend on the brink of collapse.

The Southerner let Kayleen sip from the jug, unfastened her restraints, cuffed
her elbows and wrists together behind her back, then forcefully twisted her
legs in the position known in the East as the lotus, bending her pain-wracked
thighs out of place while she screamed pitifully at the renewed torment.

He fastened her bent legs to her collar, then turned her face down and pulled
her arms over her head, laughing at her screams and fastening her wrists to a
ring in the floor. He knelt behind her and waited until his member stiffened
again before violating her vagina again, drooling at her cries as his gloved
hands raked her back.

Mad with lust, he kept thrusting, never sated, and instead of pulling out kept
raking his hands on her bloodied back, enjoying her twitching on his member.
Only after protracting her violation at length did he free her from her
restraints, but only to cuff her wrists to chains from the ceilings and pull
her legs up until he could fasten her ankles to her wrists, leaving her
hanging in mid-air, exposed and crying from the pain in her strained joints.

With an evil smile, he brought his rapidly arousing member near the rosette
of her anus and teased it, enjoying the dread and humiliation in her cries as
he waited for the drugs to take effect. Only when it was rock hard did he
thrust it up her ass, pushing up viciously and enjoying the recoil as her
trembling body fell back down on its erected manhood. Her screams of despair
rose to howls when his sharkskin gloved hands started rasping the shredded
skin of her thighs and legs, as he used them to accompany his upward thrusts.

Lyral's eyes could not leave her friend's bouncing form, in spite of her own
torment in the Easterner's vises, unable to comprehend how her friend's
tormentor could still will and ever be able to hurt, rape and humiliate her
friend, as if there was something he had not subjected her to. All resolve was
gone from the blue eyes, and the face contorting in torment bore no sign of
defiance as the head rocked back and forth under the thrusts.

Unbelievably, the Southerner protracted the violation of Kayleen's bowels, his
eyes bulging and his breath panting from the effort and the drugs, while his
victim twitched and screamed as the abrading gloves rasped mercilessly her
shredded legs and thighs. He came with a growl, loud enough to be heard under
her frenzied screaming, and then let her twitch for some time on his upturned
member, rubbing the sharkskin on her raw nipples while she cried in pain.

He lowered her on the floor, cuffed her left ankle to the right wrist behind
her back, then pulled her up by her left wrist, letting her scream as her
weight rested on her dislocated right leg, and, once he grabbed her firmly,
on her mouth on his member. With lust in his eyes, he moved his hand to her
ass and started reaming the inside of her anus with his sharkskin covered
finger, forcing her to scream her agony onto his member again.

As he protracted her humiliation, he added first one finger and then another
inside her bleeding ass hole, elated as the drugs managed to bring him again
to arousal, fully enjoying her tongue pleasuring his member as she screamed in
mad pain, shrill cries of agony turning into pitiful gurgles as her mouth was
almost filled by his unnaturally hard member. Panting, he brought both hands
on her ass cheeks and started raking them, tearing at her ass hole as if to
rip it open while her cries brought him to climax again.

Lyral shook in disbelief and horror, her own pain a dull ache as even the
Easterner had been fascinated as her friend's rape protracted beyond all
boundaries of reason and nature. There had been no pause, no mercy, just the
brutal humiliation of forced oral penetration between the repeated violation
of her friend's orifices, perpetrated while scraping her skin raw with the
sharkskin gloves and straining her dislocated limbs. And it was not over.

The Southerner let Kayleen sip from the jug, and then cuffed her elbows and
wrists together behind her back, and her ankles to a wedge-shaped steel bar
crushing her bleeding mons, straining her legs bent besides her thighs into a
pain-wracked fold which tore agonizingly at her disarticulated hip joins. He
then clamped the flapping tatters of her cunt lips, staunching their bleeding
but causing her cries to rise in pitch as he fastened them to the bar, causing
her to lewdly push her vulva forward, balancing precariously on her knees while
quivering from the pain in her hip joints.

Her screams rose even higher when he started clamping the folds of skin on her
bleeding breasts, fastening the clamps from each breast to a chain from the
ceiling and slowly pulling up, forcing her to arch strenuously to prevent her
breasts from being further flayed, at the price of putting all her weight on
her dislocated hip joints. Pulling her wrists and twisting her arms above her
shoulders, preventing them form supporting her trembling body looked like the
last straw in depraved cruelty, until he moved between her legs and nudged her
rasped anus with his newly aroused member sheathed in leather.

Lyral watched in gaping disbelief as he thrust into her friend's torn ass
hole, the leather rasping her bloodied innards while his sharkskin gloved
hands pulled savagely at her nipples, unable to stop shaking at her friend's
pitiful howls of desperate agony, sobbing at what she could recognize as
mindless agony, the broken shell of her formerly proud friend. Now that her
friend's resolve had been shattered by the relentless assaults, the
whereabouts of Shandra would be disclosed, and it would be over.

The feeling of relief which Lyral was warming to was suddenly chilled in her
mind by the thought of what would be of them once they had nothing of value
for their captors, and especially what would be of her once they had no more
reason to preserve her maidenhood. Gripped by a fear she could not contain,
she surprised everybody in the torture chamber by shouting, "Kayleen! Don't
talk, Kayleen! Hold on, for heaven's sake, hold on!"

A desperate howl of dread, pain and humiliation rose from Kayleen's throat
when, as if in response, the Southerner knelt between her splayed thighs and
forcefully penetrated her rasped vagina, raking the sharkskin gloves on her
hips as his frenzied thrusts crushed the clamps on the wounded lips and jerked
her body off the floor, tearing at the folds of skin in her breasts, in a
contraption of devious cruelty and perverse lust which her tormentor enjoyed
with wild abandon, fueling his inhuman arousal as much on the drugs as on her
spasmodic convulsions and anguished, uninterrupted screams.

Growling, her tormentor protracted her violation, as if feeding off her
screams, pausing to let his member relish her spasmodic convulsions and then
resuming her rape to fuel new frenzies of pitiful howling, and continued long
enough to let Lyral recover her wits and shed bitter tears at the thought of
what her friend was going through and how selfish she had been.

"Faithful, loyal servants are supplied with the means to have their fondest
dreams fulfilled. Defiance is suitably punished," whispered Zhorun, indirectly
revealing the origin of the Southerner's inhuman lust, his voice thrilled and,
if possible, lustful at pleasures he could only watch.

When her friend was finally released, trembling and coughing, the sun was
setting over almost a day of uninterrupted rape, and Lyral started considering
how she could augment her healing to let her friend recover beyond the purely
physical aspects of her ordeal, when the robed figure spoke, a deviant thrill
in his whispers from beyond the grave, "Her interrogation must continue."

The Easterner moved besides Kayleen and cautiously undid her restraints, even
if she was obviously unable to resist, and cuffed her wrists to chains from
the ceiling, lifting her up by her disarticulated arms while she screamed at
the top of her lungs, her mouth distended by the gag and repeatedly violated
trembling as her body convulsed from the horrid pain. He then cuffed her
ankles to chains winding around two pillars and pulled her legs up at waist
height, distending them beyond what could be ordinarily achieved as they no
longer rested in their sockets and held only by the ligaments, as confirmed
by the sunken flesh at her hip and shoulder joints.

Just hanging spread eagled in mid air with her limbs out of their sockets
would have been more than enough torture in Lyral's eyes, but her friend's
tormentor had prepared something on par with what his colleagues had visited
on the devastated victim. At first, Lyral failed to understand how what looked
like small triangular pieces of paper could harm her friend, but she could not
deny the reality of her hopeless screams of agony as the Easterner used the
paper in his hands on her chafed and gouged skin.

Kayleen screamed in mindless agony as she withstood what her friend could not
discern clearly, the slicing of her raw flesh by a razor thin piece of paper
turned stiff and brittle, almost like glass, by bathing in some chemical whose
residual traces burned in the shallow wound like bleach.

Her tormentor cut shallow slices through her breasts and cunt lips, so thin
and shallow that they barely bled, remaining open and burning far longer than
cuts from a knife would. He then reached for her feet, and started cutting
under her nails and between her toes, making short pauses between each cut as
the wound was so minor that he could slice her a dozen times before she bled
as she would from the slightest blade cut.

He moved from her left foot to her left calf, slicing her repeatedly with
short pauses in between and taking care to cut through the gashes left by the
shredder, letting her howls of demented agony subside just enough to place the
next cut where he wanted it in spite of her trembling and jerking under the
relentless assault of the devious little implements of torment.

After spending an unbelievable amount of time on her left leg, he moved his
attentions to her left thigh, wrenching high pitched howls as he sliced softer
flesh, attempting to dig longer cuts even if the paper was not really up to
the task and bent easily. She screamed repeatedly as he cut across the bloody
gashes left by the shredder, leaving cuts thin enough that they barely bled
but burned fiendishly from the irritant used on the paper.

After thoroughly crisscrossing her left thigh with cuts, he splashed her with
cold water and knelt before her, dragging the razor thin paper on the abraded
skin of her mons as she jerked in screaming agony, then following up with a
cut at the base of a rip in her cunt lips, reopening it while she screamed
herself hoarse and a drop of blood formed where the rip had been reopened.

He started slicing through the folds of her clitoris, one cut at a time, each
a thin red line in the pink flesh, each wrenching a new scream from her as he
alternated between left and right, nearing to her bleeding love bud, abraded
raw by the sharkskin and still throbbing in pain. But when he sliced through
it with the razor thin paper, she arched in pain-wracked spasms and howled her
agony up the vaults of the torture chamber, trembling and buckling in spite of
the torment thus wrought on her dislocated joints.

Lyral could not help but tremble at her friend's scream, neither did she
manage to withstand the ones which followed, because although she could not
see what exactly her friend's tormentor was doing, she could sense the sheer
agony in her desperate howls and could guess that he was again targeting her
femininity, his cruelty second to none and no less despicable just because he
refrained from physical intercourse with his victim. Lyral shook her head as
her friend's screams continued, as if to repel the thought that he could not
find anything more to cut there by now.

Instead, the Easterner was finding plenty to cut on Kayleen's abraded love
bud, because each slice was tiny, and he prided himself in being able to slice
into an existing cut in spite of her spasmodic jerks, so he kept up her
torment far longer than his mindlessly howling victim or her terrified friend
would have considered or even hoped possible.

He moved to her right thigh and resumed the assault on her flesh, drawing the
razor thin paper in cuts across the gouged skin and into the bleeding
abrasions, pausing after each howl of demented agony to let her jerk and
convulse herself into further pain as she tore at her swollen joints.

He finally moved to her right leg, continuing to slice thin cuts across the
gashes left by the shredder and pausing to let each run its course of pain as
she screamed and jerked, furthering her agony. She was perspiring heavily, and
the salty sweat burned in her wounded and abraded flesh, creating a backdrop
of unrelenting torment against which the tiny cuts of her tormentor flashed
like lightning in a storm, followed by the thundering pain from the joints.

Lyral cried as Grod, in view of the impending pause in her friend's torture,
pulled a curl of hair from her thick bush, wrenching a howl of pain from her
mouth and throwing her in a deep pit of dread as her nightmare of an assault
on the femininity which she had distanced from inched closer.

The Easterner let Kayleen sip from the jug, allowing for the briefest respite
before reaching for her right foot, wrenching from her shrill cries of
helpless torment as he started cutting under her nails and between her toes,
lingering on each before moving to her sole, slicing into the soft flesh with
tiny cuts which barely bled but kept burning from the irritant in the paper.

He moved behind her and started slicing the back of her leg, drawing from her
new screams where pain mixed with dread as she realized that he intended to
travel the full course of her distended, quivering legs, cutting his way into
her flesh tiny wound by tiny wound, meaning that her torment was not even
halfway as he would then turn on the rest of her body.

The torment of her thigh was a protracted ordeal of slicing and cutting, and
her tormentor put an end to it only for an instant of respite, just before
dragging a razor thin paper strip down the crease in between, managing the
long cut he had so often attempted while she arched in a bellow of unbridled
agony, pushing madly on her disarticulated limbs in the vain effort to stem
the pain from the long, shallow cut which as he deepened it agonizingly.

Unlike her legs, her ass cheeks had not been raked by the shredder, so instead
of long gashes they bled from the deep abrasions left by the sharkskin gloves,
and she discovered that this was fertile ground for her tormentor's cruel
imagination as he started alternating between cutting into the skin and inside
the abrasions, opening them even so slightly and renewing their burning agony
with a new dose of merciless torment which caused her to howl and buckle,
wreaking new agonies onto her swollen joints.

He also practiced the art of slicing into an existing cut, biding his time to
avoid her spasmodic jerks as the intense pain short from her buttocks and
rattled her chains as much as her joints, fueling new frenzies of fitful
screaming while thin rivulets of blood, mere droplets, formed at the edges of
the thin lacerations which burned from her salty sweat.

Lyral watched her friend howl from pain and convulse in agony, unable to avert
her eyes from the sight of her ligaments and muscles twitching and tensing as
her jerks strained her joints, starting when the head of the dislocated bone
bulged under the tormented flesh. Then a pain flashed from her mons as another
curl of hair was cruelly ripped off, and she clenched her eyes screaming.

After splashing Kayleen with cold water, the Easterner started practicing a
different art, that of slicing under the edges of an existing wound, slicing
the skin off from the underlying flesh for the fraction of inch allowed by the
brittle paper, wrenching from her a bellow of gut-wrenching agony as the cut
brought the irritant from the paper into a larger area of tormented flesh.

After tormenting her buttocks for an unbelievable amount of time, he resumed
his progression along her limbs, moving to her right thigh and cutting across
the gashes left by the shredder, returning to a form of torment which was
maybe less refined but no less painful, at least according to his victim's
agonizing screams and spasmodic jerks.

He then circled her, reaching for her hand and slicing under the nail of her
ring finger, pausing when she jerked with a yowl which turned to a scream when
he cut the flesh between two fingers and then then sliced under the nail of
her small finger, starting the relentless torment of her fingers which he
methodically protracted while she screamed in abject torment and twitched her
arm, sending shoots of pain through her shoulder in the vain attempt to
relieve her tormented fingers.

In time, he moved to her forearm, tracing thin cuts in the flesh near the
wrist and then descending slowly, each cut a new rattling of the chains and
a new scream, full of helpless torment and deep misery, her voice trembling
from the uninterrupted effort and yet capable of rising to new heights as he
crisscrossed her flesh with tiny burning cuts.

Her tormentor reached her upper arm, and soon moved to her armpit, targeting
the soft flesh with long, slow cuts which wrenched screams of bitter pain from
her shaking body. He kept slicing the relatively unharmed skin, inspecting her
eyes as the dread regarding where he would subsequently move his attentions
built up, creeping in her hoarse screams and anguished stares as the cuts
inched closer and closer to her breast.

Lyral watched helplessly, crushed under the realization that the show was
being protracted for her benefit, to force her to talk, and at the same time
unable to silence the dark corner of her mind which hoped her friend's torture
would not stop, because her own would then begun. She tried to pray for her
friend, but she so despised herself that she could not bring herself to
continue and just wept bitterly, screaming when another curl was ripped from
her mons by her vigilant tormentor as her friend's torture was paused.

When the Easterner brought the jug to Kayleen's lips, she broke in tears,
wailing in despair, knowing what would follow and finding no mercy in the cold
eyes of her tormentor. Her breasts had been savagely torn by the shredders,
whose jaws had raked them repeatedly leaving dozens of bruises and gouges,
some chafed raw by the repeated shredding and some lacerated to the raw flesh
by the many splinters. The twisting and pulling had torn the soft skin of the
underside like a ripped curtain, exposing bleeding swaths of fat and flesh
summarily clipped but still bleeding slowly. The sharkskin had abraded the
wounded skin and peeled the nipples raw, leaving two radiating centers of
unrelenting agony pinned on top of the throbbing mounds of feminine flesh.

"Obstination will only result in more pain, for both of you. The torment shall
be protracted until either of you delivers what I request, and its intensity
will be increased to match your defiance, " said Zhorun, watching intently.

The paper cut across a lacerated gouge in Kayleen's left breast, sending her
head jerking back as her mouth distended in a scream of tormented agony,
followed by another as her joints shook under her spasms of pain. The next cut
sliced through the abraded tip of the left nipple, forming a droplet of blood
under the throbbing bud as she howled, rattling her restraints, unable to
prevent herself from pulling at her dislocated joints.

He dragged a paper across the tatters of skin under her left breast, wrenching
a sustained howl of unbridled agony as she shook her head in mad pain, the cut
not even deep enough to sever the remaining folds of soft skin but burning
painfully as it remained open while she convulsed her disarticulated joints
into further torment. She bellowed in utter agony when he sliced along a deep
gash left by the shredder, scratching the dried blood from the raw flesh and
causing her to stiffen and arch in a hoarse scream before buckling madly.

Slowly, deliberately, he sliced scores of thin cuts in her mauled breasts,
pausing after each and biding his time while she could not prevent herself
from jerking and buckling, furthering the torment of her dislocated joints
into frenzies of screaming agony. Her own perspiration brought salty sweat in
her innumerable wounds, and in spite of the efforts in reducing the bleeding
the blood loss was starting to become significant.

Lyral watched, beyond tears, as her friend's breasts quivered between howls of
unbridled agony as the paper scratched the gouges, sliced abraded flesh, and
sliced through existing cuts. Such was her friend's agony that she overcame
her deep seated fears and found herself praying for a pause, no longer fearing
that it would bring her own torment, ready for anything as long as it meant a
pause in her friend's uninterrupted torture.

After covering Kayleen's breasts with tiny cuts, the Easterner let her sip
from the jug and then moved to her right arm, no longer playing on her deep
seated womanly fears but simply dragging the razor thin paper in an intricate
graffiti of torment punctuated by her uninterrupted, hoarse screams of agony.

He splashed her with cold water, and watched while she convulsed and screamed
as the saltwater burned through the innumerable wounds all over her body. When
she stopped rattling her chains, he knelt before her and dragged a razor thin
piece of bristle paper across the rim of her sphincter, sending her buckling
again as the tiny cut brought her suffering to a new level. Taking advantage
of a momentary lapse in her trashing, he then sliced through the rim of her
abraded vagina, following up with the razor thin paper as her body stiffened
before she started convulsing in a frenzy of uninterrupted screaming.

He continued slicing mercilessly the rim of her orifices, tracing tiny cuts of
unbelievable agony in the abraded flesh while she screamed at the top of her
lungs and convulsed madly, tearing at her dislocated joints in a frenzy of
maddened pain which he protracted cruelly, alternating between deepening
existing cuts and opening new ones.

Lyral gasped as her friend's torment reached new depths of depravity, as the
cuts on her nipples and clitoris became the next target, pulled open by expert
fingers and sliced under the edges by the brittle paper, causing wild spasms
of desperate agony as the irritant burned into slices too tiny to bleed, let
alone clot, or protracted frenzies of howling torment as the paper sliced
through raw flesh in the bleeding gashes or under abraded skin.

Time and again, she hoped that a pause in her friend's screams meant that the
ordeal was finally over, but to her dismay they always resumed as cold, salt
water was poured on her convulsing form to revive her and rekindle her
torment. Only when the last howl was wrenched from her throat did their
ordeal, finally, give way to another night of torturous restraint.


Chapter 17 - Partakers in Their Own Misery

The dark emptiness of the torture chamber under the ruins of Zhorun's former
castle echoed with Kayleen's intermittent, bitter cries. She hung from a wedge
shaped steel bar snug under her knees, with her ankles cuffed together, her
arms encircling the legs and cuffed before the ankles, folding her painfully
with her chest pressing on the thighs and her dislocated limbs under
uninterrupted, savage strain. Her shredded cunt lips had been pulled open and
stitched with needles to the inside of her thighs, and the flies which had
been left with them showed some preference for biting her there, as their
captors had intended, tormenting her mercilessly.

Below her, Lyral balanced precariously with her knees on a hacked wooden
wedge, with her ankles tied to iron bands at her thighs, her wrists and elbows
cuffed together behind her back, wailing in bitter agony when a fly bit her
bleeding mons, where her curly hair had been ripped. A spiked hemp rope
encircled her breasts, gouging them whenever she lost her balance and pulled
on it, her scream soon joined by her friend's as the other end of the rope had
been fastened to Kayleen's waist band, causing any tug from her friend to
reverberate cruelly on her dislocated joints. Conversely, as Kayleen convulsed
from a particularly nasty bite, the rope spikes shifted cruelly inside her
friend's breast flesh.

Of the two, Lyral was the one in better shape, as Kayleen was beyond herself
after a day of uninterrupted rape and savage slicing of her most tender flesh,
but she found herself unable to concentrate enough to use her power to heal
herself, because of the uninterrupted torment from the wedge or the spikes, so
she just twitched in misery, screaming occasionally when the pain rose for one
reason or the other. Kayleen still shivered from the repeated dousing with
freezing cold water, most of which had splashed Lyral also.

As the night went on in a nightmare of mutual agonies, it was Kayleen who
tapped some inner reserve of resolution and slowly managed to bring herself
under some control, straining heroically to still herself before the agonies
she was undergoing in order to stop tearing at her friend's breasts.

"Lyral, Lyral, is it better now ? Can you hear me ?" she called, wincing at a
bite under her sole but keeping as still as she could.

"I do, Kayleen. Oh Kayleen, my breasts ... I can't stand the pain, please
don't move again," replied Lyral, and Kayleen had to stifle a stinging remark
as her own breasts had been shredded raw, abraded and sliced with hundreds of
paper-cuts. But she could not ask Lyral to become what she was not.

"Can you heal yourself, now ?" asked Kayleen instead, worried that her friend
could not withstand the impending torments, as it was almost dawn.

"Maybe, but I cannot reach you. I cannot see so far up," replied Lyral.

"If you can heal yourself, I think I can extricate myself from this position
and lower my head enough to reach you. If my joints were sound it would be
easier, but now ... I won't be able to spare you much, Lyral," she said,
omitting that what she had in mind would amount to protracted self torture of
her own dislocated joints.

Lyral trembled, terrified at the prospect of further suffering in her breast,
and almost denied her friend, then she saw before her eyes her friend's body
being savagely raped by the old Southerner while Zhorun watched intently, and
sighed in misery, dreading the thought of what her fate would be in her
friend's absence and hating herself for her weakness.

"If you hear me scream, don't stop," said Lyral, marveling at her own words.

Steeling herself, the Warrior Queen started arching, containing a scream of
intense agony as the act distended her arms and tore at her dislocated
shoulder joints, straining in the desperate attempt to extricate herself from
her folded position and distend, reaching down with her head to touch her
friend. In doing so, she pulled her waist up, and soon had to support her
friend's weight in addition to her own, while Lyral hung from her constricted
breasts and screamed in agony, soon joined by Kayleen as she reached a point
where the pain was excruciating.

The first attempt failed in a frenzy of screams, and Kayleen had to return to
her original position, sobbing and twitching in bitter torment, but after the
shortest rest she thought she could afford she tried again, and almost made
it the second time before giving up between screams. She rested again, and
with a horrendous effort managed at last to extricate herself, letting the
bar slide painfully from her knees to her ankles and distending downward,
bringing her friend back on the ground and reaching her face with her own,
although at the price of horrendous pain in her dislocated joints.

When both recovered after the intense pain, Lyral gathered the strength to
heal her friend, trembling as her healing power diffused and she was exposed
to some of the pain her friend had been through, seeking in the empathy they
shared the traces of her friend's abominable rape and shuddering as she found
plenty, crying bitterly at the vicarious experience.

"Why do you cry ? Didn't you heal yourself ?", asked Kayleen.

"I was not sure I had power enough for us both, Kayleen, but that's not it.
When I heal you, I can feel some of what you went through," replied Lyral.

"You mean ... the old pig ?", said Kayleen, steel in her voice.

"Yes", whispered Lyral, trembling.

"Don't let them ... stain you, Lyral. Don't dwell on it, take your mind off
the thought. I know it's terrifying, but don't dwell on it. That's what they
want, they know you're afraid, and ..." she stopped in mid sentence, but
Lyral completed it, "... they rape you because of that. Oh Kayleen, I wish I
were brave enough to stand in your place, but I cannot! When that man lays his
hands on me, I feel like dying of fright! I am so worthless!"

Kayleen tried to soothe her, whispering in her ears the best words she could
find, raging silently at the thought of her young, frail friend being
subjected to the depravities they faced, and at her own inability to prevent
it. She had to find a weakness in their captors' habits, and quickly, since
withstanding the torture proved harder and harder each day.

As if to prove her right, she heard the dreaded noise of approaching
footsteps, and for a moment was about to cry in despair that it wasn't fair,
it was too early, and then sobbed silently as Lyral moaned a tormented,
forlorn "Nooo" which echoed in the chamber as the torches lit it again.

The Easterner neared and lowered Kayleen to the ground, ignoring Lyral's sigh
of relief, and immediately tightened her collar, restricting her breathing and
dragging her to a nearby bench. He cuffed one ankle at a time to one end of
the bench, then one wrist at a time to the other, and fastened an iron band
around her waist. Only then did he allow her to breathe normally again, and
then disrobed, wrapped his member in leather and entwined his legs with her
constricted form before thrusting it into her vagina, coldly raping her on the
bench while she cried in dismay.

Meanwhile, the Southerner had fastened Lyral on the ladder, and drove a thin
needle under her left toenail causing her scream to join her friend's. He drove
a few in quick succession, pausing just enough to let her screams subside, but
then stopped driving needles under her toenails to watch her friend's
violation, commenting lewdly, "It took the others a while, but they finally
decided to give her what she deserves. Too high and mighty for an old man, she
fancied herself, and now watch her service all the three of us!"

After climaxing, the Easterner extricated himself, then cranked the bench to
pull Kayleen's body taut and circled her. Soon she felt a cord tighten around
her thumb, and yelped as tiny thorns bit her skin. As the cord was tightened,
her yowls turned to a bitter cry, and soon she started screaming as pain
wracked her fingers while he tightened the barbed cords, phalanx after
phalanx, using iron pliers to slowly and viciously twist them.

His victim gazed in dread as, after mercilessly tormenting her fingers at
length, he moved by her feet and wound a thin barbed cord around her toe,
jerking her head in a scream when he tightened it and the tiny thorns started
chafing the skin. She could not see them, but could see that the cord had
knots at regular intervals, each knot winding around a small steel linchpin
whose purpose cast ominous shadows in her mind. As the toes had no discernible
phalanxes, her tormentor placed two cords on each, wrenching bitter screams as
the pain from her toes compounded the piercing ache in her fingers.

He paused again, then produced coils of rough hemp rope which he started
wrapping around her slender legs. She watched through tears as he wound a
strip of cured skin, possibly soft leather, around the limb, followed by two
coils of the hemp rope, ominously knotted around linchpins at regular
intervals and braided around a two-inch steel rod, which he used as the handle
when tightening the ropes with the same iron pliers.

She was already perspiring heavily, and the burning in her fingers and toes
told her that the cords had been tightened enough to chafe skin, and now the
pain from her legs was rising as he tightened the coils, each turn of the
tourniquet causing her to yelp as they dug deeper and deeper. Her screams rose
in pitch when he repeated the procedure on her thighs, where the ropes dug
much deeper in the soft flesh, although in some cases, for a purpose which she
could not guess, he had first snug small iron strips under the ropes.

Instead of pausing, her tormentor produced more ropes and started winding them
around her limbs, first at each mid point of thigh and leg, then at the mid
point of each intervening space, tightening them while she screamed herself
hoarse as her once shapely legs slowly turned to obscene sausage-like trunks
of quivering constricted flesh, sectioned in bulging ripples between each pair
or coils as they dug deeper and deeper.

Lyral winced at the thought of how painful the blood engorging the folds of
constricted flesh would soon become as circulation was all but cut, with only
the strips of cured flesh preventing the ropes from cutting her friend's limbs
to the bone, severing a major vessel. She had not noticed how iron strips had
been placed exactly to avoid bleeding her to death, and her eyes left her
friend's tormented form when the Southerner drove a needle with a forked tip
in the soft flesh of her left book, pushing it forcefully while she screamed
and twitched from the unimaginable pain.

The Easterner then started winding cords between Kayleen's legs, pulling them
up under her back up to her neck, but instead of tightening them he moved to
her arms, placed wooden chips on her forearms and started tightening ropes
around them in the same manner used for her legs, and kept up at his work, in
spite of her uninterrupted screams of demented agony, until her arms became a
smaller scale replica of her swelling legs.

He let her trash and scream until her tremors subsided, then poured cold, salt
water on her body, unmoved by her screams as the liquid burned her chafed
skin. He paused again, letting the liquid run its course to the fullest, then
poured more salt water, and kept pouring until he was satisfied that the
ropes had been thoroughly soaked. He then proceeded to tighten them all, one
by one, each time wrenching a new scream from her trembling body.

He then started winding ropes around her waist, abdomen and chest, tightening
them on the underlying leather strips, so that each breath became labored,
even painful, but leaving her breasts aside. Temporarily, as it turned out,
because he retrieved the barbed cords wound under her back and distended her
left nipple, elongating it and tightening first a cord around the base and
then one at mid length. She screamed in agony as he twisted each cord, gazing
in horrified fascination at how the linchpins had been placed facing each
other, crushing the delectable flesh between them.

He started laying cords on her chest in preparation, one after the other as
her eyes bulged in fear at their number, and then moved to her crotch and
pulled her cunt lips open, tightening two cords on her love bud while she
trashed in the mesh of cords and howled in agony, and trapping her cunt lips
around a wedge hammered up her vagina, looping a cord tightly around the
painfully distended folds of feminine flesh.

When he knelt under the bench and started shortening the cords connecting her
nipples to her crotch, she started trashing and screaming, unable to arch to
relieve the pull on her clitoris and nipples, which caused her breasts to
distend into cones of throbbing pain. When her trembling subsided, he
straddled her head and pushed his member down her mouth, pouring saltwater
over her restrained form to rekindle her agonies as the saline liquid seeped
into the wounds dug by the ropes and cords all over her body, and her own
jerks worsened their bite onto her flesh while she gurgled pitifully.

Once her breasts elongated far beyond their natural proportions, he started
tightening the cords he had prepared around her breasts, furthering her
torment as the pliable flesh was dug into by the tiny barbs and deformed into
grotesque ripples as he used the tourniquet where mere muscle proved not
enough. Each turn dug the barbs deeper in the soft flesh and squeezed more
salt from the soaked cord, wrenching from her throat a choked scream of
desperate agony while her body shook spasmodically, in spite of her efforts to
be still and spare herself further agonies from her other restrains.

Lyral watched in tears as the violation of her friend's mouth was protracted
alongside the torment of her breasts, unable to avert her gaze even as she
kept telling herself that they had decided to follow in the footsteps of the
old pig from the South after seeing how much rape terrified her. The latter
had been leisurely driving needles under her nails, wrenching howls of insane
torment from her quivering body, but was now engrossed in her friend's plight.

Once spent, the Easterner wound the remaining cords between Kayleen's legs and
around her neck, shortening them with a tourniquet until they started biting
between her cunt lips and cutting into the soft flesh between her orifices,
pouring more salt water whenever she stopped twitching, wrenching new hoarse
screams as he reenacted the first torments visited on her under a harsher
guise, which now included the violation he had previously abstained from.

As if to complete his grisly work, he wound a barbed twine around each of her
nipples and her clitoris, elongating each unmercifully with a pair of iron
pliers in order to find some flesh to tighten them onto while she howled in
unspeakable agony. He then drove a thin needle through each, which caused her
screams to rise as it was coated with some venomous substance, then joined the
three twines under a rope tightened on her belly, and shortened them until
they started tugging cruelly on the delectable pieces of feminine flesh, in
the opposite direction of the cords winding besides her back.

To relieve this torment, she had to bend at the waist, but even what little
relief her restraints would thus allow turned immediately into pain as the
cords under her back pulled in the opposite direction, forcing her to arch
instead, a position which caused the barbed twines to bite into her flesh
again, drawing blood and a heart-rending howl. Unable to find relief, she
started twitching between the two positions, her labored breathing a further
source of torment as her ribcage was encased in the unyielding ropes.

After protracting her torment until her screams subsided, he let her sip from
the jug, sputtering as even sipping was painful, and then with pliers in each
hand started tightening her restraints again, grabbing the steel linchpins and
using them as miniature tourniquets. She started twitching in agony between
the two equally painful positions allowed by her restraints, and screamed at
the top of her lungs when droplets of blood started flowing from her nipples
and clitoris, constricted near bursting point, swelling from the venom on the
needles, bitten by the tiny thorns in the cords and burning from the saltwater
the cords had been repeatedly soaked with.

In spite of the pain from the needles, Lyral trembled at the thought of how
her friend's torment must have been steadily mounting, with the ropes digging
deep and cutting off the circulation, causing the constricted limbs to become
engorged with blood as time went by while no respite was allowed to the
bursting pieces of feminine flesh. Her own flesh hurt horribly whenever the
Southerner leisurely drove another needle in her thighs, buttocks and belly,
teasing her breasts by scratching them while she trembled in dread.

Kayleen's limbs were swollen and purple, four rods of cramped agony where the
ropes had dug so deep that she would be bleeding freely if not for the leather
strips, which had preserved the skin from being sliced through but not from
chafing and incessant burn as they had soaked with saltwater. No such care had
been taken for her breasts and crotch, where the barbed cords had drawn blood,
abrading through the chafed skin whenever tightened and slowly sawing through
her flesh while saltwater seeped in the thin, lacerated wound, drawing ever
shriller screams of hopeless agony from her gaping mouth.

The Easterner fetched more barbed cord and wound it on her legs, between two
coils of rope digging in her calves, tightening it with iron pliers until it
snug onto the soft leather, then using pliers in each hand started dragging it
back and forth while she screamed in agony as the cord bit through the soft
strip into the chafed skin underneath and his forceful sawing motion jerked
her in her restraints, rekindling the torment in her nipples and clitoris.

He moved to the next pair of coils and repeated the procedure, wrenching new
screams of unbridled torment as she convulsed in her restraints under his
unceasing exertion. As the sawing motion protracted, blood started to tinge
the hemp ropes as the barbed cord progressed from scratching the chafed skin
through the soaked leather, to abrading the skin directly while the saltwater
seeped in the wound, and finally to slowly lacerating the flesh as the tiny
barbs sawed deeper and deeper, except where iron strips had been placed to
safeguard major vessels. He paused to drench her thoroughly in saltwater, then
resumed her torment while she screamed and twitched in demented agony.

He alternated between her upper and lower limbs, and her screams rose in pitch
and increased in duration, especially when he started sawing into the flesh of
her thighs. The soft leather no longer prevented blood loss, while the pain
from the compressed limbs found new heights as the constricted blood pulsated
as new avenues were opened to it, so he started alternate the furthering
of her torment with some treatment, smearing the paste they used on open
wounds inside the deep lacerated gashes sawed by the barbed cords.

Each pause, however fleeting, wrought new screams from Lyral's twitching form
as the Southerner drove another needle in her soft flesh, viciously targeting
the parts of the body more vulnerable to pain and as often as not her creamy
breasts, now streaked by rivulets of blood which flowed a little more each
time her body convulsed under her howls of desperate agony.

When the Easterner used the pliers to tighten the cords on Kayleen's fingers
and then started pulling back and forth on the cords, her screams and
convulsions became inhuman as the cord quickly abraded the chafed skin, saw
through flesh and started grating on the bone. Silently, he straddled her
mouth again and pushed his leather wrapped member down her throat, protracting
the torment of her fingers until he came in her mouth. Worse still was the
pain when her toes were subjected to the same torment, some cracking under the
pressure while she howled in sheer agony and tore at her nipple and clitoris
by jerking spasmodically in spite of her restraints.

He wound cords around the ropes constricting her ribcage and started pushing
and pulling on them, alternating between each as the barbs abraded the skin
and scraped the bone while she howled in demented torment, each breath a
piercing blast of searing agony while blood dripped in rivulets from her
wounds still remorselessly burning from saltwater. Rib after rib, he kept
tormenting her chest until her howls turned to wheezes, at which he brought
the jug to her lips again and quickly treated the worst wounds.

When he reached for her breasts, she stiffened and then burst in a scream of
gut-wrenching dread, aware that her nightmare was about to worsen. He started
tearing on the cords biting into her breast flesh, usually pliable but now
taut near bursting point from the protracted constriction and engorged with
blood, abrading the soft skin and lacerating the muscle which twitched as
saltwater seeped from the squeezed cord. Her screams became louder and louder
as the cords sawed deeper, digging profusely bleeding gashes which forced him
to use the paste often, only to see them torn open again when her convulsed
jerks pulled on her nipples and thus at the distended breast flesh.

He moved to her crotch, and she found herself crossing boundaries of pain she
had not conceived as the barbed cord around her lips started lacerating the
folds of soft flesh while he pulled back and forth, the harsh burn of the salt
water no more than a nuisance before the pain in her shredded cunt lips and
the mounting agony in her swelling nipples and clitoris. He brought the jug to
her lips twice, but the sawing of her cunt lips caused her to convulse in
howls of spasming torment, jerking on her nipples and ripping open again the
deep lacerations in her breasts, the blood loss limited only by the viciously
tightened cords tearing through them.

Moaning in horror, Lyral took in her friend's bleeding, lacerated wounds and
pitiful howls, dreading that she would be tortured to death and would not
survive long enough to be healed during the night, so while the Easterner
started pulling back and forth at the cord tightened around the base of her
clitoris, causing inhuman howls of maddened agony to echo under the vaults of
the torture chamber, she shouted, "Enough!  You're killing her!"

"She's reaping the fruits of her stubborness, just as you will soon. Reveal to
me where the Sorceress hides, while my patience still lasts," whispered the
robed corpse of the former wizard, leaving his place near her friend's blood
stained twitching body to come near Lyral.

"Lyral! Don't tell him!" croaked Kayleen between a howl and the next.

"Secure her silence, according to the means we discussed, and continue,"
screeched Zhorun, at which the Easterner straddled Kayleen's head and drove
his leather clad member down her mouth, resuming the sawing motion on the cord
at the base of her clitoris while her muffled screams started anew.

"Tell me where the Sorceress is hiding, girl," hissed Zhorun, while Lyral
shook her head in tears at her friend's stifled sounds of agony. But in a
flash she saw herself, her athletic friend and the red-haired Sorceress in
this room, grisly tortured before a throne where Zhorun reveled in the agonies
of those he charged with his downfall, as he was wont to do because of the
nature of the condition he had chosen for himself.

She clenched her lips and lowered her head, her soft weeping turning into a
scream when the Southerner grabbed the needles piercing her nipples and
started twisting and pulling them violently, renewing her torment without
obtaining a single word from his frail but newly determined victim.

Meanwhile, the Easterner rose, ending Kayleen's torment and together with
Grod started treating her wounds, stitching them unceremoniously after using
the paste which helped in reducing blood flow. Wading through pain, Kayleen
recognized the smell, as she had also used some variation thereof before
encountering Lyral, so she knew that the paste would not save her, because she
had lost too much blood. Numbing already, she was forced to drink something
thick and vile, which cleared her mind but burned in her throat, thick with
herbs and strong, while her heart pounded in her chest like never before.

Lyral's screams continued without interruption as the Southerner was twisting
the needles in her flesh with abandon, staining his own white robe with
droplets of blood while she twitched madly in her restraints, her hoarse voice
finding new wind as he started twirling a needle piercing her left nipple
while she shook in the pangs of agony. For the whole duration of Kayleen's
careful treatment, almost long enough to wholly consume the torches, Lyral
howled in sheer agony from the unrelenting torment of the needles.

Recovering, Kayleen closed her eyes, wishing she could close her ears before
her frail friend's screams, well aware that her relief had been decreed only
by the intent to protract her ordeal. Still weak, but somehow recovering from
the lost blood, she sobbed silently when Grod tightened her collar, unfastened
her wrists from the bench and locked the cuffs behind her back at the ends of
a steel bar, ten inches wide and not allowing her wrists any movement. He then
rolled her off the bench and locked her ankle cuffs to the ends of a longer
bar, unfastening her collar before dragging her towards her next ordeal,
ignoring her trembling as she took in what awaited her.

This corner of the torture room was hot from dozens of coal braziers, ranging
from man sized beds of reddish coals to small iron kettles where cinders shone
under the ashes. He lowered a chain from the ceiling which he fastened to her
wrist bar, using it to raise her arms behind her back and continuing after she
started screaming until her feet flailed a inch above the floor. He reached
her quivering form, moved behind her and put his hands on her hips, driving
his leather sheathed member up her ass.

In the distance, Lyral screamed as the Easterner raked her soft back with a
red hot copper hook, distracting her from the effort of understanding what was
happening to her friend. The Southerner had suggested to make it difficult for
her to see what was happening to her friend exactly, to heighten her fears.

Grod's large hands moved to Kayleen's breasts while his thrusts followed her
each scream of bitter pain, building up in rhythm while the wounds on her
breasts bled again as his hands dug into the flesh. Her prolonged violation
ended with a low grunt as he left her swinging and wailing while he selected a
heavy iron brazier where the coals burned bright red.

He smeared her feet with grease, thoroughly, then fastened the steel bar to
a handle above the brazier and started cranking it, bringing her soles near
the searing heat while she writhed in mid air, wailing from the pain in her
torn shoulders. A few more cranks, and her feet started twitching madly while
she screamed in sheer agony as the heat started searing her tender soles.

He let her writhe in agony on the searing flame, then cranked the handle back,
lending her some respite, then renewing her exposure to the blistering heat
and wrenching new screams from her torn mouth as the heat licked at the
sensitized skin, heating the grease which spread the pain and formed bubbles
whose bursting caused spikes of unimaginable pain to sear her skin, sending
her hanging body in frenzies of spasmodic jerks and demented howling.

He kept cranking her feet back and forth, protracting her torment with the
help of the grease which kept bubbling over the smarting skin for some time,
and then removed the brazier and let her hang in coughing agony, weeping and
screaming, her eyes bulging in dread at the sight of the large rectangular
brazier he was laying out under her, her only relief a sip from the jug.

A new scream rose from Lyral as her anxious witnessing of her friend's torment
was brutally interrupted by the hot copper hook tracing a gash under the soft
underside of her left breast. She had realized that her friend was being
tortured with fire, and she was certain that the brutal rapes from the
executioners which had not indulged in them before were the direct consequence
of her inability to hide her horror of the act, but the pain in her soft flesh
prevented her from further dwelling on the matter.

Grod fastened a chain to the bar between Kayleen's ankles, lifting them up at
waist height and bending her painfully, then smeared the bottom of her legs,
up to the buttocks, with grease, and cranked the brazier up until she started
screaming as the heat started searing her flesh. Unbearable pain rose from her
roasted underside as she twitched in mid air, prevented from the unyielding
restraints at her ankles from turning aside and forced to buckle and twitch in
mid air, distancing herself very little from the unrelenting heat but
repeatedly jarring her shoulder joints with white hot blasts of absolute pain.

Her torment was protracted in a frenzy of screams by expertly cranking the
brazier up and down, alternating pauses where the bubbling grease tormented
the sensitized skin with actual exposure to the brunt of the heat, searing the
red skin into blistering and causing bubbles in the grease to burst in spikes
of nightmarish pain which wrenched raucous howls from her twitching form.

Lyral trembled at her friend's harrowing screams, but managed to notice how
Zhorun had silently left her, irresistibly attracted to the harrowing torments
inflicted on the cause of his demise. Lyral tried to purge her mind from the
thought of how painful the heat would be on the places where the sawing cords
had lacerated the skin, reaching the bone.

Kayleen was momentarily allowed some relief, and another sip, then she was
lowered to the floor and pulled up again, stretching her horizontally between
the chains at her ankles and wrists before sliding a brazier under her arms,
changing the cause of her desperate screams from the pain in her torn shoulder
joints to the searing agony of the red hot coals.

After repeatedly cranking the brazier back and forth, causing her to buckle
obscenely in mid air with her spread thighs twitching invitingly, Grod let her
sip again and then moved between her legs, spreading her thighs wider while
she convulsed in howling torment from the blisters bursting in her arms. He
pulled out his member, sheathed it in leather and thrust it viciously into her
vagina, ramming her forcefully while a scream of hopeless outrage joined her
cries of unrelenting torment.

Chased by her own nightmares, Lyral screamed alongside her friend, wishing she
could end all this by revealing Shandra's whereabouts and twitching like a
butterfly on a needle at the thought of the horror of their predicament. There
was a reason she had been taught to dispatch creatures like Zhorun without
hesitation or regard to their plight, and they were living through it now.

Grod kept ramming into Kayleen's love channel while her arms roasted over the
fire, screaming from the humiliating violation as much as from the unrelenting
pain at first, but as the fire kept licking her skin, forming blisters where
the bubbles in the grease burst and then peeling as the heat continued its
unrelenting assault, with the bubbling grease seeping into her stitched wounds
and causing her heaves and buckles to jar her shoulder joints to unprecedented
heights of agony, her world shrunk to a searing hell of howling flame.

In spite of her inhuman screams, he moved to crank the brazier away only
after cruelly protracting her violation, as her screams turned delirious and
the smell of burnt flesh rose from the raw underside of her arms. He let her
sip from the jug, and removed the brazier before lowering her to the floor,
but only to pull her up again while she wailed in dread as she was now lying
face down while he smeared grease on her belly.

He brought another brazier under her and cranked it up slowly, letting her
strain her shoulder joints between hoarse screams in the vain attempt to gain
an inch from the searing heat as she slumped pulled up between the chains. Her
voice reached a new pitch of frightened despair when the coals started heating
the grease under her muscular abdomen, starting her agony anew as she writhed
in her restraints and twitched in spasmodic torment.

After cranking the brazier back and forth, prolonging her suffering through
repeated frenzies of howling agony, he let her sip from the jug and once again
lowered her on the floor only to pull her up again, her arms still torn in
their sockets while a brazier was placed under her back and her suffering
began anew, to be protracted into a hell of unrelenting flame which first
tenderized her skin, tormenting it incessantly with the bubbling grease, then
caused it to blister, each blister bursting a new peak of harrowing torment
for the spasmodically convulsing young woman, then brought it to flake and
peel away, exposing the twitching crimson flesh underneath.

Lyral's breath raced as her friend was exposed to a heat she could only judge
by the increasingly horrid conditions of her friend's body. Most of her back
was angry red, and distance spared her the sight of the oozing blisters, but
where the skin flaked she could see the crimson of raw flesh. The torturers
obviously knew of how she healed her friend each night and had come to rely
on that, as even her strong friend would not survive the torments being
wrought upon her for long.

Kayleen was forced to sip from the jug again, and hung from the ceiling, her
ankles pulled up behind her. In spite of her pitiful screaming, a brazier was
placed under her grease smeared breasts and the cruelty of her torment was
raked up a notch as the heat seared her nipples, the bubbling grease scorching
the delicate flesh while she howled and buckled in unparalleled agony each
time Grod replaced the grease on her blistered buds and cranked the brazier
close again. Beyond increasing her torment, however, the grease preserved her
nipples from charring in the heat while the brazier was brought close enough
to turn her breasts into angry red mounds of scorched skin.

Cranking the brazier back and forth, he kept roasting her mounds, wreaking
unspeakable agonies in her boiled nipples and slowly turning her breast flesh
to a deep crimson, the skin peeling off in places and revealing the oozing,
raw flesh underneath. Her frenzy of pain-wracked howls found new heights when
he started raking the scorched flesh with a cat's paw, its fine points barely
scratching the surface but wreaking untold agonies in her breasts.

Lyral winced as she saw in her mind the points of the instrument tearing lines
of sheer agony in the burnt flesh, reopening the wounds left by the cords and
letting the bubbling grease seep in, causing the screams of harrowing agony
which escaped her friend's mouth. Her own screams, wrought from her mouth by
the red hot copper hook whenever the torment of her friend was paused, could
barely be noticed against the backdrop of Kayleen's unceasing suffering.

Kayleen kept screaming while Grod lowered her, poured the remaining contents
of the jug down her mouth and lifted her again, bringing the brazier under her
buttocks and quickly rekindling her torment while her sight cleared, causing
her voice to rise again in an unabated howl of dreadful agony as the fate met
by her once proud breasts was being visited on her firm ass cheeks.

He kept her screaming on the brazier, cranking it back and forth while she
howled in absolute agony, raking her with the cat's paw after pulling the heat
away and dragging some bubbling grease on the paw's points between the short
curls of her pubic hair. In spite of her desperate howls of unbridled agony,
however, something inside her was still strong enough to hold on.

Amazingly, Lyral felt the same sensation moments before losing herself in the
world of her own personal torment as the hot copper hook raked her left nipple
again, the realization of her friend's unparalleled bravery helping her to
resist the harrowing pain, as she found in herself the strength to withstand
the red hot tip of the hook lacerating her right nipple by remembering in her
mind the wisps of smoke rising from her friend's pubic hair.
Grod lowered Kayleen on the floor, and freed her ankles from the steel bar
only to cuff them to chains leading to nearby pillars which he used to pull
her up and spread her legs horizontally, then attached another chain to her
wrist bar and pulled her arms up, twisting them in their sockets and pulling
them above her head until she was lifted off the floor, screaming as the pull
tore unbearably at her shoulder sockets while he greased her front thoroughly.

He fetched another brazier, which unlike the others had rows of thin iron
spikes jutting upwards, and placed it under her, causing her to scream in
dread and pain once he adjusted its height as the spikes were red hot from the
coals beneath. But her howls rose to new heights once he cranked up the bed of
coals, exposing her whole front to the brunt of the heat in the same manner
already faced by other areas of her body.

Her slightly slumped position was matched by the reclined placement of the
brazier, which meant that her raw breasts were not exposed to much more heat
than the rest of her body, but also that her tender vulva was, and soon the
grease started bubbling between her cunt lips while she twitched and buckled
in maddened agony, trashing on the iron points which fulfilled the same
function of raking the sensitized skin he had performed manually with the
cat's paw, but were still red hot even when the brazier was lowered.

After cranking the brazier back and forth repeatedly, he lowered the coals,
fetched a thick poker from the coals and pushed it inside her ass, wrenching
a bitter howl of unbridled agony as the red hot metal seared her bowels, and
keeping her screaming while he reamed her sphincter raw. He then let her sip
from the jug again, brought the coals up and moved behind her, sheathing his
member in leather before driving it through her burned sphincter with a
powerful thrust which wrenched a heart-rending screech from her torn mouth
and violating her bowels with powerful thrusts while she convulsed on the hot
coals and the iron points raked her scorched flesh.

Lyral literally shrunk in her restraints as the violation of her friend was
again perpetrated before her eyes, praying softly to be allowed the resolve to
withstand the sight and not spoil inconsiderately the fate of them all. She
tried to distance her mind from the thought of the grease bubbling in the
lacerated wounds, of the skin flaking away under the unrelenting heat, of the
tender cunt lips writhing in unparalleled agony, concentrating on the thought
that they had to live through this day until she could heal her friend again.

Grod kept thrusting into Kayleen with jarring force, scraping her burnt ass in
blazes of hellish agony while her skin blistered under the heat and grease
bubbled on her scorched nipples, peeling them raw. Her howls of insane agony
mounted under the vaults of the chamber, subsiding only when he finally came
and cranked the brazier down, although she still twitched from the unceasing
raking of the iron points, screaming in bitter pain.

He fetched the iron poker again and pushed it into her vagina, bringing her
howls of unspeakable agony to new heights and pushing her farther along the
brazier, at which the points traced new bleeding scratches in her blistered
skin and tore new screams from her sore mouth. He cranked the brazier up while
keeping the poker pressed into her, reaming the rim of her vagina and exposing
her privates to the heat, setting the curls of her pubic hair on fire so that
when he pulled it out she kept buckling and trashing on the iron points,
screaming madly from the unceasing torment.

He brought the jug to her lips, then shifted some of the iron points under her
crotch before pushing the iron poker into her womb again, rubbing it viciously
back and forth while the points raked inside her spread cunt lips and grease
bubbled on her clitoris, viciously protracting her agonies by alternating the
hot poker and the brazier, making sure her nipples and clitoris kept bubbling
with hot grease and slowly peeled raw while the iron points occasionally raked
the tormented pieces of feminine flesh, wreaking untold agonies through her
convulsing body and drawing new screams of unparalleled woe from her throat.

Shaken, but determined to hold on, Lyral could not help but wince at every
scream and twitch of her tormented friend, blessedly unable to tell exactly
what she was undergoing but weeping bitter tears whenever the unmistakable
poker scorched her friend's innards. She was spared the sight of the nipples
and feminine parts scorched raw from the unrelenting heat, but not that of
another rape as Grod drove into her friend's vagina from behind, scraping the
scorched flesh amid a renewed frenzy of harrowing screams.

The Southerner stepped silently in Grod's place when the latter was finally
done and stood still, watching Kayleen writhe and scream in her restraints,
still shaking from the rape and at the same time seeking some respite from the
hot spikes, her thighs twitching invitingly in the effort to put some distance
between her burnt flesh and the iron points. He waited until his arousal
bulged under his white robe, then sheathed his member in leather and neared,
nudging the rim of her vagina and smiling when she cried in dread and dismay.

With a sinister smile, he cranked the brazier up, rekindling the agonies of her
scorched flesh, and once her screams rose again frantically, thrust his member
into her womb, pushing her forward again on the points and exposing once more
her tender parts to the heat. He kept thrusting viciously, grunting in a rut
which was fueled by her pitiful, bitter howls, but thankfully his arousal was
quickly consumed this time and he let go of her hips with a growl, although she
kept screaming until he cranked the brazier down.

Unable to withstand the sight, but even less able to avert her gaze, Lyral
squirmed in her restraints at the abject performance, engrossed to the point
of noticing how Grod was encasing her chest in a mesh of spiked chains only at
the very last moment. The reason her tormentor was using tongs became plain as
Kayleen's rape ended and the mesh, which was actually a kind of a shirt with a
hole for the head, was dropped on her and turned out to be searing hot. Her
howl of surprised agony superseded her friend's screams, and immediately the
only thing on her mind became how to get rid of the hellish shirt.

Without bothering to tighten Kayleen's collar, the Southerner unfastened the
bar at whose ends her wrists had been locked from the chain, ignoring her moan
of relief, and rolled her off the brazier, freeing her legs and ending her
relief as lying on her blistered back on the stone floor proved a torture unto
itself, causing her to scream and buckle in the attempt to lessen the
harrowing pains caused by the slightest contact with her severely burned skin.

Ignoring her screams, he doubled her left leg at the knee and tied her shin
under the thigh with a thick hemp rope, then did the same with her right leg
but tying the rope near the knee rather than the hip. He wound more thick hemp
rope around her breasts, and fastened it over her shoulders to her wrists
cuffed behind her back in a reverse prayer position. He then dragged her to a
post, fastened her right ankle cuff to a chain and pulled her up, letting her
scream from renewed pain as her weight partly rested on her left knee and
partly bent her right leg, while the ropes chafed her scorched skin.

Two barbed wooden wedges were pushed into her nether orifices, wrenching a
howl of desperate agony from her trembling body, and weighted clamps were hung
to her nipples and clitoris. He put the finishing touch on his grisly work by
forcing his flaccid member into her mouth, mimicking a violation he was not
able to effect in order to return to one of his favored techniques, ramming
the barbed wedges against the post by thrusting into her mouth and savoring
her harrowing screams around his member.

He kept up this torment until her forced pleasuring of his member subsided, at
which he removed part of her restraints, winding more hemp rope around her
legs and chest and fastening the clamps, including those just tightened on her
cunt lips, to her right ankle cuff. When he pulled her up by her left ankle
again, the coarse rope chafed her scorched skin like a thousand angry bees,
wrenching a harrowing scream of agony from her tormented throat and causing
her to buckle spasmodically, pulling on the clamps with the full strength of
her leg muscles thus inflicting fresh agonies on her scorched flesh. Her
screams rose to desperate howls when he started to slowly rip her fingernails
off with iron pliers, one by one.

Meanwhile, Lyral found herself in the grip of unrelenting pain as the hot
chains burned her flesh while the spikes pierced shallow wounds, her own
convulsing jerks causing them to find new skin to torment. For the first time
in days, she was being tortured without interruption, and she found herself
shriveling under the unrelenting assault, her friend's harrowing violation now
but a forgotten stain in the canvas of horror she writhed on.

After letting Kayleen sip from the jug, the Southerner cuffed her wrists and
elbows together, then pulled her arms up behind her, fastening her wrists to a
chain from the ceiling and forcing her to sit on sharp iron spikes, which
raked her scorched buttocks while she screamed her lungs out as he wound
coarse hemp rope around her thighs and legs, fastening them to a pole snug
between them and driving a large, barbed wooden wedge deep into her vagina.

His reasons for forcing her legs to bend slightly at the knee instead of
distending became painfully obvious when he refastened her nipple, cunt lips
and clitoris clamps to her ankle cuffs, shortening the fine chains so that by
extending her legs she would rip her tormented pieces of feminine flesh off.
When he started pulling her toenails with iron pliers, she had to fight the
reaction to extend her legs as this caused the pain in the scorched pieces of
feminine flesh to rise above the agony from her toes, but the fiendishness of
the torture was revealed as he suddenly released the grip on the half torn
nail, causing her to ram the wedge down her bleeding sex in reaction with the
full force of her strong leg muscles between howls of spasmodic pain.

He kept up this torment with cruel patience, putting off the ripping of her
toenails to let her repeatedly drive the wedge unto herself, actually ripping
one off only when she stopped pulling against the pliers to lessen the effect
of recoil. After dozens of strikes, the wedge was covered in blood and rasped
flesh, while the scorched rim of her vagina was in bloody tatters.

The young Priestess kept screaming while Grod rekindled the heat in the chains
by catching them between the jaws of white hot pliers, but the sight of the
bloody violation of her friend somehow strengthened the little resolve she
could muster. In a haze of pain, her gaze found the silent figure of the
former wizard watching intently the suffering of her poor friend, and horror
swept over her as her fears found further confirmation.

The Southerner poured the contents of the jug down Kayleen's throat, then
doubled both her legs at the knee and tightened more coils of coarse rope on
her scorched flesh before winding the fine chains from her nipple clamps
behind her back and fastening them to her ankle cuffs. He then cuffed her
wrists to chain from the ceiling and pulled her off the floor, smiling as her
arms started twisting her shoulder sockets and at the same time pulled her
ankles, distending her scorched breasts under the chafe of the tight hemp
rope. He raised her until he could push his member into her sore mouth, then
procured another barbed wedge, consisting of four sections, and pushed it down
her anus while she gurgled her unbridled agonies onto his member.

When her convulsions subsided, he drove a larger four-piece wedge down her
vagina, watching intently as the device bulged under her scorched mons and the
rim of her love channel bled where the barbs had ripped the stretched flesh,
counting on how her tongue scream after scream brushed his member to renew
his arousal just as her suffering renewed his ecstatic pleasure.

To further his bliss, he drove another wedge between the four sections of the
one already bulging in her bowels, using a hammer for the last half of its
course and trembling when her muffled howls rose in unspeakable torment as the
rim of her sphincter was ripped open and the barbs tore deeper in the scorched
flesh of her anal tract. And he shook with pleasure while doing the same with
the wedge into her vagina, accompanying her spasmodic convulsions with hammer
strikes while her bellows rose to high pitched shrieks of abject pain.

He kept up her torment until he noticed the first signs of renewed arousal, at
which he pulled out of her and lowered her to the floor. He then removed the
barbed wedges, summarily treated her bleeding orifices and tightened dozens of
clamps on her cunt lips and clitoris, keeping his arousal fanned with the
sight of her twitching thighs as each movement caused her ankles to pull on
her distended nipples, now bleeding after being raked over and over.

Grod had made sure that pauses in Lyral's torture did not match those in her
friend's torment, but the Southerner proved less thorough, allowing Lyral to
spend some of her respite in assessing her friend's condition. Fear mounted in
her as her eyes confirmed her worst fears, as after losing blood profusely for
half a day and being severely burned over most of her body she was now being
chafed raw by the hemp ropes, not to mention the bleeding violation of her
orifices which caused more blood loss.

With a growl, the Southerner pulled on the clamps to lift Kayleen's hips off
the floor and draw her bleeding vagina onto his leather sheathed member,
savoring her scream of agony and dismay as he abjectly violated her again,
ripping the clamps off with shreds of scorched skin attached as he forced her
to gyrate and twist around his bulging penis and periodically tightening her
collar to force her torn muscles to clutch it while she fought for breath
between frenzies of insane screaming and long howls of sheer agony.

In spite of his rut, he protracted her rape as far as he could, pulling out
often and then ramming his member viciously back into her bleeding orifice,
not stopping even when the last clamp was bloodily yanked off, grabbing
instead the sparse curls of her remaining pubic hair, adding a new drop to the
sea of torment washing over her to bring her abject violation to completion.

Lyral's gaze never left her poor friend's body, and just as their suffering
reached a new peak she found the words for praying again, asking softly
between a scream and the next for the strength to hold on against he onslaught
of evil now being visited on them and soon to wreak havoc unto the whole land.

Panting, the Southerner dragged Kayleen to the post and fastened her to it at
her neck, pulling her arms up against the post while she cried as they were
painfully twisted again. He removed the coarse ropes from her limbs, paying
little heed to the blood which stained them, and cuffed her ankles to chains
from the ceiling, suspending her in midair with her legs spread.

Smiling cruelly, he produced a bundle of branches and leaves which he dragged
on her raw flesh, wrenching a horrified scream from her torn mouth as the
harsh burn of the stinging tree on scorched flesh was infinitely worse than on
bare skin. He kept dragging the hellish leaves all over her body, lingering on
the places where the raw flesh flared its angry crimson or where the skin was
swollen and blistered, reaming both her orifices at length while she buckled
in spasmodic torment, howling her misery unto the dark vaults.

He released her when her screams waned, bringing the jug to her lips and then
doubled her legs at the knee again, winding hemp rope around them and using it
as a harness to keep two barbed wooden wedges deeply lodged into her orifices
while she screamed in mad agony. He then wound coils of rope around her
chafed breasts and pulled her up by her breasts, lifting her about a foot off
the floor and then letting her fall to impale her ravaged innards on the
barbed wedges with a howl of harrowing torment.

After protracting this torment at his leisure, he lowered her on the floor
and turned her on her belly, fastening her ankles to her wrists before pulling
her up in a suspended hogtie and pushing his member down her throat again,
renewing her agonies by slamming the wedges in her crotch against the post by
pushing rhythmically onto her face, repeatedly, enjoying the anticipation of
how he would complete her torment once his arousal was rekindled.

As her friend's screams were now muffled, the words of Lyral's prayer could be
heard for a moment, "... and from the walking dead deliver us." Stymied, Grod
tugged at the hot spikes, raking her and causing her to scream hoarsely, but
Zhorun started as if bitten.

Laughing, the Southerner fetched a heavy iron grid, with short dull spikes at
each intersection, and dragged Kayleen nearby. In spite of her condition, she
resisted his attempts to put her on the grid, capitulating only when he
tightened her collar, restricting her breathing and turning her howl as the
points dug into her burnt flesh in a pitiful, stifled gurgle.

He let her breathe normally again, and soon rekindled her screams by grabbing
her left wrist, twisting it behind her back as if to bind it in a reverse
prayer position, then pulling it outwards and down until he managed to cuff it
to the grid. He did with the same with her other wrist, ignoring her screams of
pain as her arms were horribly twisted and her front, especially her breasts,
was being forced on the spikes.

He then grabbed her left leg and pulled it to the left and up until he managed
to summarily bind her ankle to a corner of the grid with a cord. He repeated
the procedure with her other leg, smiling as this position forced her front,
especially her mons, to press painfully unto the spikes. He then placed on her
shoulders a grid not unlike the one she lay on, then fetched her left ankle and
twisted it up until he managed it to fasten it to the grid above.

Once he had done the same with both ankles, twisting her legs painfully, he
adjusted the grids so that they lined up and started tightening them using
screws placed in the four corners, slowly compressing her between the spikes
while she howled from the pain in her limbs and the cruel bite of the spikes on
her scorched flesh. He paused only to insert more grid sections around her
constricted torso, which he then tightened using screws, slowly compressing her
in a cage of merciless spikes and unrelenting distortion of the limbs.

Smiling, he circled her, disrobed, and nudged the entrance of her vagina, again
waiting for her cry of dismay at her impending violation before thrusting his
leather sheathed member inside her, grabbing the iron grid with both hands to
brace before each thrust, and occasionally twisting the grid left and right to
forcibly twist her around his hard member, savoring the screams of agony
issuing from her torn mouth as her constricted form, so tightly encased between
bars and spikes that each breath was a torment, was being raped yet again.

When his arousal was finally spent, he stood panting for a while, watching his
victim moan in her cage, screaming occasionally when the spikes punished each
deep breath, then fetched another grid section and pushed it against her
exposed bottom, smiling as the spikes dug into her flesh causing her to twitch
wildly, screaming pitifully while he fastened the last piece of the cage.


Chapter 18 - The Dear Price of Borrowed Time

In the darkness of the torture chamber under the ruins of the castle formerly
belonging to Zhorun the Necromancer, Lyral's bitter sobs of frustration were
occasionally interrupted by Kayleen's screams of harrowing pain. The strong,
slender body of the blonde warrior had been horribly constricted inside a
spiked iron cage, and the dull spikes dug painfully in her severely scorched
flesh, compounding the pain from her bent limbs with stabs of sheer agony when
a deep breath or the shivers from a massive dousing with cold water pressed
her ribs against the dull spikes.

The reason of Lyral's frustration was the devious predicament they had been
left in to prevent her from healing her friend, whose cage was suspended with
a chain from the ceiling while she was herself suspended by an iron waist
band, facing up with her wrists fastened to her ankles in a severe hogtie.
Both girls spun around the chains they hung from, unable to touch but for a
fleeting brush of the faces when their rotation brought them in line, and
Lyral could not heal Kayleen unless she found a way to touch her friend.

Lyral found herself forced to spend some of her power to shed some light,
because her attempts to reach her friend kept failing. After much frustration,
she realized that at best, when their heads faced, they were a few inches
apart. When she tried to bridge the distance by contracting and distending in
her restraints, she realized the deviousness of her captors, as her jerk
rocked Kayleen's cage, spinning it out of reach and wrenching a scream of
bitter torment from her poor friend as the spikes raked her scorched flesh.

Spurred by the anxiety over her friend's ultimate health, especially as the
blood losses from the cords had been compounded by the repeated ravaging with
the barbed wedges, Lyral continued her attempts until she lost track of their
number, but only managed to spend most of her power in stopping the bleeding
and causing her friend's severe burns to recede. She could do nothing for her
limbs, painfully twisted into torturous positions, or the spikes.

No longer restored to full health, Kayleen hung in misery in her cage, her
intermittent moans sometimes rising as screams and sometimes subsiding into
bitter sobs, lost in her personal hell of pain and trauma, but still able to
whisper, "Lyral, enough. Heal yourself, I'll need your help again soon."

"Kayleen, they almost killed you today! The tortures get harsher each day, and
now all three of them have taken to ... raping ... you. Please, let me heal
you some more," said Lyral, her voice trembling.

"I know, Lyral. Even in the depths of hellish torment, the thought of your
touch delivering me from the agonies and atrocities they heap upon me is a
beacon which helps me defy them, and I'll never be able to repay you for it.
But we must face reality, and tonight I'll have to do with less, just like in
the first days of my captivity. Besides, I think their efforts show that
they're running in circles, and if I am really delaying Zhorun's onslaught, I
am ready to take on their worst."

The rage Kayleen's words fanned in the silently listening former wizard was
such that Lyral almost sensed it, but failing to recognize it framed the
sensation as her own imagination's vivid recreation of how the wizard would
welcome her friend's brave words. After the words she had just heard, she was
not ready to tell her friend that she feared the reason behind her mounting
agonies was that Zhorun increasingly craved them.

"Besides, if my condition forced them to exercise more restraint, I would
welcome the change," said Kayleen, musing aloud, sobbing softly, "They would
have to let me recover. Even remove these cuffs, maybe. This gag. Or no more
fire," Lyral tried to stifle her sobs as she heard her friend mutter, "No more
rapes, no more tortures ...  there,"

Suddenly, Kayleen's voice rose in a shriek of dread and dismay, whose reason
became obvious to Lyral when the light of a torch shone upon the implements
lined along the walls of the torture chamber. A new day of torment started.

The Southerner lowered Kayleen to the floor, humming softly, removed the
sections of the iron cage which he had pressed against her nether regions the
evening before and scratched the rosette of her anus with his finger, smiling
when she cried in dismay and from the bite of the spikes. Then he pulled out
his member from under his white robe, sheathed it in leather and thrust it
inside her ass, grabbing the iron cage with both hands while a scream rose
again from her sore mouth.

Meanwhile, Grod had cuffed Lyral's ankles, wrists and elbows together, taking
her under a chain from the ceiling which he fastened to her wrists. He pulled
her up, twisting her arms in her shoulders until she started screaming as her
feet rose a few inches above the floor. While she had followed the beginning
of her friend's violation with dread, her own pain now overwhelmed her.

The old Southerner kept up his violation of Kayleen's bowels while she trashed
and screamed in the grip of the spiked cage, already bleeding where the
spikes, however dull, had pierced the skin. Once spent, he started removing
the sections of the cage, chuckling when she cried as her bent limbs were shot
through by horrible cramps after being freed from the positions they had been
forced into for hours. He summarily cuffed her ankles and wrists together,
then dragged her to face what he had actually planned for her.

She recognized the thick pole and the four sturdy beams at the base instantly,
but her eyes grew wide with fear at the conical shape on top, which looked
thicker and longer than she remembered, and whose wooden surface had been
thoroughly hacked and dented. She immediately tried to oppose her impending
ordeal, but the old man had tightened her collar, and she found herself unable
to breathe. With Grod's help, she was lifted on top of the device until her
anus rested on the tip of the cone and her ankle cuffs were fastened to the
ends of a steel bar through whose central eyelet the wooden pole rose, an
arrangement intended to deprive her feet from finding any rest once the slabs
under her feet were removed.

After allowing her to breathe normally again, the Southerner unveiled his
tools for the day, drawing a gasp from the girl as he unfurled a collection of
graters and rasps, sculpted from ivory and inlaid with shark teeth, imitations
of the worker's tool intended to shred flesh instead of shaping wood. The old
man cuffed Kayleen's wrists behind her neck, pulling back her arms with a
chain connected to a tight iron waistband, and tightly wound a barbed cord
around the base of her breasts.

With an evil smile, he fetched a rasp, lifted her a bit by her neck and pushed
it up her raped anus, holding still while she screamed in agony as the tiny
teeth scraped her muscle rim and the lower tract of her bowels. He kept
scraping until he saw the sphincter torn and bleeding. He then knelt and
removed some slabs from under her feet, leaving them flailing a few inches
from the platform and forcing her entire weight on the tip of the cone.

Devastating waves of pain rose from her sphincter as its rasped circumference
was ripped wider by the tip of the cone, which would have been probably too
wide on its own, and she screamed at the top of her lungs when he dragged a
grater along the inside of her thigh, forcing her to spread them and sink
another inch down the hellish wooden implement.

He removed another pair of slabs from under her feet, then watched as her
weight recommenced pulling her down the cone, rekindling her screams as her
scraped sphincter was being ripped a bit wider again. He neared and dragged a
grater down the inside of her left calf, wrenching a howl of bitter agony from
her as the blood oozed from the lacerated skin while her limb stiffened and
then twitched in the vain attempt to escape the myriad of tiny teeth, and in
so doing allowed the cone to slid a fraction of inch deeper.

He then scraped the rear of her right thigh, dragging the bloody tool up and
down while she tried to turn around, screaming in staggered fits of hoarse
torment while screwing herself deeper and deeper onto the wooden cone. After
leaving her screams subside, he rubbed the grater behind her left leg, forcing
her to turn back in the opposite direction in a frenzy of screams and slide a
bit more down the cone again.

She screamed in horror and dread when he removed another pair of slabs, her
limbs trembling in agony as her weight was no longer enough to pull her
further down the width of the cone, but still more than enough to tear
relentlessly at her savaged sphincter, leaving her twitching on the hellish
cone and crying in unrelenting pain. But her screams rose into howls when he
exchanged the grater for a brush bristling with tiny fishbones, which he
rubbed on her lacerated skin, alternately rasping her left and right limb raw
to force her to screw herself down the cone another few inches.

Hanging in unrelenting torment, Lyral saw through teary eyes her friend buckle
on the frightening girth of the hacked cone, the bowels torn by the forced
screwing and with blood oozing from swaths of wounded flesh. Unless the wounds
were shallower than they looked, her friend would bleed to death before her
eyes, she thought, and she would remain the only one they could torture to
extract what they wanted to know about Shandra.

As if Kayleen's suffering was not complete, the Southerner knelt and savagely
rasped the soles of her feet raw while she howled in mad pain, so that when
she finally slid down enough to rest the balls of her feet on the wood again,
the spikes on the foot rests compounded her agony.

He kept removing slabs and forcing her down the cone until half a foot of wood
had penetrated her rectum, bulging under her flesh and forcing her to bend at
the waist slightly to stem the agony in her bowels. Her body was covered in
perspiration and her lacerated limbs burned from the salt in her sweat. With a
smile, he reached for her cunt lips and started scraping them with the ivory
grater while she resumed howling in desperate agony.

Holding on the soft flesh with one hand, he slowly rubbed the grater up and
down, pulling on the way up so that she involuntarily tried to rise, scraping
her bowels against the hacked surface of the cone and setting herself up to
being ripped open a bit wider once he let her fall back. Blood started flowing
in lazy rivulets down her legs, joining what dripped from her rectum while
howls of insane agony shook her trembling chest.

Her twitches became spasmodic jerks when he started scraping the inside of her
vagina, effectively raping her with the ivory rasp and later with the fishbone
brush, allowing her to sip from the jug now and then for brief instants of
sputtering respite before renewing her agonies, still devilishly managing to
force her down the cone after removing slabs from under her bleeding feet. In
spite of the pain, she noticed that the mixture he had fed her tasted somewhat
different, and its effects were apparently more pronounced.

He placed a leather cloth on the cone, for protection against the slivers on
its dented surface, and wrapped his member in leather while she shook her head
in wailing agony. He thrust it up her vagina with a laugh, with enough force
to lift her up a bit as she screamed in dismay and torment, then savored her
twitching as she slid back down, repeating her violation while tightening and
releasing her collar so that her vagina clutched involuntarily the instrument
of her ravishment while she fought for air in sheer pain.

Still moaning from the pain in her shoulders, Lyral nevertheless watched as
her friend was abjectly violated again, wishing she could hide the horror the
act wrought on her as she was well aware that it was the reason even the two
torturers who had not indulged in the act before had changed their mind. Yet,
she winced at each harrowing scream, shaking her head while watching with
bulging eyes as her friend convulsed in agony on the pole.

The respite Kayleen got when the old Southerner withdrew at last was very
little, because the cone had ripped her sphincter beyond repair and splinters
from the hacked and dented surface of the cone had pierced and mangled her
bowels without mercy, so she just shook on top of the cone in harsh sobs and
bitter screams, unable to find a rest for her bleeding soles, while her
panting tormentor composed himself.

He grabbed a fold of flesh from her muscular abdomen and rubbed it slowly with
the ivory grater, drawing tiny rivulets of blood and a sobbing scream which
turned into a howl when he kept rubbing, switching to the brush while her
voice rose and waned in unbridled agony. He circled behind her and grabbed a
fold of her buttock flesh, soft yet firm, and slowly scraped it, dragging the
grater while his eyes inspected the lacerations and his hand moved to increase
her agony by rubbing the brush across the initial scratch while she howled
fitfully and convulsed spasmodically on the cone, her eyes clenched shut and
her breath short and rasping between the screams.

Lazily, he kept scraping her buttocks until her howls waned to pitiful
wheezes, protracting her torment until she literally started foaming at the
mouth, lost in a world of unending torment from which the occasional sip from
the jug only distracted her temporarily. But her voice found new wind whenever
he used the brush, which was if possible more painful while causing less
damage, raking the lacerated skin without actually tearing it while her mouth
gasped wide open in protracted howls of unbridled torment.

Although screaming occasionally from the pain in her shoulders, Lyral was
still intently following her friend's ordeal, worried sick about her blood
loss as the thought of remaining the sole victim of those three monsters had
taken hold of her imagination and she started comparing her present torment,
which bordered on the unbearable, to the agonies her friend had been through.

After letting Kayleen sip from the jug again, the Southerner recovered the
ivory grater and moved to her muscular back, scraping gashes of white hot
torment under her shoulder blades and compounding the torment with the brush,
alternating the hellish instruments while she convulsed madly and shook her
head almost to the point of breaking her own neck from the harrowing pain.

Indulging in one of his favorite torments, he pulled her up by a curl of her
pubic hair and started scraping her mons raw with the grater, still twisting
her left and right to let the slivers and splinters from the cone rake her
distended bowels, but putting his best efforts into ripping swaths of blonde
pubic hair by sawing back and forth with the bloody grater while her wretched
howls echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber.

Her torment got, if possible, worse when he targeted her ribcage, as he put an
unexpected amount of force in scraping the very flesh from the bone, knowing
how painful the points would be when scraped against the ribs. She howled in
mad agony while sputtering and choking on foam at her mouth, shaking from the
unspeakable pain while his scraping ripped the flesh from her ribs, shriveling
under a pain which surpassed even the unrelenting agonies of the cone.

Lyral started praying softly when she saw white bone in her friend's wounds,
engrossed in the agonies she was facing almost to the point of forgetting her
own, except when searing pain shot through her shoulder joints and everything
on her mind went blank until she stopped trembling and screaming. Silent and
motionless, Zhorun stood by her suffering friend as if not to miss anything.

When the Southerner's hand grabbed Kayleen's breast, she found the voice for a
wail of dread and despair which betrayed how little of the proud Warrior Queen
had survived the unrelenting torments being heaped upon her. Blood oozed from
her engorged breast flesh when the tiny teeth of the ivory grater lacerated
the distended skin, and the echoes of her howl of raw agony persisted long
enough to be joined by the screams which followed as he mauled the taut flesh
of her breasts with savage abandon, delighting in the unrelenting screams and
spasmodic convulsions which sent droplets of blood all over his white robe.

He kept scraping her breasts, splashing her occasionally with cold water,
until he was sure that only the nipples had escaped the agonizing kiss of the
grater, then abandoned it in favor of a new device, a pair of pliers whose
elongated jaws consisted of narrow ivory graters. With a chuckle he pinched
her left nipple and tightened the jaws on it, dragging them forcefully while
blood spurted from the scraped piece of feminine flesh and a howl of
unparalleled agony rose from between the legs of the gag distending her mouth.

He slowly protracted the scraping of her nipples, pausing maybe once in a
dozen times to let her sip from the jug, savoring her howls of desperate agony
and the sight of her tear streaked visage shaken by tremors and drooling at
the corners of the mouth. Instead of scraping her nipples to shreds, however,
he switched to the fishbone brush, which he used to scratch the rasped flesh
repeatedly while she convulsed in howling torment under his hands.

Still not sated, he then grabbed her clitoris in the pliers and started
scraping the tiny bud of feminine flesh raw, relishing the inarticulate howls
of unspeakable agony issuing from her distended mouth a few inches from his
leering grin, his arousal mounting when her bleeding nipples heaved at every
scream and quivered brushing against his chest.

Lyral watched in horror the ghastly mauling of the piece of feminine flesh her
friend rued before any other, remembering how for a moment in the morning the
fear, horror and grief of the young woman had been revealed, praying that
something, anything, stopped her friend's torment. She kept praying while her
friend's screams continued, refusing to believe that her prayers would go
unanswered even as her friend's agony continued on and on.

Finally, with a growl, the aroused Southerner drove his member up Kayleen's
vagina again, thrusting viciously in a frenzied rut which wrenched new screams
from her as his leather sheathed member tore into her scraped passage,
reopening bleeding wounds and ripping the gashes torn by the grater still
wider. Consumed by lust, he pushed into her in wild abandon, his hands on his
hips pushing her down on the cone after his loins had pushed her down, bent on
savoring the convulsions of her body in his arms and the twitching of her
scraped nipples as, scream after scream, they stroke his chest.

The Easterner stepped in, and with help from Grod they grabbed her, the cone,
and the entire contraption, and slowly tilted her, not without screams and
convulsions as new waves of pain wracked her body, until she lied on her right
side with the cone still deeply penetrating her bowels. They let her sip from
the jug in quantity, then proceeded to seep warm, light oil inside her rectum
in order to remove the cone without ripping her entrails off, although she
suffered horribly and they had to stem her bleeding repeatedly.

Lyral watched the treatment with ambivalence, at the same time glad that her
friend would not bleed to death, as the paste was apparently quite effective,
and chilled to the bone at their readiness to risk lethal injuries to increase
the level of torment. They probably counted on her healing power to bail them
out in case things got out of hand, and she had to admit that she would never
let her friend die before her eyes, even if this played in their hands.

Now it was the Easterner's turn, and he cuffed Kayleen's ankles together
before dragging her moaning form to an ominous device, a large waterwheel
whose lower half was under water level. He forced her to kneel and cuffed her
elbows together behind her back, then twisted her arms up and fastened her
wrists to a ring in the wheel. He then cranked the wheel, pulling on her arms
while she cried as her sockets were again torn unmercifully while her back was
pulled on the wheel as it rotated clockwise. Her body jerked with a scream
when the barbs in the wheel raked her lacerated back, and her screams
continued as her body was slowly forced to arch on the waterwheel, fastened to
rings at the wrists, waistband and finally at her ankles.

He kept cranking the wheel until her wrists reached the cold water, at which
she cried in dismayed surprise when her wounded wrists burned under the fierce
bite of the saline water. Her eyes closed shut while her body trembled in
dread at the thought of the torments she would face once the lacerations
covering most of her body were immersed in the salt water. Her tormentor
paused to lock his gaze into hers, shrugging when he found resolve.

As her head went under water before the parts of her body where the skin had
been scraped off, her agony was not apparent at first, but when her raw purple
breasts reached the water the convulsions of her body silently illustrated how
agonies beyond belief were coursing through her slender form, while a few
bubbles rose from the water. Her tormentor kept cranking the wheel, keeping
her under until her head emerged, her gasps for fresh air soon turning into
bitter screams as the saltwater still burned her wounded skin.

He kept cranking until she came full circle and her head disappeared under
water again, but instead of continuing he stopped and disrobed, straddling her
loins, and thrust his leather wrapped member down her scraped love channel as
her body trembled and shook in dismay and pain. He kept thrusting, holding
with his hands as she trembled whenever her breasts slid into the water,
grunting when her vaginal muscles started contracting as she drowned.

Lyral watched in dread the race between the Easterner's arousal and her
friend's asphyxiation, trying to put off from her mind the thought of how the
saltwater was burning her under his ravishing thrusts, and puked when he
finished and some of his semen squirted on her friend's lacerated mons, her
only relief being that the wheel was being cranked back and her friend's
heaving chest testified to her vitality moments before the mouth erupted in a
tormented scream after gasping for air. A flash of pain however ended her
relief as the Southerner had grasped one of her fingers and ripped the nail
off with pliers, without bothering to release her first.

Twitching from the harsh bite of the salt all over her scraped flesh, Kayleen
continued screaming while the Easterner cranked the wheel until she was out of
the water. Without a word, he procured a small steel hook, grabbed a fold of
her lacerated breast flesh and twisted it in between her wounds, ignoring her
anguished screams as droplets of blood spurted and salt seeped in the wound,
crushing any residual expectation of restraint as an entire box of hooks was
revealed and a spiked lead ball was fastened to the hook, causing it to
distend her wounded flesh while she shrieked in deranged pain.

He then resumed his cranking of the wheel, at which the hook revealed its
fiendish purpose as it shifted under the weight of the ball while her position
changed, wrenching cries of pain from her distended form. He did not stop
cranking when her head went under this time, and she was slowly hauled through
a nightmare of burning agony, on the edge of drowning for interminable seconds
until her head cleared the water, sputtering and shaking back and forth while
screams fought with gasps for air in her spasmodically heaving chest.

No sooner had she stopped screaming, that he drove another weighted hook in
the flesh of her other breast, subjecting her to another full circle of the
wheel immediately thereafter. When she emerged, screaming, he used a pair of
pliers to clench a barbed steel wire at the base of her clitoris and each of
her nipples and then pierced them with thin barbed needles, finishing with a
full rotation of the wheel. Always hauling her through a full rotation each
time, he drove three barbed hooks in each nipple and four in her love bud, so
that as she went through the upper half of each her screams became each time
harsher as the weights shifted the hooks, distending her breasts into cones of
burning agony. Underwater, the weights just distended the skin around her
lacerations, making the bite of the salt even harsher.

Lyral screamed again as the Southerner ripped a nail from her fingers at the
slightest pause in her friend's torment, fully aware that her shoulder joints
were burning nodes of white hot agony which was fanned anew by the jerks from
the pain in her mauled fingers.

Still following each with a full rotation of the wheel, the Southerner started
driving more needles in Kayleen's swollen nipples and clitoris, long needles
whose forked tip wrenched howls of agony from her heaving body as he slowly
pushed it through her flesh. Once no more needles could find place on her
bleeding love bud, he started driving barbed hooks through her cunts lips and
stitching them to the inside of her thighs with more needles, dragging her one
step at a time down a staircase of saline agonies while the folds of her flesh
were distended in a flower of pain ready to twitch spasmodically under the
harsh bite of salt water and to be pierced by more needles.

After this protracted torment, he suddenly started removing the needles and
subsequently the hooks, another torment as the barbed tips receded in her
wounded flesh, but something she could not help but hope would prelude to some
respite. But she was made to sip from the jug, and then he cranked the wheel
until her loins reached the right height, then circled around, hurriedly
pulling out his member, and thrust it inside her again, panting slightly but
apparently in haste rather than from arousal, pumping back and forth his
manhood in her bleeding orifice with uncaring viciousness, his eyes coldly
assessing her spasmodic jerks and the trembling of her chest while bubbles
rose to the surface above her submerged head.

When her vaginal muscles clutched his member, a sign of incipient drowning, he
jerked his hips left and right, as if to screw deeper down her scraped womb,
then grabbed the wheel and started lowering his pelvis forcefully, turning the
wheel with his weight while protracting her abject rape until her vagina was
so low that he had to pull out to avoid the barbs on the wheel.

Instead of turning the wheel back, he returned to cranking it, although her
stay underwater was already comparable to what she had endured before, and in
a show of executioner's expertise kept her convulsing and shaking under water
until the very last second, pulling her head above just after her spasmodic
twitches stopped, then quickly turning the wheel until her head was upside
down, at which he was able to push on her chest with his hands to force the
water out of her lungs, bringing her back between coughing screams as the pain
from the relentless bite of the salt assaulted her recouped consciousness.

Lyral gasped in horror as her friend was effectively drowned before her eyes,
her dread so intense that she forgot about the unrelenting pain in her
shoulders for an instant. As with the lacerations all over her friend's body,
the torturers were using ordinarily deadly methods and then rescuing the
victim on the edge of death. And since the bleeding had receded greatly, she
suspected that Zhorun had an hand in improving the means of treating the
victims of the torture chamber, once the sole province of Grod if tales could
be trusted. Necromancers were known to dabble with life, and maybe he had
devised some means to assist his torturers in their grisly work.

Dread and dismay tinged Kayleen's screams as the hooks and needles were again
driven into her quivering flesh, so brimming with salt that she was in
uninterrupted agony from it alone, but somehow managed to produce harsher and
louder screams when the devilish implements penetrated it, each new one
followed by a course through the saline hell and then compounding her agony by
twisting in her flesh for the upper half of each rotation.

After exhausting the pile of needles and hooks removed before her rape, the
Easterner produced a number of thin steel needles which he pushed deeper into
her flesh so that her muscles would bend them while she convulsed in agony and
the tips would twitch inside her delectable feminine flesh, especially her
bleeding nipples and clitoris. It took him many turns of the wheel to get this
part right, adjusting the tips as screams burst from her torn mouth.

Taking care not to wound himself on the points crowded around her nether
regions, he then drove weighted hooks through the scraped rim of her vagina,
distending it with two fingers before driving each hook in, not perpendicular
through the flesh but under its surface, so that the pain would be intensified
as the weight tore it back and forth.

As her torment had shattered any hope of restraint she might harbor, the only
thought in the haze of pain in her mind was to hold on until evening, but her
tormentor was apparently intent on finding a new agony for her feminine flesh
on each turn of the wheel and started folding the lacerated flesh at the base
of her breasts, pinching it with short needles so close to each other that it
was if he was tightening a cord at their base, although they bulged only
slightly as the circulation was not being restricted.

Lyral screamed as her gaze was forced to leave the torments being inflicted on
her friend by a terrible pain in her toe, whose nail had been ripped off by
the smiling Southerner, who now savored the sight of her creamy legs flailing
from the pain and jerking her shoulder joints into white hot bursts of
unspeakable torment. The image of her friend's breasts bulging as their flesh
was being folded by stitching it with needles was obliterated from the swarthy
visage of her tormentor laughing as the pliers chose another toe.

In a new twist of cruelty, the Easterner clenched a weighted clamp on
Kayleen's left nipple, constricting its pierced flesh between its jaws as her
voice exploded in a howl of demented agony which rose and waned for the entire
upper half of the subsequent rotation, as the weights and her convulsions
shifted the needles under the grip of the clamp. The same fate was visited on
her other nipple and clitoris, and then more thin, long needles were driven
through the distended folds of her cunt lips while she howled in desperate
pain while undergoing another hauling through the saline hell below.

On the next rotation, her head rose from under water while she fought for air
just in time to see him raise a ladle, apparently some hot liquid because of a
wisp of smoke. When the wheel brought her breasts up, he trickled scalding hot
water on them, wrenching new agonies from her as her body convulsed
spasmodically under a fitful frenzy of tormented howls while all the needles
and hooks tore simultaneously her salt encrusted flesh. The next rotations of
the wheel dragged her through a hell of scalding torment before plunging in
the cold depths of saline agony, as the trickle of hot water seared her chest
and crotch, lingering atrociously on the nipples and the clitoris.

Then she sensed that something was different and a strangled cry of dismay
escaped from her lips as her head sunk underwater, and her hunch proved
correct as her tormentor stopped cranking and reached her parted thighs,
driving his thickly sheathed manhood in her vagina again, crushing hooks and
needles with silent force while her body stiffened and then jerked in
unbridled agony. With endurance devoid of lust, he protracted the torment of
her bleeding and pierced flesh, pushing rhythmically while turning the wheel
with his weight and twisting his pelvis now and then, raking the implements
driven in her flesh through her twitching flesh while her lungs fought for air
between blazing waves of unbearable pain.

The contraction of her vaginal muscles as she was taken on the edge of
drowning added another drop to the waves of her agony, fanning the torment
caused by the steel implements piercing her mauled flesh to new heights of
spasmodic twitching as her voice bubbled underwater wasting her precious last
gasps of air. Her bloody rape was kept up until she stiffened after a few
prodigious jerks and then fell limp, and only then was the wheel turned back,
bringing her head above water so that his hands could forcefully revive her by
expelling water and blood from her lungs while screams of sheer agony framed
her pitiful gasps and coughs.

Lyral wept bitterly as her friend was raped to death, hysterically trying to
find a way to convince their torturers that she was not afraid of rape so that
they would stop violating her friend so abjectly. Her friend being then
revived brought her little comfort, both because she knew that more tortures
would follow, but also because the Southerner ripper her last toenail,
returning her attention to her own agonies in a blast of unbearable pain.

Kayleen screamed occasionally while the implements piercing her lacerated
flesh were removed and her wounds treated, her soft sobs a quiet testimony to
how much she had been through. Then she was removed from the device, crying as
Grod tightened the collar on her windpipe before dragging her to another, a
contraption of steel bars and screws whose purpose escaped her. He fastened
her cuffed wrists to the end of a thick bar which also held her elbow cuffs
and ended in a wedge shaped cross bar nudged under her shoulders, then pulled
her up and fastened her waist band to a second bar, which supported both the
bar holding her arms and another to which he fastened her ankles after
doubling her legs at the knee, which also ended in a wedge-shaped crossbar
nudged behind her knees.

When he was done, she found herself hogtied to the device in mid air, and
although strenuously constricted, subjected only to a discomfort which in no
way compared to what she had withstood so far. She was offered the jug, then
he started to turn the screw on the bar holding her arms, and dread shot
through her as her arms were pulled back, straining her sockets and wrenching
a new howl of torment as blazes of pain rose from her shoulder joints.

Her howls rose in pitch when he turned the screw on the bar holding her legs
and the pain from her hip joints compounded the agony from her shoulders, her
bitter tears mingling with the salt still harshly biting in her wounds while
she writhed in uninterrupted pain. The torments Grod managed to apply on bone
and muscle often caused pain without requiring further intervention. Like with
the ointment he was smearing on her limbs, the one which caused cramps in
muscles and would soon wreck her arms and legs with spasmodic cramps while her
joints burned in ever increasing woe.

Meanwhile, Lyral watched in dread as the Easterner was adjusting some screws
in a bronze and copper contraption sculpted into the likelihood of a cat, with
elaborated front claws which he adjusted so that they matched her nipples. As
her friend's torment was not readily understandable from her position, her
imagination trembled before the bronze implement, just as her hanging body
quivered when it was fastened to her and the claws rubbed her nipples.

Kayleen's tormentor fetched a pair of iron pliers and seized her thumb, then
with cruel slowness started ripping her nail off, causing her voice to rise in
a shriek of torment and the muscles of her arms to strain in the vain attempt
to free her hands from the abject torment. After some time, he did the same
with her other hand, and at the fourth nail her arms were already trembling
with savage cramps which wracked her even as he elongated the bar some more
and started ripping her left toenail off.

How long she twitched in agony while he ripped off her nails and elongated the
bars while cramps shot through her limbs, she could not tell, but as he ripped
her last nail and the pain from the cramps was now beyond description, he let
her sip from the jug and then slowly elongated the bars again, bringing her
joints on the verge of dislocation.

The bars allowed precise control of the distance, and now kept her stretched
on the fine line of dislocation, so that each jerk resulted in temporarily
pulling a limb a fraction of an inch out of its socket, causing a blast of
absolute torment which wrenched a howl of mad agony from her sore throat, only
to see it bounce back into place from the pull of muscles and ligaments as the
restraints disallowed any movement which would otherwise misalign the limb.

Lyral could not understand the nature of her friend's torment, although she
could guess that her limbs were being stretched, but when the Easterner placed
little nuggets of white hot iron in the bronze cat, trembled in anticipation
of the scorching agony of heat, and was thus surprised when the claws of the
device pinched her nipples, barely at first but slowly sinking deeper while
she cried from the mounting pain and trembled as they were getting warm, and
when the heat rose she screamed in terror.

Kayleen meanwhile was essentially repeatedly dislocating her own limbs on each
jerk, and the burn of the salt in the lacerations scattered over her body
caused her to jerk aplenty, so she kept convulsing in fits of woe as the
torments of dislocation repeatedly wracked her panting form, drawing pitched
howls of harrowing pain from her torn mouth.

Grod let the torment run its course until exhaustion slowly quelled her
pain-wracked jerks, reducing them to spasmodic twitches and then to trembling
agony under the incessant assault of the savage cramps induced in her limbs by
the ointment. While her raucous screams subsided, he grabbed her by her sweat
soaked blonde hair and thrust his member deep in her throat, sending a shiver
in her tired body and pushing violently, causing her to jerk in response and
scream all her desperate agony onto his bulging member.

His rhythmic pumping of her sore mouth was by itself enough to tear repeatedly
her shoulder joints into dislocating briefly, and the flares of agony each
such occurrence entailed wracked her restrained body into further spasms of
unbridled torment which occasionally caused the same to occur in her hip
joints, which resulted in her limbs trembling uncontrollable while white hot
pain coursed through her restrained form,

He pulled out, leaving her cough and gag in misery, slowly sliding into
exhaustion again after being forced to suffer through multiple dislocations
again. He fetched a pair of knobbed wooden planks and encased her elbows in
between, and a cry of despair surged from her mouth when she saw him pick up a
wooden wedge and a mallet as the memory of the suffering wrought by the planks
slowly crushing her bones flashed through her mind.

As the wedge was driven between the planks, the knobs dug in her elbows and a
scream of agony surged from her mouth as the pain forced her to move, causing
her shoulder joints to flash the unbearable pain of dislocation through her
body yet again. A couple of screams later, as exhaustion quelled her spasms,
her head dropped in misery and then jerked in a howl of torment as another
wedge was pushed between her elbows and she was again brought to face the
agony of having her shoulders repeatedly wrenched into and out of dislocation.

He let her sip from the jug, scanning her eyes in search of defeat, and for an
instant she wondered what would happen if she surrendered. Then her gaze fell
on her breasts, where the skin had all but been scraped off, leaving the
purple flesh bleeding from dozens of lacerations which had been raked by the
hooks and pierced by the needles. Her nipples hung in tatters, scraped to
perhaps half their girth and shredded where the hooks had ripped clear, and
she found her answer. She would not turn Shandra over to them.

He encased her wrists between knobbed planks and then used the mallet to drive
wedges between, watching her hands clench and distend in torment as the knobs
started crushing her wrists and her body convulsed in howling pain as she had
jerked her shoulder joints out of their sockets. This always resulted in a
streak of twitches and screams, until even agony no longer managed to force
her pain-wracked muscles to contract again.

Lyral remembered how, healing her friend after the torment of the wedges, she
had felt the agony of the cracked bones, not quite broken but fiendishly close
to, and how they had wracked her friend into hells of unbearable pain. Even as
the Easterner was heating another set of iron nuggets to renew the torment of
her nipples, she could not help herself but weep bitterly at the thought of
what her friend was being subjected to in order to make her talk.

To extend the torment to Kayleen's limbs, Grod snug two planks between her
lower legs, both knobbed sides facing the flesh, using the mallet to drive
them home and causing her to resume her convulsing jerks as the knobs dug into
the lacerations left by the grater. She screamed in merciless pain as this
caused her hip joints to teeter repeatedly on the verge of dislocation. He bid
his time, always pausing to let her come near exhaustion before proceeding,
but he finally managed to encase her slender limbs in the wooden planks.

He drove the first wedge between the planks, separating them slightly and
putting pressure on the bones on both sides but also grinding the wooden knobs
into her lacerated flesh, causing immediate and excruciating pain which
resulted in a frenzy of screams and convulsions lasting much longer than
before, so long that foam started dribbling off the corner of her mouth.

Once her throes subsided, he drove a wedge through the planks crushing her
elbows, fanning their pressure anew and causing another desperate howl to
herald a series of screams of mad pain, mostly due to the repeated torment of
her shoulder joints but now also carrying the pain from her elbows, not quite
crushed but constricted fiercely enough that each movement jarred them
painfully. Since the device did not allow easy access to her knees, he had
opted for crushing the long bones of her limbs, and a few wedges between the
planks increased the pain therein enough to drive her into repeatedly wracking
her hip joints near dislocation again.

As the metallic claws tore through her nipples again Lyral convulsed in sheer
agony, because her fatigued shoulder joints blasted in white hot pain whenever
her movements jarred them. She had been praying under her breath for her
friend, hoping that whatever restraint she would be put once today's torment
ended would allow her to recover her healing power, because her friend, even
if apparently no longer facing imminent death, had undergone one of the most
harsh sessions she had witnessed and was probably in dire need of the respite
and recovery her healing would bring.

As it was often the case, Grod's torments often progressed from painful to
excruciating without ever diminishing the pain inflicted, and in this case the
planks compounded rather than replaced the fiendish dislocation of Kayleen's
joints and their grip on the bones never dwindled, increasing instead with
each wedge and alternating between the throbbing pain of savage compression
and the flashes of agony from the knobs digging into the wounded flesh.

He brought the jug to her lips, helping her to its contents as she sputtered
and gurgled, then pulled out his member and pushed it up her throat, grabbing
her by her blonde hair and thrusting back and forth while her face contorted
into a mask of rage and torment. Her muffled screams crowded in her throat as
his thrusts wracked her into more jerks of self inflicted torment, but unlike
the Southerner he did not seem consumed by lust after his victim, which to
some extent was for the worse as this caused her humiliation to last longer.

At last he pulled out, leaving her cough between screams of dismay and anguish
as her shoulder and hip joints were jerked again into and out of dislocation
as a consequence of her spasmodic convulsions. While she was on the way to
exhausting herself again, he splashed her repeatedly with cold saltwater,
rekindling a torment which had slowly receded, so that pain burned all over
her body again and another frenzy of howling agony was set in motion.

The harsh sting of the salt made itself felt especially in her legs, and the
pain of repeated dislocation of her hip joints coursed through her restrained
body like a wave of blazing agony, wracking her chest under the shuddering
impact of bellowing howls, sometimes to the point of causing her shoulder
joints to undergo the same fate. She had been screaming uninterruptedly for
most of the day, any semblance of her former defiance shattered by the ever
present gag and probably not on par with what she was undergoing anyway.

He trapped the fingers of her left hand between the jaws of a pair of
thumbscrews, and waited until she almost stopped trembling before tightening
them, so that the pain rose through her arm and caused it to jerk, at which
her whole torso stiffened and then shook in a howl of abject suffering as her
shoulder joint had been wracked into and out of dislocation. The same happened
to her other shoulder as a consequence of her convulsions, and her torment
continued between raucous screams until her exhausted muscles lost their
capacity to react, although not the capacity to endanger more cramps.

Lyral watched, as their torturers intended, but instead of being pushed to
talk she was focusing on praying for her friend, as her knowledge of Zhorun's
nature allowed her no illusions as to their fate. Apparently evil was often
its own undoing, because Zhorun would have obtained by now all he could need
about Shandra by putting her through a fraction of the torments wrought on her
friend, but his urge to wallow in her friend's agony had blinded him.

Once Kayleen's twitching dwindled, Grod put on her restrained feet a device he
had used only rarely, a heavy iron boot which could be cranked to crush the
foot, a task for which he favored ordinary vices or planks and wedges. She was
by now in constant agony from the planks crushing her joints and bones,
although none had been broken or even cracked yet, but when he tightened the
boot and its ridges and knobs gripped her foot and started cracking the
delicate bones, her agonies reached a peak she would have discounted as
impossible, causing her to convulse in mad torment, rattling the hogtie rack
as fierce howls shook her chest and her face contorted in sheer agony.

Another boot was placed on her other foot after letting her sip from the jug
again, but he bid his time before crushing it to let the drug take effect.
Once he tightened the boot, however, her howls rose as high as before and her
convulsions proved if possible even more spasmodic, and took longer to settle
while her repeated screams remained strong for an horribly long time.

"Is this enough, or do you mean to tax my patience any longer ?" asked all of
a sudden the robed corpse who had attended silently so far.

"Rot ... in ... hell", stammered Kayleen's voice between screams.

"Grod, while your technique is of commendable ingenuity, her defiance is not
being punished adequately. Would she stand the hot irons ?"

"Yes, at least if lightly applied," replied Grod, surprised, while a strangled
scream of unspeakable dread shook Kayleen's chest.

"Proceed with the hot irons, then, and be merciless", whispered the corpse.

Lyral's eyes bulged in horror as her musings found their dreadful confirmation
and frantically tried to find something she could say to stop them, but no
words rose to her mouth as warm tears descended her cheek. Her friend had not
been aware of Zhorun's nature, and probably not even the wizard was, as this
was part of the lore she had been taught and was probably the result of what
had been learned before the undead were defeated. Her plan to withstand the
torture to buy time was probably based on what human torturers would be
limited to, but Zhorun's direct involvement would probably increase.

Grod left his victim writhing between dwindling screams of desperate agony, as
he had not envisioned the use of hot irons and he would have to heat them now,
but Kayleen's respite was short lived. When her throes subsided, Zhorun
gestured to the Southerner, who smiled evilly, bowed and moved before
Kayleen's face. He pulled out his member and thrust it down her throat,
muffling her cry of disgust and pain and immediately pushing back and forth
with all his force to savor her screams of enraged pain and force her tongue
to massage his aroused manhood while pain wracked her joints again.

Once the old man's semen filled her mouth, he pulled out, and left her to
convulse and scream herself to exhaustion. While her jerks subsided, the
corpse which had been a powerful necromancer raised his fingers in the subtle
gestures of a spell and thin tendrils of blue lightning streaked through the
room, playing on Kayleen's restrained body as if caressing it but causing
unbelievable jerks and twitches as her voice bellowed in unspeakable agony
from the multiple pains coursing through her tormented body.

After an instant which carried an eternity of torments the lightning
disappeared, leaving its victim convulsing spasmodically in her bonds and
screaming hysterically as the prodigious jerks caused by the lightning rattled
the rack and her limbs shook and trembled incessantly.

Zhorun did not use his magic again, and Grod neared with a brazier of fiery
coals and a red hot poker, which he dragged along her left leg, wrenching a
trembling scream of desperate agony from her torn mouth as the residuals of
water and sweat sizzled and her lacerated flesh was scorched raw.

As with anything which caused her to move, although not the degree caused by
Zhorun's tendrils of lightning, the hot iron engendered a streak of harsh
convulsions and harrowing screams as her joints teetered into and out of
dislocation, so he paused after application to let it run its full course.

He then rubbed the hot iron on her taut belly, pausing as this pushed her into
throes of jerking agony again. Almost lazily, the hot iron was dragged on her
arms and legs, as the movements induced in the limbs more readily resulted in
the torment of her joints, as testified by her harrowing screams.

As exhaustion was taking hold of her he forced her to sip from the jug before
rubbing the hot iron on her breasts, scorching the scraped flesh unmercifully
while her howls of demented agony wracked her chest and rattled her restraints
as she experienced depths of pain beyond her worst nightmares.

"Is this enough, or do you mean to tax my patience any longer ?" whispered the
robed corpse, using the same exact words he had used before.

Kayleen was no longer able to express a defiant response, her gagged mouth
foaming and bleeding pitifully as she was shaking and screaming hoarsely from
the unspeakable agonies wrought on her, but managed to shake her head. Upon a
gesture from Zhorun, Grod rubbed the hot iron between her cunt lips, managing
to wrench a new scream of horrifying torment from a mouth which apparently was
now beyond its last screams.

Unmercifully as requested, he heated the iron again and pushed it deep inside
her vagina, pausing while she convulsed in mad agony before pushing it in
again. After a while he pushed its dull point into her scraped clitoris,
twisting it in the rip torn by a hook while she bellowed in abysmal pain. Once
her howls showed sign of waning, he rubbed first one nipple and then the other
with the scorching iron, careful not to linger too long as the shredded flesh
could stick to the iron since he was not using grease this time.

As her convulsions were now uninterrupted and hard to assess, he just took to
waiting a bit before dragging the iron on each target, his gaze on the
motionless robed figure, dragging her through deeper and deeper hells of
searing agony until Zhorun gestured that it was enough.


Chapter 19 - No Respite Allowed

Lyral cried bitterly when her aching muscles gave way and she fell back onto
the stone floor. Her ankles had been cuffed together under her to a ring in
the floor, her arms bent under her neck and similarly restrained, in a
position which caused her hellish pangs from her arms and shoulders. Above her
head, in the darkness, her friend's head faced hers, and she winced whenever
tears landed on her face. Her friend had been forced to straddle a large wooden
wedge, cruelly set with tiny spikes not only on the top edge but also on the
sloping sides, and had been repeatedly doused with freezing cold salt water.

Kayleen's arms had been cuffed behind her and then pulled above her head,
forcing her to lean on the wedge with her front and rub the inner sides of her
lacerated breasts on the spikes while her collar was fastened to the near end
of the device. An iron band had been savagely tightened around her waist and
her legs had been bent at the knee and fastened ankle to thigh, so that when
she tried to lift her bleeding crotch from the edge the spikes dug in the
lacerated insides of her thighs causing her to scream bitterly.

In order to heal her shivering friend, Lyral had to push herself up, but even
in her best bridge push-up she could only reach the hair, and after hours of
torment her arms and shoulders hurt terribly when she attempted it. Healing
from the lips trough the hair was possible, but terribly curtailed, with an
effectiveness far short of what her friend needed.

"Heal yourself, Lyral. You cannot heal me tonight," whispered Kayleen.

"Kayleen, please try. You've been on the edge of death twice today. The paste
they used on your wounds barely staunched your bleeding, but half of your skin
has been scraped off. If you lower your head, I could restore you to ..."

"Face another day in hell," sobbed Kayleen.

Lyral stood still, chilled by the prospect that her brave friend could lose
heart. She had been looking to the strong woman as a paramount of courage and
resolve, while despising her own weakness, and now she had no safe harbor for
her fears and doubts. "Kayleen, ..."

"Don't worry, Lyral, I don't mean to give up. It's just that sometimes I would
like, for example, to get these cuffs off just long enough to snap Zhorun's
neck. Never mind. get ready," said Kayleen, gathering her resolve to gain the
inch which would allow her friend to heal her. She forced herself onto the
wedge, compressing her chest and screaming hoarsely as the spikes dug in her
sternum. This allowed Lyral to reach her friend's head and start the healing
process, at least until her muscles could no longer sustain her bridge push-up
and she fell down, screaming from the pain in her throbbing shoulders.

If she healed herself, she would still be unable to keep up a bridge push-up
for long, so she chose to heal her friend instead. It took her many torturous
attempts, but she managed to convey some of her remaining power into healing
her friend at the price of awful pain in her shoulders.

"I feel much better," lied Kayleen, sensing what was going on.

"Thanks, but I know," replied Lyral, well aware that her friend's healing had
been incomplete. The healing power worked from the inside out and from worst
to least, so dangerous internal wounds had been repaired but her skin had been
restored only partially. Her burns would still hurt, and she would not face
the day ahead with a body restored to its full health. Somehow, Lyral felt
that this had been the intent of their torturers from the beginning.

"Kayleen, if they insist on curtailing the healing I can deliver, you'll be
ground into submission sooner or later, by exhaustion if nothing else. How
much time can your bravery still buy ?" asked Lyral.

"All the time I can, Lyral. I doubt the capture of Shandra would improve our
position. Taking my life would thwart him, sure, but I have not been given
many chances, and if the first attempt fails they would make sure I could not
try again. Besides, I would abandon you in their hands," whispered Kayleen.

Lyral trembled at the thought, and had to admit that even if she could muster
the resolve to take her own life in moments such as now when they were given
some semblance of respite, she could not bear the thought of abandoning her
friend, bereft of what little comfort her healing brought. Her mind still
shivered at the memory of the anguish she had sensed when healing her the
first time, from the accumulated agonies of days and days of torture; even if
the individual torments had grown harsher thereafter, she had not experienced
anything comparable again.  She only said, "I'll be with you, whatever you
decide. But we must rest now,"

Neither found much rest, especially Kayleen under the pain of her twisted arms
and the unrelenting torment of the wedge, but when the light from the torches
marked the start of another day of torments, their eyes exchanged a gaze of
mutual support and encouragement.

Lyral gulped when the Southerner neared her, freeing her from the rings in the
floor only to drag her across the chamber to the wooden ladder, where her
ankles and wrists were fastened to the device. But when she saw the glass jars
where horrific critters twitched ominously, a wail rose from her lips and she
started praying softly in terrified whispers.

Grod tightened Kayleen's collar before releasing her arms, and while a fitful
sigh escaped her lips he rolled her off the wedge and dragged her by her legs
between two pillars, where her ankles were fastened to chains which he then
pulled up to spread her legs wide in a lewd inverted suspension. When he
grabbed the wrists and twisted them, first under her and then above her head
again, a bitter cry surged from her mouth as the ache in her arms and
shoulders had not healed and was now being rekindled.

He then started pouring water on her, freezing cold salt water. She screamed
as the salt seeped again in her wounds, buckling in the taut chains, although
the pain was less excruciating than the day before when the same treatment had
been visited on flesh scraped raw. Yet, the water was so cold and she was
drenched with such insistence that she started to shiver, and the cold became
painful when he doused her with a powder so cold that it almost burned, while
vapor rose from her skin turned pale and covered in icicles.

He fetched a barbed flogger and with a powerful swing raked its tails on her
ass cheeks, wrenching a pitched scream of utter agony from her mouth as a pain
surpassing all her previous whippings radiated from her buttocks. She screamed
again when the next strike landed on her left thigh, coiling around the limb
and leaving tiny wounds which immediately oozed blood.

A third strike hit her on her other thigh, and the fourth squarely on her
crotch, sending droplets of blood spraying while her mouth bellowed in the
throngs of agony. He paused while she writhed in torment, then flogged her
crotch again, and again, landing over a dozen evenly spaced strikes between
her splayed legs while she screamed in inhuman pain.

He then reduced the pull on the chains, lowering her loins until she was at
the right height, then silently penetrated her suffering vagina, ignoring her
howl of rage and pain as the violation scraped her dry innards. Holding her
hips, he kept pushing back and forth with methodical force, probably aware of
how his thrusts jarred her shoulder joints, furthering her agony.

As the rape was protracted, it was as if despair was seeping, scream after
scream, in her voice, and he increased his rhythm, climaxing within her with a
long deep breath. Her chest heaved in bitter cries, and then she screamed when
he poured more cold saltwater on her before flogging her repeatedly again. As
if the thought of breaking her with his manhood excited him, his member rose
again while he kept flogging her feminine parts and he renewed her violation
viciously while she writhed and buckled, screaming in forlorn torment.

The rapes of her friend, much to Lyral's chagrin, were meant for her, but this
time the Southerner apparently intended to torture her in earnest, because he
repeatedly dragged a venomous caterpillar on her pale skin, rubbing it under
the armpits, or under the soles of her feet, keeping it there while she burst
in screams of harrowing agony and was too absorbed in her own torment to take
notice of what was being perpetrated on her friend.

Kayleen's second violation was brief, as Grod's excitement brought him to come
rather quickly, but he kept shaking her body for a while before pulling the
chains taut again and savagely lashing her ass cheeks. In a change from his
previous technique, he was now repeatedly targeting the same area of the body
over and over and frequently pouring cold water, maybe because it did not
linger as long as during the previous sessions because of her position.

He lashed her left leg, coiling the tails around her calf and tracing deep
crimson wounds which oozed blood after the barbs had torn the skin, causing
her to jerk in abysmal torment and scream helplessly as lash after lash left
its mark. When he switched to her right thigh, her screams became louder and
more desperate as the soft skin of the inner thigh was cruelly raked by the
barbed tails while her body trembled in a frenzy of anguished screams.

When he moved to her front, a sigh of despair coursed through her chest and
became a scream when the flogger slashed her breasts, still wounded from the
day before and burning from the salt, spraying droplets of blood as the barbs
tore the skin. Instead of continuing, he let her sip from the jug, but then
resumed the flogging of her breasts in earnest while her screams found new
strength as the horrific barbs raked them mercilessly, rising to howls of
unspeakable torment when a barb ripped a tiny bit of flesh from a nipple.

Lyral's respite was an indirect consequence of her friend's agony, however, as
the Southerner's gaze turned to the screaming blonde, ogling the strong thighs
and sumptuous breasts writhing under the barbed flogger. Lyral gasped when she
saw bits of flesh being ripped off her friend's breasts by the merciless tails
as a inhuman scream echoed in the chamber, aware that the cold water increased
the pain while reducing the blood loss.

After protracting the torment of Kayleen's breasts, Grod circled her writhing
body and targeted her back, first between her shoulder blades and then slowly
moving up to the small of her back, always pausing between a strike and the
next and pouring cold water on her withering form, keeping her in
uninterrupted torment as the screams caused by the bloody whipping were
interspersed with the cries caused by the harsh sting of the salt water.

The hellish barbs tore the skin of her back in dozens of places, leaving tiny
wounds along the thin welts like pearls of blood on a cord, but the shivering
cold she was being subjected to somehow reduced her blood loss, although it
made the pain all the more unbearable. Her back slowly turned into a nightmare
of welts and wounds, oozing blood and burning horribly from the salt in the
tiny wounds. Her screams rose to a frightening pitch as he repeatedly lashed
the small of her back, tearing at wounded skin with all his strength.

He changed his position slightly while she writhed in desperate agony, and her
gaze frantically looked around fearing that he would target her front again.
The next strike landed instead on her left side, tracing thin welts on the
ribcage but sending the barbs coiling around onto her left breast, wrenching a
new howl of unparalleled torment from her torn mouth.

He poured more cold water on her front, then when she stopped writhing encased
the base of each breast in a tight iron ring, causing them to bulge out of her
chest and bleed from the many tiny wounds. The next strikes landed on her arms
and while she screamed in agony, she was painfully aware that he was just
waiting for her breasts to swell from the constricted blood. She tried to
gather her resolve, telling herself that she only had to hold on until evening
came, telling herself that they could not break her, telling herself that they
were desperate for time, her mind spinning around the ever increasing torments
being wrought on her and dreading the long hours before dusk.

With methodical cruelty, he started whipping her sides, making sure the tails
coiled around and raked their barbs on her taut belly, spacing his strikes so
that each scream was not quite finished before pouring more water, but waiting
for her gasps and cries to finish after doing so. The welts and wounds marking
her pale skin traced a web of torment which was sapping her will, as if the
extreme pain of the barbed whip was somehow more intense than the harrowing
torments she had been put through in the preceding days.

Lyral cried in sheer agony when the Southerner returned briefly to rubbing the
horrid caterpillars on her soft breasts, but she started praying under her
breath for her friend, whose wounds she would be able to heal only in part and
so would be denied any rest or respite from the horrid attentions of Zhorun's
minions. The former wizard stood, completely motionless, less than two feet
from Kayleen's screaming and convulsing form, apparently transfixed by her
agonies and, Lyral suspected, discovering how they soothed his own.

Despair tinged Kayleen's inhuman screams as Grod started whipping her legs
again, ripping bits of flesh from the limbs kept taut by the chains while her
chest shook back and forth spasmodically. The wounds in her breasts were
bleeding again as the blood engorged the constricted flesh, but the rest of
her body was not, and her pale skin shivered while he repeatedly poured cold
water all over her, not excluding her breasts, causing her to cry in harrowing
pain from the relentless burn of the salt in her wounds.

He fetched a number of clamps and cruelly distended her cunt lips, exposing
her feminine parts and her clitoris which had already been whipped before her
rape. When the first strike landed between her inner lips, she bent at the
waist and howled in absolute agony as a droplets of blood sprayed after a bit
of flesh was ripped from the rim of her vagina. Why did they always target her
there, she asked herself in a haze of numbing pain, her grip on the reality of
her condition teetering momentarily.

More howls of unparalleled agony followed as the tails raked repeatedly her
soft nether regions, reaching a new peak when her clitoris was raked by a barb
while her body stiffened in an arch of desperate pain from the previous strike
under whose effects she was still screaming her lungs out.

At the top of her agony, he landed another vicious strike aimed at ripping
another bit of flesh from her clitoris and then penetrated her vagina again,
thrusting his member into her without even lowering her as before, forcing
himself on her with all his weight as the chains pulled on her limbs and pain
surged in her ankles while his member scraped her innards.

Panting, he pushed his manhood back and forth with cruel strength, twisting
left and right while she writhed between screams of dismay and gasps of acute
pain. To protract her humiliation, he stopped after a while and whipped her
again a couple times, then resumed her violation after pouring more saltwater
on her twitching form without waiting for her screams to subside.

Lyral, being momentarily spared the hellish torment of the caterpillars as her
tormentor savored the sight of her friend's violation in aroused anticipation,
inspected her friend's body frantically, trembling at the thought of how she
could best heal her with the limited power she would be afforded. In spite of
the continual dousing with ice cold water, too many wounds oozed blood.
After interrupting and resuming Kayleen's violation twice more, Grod finally
came inside her ravished love channel, possibly in spite of himself, but kept
his manhood inside her while she shook from the pain and humiliation of the
brutal rape. After composing himself, he let her sip from the jug and then
circled her, reaching her front and bringing the flogger in a wide swoop on
her right thigh, rekindling her screams as the barbs tore the soft skin.

The next strike was placed across her breasts, targeting the soft undersides
which exploded in pain as the barbs left tiny wounds in the constricted flesh
while her chest shook under a scream of sheer agony which had few equals in
what had been heard in this torture chamber. In a haze of pain, the thought of
how wrong she had been in assuming that a whipping would be easier to
withstand flashed through her minds, immediately confirmed by a white hot
blast of pain from her thigh as the barbs ripped more flesh from it.

With time, the strikes on her thighs alternated with those on her breasts on a
regular basis, as the number of wounds left by the barbs on her cold skin rose
to frightening levels while she buckled spasmodically under each strike, since
very little of her exposed skin had been spared and when a barb raked the welt
left by a previous strike a blast of unbearable pain seared through her
writhing body and a howl of pure agony rose to her tired lips.

Lyral vainly attempted to hide how her friend's screams made her shiver, but
only managed to avert her gaze, prompting her tormentor to rub the venomous
bristles of a fresh caterpillar under her left nipple with a laugh which her
scream drowned immediately. If they were buying time for their friends, they
were paying a horrid price for it.

Kayleen's body was now covered by rivulets of blood oozing from countless tiny
wounds where the barbs had ripped the skin, and after being whipped repeatedly
in places where the wounds were crowded together she was finally exposed to a
new level of pain as a barb ripped through the wound left by another, bringing
her to scream in demented agony while her body stiffened and then convulsed in
a jerk which could have snapped her spine.

When her throes subsided, Grod brought the jug to her lips, then raised the
flogger and brought it down on her left breast, bringing one of the barbs to
land on her nipple and causing her to scream in renewed torment. The next
strike landed between her legs, and a barb ripped a tiny bit of flesh from her
exposed clitoris, drawing a howl of inhuman agony from her sore mouth while
his evil intent started dawning on her.

Striking repeatedly, with skilled blows which caused the barbs to rake her
feminine flesh more often than not, he slowly dragged her down into pits of
hell she had not experienced yet, at the bottom of which lied the torment he
had demonstrated on her flesh and wanted to visit on her femininity. Strike
after strike, he repeatedly wrenched screams of anguished pain from her lips
until her nipples and clitoris were covered in tiny wounds.

When he managed to send a barb to rip through the raw flesh of her left
nipple, her howl rose to heights which had been seldom heard in this chamber
before, echoing under the dark vaults and fading only to be replaced by
another as he managed to obtain the same result again. He poured more salt
water on her writhing form, then when her cries subsided resumed whipping her
clitoris until her voice burst in another howl of unspeakable agony as her
love bud was ripped through by a barb and pain unlike any she had experienced
so far blazed through her convulsing body.

While she was still screaming from this last strike, he neared and penetrated
her again, fanning her screams to a new peak as his manhood scraped the rim of
her vagina where the barbs had ripped tiny wounds. Pain, rage and humiliation
roared in her voice as she started screaming in rhythm with his unrelenting
humping, writhing in his grip while he kept her at crotch height by leaning on
her with his full weight with each thrust, yanking her legs painfully and
subjecting her again to a humiliation which had grown more and more unbearable
as the repeated violations had followed one another.

Lyral twitched in mad agony from the stinging touch of the caterpillars under
the soft undersides of her creamy breasts. Her tormentor had momentarily
resumed her torture, but was looking forward to abusing her friend, as between
tears she saw him swallow some moldy concoction while watching. When Grod
finally pulled out of her friend's vagina, he left her side and reached him
immediately, as if to reclaim his turn.

The Southerner tightened Kayleen's collar, lowered her on the floor, cuffed
her ankles together and the wrists to her waist band before dragging her to a
heavy wooden trestle and laying her with her back on it, with the point of the
wedge lodged in the small of her back. He fastened her ankle cuffs to the
trestle, doubling her legs at the knee and splaying her thighs wide, while her
arms were pulled behind her neck, wound around a wedge-shaped bar nudged under
the elbows and her wrists were cuffed to a chain. He released her collar and
shortened the chain, forcing her to arch on the trestle.

She shivered when he moved between her legs, hiding a sob as she was well
aware of what her position entailed, and her voice rose to a shriek when he
pushed a thin needle through the rim of her vagina. She screamed again when
the needle was extracted and then reinserted, as he was threading a cord
through the flesh, folding it into ripples in spite of her twitches as the
salt burned into the wound, painfully reducing the width of the opening while
her screams continued in fits of harrowing torment. He revealed his aroused
manhood and, holding the ends of the cord with both hands, penetrated her with
a growl, thrusting viciously while she screamed in abject agony as the tight
passage was ripped through in beastly frenzy.

Pulling on the cords, he pushed back and forth into her while she twitched in
pain, howling when the combined action of his member and the cords ripped a
wound open for the salt. To protract her agony, he repeatedly pulled out while
tightening the cords, so that her channel would be ripped from the opposite
direction, and then thrust in again, wrenching new screams of pain although
the lubrication from her blood made the penetration less painful. When his
lust was spent, he tore the cord free, wrenching howls of desperate agony from
her sore throat and leaving her to cry in bitter pain as some remaining
saltwater seeped into the bleeding wounds and the scraped love channel.

Lyral shook her head between tears, as if to toss away the thought that this
new abject violation of her friend had been thought up because of how rape
scared her. As her friend's cries receded, dread mounted in her as she saw the
Easterner heating thin copper needles in a brazier.

With a cruel smile, the Southerner drove a four piece wooden wedge up
Kayleen's ass, causing her to twitch in screaming agony as the hacked, dented
surface scraped her bowels, and then with the help of both hands lodged his
flaccid member inside her vagina again, reveling in her inability to oppose
the disgusting act and the raging frustration which showed on her visage. Of
their three torturers, he was the one who took such unabashed pleasure in
hurting and ravishing her. At the bottom of her soul, Kayleen probably shared
her friend's deep fear of him.

Leaning forward, he started driving short, thin needles through the base of
her breasts, each one causing her to let a sharp cry escape her painfully
gagged mouth, alternating one pointing up towards the nipple with the other
pointing down towards the chest. Once done he tied a fine cord over each ring
of needles, tightening it with a tourniquet and causing the needles to bend
inside the firm flesh of her breasts, wrenching a howl of devastated agony
from her heaving chest. Each time he tightened a cord, alternating between her
left and right breast, her screams rose in pitch and duration, as her breasts
started swelling from the harsh constriction.

He fastened the cords constricting her breasts to a chain dangling from the
ceiling, which he then pulled up slowly while she twitched in pain, lifting
her a few inches from the trestle and leaving her dangling between screams as
the slightest movement shifted the needles inside her breast flesh. To renew
his arousal, he started driving needles through her buttocks, slowly pushing
them in the firm flesh as the forked tip dug searing pits of blazing agony
which surged through her mouth in long, howling screams of desperate pain.

Lyral's screams joined her friend's as the Easterner drove a hot needle under
her toenail, causing her to stiffen and arch in torment while her young voice
rose in shrill screams of pain. Only when not immediately subject to torture
was Lyral herself enough to shame at the thought of how a mere needle caused
her to scream madly while her friend withstood dozens through her breasts.

Savoring how Kayleen's screaming convulsions massaged his manhood, the
Southerner fetched more needles, long and thin, which he drove in her chest
after bending them so that he could slide them under a rib and the point would
exit on the other side, allowing him to pick it up. Amidst harrowing screams,
he used iron pliers to bend each needle again and push it under another rib,
braiding it into her ribcage two and even three times.

By slowly braiding dozens of needles through her ribcage, he turned her
breathing into a searing exercise in wheezing torment, panting while her
vaginal muscles clutched his member as spasms of pain coursed through her in
rhythm with her breathing, which they turned to fitful screaming. Nearing
arousal, he twisted a number of needle points so that they touched the taut
skin of her breasts, digging in whenever she took a deep breath, including
when her chest heaved before each scream.

With sadistic glee, he used the iron pliers to tighten pieces of iron wire
around the base of each nipple and of her clitoris, causing blood to engorge
her pieces of feminine flesh just before piercing them with wicked barbed
needles, which he twisted into her buds with vicious abandon while the screams
thus induced burst into her tormented ribcage fanning the flames of pain in
her lungs into roaring blasts of hellish agony.

As his manhood stiffened under the spasmodic clutches of her vaginal muscles
twitching from the uninterrupted torment, he grabbed the blonde curls of her
pubic hair and started pulling her loins onto his member, thrusting with his
hips so that the shredded rim of her love channel would be stretched into
ripping the torn wounds wider, finding his abject efforts rewarded by a
harrowing scream of hopeless torment which shook her to the point of bending
some of the needles braided through her ribcage.

Again, Lyral shook in her restraints almost in unison with the beastly thrusts
tearing into her friend's ravaged womb, echoing her screams of harrowing
torment with ill concealed sobs of mindless terror. She dreaded her own fear,
continuously repeating in her mind that if they threatened to rape her just
once, she would collapse immediately and give her friend away, and hating
herself for not being as brave as her screaming friend. And yet, she
repeatedly caught herself wishing that her friend's torment was not
interrupted, as each interruption caused the Easterner to insert another hot
needle under her nails or in her breasts.

The wedge in Kayleen's ass bulged inside her, making her love channel cramped
and its penetration harrowing, and the Southerner's thrusts also rammed the
wooden horror inside her bowels, furthering her torment as the wood scraped
them mercilessly. Her rape was again protracted by repeatedly interrupting the
penetration, only to resume it after the briefest respite, tightening the
collar on her windpipe so that her vaginal muscles would contract
spasmodically on his manhood. When he finally pulled out, her misery was
immediately renewed by pouring cold salt water all over her bleeding body,
causing her to twitch in howling torment while he recovered his breath.

A gasp surged from her mouth when she saw him fetch a pair of tiny hooks, and
her scream when he drove the hooks through her cunt lips was but the first of
many to follow, as he proceeded to stretch them open by driving hooks through
them and stitching them to the inside of her thighs with needles whose forked
tip wrenched pitched shrieks of torment from her mouth when he pushed them
through her flesh, letting her wrack herself through harrowing spasms of
searing agony as each scream fanned the torment of her ribcage anew.

Forcing her to scream until his arousal was rekindled, therefore, became his
pastime, which he indulged with abandon and little actual interest in forcing
her to talk, such that he barely bothered to check if she was still being
defiant before driving needles under her partly regrown fingernails, and then
through her toenails, twisting each repeatedly and then letting her scream
through the resulting fit of spasmodic convulsions, the pain from the needles
in her ribcage now compounded by the points tearing through her crotch.

After tiring of this game, he lowered her back on the trestle and began
another, fetching a small barbed needle and driving it along the side of a
nipple held between pliers, then picking up the point after it cleared the
flesh, bending it back up with pliers and pushing it up into the nipple flesh,
creating a crude hook which pierced her nipple twice along its full distended
length while she screamed pitifully.

With deliberate slowness, he repeated the procedure on her other nipple, and
once her screams subsided, on her clitoris, which took much longer as her
jerks of hopeless agony made the second part of the game much harder. After
pouring more water on her writhing form, he twisted another needle into a hook
through her left nipple first, then her right nipple, and then her clitoris
again, laughing as her howls rose to hoarse shrieks of deranged torment and
managing to drive a third horrid implement through each nipple.

He poured more salt water on her, so that she would not slide into shock, and
watched drooling as the liquid stung harshly her many open wounds, wracking
her through anguished jerks of mad pain and helpless howls of savage agony.
When her throes subsided, he fastened the hooks to chains dangling from the
ceiling using fine steel chains, and slowly pulled her off the trestle as her
voice burst into howls of unspeakable agony.

Lyral's mouth opened wide in disbelief when she saw her friend being pulled up
by hooks in her feminine parts, gasping as she recollected how deeply the
proud warrior resented being faced with the weaknesses of the female body and
trembling at the sight of the hands clenching on thin air, a tremor which
echoed her friend's pitiful quivering in the throes of abysmal agony.

The hooks ripped savagely through Kayleen's feminine flesh, tearing open
bleeding wounds into which the salt water started seeping immediately, but not
to the point of tearing free, leaving her suspended in convulsing pain by the
three pieces of tormented flesh. With fiendish cruelty, the Southerner started
pushing fine needles through her distended breasts and folds, targeting the
base of the delectable buds first and then slowly piercing the very pieces of
flesh she hung from, driving the forked tips through the taut pinkness with
deliberate slowness to protract the frenzy of screams bursting from her mouth.

While she hung in twitching agony, he fetched a steel bar brimming with barbs
in its mid section, which he lay on her mons and twirled so that the barbs
caught curls of her blonde pubic hair, pulling them taut, and then fastened
her ankle cuffs to the ends of the bar, so that each movement of her strong
legs ripped her pubic hair and dragged the barbs across her skin, leaving
shallow cuts which stung fiercely once the saltwater seeped in.

He poured some of the contents of the jug down her mouth, then pulled her cunt
lips wide, stitching them to the inside of her thighs with hooks and braiding
needles through the distended folds of bleeding flesh while her screams echoed
under the vaults of the torture chamber, making sure the needles were bent so
that they pulled on the hooks mercilessly each time she twitched in pain. Lost
in a haze of uninterrupted agony, she tried to call for her friend, deluding
herself that the torture was almost over and her pain would soon be soothed.

When he fetched more hooks, a shiver coursed through Kayleen's writhing body
and surged as a scream of despair from her torn mouth, the first of a streak
which aroused him to abject excitement while he pulled the hooks through the
rim of her vagina, then braided their ends around two bent needles whose tips
he pushed through the sides of her clitoris, wrenching a torturous howl of
sheer agony from her heaving chest as she writhed in torment.

Lyral wondered, and not for the first time, how her friend managed to defy
their torturers, as herself was by now in such pain that she would do anything
to prevent the Easterner from inserting another hot needle in her breasts.
Almost anything, actually, as she managed to suppress her wish to scream that
she had had enough, thinking at how her friend's agonies would be wasted.
Somehow, they could not cause her friend a pain so unendurable that avoiding
further agony would override any other consideration. It was not because of
reduced pain sensitivity, as in the syrup they were fed she had recognized
pain enhancing herbs, not to mention that it consisted mostly of sugar.

Smiling, the Southerner procured a short branch of the hellish stinging tree
and started birching the soles of Kayleen's feet, each strike causing her to
twitch as the pain from the stinging tree was overwhelmed by the agony of the
implements he had so fiendishly set up. Each jerk of her thighs pulled
savagely on the hooks tearing at her cunt lips and the rim of her vagina, but
also raked her mons and ripped some pubic hair, both reason enough for her
chest to heave in a scream which wrought unspeakable torment through her ribs
and breasts, while the ripping agony of the hooks in her nipples and clitoris
was rekindled to white hot blasts of searing pain.

After protracting the birching of her soles and the resulting torment of her
hanging body well beyond the point when her screams had turned to wheezing
wails of hopeless anguish, he let her sip from the jug again and then moved
between her thighs, inserting a four piece wedge in her bleeding vagina and
hammering a fifth wedge between them so that they distended her wracked love
channel while her howls echoed in the torture room. He then fixed a wooden
plank before the butts of the two wedges jutting from her orifices, and tied
them both to the plank with fine chains while she sobbed bitterly, remembering
how he had already used this harrowing technique before.

He moved to her head, pulling out his member and thrusting it into her sore
mouth, in spite of her vain attempts to resist. He then started thrusting into
her, each movement wreaking renewed agonies through her hanging form as her
crotch was rammed against the plank, driving the wedges inside her, and then
swinging back, pulling them out while they scraped her insides and pulled
hooks and needles to new peaks of merciless agony while her throat screamed
her torment onto his stiff member in choked gurgles.

Lyral almost retched, more disgusted than scared by the violation of her
friend's mouth, raging in a corner of her mind at the humiliation of her proud
friend. The impassive Easterner slid another hot needle in her left breast,
piercing  the areola and sending her head jerking in a scream of harrowing
torment, but her mind was still occupied by the image of her poor friend's
bleeding orifices, raked and torn not only by the wedges but also by the hooks
and needles, some of which had ripped horrid wounds through the flesh.

Still not sated after protracting Kayleen's harrowing violation, the
Southerner pulled out of her mouth to remove the wedges from her orifices, but
then resumed the ravishment of her throat, ignoring the blood flowing between
her legs. In a rut of panting viciousness, he started birching her distended
slit with the stinging tree branches, causing her to convulse madly while
droplets of blood spurted from the many wounds thus torn wider by her jerks.
He laughed while her gurgling screams pleasured his member, continuing her
abject violation until her agonies finally outlasted his arousal.

The Easterner stepped in, inspecting the bleeding orifices of his would be
victim, and immediately started treating the wounds, alternating liberal use
of the paste with cauterization by hot iron, which shook Kayleen's quivering
body into new fits of agony as she had not been freed from the hooks and
needles tearing her flesh. Brutal as they were, his ministrations staunched
her bleeding for the time being, although Lyral knew all too well that unless
she managed to heal her friend within a few hours, she would probably die.

With little ceremony, Grod unfastened Lyral from the ladder and forced her to
sit on a heavy wooden chair, brimming with iron spikes, refastening her wrists
and cuffs to the solid frame. She lifted herself above the spikes, but soon
she realized that she could not hold the position forever. The chair was fixed
to the floor, placed so that she could have an unobstructed view of what would
her friend would be subjected to.

After removing hooks and needles, showing little mercy to his crying victim,
the Easterner tightened Kayleen's collar, constricting her windpipe, then
cuffed her wrists together behind her back and her ankles together, with great
care, before releasing her from the trestle and dragging her between two
pillars. There he cuffed each wrist to a chain, pulling it up behind her back
and painfully twisting each arm in its socket, and once her feet dangled a few
inches above the floor fastened each ankle cuff to a chain from each pillar,
spreading her thighs wide while her crotch slumped forward.

Without a word, he moved behind her, sheathed his member in rough leather and
penetrated her asshole from behind, thrusting up while grabbing her hips as
her glistening body shook in pain and despair while an anguished cry erupted
from her mouth. Panting slightly, he protracted her rape for a while before
pulling out abruptly, leaving her hanging, her chest heaving in bitter sobs
and wracked by occasional screams of anguish. Although of the three he was
apparently the least excited by her violations, he was always coldly brutal in
ravishing her, using his manhood as just another instrument of torture.

When she saw him drag a brazier nearby, a scream of hopeless terror escaped
her lips as she took in the implements being heated within. He fetched an
iron cat's paw, its three iron claws heated red, and raked her distended left
thigh, wrenching from her a gasping scream of raw pain. He placed the paw back
on the brazier and started smearing her body with a thick goo, not unlike the
grease favored by Grod, which caused her to start writhing in pain as it
burned like salt in the innumerable tiny wounds scattered on her body.

The hopes of being spared the hot iron, born when he had put the cat's paw
aside, were shattered when he picked up the implement again, and satisfied
with the bright red glow of its points tore three gashes of hellish torment
under her left breast, causing a howl of unspeakable agony to surge from her
aching mouth, followed by gasping screams of pain as he paused silently.

After a while, he dragged the points across her chest while she screamed in
abysmal pain, and then after another pause climbed along her upper left arm,
tearing shallow bleeding wounds in her muscles while her arm shook
uncontrollably and her head ebbed back and forth, hiding the expression of
unbridled torment on her contorted visage. The goo he had smeared her with
melted under the heat and flooded the gashes, burning like salt and bubbling
in the open wound, furthering her torment well beyond the white hot agony of
the points ripping through the flesh.

Lyral shook her head in disbelief, gasping at the agony being inflicted on her
friend and comparing it to the similar but much milder torment she had been
subjected to two days ago, by the Easterner, who had used a hot copper hook on
her maybe two dozen times, while her friend had already been hurt more times
with an iron implement bearing three points instead of one. The iron points
were thicker and probably hotter, and he was using one hand to use the horrid
device and the other to pull the skin taut under the points. As with the
spiked chair, which she was placed on without further torment, they were
lenient with her because they thought she was the weakest.

The Easterner fetched a fresh cat's paw from the brazier and dragged it along
Kayleen's left leg, tracing bleeding gashes in her calf while she twisted her
leg in the attempt to stem the scorching torment, then climbing up along the
front of her thigh while she howled in unspeakable agony, throwing her head
back while her mouth distended almost to the point of tearing as if to allow
the waves of agony coursing through her to find their way out. He ripped
slashes of red hot pain in her legs and thighs, criss crossing them until her
screams of abject woe turned to pitiful wheezes.

He let her sip from the jug, then moved the brazier behind her and started
dragging the cats-paw down her muscular back, cutting along the line of her
muscles while she convulsed in spasmodic agony and screamed her lungs out in a
fit of screaming desperation, occasionally interrupted when he changed
direction in the raking of her back, causing her to stiffen abruptly before
jerking in unabashed pain. The torment was mercilessly protracted in spite of
her cries, convulsions and howls, splashing her with cold water twice and on
occasion bringing the jug to her lips again.

Pausing each time, he switched to raking her buttocks, tracing irregular,
bleeding gashes in the firm flesh, wrenching inhuman screams of maddened agony
from her convulsing body while her restraints rattled with her agonized
convulsions. Although her buttocks offered a target smaller than her back, he
protracted the torment even longer, raking repeatedly the soft crease between
her ass cheeks and ripping through the flesh between buttock and thigh with
controlled abandon, skillfully avoiding major blood vessels.

He then dragged the cat's paw across her vulva, from behind, causing her to
arch in a stiffened bow of unparalleled agony while a pitched howl rushed from
her throat and shook her chest. Using a fresh cat's paw, he started dragging
the points from her mons down, slowly twisting the implement left and right
while the sizzling points ripped through her flesh and her howls surged
one after another as her abysmal agony surpassed the limits of her screaming.

Lyral buckled in the chair, now appreciating how the iron spikes hurt her soft
flesh each time she tired of pulling herself up but also trembling before the
agonies her friend was being put through. She recollected how, in one of her
rare lapse, she had let out a glimpse of how much the torment of hot iron and
the targeting of her feminine parts weighed on her, and seeing her friend arch
in howling agony as the hot points tore dented gashes in the pink flesh was
almost too much to bear.

When the Easterner circled Kayleen, bringing the brazier along, a sob heaved
in her chest as her mind focused in dread on what would follow. He grabbed her
shredded nipple with iron pliers and then raked the red hot points of the
cats-paw along the elongated breast flesh, causing her to burst in a desperate
howl of trembling agony while blood oozed from the gashes. The fangs of a pain
which knew no bounds ripped again through the flesh of her breast, wrenching
another howl of unparalleled torment from her throat, and once this also
subsided the pliers pulled at her other breast.

With slow, deliberate cruelty, he ripped lacerated gashes of red hot agony
through the firm flesh of her breasts, letting her scream herself hoarse as
the pain of the goo bubbling in the wounds followed the agony of the points
raking through the flesh. In spite of the horribly irregular wounds, she had
not lost much blood, because the cats-paw to a great extent cauterized the
wound it created and the bubbling goo also contributed in stemming the loss.

A moment of relief followed, but her wracking sobs burst into a scream again
when his member sheathed in rough leather penetrated her vagina, scraping the
scorched flesh while her body twisted in agony. Thrusting back and forth with
cold viciousness, he ravished her hanging body, wracking her twisted arms and
tearing her wounded innards mercilessly, pulling out only when his arousal
was spent and leaving her gasping in bitter pain.

He let her sip from the jug before lowering her to the floor, but only to drag
her to the ladder, ignoring her pain-wracked sobs as she knew that being
restrained on the ladder would entail torments which required her to have no
freedom of movement, those which were so hellish that extreme precision in
administering them was required to let the victim live through the ordeal.

Unable to keep herself above the iron spikes, Lyral cried in dismay as her
sore muscles gave and the points drew blood again, taking her mind momentarily
off her friend's abject ravishment. She wondered if the spikes would prove so
unbearable that she would be forced to give in, saying to herself that she had
to be strong but with the mind full of dread at the thought of being unable to
resist, wasting her friend's heroics with a single act of weakness.

The Easterner laid Kayleen on the ladder, fastening her collar and waist band
to the wooden structure so that her head lied slightly lower than her pelvis,
cuffing wrists and ankles in a taut spread eagle position which exposed her
crotch.  The red hot points of the Caspar were then dragged on her left foot,
ripping through the flesh between her toes repeatedly while she screamed in
harrowing pain, rocking the ladder in mad agony.

After letting her sip briefly from the jug and heating carefully the cat's
paw, he raked it forcefully along her forearm, ripping open a deep gash which
he scraped repeatedly, using only the left point and heating the device often,
deepening the gash until he reached the bone. She burst in screams of
horrendous torment, which rose even higher once he started scraping the
exposed bone with the red hot left point. After a few rakings he did the same
with her other forearm, so that he could alternate the torment, spreading the
damage while keeping up the pain.

Her screams rose under the vaults of the torture chamber, echoing her torment
with heart-wrenching peaks of sheer agony, but a desperate resolve could still
be heard in her voice as she clung to what was dearest to her in a feat of
astounding courage which had little precedent. In spite of the horrid gashes
lacerating her body, in spite of the abysmal torment of having a hot iron
point scrape her bone, she knew that if she could hold on just some more time,
they would be defied again.

Unmoved, her tormentor heated the cat's paw again and pressed its points on
the left of her ribcage, carefully ripping through the thin muscle to expose a
rib so that the red hot point could scrape it, wrenching hoarse screams of
abysmal pain from her convulsing chest, the first step her down the pits of a
personal hell of searing hot pain, ripped flesh and uninterrupted agony.
Slowly, rib after rib, the fiendish torment of her exposed ribs was protracted
while her labored breathing turned to a wheezing wail and foam bubbled from
her mouth upon each anguished howl.

When she saw the white of her ribs, Lyral opened her mouth in disbelief,
unable to make sense of what was occurring to her friend until her eyes fixed
on a red hot point sliding along the white of the bone, while her friend's
voice rose in another howl of unspeakable torment. The agony of spikes under
her soft thighs almost vanished before the thought of what horrid torment her
friend was being put through for the benefit of her eyes, and her mind ran in
circles again in search of something which she could say to stop this horror,
or at least relieve her from being the cause of her friend's agonies.

As Kayleen's body was shaken by fits of coughing and uninterrupted tremors,
the Easterner had to force the contents of the jug down her mouth, bringing
her back from the pain induced relief of shock before dragging the fiendish
paw up her leg, repeatedly, until the white of bone showed, ready to be
subjected to the horrid torment of scraping. To staunch the bleeding, since
the cut was bound to be deeper and wider than on her arms, he repeatedly
rubbed the red hot points along the edges of the gash, then heated the device
again and let the point skid along the gleaming white at the bottom of the
gash while a howl of absolute agony surged from her frothing mouth.

With time he started alternating between her left and right shin, which had
been similarly ravaged, splashing her with cold water as soon her screams
waned, as the pain from a few rakings was enough to induce shock in spite of
what she drank from the jug, and he wanted the full horror of the unspeakable
agony she was undergoing to wrack through her body in spasms of unbearable
torment, hoping to shatter her resolve before shattering her body.

In spite of the harrowing agonies being wrought on her scraped bones, in spite
of the uninterrupted torments, her resolve still held on, so he took a chance
and, after letting her sip from the jug again and pouring more cold water on
her trembling body, raked the red hot cat's paw on her thighs, first one and
then the other, placing the utmost care into slowly reaching the bone while
avoiding the major blood vessels while her screams reached new peaks of agony.

The scraping of her thigh bones was, if possible, worse than what she had been
put through thus far, so painful that in spite of her restraints she convulsed
madly, pulling and straining a number of muscles while pitched howls of sheer
agony surged from her lips, bubbling through the reddish foam in her mouth,
each bursting out before its predecessor waned as her torment surpassed the
limits of her ability to express her pain through screams.

Lyral jumped on the spikes, screaming her lungs out from the sudden pain, when
she saw white slivers splintering from her friend's thigh bones under the
force of the red hot points. She could not believe that her friend could
withstand that and just scream, however blood-curling her howls rose under the
vaults of the torture chamber. For a moment, the essence of her being, her
faith, was shaken by the thought that the powers of good had abandoned them
both in the hands of the minions of evil incarnate.

Yet, as the Easterner's eyes sought defeat under Kayleen's clenched lids, all
he found was a desperate resolve, born of courage and dedication, and to break
the resolve behind the visage contorted in a mask of unbridled agony he heated
a fresh cat's paw which he inserted into her vagina, raking it from the inside
out while she stiffened in a scream of fitful agony as the red hot points
ripped through the most sensitive part of her love channel, above the rim.

He let the horror and pain sink into her, then set his jaw, moved between her
legs and thrust his leather sheathed member into her shredded vagina, partially
cauterized but still bleeding profusely. With his hands on her hips, he drove
into her with cold viciousness, ramming and twisting to rip the lacerations
left by the cat's paw wider and wider on each thrust while she jerked in fits
of unbridled pain and howls of unspeakable agony.

After keeping up her violation, pausing it repeatedly to splash her with cold
salt water, he pulled out, momentarily leaving her to cry in misery while he
heated the device again. He brought it up before her, inspecting her eyes for
a sign of defeat, then, after shaking his head once, dragged it forcefully up
her vulva, slowly ripping her open from the rim of the vagina upwards, tearing
the clitoris in two while an unparalleled howl of agony exploded from her
mouth, fanned by the spasms in her heaving chest as the points ripped through
her femininity with excruciating slowness.

Using a pair of hot pliers, he grabbed the tatters of her left nipple and
distended the breast, repeatedly sawing through its base with the points of
the cat's paw while she screamed in unspeakable agony until he reached the
white of the rib. He then scraped it forcefully, careful not to let the red
hot point stray while her chest burst in howls of unparalleled pain. In a haze
of unbearable pain, the last shards of her resolve were being scraped from her
one by one, and she clung desperately to the thought that if she could hold on
a little more, the torture could not last much longer.

Impressed by her endurance, he moved to repeat the procedure on her right
breast, but since this one had been somewhat less damaged by the hooks and
needles he first ripped through the nipple, inspecting her eyes for signs of
a defeat which was not there. He let her sip from the jug, but he noticed that
the effectiveness of the syrupy concoction was waning, although her eyes
cleared and she screamed as the pain made itself felt in full again. Using the
hot pliers he pulled the breast and raked the underside repeatedly until he
exposed the bone again, listening to her pitiful screams as he could not
believe that she could hold on further.

When he started scraping the exposed rib, he did forcefully, not having to
worry about the heart and determined to force her to submit at last, but in
spite of the unparalleled howls and the chips of bone scraped from the rib,
which cracked twice as he relentlessly raked it, her hoarse voice never
conceded defeat. Unable to speak, unable to call for her friend, foaming at
the mouth in unbearable agony and screaming pitifully, she still found the
resolve to deny them their prize, ultimately defying her torturers.

Lyral watched her friend's contorted face with a mixture of admiration, dread
and pity, as the amazing courage and endurance demonstrated could not hide the
fact that the wounds her friend was being dealt were lethal, in spite of her
extraordinary physique and of the tormentor's ingenuity in dealing pain while
limiting damage. Even if not bleeding freely, the skin was lacerated in so
many places that there was probably more flesh than skin exposed, and the
scorched flesh oozed a clear fluid which mixed with the salty goo smeared over
her body, and dozens of gashes reached to the gleaming white of the bone,
albeit in places where the bone was close to the surface. She would have to
heal her as soon as possible, and with her healing power almost spent, she
would not be able to heal her fully anyway.
When the Easterner unfastened Kayleen from the ladder, the screams which had
been wracking her chest waned into moaning cries, as the relief of having made
it through another day of torture washed over her, even if she knew that she
would be put in some form of torturous restraint. It took her some time to
realize that her tormentor had laid her on the cross rack and was now pulling
her limbs taut and spreading her thighs open. Her scream as the pain in her
thigh joints burst through her mouth was heavy with the despair of seeing her
relief being wrenched from her and replaced by further agonies.

He pulled the rollers at each end of the cross rack unmercifully, until he
could hear her joints creak between the pauses of her hoarse screaming, then
poured the contents of the jug down her throat while she sputtered in pain and
fear as she had guessed that he wanted to break her resolve now, by subjecting
her to agonies so unthinkable that they would even surpass what she had been
put through so far. He moved between her thighs, stretched painfully wide, and
using a freshly heated cat's paw slowly raked the point through the tense
cords which stood out in the underside of her strained thighs, wrenching howls
of demented pain as muscle and tendon trembled on the verge of rupture.

The pain was such that convulsions shook her body, wracking her joints near
dislocation, and as he repeatedly tore through the taut flesh her limbs one by
one dislocated under the pull of her spasmodic jerks. With a snap, the hot
iron points also ruptured the strained cords under her thighs, but her howls
were by now so raucous and pitiful that even this horrid wound hardly made a
difference in the litany of her screams.

What made a difference was that he heated the cat's paw again, after dousing
her with cold water and pouring more syrup in her torn mouth, and with
excruciating slowness raked it through her mons, ripping the skin off in
strips and searing the bleeding flesh, a torment so hellish that the
unspeakable agony fanned her voice to new heights of demented torment which
echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber. When the pubic bone was
exposed and the hot points raked the white surface, the dislocation of her
right thigh, last among her limbs, added little to her howls.

Lyral, still twitching on the iron spikes of the chair, was out of her mind
from dread and horror at the sight of what her friend was being subjected to,
her head shaking mindlessly in the effort to distance herself from the sight
of the cat's paw scraping white slivers from the bloodied triangle of her
friend's mons, wrenching inhuman howls of unparalleled agony from the heaving
chest convulsing in the throes of abysmal torment.

Kayleen was now being forced to drink from the jug each time, so deep in shock
that each new scraping added less and less to her agonies, even when the bone
cracked; her face was a horrid mask of pain, with the eyes rolling and showing
the white and foam drooling from the mouth, while each howl rose through her
chest in choking spasms of coughed blood. After slowly raking her pubic bone
again, scraping tiny white chips while her howls rose in a wheeze of exhausted
agony, her torturer put the cat's paw aside, no longer confident that the
torment could be protracted without killing her outright.


Chapter 20 - Ambushing the Rescuers

Lyral's cry of dismay faded slowly in the unlit vaults of the torture chamber
under the ruins of Zhorun's former castle. She had just failed again to bring
her lips to touch her friend's forehead, cursing herself for not being what
she had never been, agile and athletic.

With her wrists cuffed behind the back to her left ankle and hanging upside
down from a thumbscrew gouging her right toe, Lyral's attempts to swing and
bend at the waist to reach her friend with the lips had resulted in some
healing for her friend and much frustration for her, and now her tired muscles
were starting to ache from the effort and from her position. What brought her
to tears was that this was nothing before the torment wrought on her friend.

Kayleen hung with her left wrist cuffed behind the back to her right ankle,
and the right arm cuffed at the elbow and wrist to her left leg, in a
grotesque lozenge which pulled strenuously on her dislocated joints, wrenching
raucous screams of pain from her trembling frame. She still shivered having
been drenched in freezing cold salt water, and her weight hung from
thumbscrews savagely crushing her right toe and left thumb, which had cracked
under her efforts to help in getting healed and were now painfully swollen.

The healing which Lyral had managed to convey had restored most of the flesh
scraped from her limbs and mons, although the white of the bone still showed
in her ribcage through wounds whose pain was almost on par with the blazing
agony from her shredded nipples and clitoris, which had been restored only
partially. Lyral's healing, however miraculous, would not restore her joints
as long as they were under the traction induced by her position.

What Lyral and Kayleen ignored was that Kayleen's predicament was the result
of Zhorun's directions, as the undead wizard had wanted to relish in seeing
his nemesis suffer the beginning of agonies which would last through the
night, because he would not be able to witness them as he had taken to.

In the last days, his spies had warned him that, in spite of the precautions
taken by his henchmen, a group of Priestesses had been able to follow the
trail of Lyral's abductors, probably detecting residues of the magic carried
by items of hers which had been brought along. Nothing in his tomes had hinted
that Priestesses possessed such abilities, although, in hindsight, the notion
that stealing from them was unwise had been there. Whatever the ability, it
had a limited range, because their had to spread from a known point, and
apparently employing many Priestesses allowed them to cover a wider area.

It was also likely that the Priestesses had found some residual of the corpses
incinerated by Lyral's power, because they were taking precautions against the
undead. What they did not expect, as there were many Priestesses and few
fighters, was living opponents led by a wizard, of a might the likes of which
had been forgotten in the kingdom; he would storm their camp at dawn with his
troops, wiping out over half of the Priestesses in existence in a single blow.

He planned to take some prisoners, have them deprived of their power by his
men, which would be their just reward, and interrogated, because he hoped to
find most of the others gathered together in some shrine, and if he got his
timing right he would be able to obliterate them also before news of the fate
of those investigating Lyral's disappearance spread.

Meanwhile, he watched silently, with his netherwordly gaze for which darkness
was not an obstacle, as Lyral's efforts improved the health of her friend,
causing the scorched gashes in the limbs and crotch to heal, although the
flesh on the ribs and the breasts still pulsed and oozed. The nipples bled
slowly now, but the pain from the innumerable small wounds left by the needles
and hooks was still remorseless.

"Kayleen, I believe we're against a wall. It's impossible for me to heal your
joints in that position, and any healing I further infused on you would be
wasted in trying just that, without improving the rest of your wounds."

"Do you have ... enough ... for yourself ?" croaked Kayleen, crying.

"I have already healed myself," lied Lyral, blessing the darkness.

"Kayleen, I am stumped," she added, "We're playing into their hands. They
torture you, I heal you, and then the next day they torture you even more. Now
they've taken to curtailing the little help I was able to give you, and I am
forced to sit hearing you scream all the way to the gates of hell because of
me, being abjectly raped because I'm too weak to stand it myself!"

"Lyral ... don't play into their hands even more. What you give, however
little you manage to ... accomplish, is what keeps me from breaking. Even in
the worst ... torments, I know that if I just hold on some more, a time will
come when ... the kiss of a friend will soothe my pain. Get over your guilt,
they are playing upon it, ... besides, it's because of my weakness that you're
undergoing this, so you're not alone," whispered Kayleen between fits of pain.

"It's not us, it's them ... it's them we should stand against, together. As
much as I regret dragging you into this, ... it was worse when I was alone,
Lyral. Alone with the pain, the humiliation ... crying in the dark, never free
from these cuffs, ... no kiss of a friend before another day of merciless
torments," mused Kayleen, trying to muffle her bitter sobs.

Zhorun left shortly thereafter to join his minions, his mind divided between
the task ahead and the delicious anticipation of further sufferings to be
inflicted on his prisoners, especially the Queen. He had considered ordering
today's session postponed until his return, but then settled for allowing the
torture to continue, intending to use magic to have a look whenever possible.

At the end of a restless night, punctuated by Kayleen's bitter screams as the
pain in her joints mounted, the torturers returned for another session, and it
was the Southerner who moved towards her, his arousal prominent under his
white robes as he lewdly inspected her quivering form.

Without releasing her from the restraints she had spent the night in, he
produced a small blade and started tearing small wounds in the rim of her
sphincter, almost purring whenever she screamed pitifully, and then pulled out
his manhood and rammed it into her ass, causing her voice to rise in a howl of
hopeless torment as the wicked thrust ripped the wounds wider.

He kept jarring viciously back and forth for a while, grabbing her thighs
while she cried and sobbed bitterly, then pulled his bloodied member out and
reamed her orifice with pinches of white powder, which soaked her blood so
that he could resume her violation denying her its lubrication, rekindling the
flames of agony in her voice until his lust was finally spent.

Lyral was dragged by the Easterner near a heavy iron grate, set with dull
spikes, on which she was forced to lie with her back, immediately realizing
that her muscles would not hold the strain of keeping the worst of the points
from her flesh for long. Her gaze, however, followed the violation of her
friend, whose dislocated joints which she had not been able to heal were now
compounding with their agonies the humiliation of yet another abject rape.

The Southerner tightened Kayleen's collar, constricting her windpipe, and then
lowered her on the floor, dragging her near a low, reclined plank. He cuffed
her wrists and elbows behind her back, fastening the wrists to a chain from
the ceiling, and then spread her legs wide by cuffing her ankles to chains
from two pillars at her side, adjusting the chains so that her front lay on
the plank, with her face almost touching the floor and her loins raised up, a
position whose significance she realized immediately with a bitter sob.

She started screaming when her dislocated joints were forced to bear the brunt
of her weight, as her arms were pulled up behind the head and her thighs
rotated and spread unmercifully, wrenching harsh cries of agony as lances of
white hot pain shot from the wracked sockets, and then howled when he started
driving short needles under her partially regrown finger and toe nails,
twisting the forked tips, waiting for his member to harden again.

After leaving her to sob bitterly thereafter, he pulled the chain fastened to
her wrists, raising her front while a protracted scream rose from her mouth as
pain surged in her wracked shoulders, exposing her muscular abdomen and proud,
generous breasts. He brought the jug to her mouth, letting her sip repeatedly.

He started inserting tiny hooks around her navel, pulling the flesh taut and
braiding them with short needles whose forked tip he drove slowly just under
the skin, pausing whenever she quivered in screaming agony and resuming when
her voice subsided. He stopped after about two dozen, admiring his work for a
moment before producing a barbed steel rod which he used to administer a
vicious strike across her pierced abdomen.

The barbs tore the skin in a number of places, causing her head to jerk back
in a scream of surprised pain, but the contraction of her muscles pulled on
hooks and needles, which tore through the muscles just under the skin slitting
lacerated gashes of bleeding agony in her quivering abdomen. Overwhelmed by
the sudden pain, she shook in her restraints, howling repeatedly in abysmal
torment while blood oozed from the tiny wounds after each strike.

With a smile, he produced a jar and emptied it on the plank, revealing dozens
of critters, each half an inch long, which scuttled around, crowding where
drops of her blood stained the wood. Her eyes grew wide when he started
lowering her, until her abdomen contacted the plank and the true measure of
her torture was revealed as the tiny crabs, a variant of land crab for which
her tormentor had found this cruel use, started biting the edges of her
wounds, tearing minuscule bits of skin and flesh off.

Her howls rose in pitch as the tiny crabs, used to feed on dead or wounded
creatures, swarmed her wounds, apparently ignoring sound skin, and used their
surprisingly strong jaws to rip off a morsel of flesh and then rush away, to
laboriously ingest it. She kept screaming and howling while dozens of jaws
tore her wounds open, convulsing pitifully in uninterrupted agony, until
somehow she realized that she could lessen her torment by raising herself off
the plank, as the crabs were poor climbers and were apparently unable to hold
onto her flesh and bite at the same time.

Almost immediately, the agony of her lacerated flesh was compounded by the
devastating torment of her dislocated joints, shot through by waves of
abysmal pain as her muscles trembled in the spasmodic effort to keep her
wounds outside the reach of the crabs. The sheen of perspiration covered her
body, and her chest panted in between strangled screams as her physique
managed again to pull off an astonishing feat of endurance and determination.

Screaming herself from the iron points in her back, Lyral was still horrified
at the thought of the agony in her friend's joints, partly because the true
purpose of the plank was not visible to her. What she had feared thus far was
that they guessed this limitation of her healing and turned it into a further
source of agonies for her brave friend, but her fear found a cause much closer
to her as the Easterner shoveled a load of burning coals under the iron grate
she lied on, forcing to her to arch to distance her back from their heat.

Meanwhile, anticipating the tingle of renewed arousal, with a tiny blade the
Southerner started tearing small cuts in the rim of Kayleen's vagina, watching
as she shivered after each, sliding closer to the plank and pulling back with
a hoarse scream of utter agony as her trembling muscles managed to deliver her
again. With a smile, he started prolonging each cut, letting the blade linger
in the cuts torn through the most sensitive area, just above the rim, pressing
it down so that she was forced to lie on the plank for the joy of the crabs,
briefly renewing her agony as their jaws bit her wounds.

She was but halfway in a scream of mad agony when he grabbed her hips and
penetrated her vagina, ripping the tiny wounds wide open while her voice rose
in a choked scream of pain and despair and her trembling muscles gave, dropping
her on the plank amidst the hungry crabs. Although his jarring thrusts caused
many crabs to be crushed, she was also repeatedly forced onto the plank
exposing her wounds to more bites, while her orifice was being ripped open by
his vicious rut and he relished in her spasmodic screams of utter torment.

Lyral's screams matched her friend's as her muscles could deliver her from the
raging heat of the coals only at intervals, so her attention returned to the
abject rape of her friend in between, although in a corner of her mind her
horror mounted at how the violation was being protracted.

The Southerner pulled out of Kayleen's womb twice, tearing more cuts in her
vagina while she howled in trembling agony and rubbing her innards with more
white powder before resuming the abject penetration of her orifice in a
renewed frenzy of rutting thrusts. When his lust was finally spent, he
lingered inside her, driving hooks in her twitching ass cheeks while she
screamed as the pain of raising herself off the plank and the agony of having
morsels of flesh ripped from her bleeding wounds alternated.

Still with his flaccid member within her, he braided needles through the hooks
in her ass cheeks and back, just under the skin, twisting the forked tips so
that she howled in abysmal pain and let herself on the plank for a few
seconds each time. Only after tormenting relentlessly the parts which could be
reached while still filling her love channel did he pull out, trouncing her
sob of respite with a vicious strike from the barbed rod across her buttocks.

He let her sip from the jug again, then a new phase of her torment commenced
when he started using the barbed rod all over her needle pierced body, slowly
ripping open her skin bit by bit and causing her to stiffen and howl in
torment as each jerk shifted hooks and needles in new positions, tearing
through her muscles in endless variations of searing agony.

Panting with exertion, he put the rod aside and started picking up the crabs
one by one and depositing them on her back, ass cheeks and thighs, placing
each near and even inside a wound just as a jerk tore it open, so that the
creature would sink its jaws while she was still wracked by the pain of the
wound itself. He watched with delight as the technique worked, wrenching howls
of ever increasing pitch from her hoarse throat while her body shook in her
restraints, shuddering from the relentless ache of the dislocated joints and
jerking from blasts of pain as morsels were ripped from her wounds.

Lyral, arching in torment, watched in disbelief the convulsions of her friend,
realizing that some critter was causing the spasmodic jerks which undoubtedly
wracked the dislocated joints well beyond the boundaries of human endurance.
Her back burned from the heat and the pain from the iron spikes, which became
overwhelming when her aching muscles gave, so she had a fitful picture of what
her friend was undergoing, and the horror mounted within her as each time her
gaze wandered off to her friend's form she was still convulsing and screaming.

The Southerner pulled the chain fastened to Kayleen's wrists, raising her off
the plank and exchanging more torment on her shoulder joints with some respite
from the crabs, most of which fell down, and splashed her with cold salt
water, waiting for her subsequent screams to subside before letting her sip
from the jug. But then he started driving hooks under the skin of her ribcage
and into her breasts, drawing out sharp howls of bitter pain which turned into
fitful screams as he braided them with needles, screams he cruelly protracted
by twisting the forked tip under the skin, relishing the contact with her
shaking body and the hoarse screams of utter torment in his face.

Not satisfied with the dozens of hooks and needles deforming her breasts into
bleeding cones of trembling agony, he spent an inordinate amount of time in
driving needles through her distended nipples and then pulling each through a
small hole in a two-inch metal platter, bending the needles inside the nipple
while her voice trembled in howls of demented torment, rising again when he
drove thin needles under each platter to stitch it to the tip of the nipple.

Her screams became, if possible, even louder when he drove hooks and needles
through her thighs and her crotch, braiding dozens of hooks in her cunt lips
with needles and using iron pliers to savagely pull her clitoris through the
hole of another metal platter before laboriously stitching the tip of the
bleeeding feminine flesh to the platter with thin needles.

Lyral was not able to follow this new stage of her friend's torture, because
her own was now an all-consuming agony which wrenched desperate howls of pain
as she could no longer distance herself from the heat, and the torment in her
buttocks and the back of her thighs was uninterrupted and excruciating. Her
tear filled eyes only managed to notice that her friend hung with arms twisted
behind the back, screaming from some abject torment being inflicted on a
femininity which had become the preferred target of their captors.

When the Southerner lowered Kayleen on the plank again, the crabs swarmed her
bleeding front and sunk their jaws in her wounds, wrenching new screams of
abysmal torment from her as she forced her aching muscles to gain the inch or
so she needed to preserve her proud breasts from dozens of painful bites. Her
howls turned into gurgles as he circled her and inserted his member into her
mouth, still distended by the spider gag, pushing with his loins so that she
contacted the plank with her bleeding crotch, his member hardening at the
thought of the crabs ripping flesh from her wounded femininity.

The next scream engulfed his member while her warm tongue rubbed it in the
spasmodic attempt to scream her agonies without choking, and as more crabs
found the wounds in her crotch her howls gurgled around his manhood one after
the other, rising even higher when her clitoris was bitten and a pink morsel
was forcefully torn off, causing her to convulse in unbearable agony.

He protracted the violation of her mouth, pulling out frequently and striking
her back with the barbed rod on occasion, but his pleasure ebbed on the rhythm
of her desperate screams from the harsh bites of the crabs and bulged when her
tongue lapped spasmodically his hardening member in a choked howl of agony as
his thrusts filled her throat and wracked her dislocated joints.

When his lust was spent, he lingered inside her mouth, watching her fingers
stiffen and contract spasmodically before him as morsels of flesh were ripped
off her wounds by the crabs, causing her to gurgle her screams of abysmal
torment onto his manhood and buckle violently, wracking her swollen joints
into deeper pits of unrelenting woe.

Still screaming in bitter pain, Lyral tried to reduce her own agonies by
using her healing power on herself, and managed to soothe her torment enough
to be able to see clearly how a tiny creature reached into the gash torn by
a hook in her friend's cunt lips, tore back and forth at the bleeding edge and
finally ripped off a morsel of flesh while her friend's burst of anguished
pain gurgled in the stuffed mouth. Horrified, she stopped healing herself,
determined to save her power to deliver her friend from such abject torments.

After pulling out, at last, the Southerner brought the jug to Kayleen's lips
again, although she managed to sip little between screams and jerks, and then
picked up a crab with tweezers and deposited it on the platter stitched to her
left nipple. The creature, momentarily confused, turned to the bleeding flesh
and sunk its jaws where a needle pierced the distended bud, tearing back and
forth until it managed to rip off a morsel while she shook in screaming agony.

Smiling, he did the same with her other nipple, slowly adding one crab at a
time while her screams mounted, her pain so unbearable that her convulsions
even managed to cause some crabs to fall off, although her tormentor promptly
replaced them. Her chest trembled, heaving in panting exertion often
interrupted by a bitter scream, but her muscles literally twitched like violin
cords in the harrowing effort to preserve her bleeding front, and especially
her breasts and crotch, from the biting crabs.

He kept up this torment until his manhood hardened again, and then inserted
his hardening member down her throat, pushing with his loins so that her
crotch was again exposed to the swarming crabs, changing the origin of her
screams but not the horror of her unrelenting agony. As her woe gurgled around
his manhood, he kept up the violation of her mouth while her body convulsed in
pain, repeatedly thrusting his bulging member back and forth in her throat
until he finally came again.

Her tormentor let her scream and convulse under the relentless tearing of the
crabs, teasing her mouth with his member, savoring how her physique still
managed to deliver her from most of their bites but for the occasional lapse
which exposed her breasts to a dozens of biting jaws, which swarmed them in a
single instant of unparalleled agony which shook through her body and burst
off her mouth in a howl of harrowing woe whose echoes lingered under the
vaults of the torture chamber while her pain-wracked body shook pitifully.

When her sufferings managed to rekindle his drug enhanced arousal, he violated
her mouth again, sending her crotch into the jaws of the crabs for a variation
of her torment which lasted as long as his cruelty and lust proved able to
protract it. This cycle of horrid agony and abject violation was repeated as
many times as it pleased her tormentor to repeat it, and soon she lost count.

Finally, instead of lingering in her mouth, he brought the jug to her lips,
and then picked up more crabs which he placed on the platter stitched to the
tip of her clitoris, smiling as her mouth distended almost to the point of
letting the gag fall off in a howl of demented torment when another morsel of
flesh was ripped off from her pierced femininity.

As her convulsions paused, he added another crab to the platter stitched to
her left nipple, followed up after a while by one to the right, and kept
adding or replacing the creatures piecemeal while she howled in uninterrupted
agony, wracked by the searing torment her jerks caused on her dislocated
joints and jerking violently when a morsel of flesh was ripped off her pierced
femininity by the vicious jaws of a crab. The spasmodic convulsions of her
loins, the twitching of her strained thigh muscles, and her fingers grasping
at air, meanwhile, slowly fanned new fire into his drug enhanced arousal.

Lyral, still buckling strenuously over the hot coals, watched anxiously as her
friend convulsed violently from the searing agony of having her feminine
flesh ripped off bit by bit, the bleeding now more pronounced but still fairly
limited, but the pain unparalleled, and showing plainly in the contorted face
and the harrowing screams. Dread consumed Lyral at the thought of finding her
friend so horribly mutilated that not even her healing power would restore
what had been torn off, but as far as she could see each crab actually took a
single morsel and then laboriously consumed it before coming back for more, so
although her torment was uninterrupted, actual damage was rather limited.

When ready, the Southerner used a candle to scare off the crabs scuttling
around Kayleen's crotch area, cruelly searing the flapping shreds of her
vagina, then threaded a cord through them, carefully knotting it to the
needles piercing her flesh, and pulling it through her clitoris twice while
she stiffened in a howl of demented torment. Then, with a vicious smile, he
penetrated her love channel in frenzied abandon, pulling the cord taut so that
his thrusts shredded her flesh, twisting needles and hooks and ripping through
her clitoris and the rim of her vagina while she howled in abysmal torment.

Growling in frenzied excitement, he thrust into her with increasing
viciousness, pulling out to smear white powder inside her bleeding womb so
that her violation would resume without the benefit of being lubricated by her
blood and pulling the cord left and right repeatedly so that his penetration
tore the wounds in her vagina wider open. Her pitiful screams continued even
after he came inside her, as he kept pulling alternately on the cord while
she shook in harrowing pain.

When Grod stepped in the Southerner's place, Kayleen's teary gaze focused on
something he was carrying. He freed her from the chains, but without
unfastening her restrains or even removing hooks and needles from her bleeding
body dragged her to the cross rack, where she saw that he was carrying a set
of cuffs. He had already replaced the cuffs she wore when racking her, to make
sure her blood vessels would not be slit open, but her joints had been
dislocated for hours now and surely he did not mean to rack them further.

He placed her with her back on the rack, removed her iron waist band and
replaced it with another, which wrenched a gasp from her torn mouth as it was
studded with dull iron spikes. Unlike its predecessor, this could be tightened
with screws, and the spikes dug in her soft flesh, while another pain told her
that the iron band's edges were also serrated and scratched painfully the skin
once the band was tightened, constricting her breathing.

Now that she could not roll off the rack, he replaced the cuffs at her ankles
with wicked, heavy iron cuffs which had dull spikes and dents in places were
they would not endanger blood vessels, and which he tightened savagely with a
screw almost to the point of crushing her ankles in them. Thus, when he
replaced her wrist cuffs, the relief of having her wrists free for the first
time in weeks was brief and soon replaced by the crushing torment of dull
spikes, soon joined by similar ache from elbow and knee rings.

Next, he produced two thin iron bands, again studded and dented, which he
tightened around her thighs, near her crotch, turning the screw so tight that
the iron sunk in her flesh, tracing bleeding scratches and breaking a few
needles while she howled in sudden pain. When he cast her old restraints
negligently away, she realized that these were the restraints that she would
wear from now on, designed to torment her bitterly and without relief, day and
night, increasing her suffering another notch.

Lyral screamed in fear as the Southerner neared her, almost wishing he let her
on the hot coals although her back and buttocks had been burned crimson by the
relentless heat. Even if the torture had not been as severe as the horrors
inflicted on her friend, she had often been near breaking when her aching
muscles had failed to deliver her back from being scorched raw. But the mere
thought of what the swarthy old man was capable of doing inspired in her a
terror so boundless that only Zhorun's obsession with tormenting her friend
could explain how their torturers failed to exploit it.

Kayleen gasped when Grod produced a serrated, hinged iron band which he closed
around the base of her left breast, which bulged while he screwed it tighter
and tighter, unmoved by her screams as it caught on needles and hooks,
dragging them further through her suffering flesh. A similar fate befell her
right breast, and as the pain mounted in her constricted mounds a bitter sob
shook her at the thought of spending whole nights in such agony.

Her eyes widened in fear when he trapped her left nipple in a vise and screwed
it painfully tight, causing blood to spurt while she screamed in mad pain as
the device bent the hooks and needles still piercing the mauled flesh. As the
same happened to her other nipple, she realized that the vises had fine chains
meant to be attached to rings in her restraints, her collar in this case, and
could also become instruments of further torment. And the fears fanned by this
train of thoughts burst into bitter screams when he crushed her clitoris in a
similar vise, pulling its chain savagely to fasten it to her waist band.

Just as she wondered whether today's session, since Zhorun was not present,
would be interrupted here, leaving her to suffer in her new restraints, her
tormentor made obvious what the cross rack could still do to a female victim
whose joints had been already dislocated. The device he was fastening between
her trembling legs consisted of a stout bar, which he fastened to her ankle
cuffs, from whose middle protruded a long steel pole, whose tip tapered into
a roughly hewn wooden cone, wickedly hacked and dented.

Another cross bar was fastened to her knee cuffs, and when the tip nudged her
torn sphincter she screamed in bitter despair at the thought of its size and
dents. The cone distended the tattered rim of her sphincter, dislodging some
of the hooks and needles still piercing it, causing her to arch with a scream
of hopeless torment. The dents scraped the shredded rim, and then the cone
filled the opening of her bowels while she convulsed in pain around its girth,
her screams waning and waxing in bitter woe.

A wave of white hot agony surged from her left thigh when he cranked the
roller, pulling the leg by the ankle and stretching muscles and ligaments,
while pain throbbed in her ankle and knee smarting under the constriction of
the wicked cuffs. What in her previous experiences on the rack had been the
pinnacle of agony, the tearing of muscles once the bone had been wrought out
of its seat, was now the beginning of her torture, and compounded the tearing
of her sphincter, as the only avenue for the pull on her leg consisted in
further penetration by the girth of the cone.

Remembering the torment she had perceived in her friend's dislocated joints,
Lyral gasped when she realized that they would be stretched on the rack again,
beyond herself at the thought of the atrocity her friend was about to
withstand. From her position, she could not see the pole well enough to
understand its function, and her mind was still under the impression of the
agonies of dislocation since the night before. As for her own predicament, the
Southerner had fastened her ankle cuffs to a chain from the ceiling, hanging
her upside down with the wrists cuffed behind her back, but was apparently
more interested in following her friend's agonies.

Kayleen's screams rose higher when Grod cranked the other roller, and the cone
bore deeper through her sphincter, ripping the cuts along its rim slightly
wider as it had already distended her bowels near tearing point and was thus
ripping the flesh where it had been already weakened, wrenching howls of
abysmal pain from her stretched body as her taut legs quivered spasmodically
from the consuming pain and her chest heaved, panting heavily, shaken by
bitter screams and fits of howling agony.

He splashed her with cold, salt water, causing her screams to change in pitch
as the pain from the salt seeping in wounds all over her momentarily replaced
the agony from her limbs and bowels, but as he slowly cranked the rollers
pulling on her ankles her torment kept increasing as her sphincter was ripped
further open and her strained muscles shot blazes of white hot pain through
her convulsing body, while the dents now scraped her insides and her mouth was
distended in an uninterrupted scream of abysmal agony whose pitch changed with
the waves of anguish wracking her stretched body.

One notch at a time, he pulled her spasming legs beyond dislocation, wrenching
raucous screams as the tendons strained near the point of being wrenched from
the trembling muscles, while the cone distended her sphincter tearing its
wounded rim wider as she convulsed in howling agony. Just as the thought of
having reached the bottom of this hell formed in her mind, a new agony burst
in her breast as droplets of bubbling grease scorched it, chasing the
constricted nipple while she jerked in renewed torment and a howl of absolute
agony surged from her distended mouth.

It took only a split second for her spasmodic jerk to reverberate through her
strained leg muscles, rebounding in a blaze of unbelievable torment as the
fibers of tendon and muscle trembled near rupture under her spasmodic efforts
to wrench herself away from the sizzling grease. Grod had correctly guessed
that his favored approach, bringing bone and muscle near the edge and letting
the victim cross it briefly upon each pain induced jerk, would have been very
effective on the athletic woman, as her toned physique lent her jerks a
strength far beyond the ordinary. Now this strength was slowly tearing the
supple tendons of her thighs near the point of rupture, while her ass was
being ripped open by the merciless cone.

Lyral gasped when the sizzling liquid scorched her friend's breast, unable to
believe that such cruelty could be perpetrated and protracted, even more as
she understood that the grease was meant to cause her friend to tear her own
limbs into deeper pits of hellish agony. Her own back was now hurting horribly
as the burns oozed, and she could only guess at what unbearable torment would
her friend suffer once grease started to blister burned skin.

Grod stopped dripping grease on Kayleen's scorched chest and poured the
contents of the jug in her mouth, using one hand to keep her head from jerking
left and right while she howled from the unrelenting torment of her bowels and
legs, and splashing her with more cold, salt water for good measure. He slowly
cranked the rollers again, notch after notch, inspecting her thighs and
watching as signs of rupture in her tendons and thigh muscles surfaced as he
dripped sizzling grease on her mound and cunt lips, starting where a needle
or hook had lacerated the skin, while she howled in demented agony and wracked
her limbs with her own spasmodic jerks.

He circled her, moving above her head between her stretched arms, and cranked
the rollers pulling on her wrists, fanning new despair into her screams as she
realized that more torments were to come. Once her arms started trembling as
the rack stretched her muscles and tendons, he grabbed the vise on her left
nipple and pulled it, dripping sizzling grease on the distended breast flesh
while she howled in helpless agony.

Unlike her lower limbs, where the pain originated from the ripping of her
sphincter was on par with the straining of her muscles, so that a few drops of
grease were more than enough to keep her jerking in merciless agony, with her
upper limbs the grease was an integral component of her ongoing torture as it
wandered mercilessly on her breast, drop by drop, wrenching gut-wrenching cries
of desperate torment from her convulsing chest, whose spasmodic jerks sent
lances of pain through her hip and shoulder joints, especially the latter, just
as her tormentor's intended.

Her head shook aimlessly while he lingered on her nipple, repeatedly scorching
it with the sizzling fluid and pulling it left and right in order to expose
different areas of feminine flesh to its burning kiss, each drop bubbling on
the pink flesh turning it crimson while a new howl of demented pain wracked
her panting chest. Biding his time, he alternated the cranking of the rollers
with relentless dripping of sizzling grease on her chest, mostly on her
breasts and nipples as these wrenched the loudest screams from her torn mouth.

Lyral kept watching her friend's agonies until the Southerner produced another
crab, about two inches across, and dragged slowly it along her burned back,
until the creature suddenly pinched her flesh and tore a bit of scorched flesh
with its strong jaws, causing her to bend and buckle in sudden agony. He had
waited for her burns to become painful, and was now going to slowly rip off
her blistered flesh one morsel at a time.

After protracting Kayleen's agonies until her screams waned, Grod let her sip
from the jug, then with steel in his eyes cranked the rollers again, dripping
grease on her chest, belly and limbs, without interruption, always careful to
alternate between the left and right sides of her body so that she would jerk
and buckle spasmodically while screaming in unbearable agony, pulling
repeatedly at the stretched muscle of her suffering joints.

He kept up with this for a long time, then returned to dripping grease on her
breasts and nipples, always inspecting her shoulder joints, watching for signs
of tearing as cries of sheer agony surged from her mouth one after the other.
Her nipples had been peeled raw by the repeated application of sizzling grease
and the vises had been tightened, so that they would not slip off, causing
them to bloodily scrape the feminine buds between howls of desperate anguish.

Swaths of breast skin flared with the angry crimson of scorched flesh, and when
rivulets of grease crossed them, blasts of hellish agony surged from her mouth
in howls of unspeakable anguish. But the pain from her shoulder joints was
growing even beyond that, as the relentless pull of the rack had stretched
them beyond recognition, leaving the muscle sunken and wracking new pinnacles
of torment on her as bleeding tears started appearing where the muscle and
tendons were being slowly ruptured, turning into sickeningly ripping gashes
while her howls echoed desperately under the vaults of the torture chamber.

Although he protracted the torture almost to the point of ripping her arms off
their sockets, although she screamed and howled in appalling agony, not once
did his gaze catch in hers the signs of defeat he was seeking. He could have
torn her limbs off, but he lessened the pull of the rack instead, allowing the
strained strands of muscle to wreak new pain though her trembling body as they
contracted spasmodically. He tried to break her by repeatedly pulling and
releasing her arms, watching her gaze as her body stiffened in seizures of raw
agony and convulsed in jerks of desperate torment, but she defied him again.

Lyral's own screams now echoed her friend's, as the Southerner had procured
another crab and alternated them, lewdly targeting her buttocks and the soft
back of her thighs. Although the crabs, just like their smaller cousins, tore
flesh one morsel at a time before laboriously consuming it, she was bleeding
from dozens of small bites where her scorched flesh had been ripped off, and
her gaze wandered to her friend only when a scream rose loud enough to pierce
the haze of her own agony. Still, she saw enough to realize in horror that her
friend's muscles and tendons were being ripped to shreds,

Grod let Kayleen sip from the jug again then circled her, removed the cross
bars from her lower limbs and slowly pulled out the cone from her torn
sphincter, releasing the rollers one notch at a time while she screamed and
trembled as blood flowed from her wounded bowels. He used the same paste which
had been used in the previous sessions to staunch bleeding, which led her to
hope that her torture was almost over, but then brought the jug to her lips
and poured its contents in her mouth, in spite of her scream of helpless
despair as she realized that such was not the case.

He procured another pole, tipped by a wooden cone whose size and girth
bespoke the intent to distend and rupture the womb while scraping it raw on
the dents hacked into its surface, and she shuddered as he fastened the
supporting crossbars to her ankles and knees. When the tip nudged the bleeding
tatters around the rim of her vagina, a bitter sob shook her stretched form.
She was about to see her torment intensified and the core of her femininity
subjected to further abject sufferings, and even her determination faltered at
the thought. Somehow, she found her last ounces of resolve in the sobbing form
of her friend, who was being tortured because she had slipped. She would not
allow that to happen again, at any price.

Ending the only relief allowed to her panting body, he resumed the cranking
of the rollers pulling on her ankles. The restraints she had been imprisoned
in added to her torment, just as those on her arms had, as the studs pressed
on the bone while the dented edges scraped her skin, but the pain from the
pull on her dislocated joints mounted unrelentingly, surpassing everything
else while screams burst from her throat in a frenzy of sheer anguish.

Just as she thought that it could not get worse, the penetration of the cone
in her vagina reached the point where its girth started distending her love
channel, ripping the cuts along its rim slightly wider while the dents scraped
her innards and blood flowed again while she jerked in abysmal pain. As he was
wont to do, he had set up her torment so that the rack pulled her thighs near
the point of shredding her muscles and tendons, forcing her to impale herself
on the cone, so that the agony of having her vagina ripped wider and wider
caused her to jerk violently, pulling her limbs beyond the point of rupture.

Lyral managed to get a glimpse of her friend's predicament as she happened to
bend in screaming anguish from another bite at the same time her friend jerked
herself into further agony, and the sight of the blood-stained wood tearing
her friend's femininity asunder and ripping it apart was impressed on her mind
by the gut-wrenching scream of unbridled torment which followed.

Whenever Kayleen screams subsided, either out of exhaustion or because she had
found a precarious balance whose level of pain was slightly less unbearable,
Grod would drop sizzling grease on her mons or thighs, causing her muscles to
contract in a jerk of harrowing agony while the fluid seared skin and flesh,
leaving angry crimson blisters or flowing agonizingly over already scorched
burns, rekindling the sounds of her anguish in a neverending nightmare of
harrowing screams and wheezing howls of hopeless torment.

In spite of the mind-numbing waves of relentless pain, she managed to hide the
despair from her contorted visage, denying her tormentor any hint about how
close she was to breaking, but the horrid price of this feat of courage was
ever increasing torment, so devastating and all-consuming that he had to hold
her mouth open and pour the contents of the jug over and over to prevent her
from sliding into the exhausted stupor induced by overwhelming pain,
especially once tears started forming in the sunken flesh where her hip joints
used to be as her torture was protracted, tears which her violent convulsions
ripped into bleeding gashes as he pulled the chain on her clitoris, distending
it unmercifully and dripping sizzling grease on her scorched femininity.

This was the pinnacle of agony, where he wanted to keep her until anything
else became secondary to the imperative of stopping the pain, so he lessened
the traction on her limbs one notch, resuming the dripping of grease on her
quivering crotch, and then cranked the rack again, alternating traction and
release in a dance of contrasting agonies while repeatedly searing her
distended clitoris, initially turning it an angry crimson, then slowly peeling
it while she howled in unspeakable torment, and finally stopping just short of
ripping it off her crotch in tatters as tears formed along the distended flesh
and started bleeding while the grease seeped in and her screams of abysmal
woe echoed uninterruptedly in the torture chamber.

Lyral somehow managed, in between the blasts of hellish pain coursing through
her whenever the jaws ripped a morsel of her scorched flesh, to keep herself
from admitting defeat. She hated herself for it, but she could not stand the
sight of the bleeding gashes lengthening in her friend's hips where the muscle
was being torn asunder, while her vagina was being literally ripped apart and
scraped raw and the sizzling grease was blistering her crimson flesh. But this
made her realize that Zhorun, whom she wanted to address, was not present,
and the surprise for a moment made her forget even her agonies.

As if in confirmation, while she was still sizing up the discovery, as Grod
was about to let the Easterner take his place the Southerner stepped in,
asking mockingly "Do you mind ?" before nearing Kayleen's crotch and producing
a needle and a cord. Lyral noticed her friend's body shaking in a sob of
bitter despair, and then closed her eyes as screams echoed in the room while
the cord was again threaded through the tatters of her friend's vagina before
the swarthy old man penetrated it, thrusting with rutting force which wrenched
desperate howls of torment as they pulled on the shredded thigh muscles.

The episode made Lyral realize that Grod had foregone raping Kayleen today,
and the only explanation she could find was that he had been doing that only
on Zhorun's orders. It was hard to believe that the feared executioner could
do anything merciful, and the sight of a breast scorched raw by the grease
canceled any such illusion, but the fact remained that Zhorun was not present
and probably not watching either.

The Easterner neared the rack and slowly released the rollers, ignoring
Kayleen's cries as her strained muscles contracted in trembling spasms, not
nearly as agonizing as the unrelenting alternation of traction and release they
had been subjected to but still harrowingly painful. Once her limbs were back
near their sockets, he removed some of the needles and hooks still piercing
her and started treating her wounds, including the gashes in her torn muscles
and the rips in her orifices, smearing them with paste and painstakingly
stitching them. She had undergone such treatment after battle before meeting
Lyral, but now she cried bitterly as it was performed, in part because it was
just like torture, applied to fiendishly painful wounds and with no intent to
spare her in any way, in part because it was only meant to prevent excessive
blood losses from sparing her further torments.

When he released her from the rack, he hesitated a moment as a scream rose from
her chest when her limbs were deprived of support, but then his jaw set and he
tightened her iron collar, constricting the windpipe before cuffing her wrists
and ankles together and dragging her by the hair between two pillars. Choked
screams wracked her chest during the brief trip, whenever her shredded muscles
were pulled even slightly, but when he cuffed her ankles to chains dangling
from the ceiling her face contorted in a mask of screaming agony as the
shredded muscles of her hip joints had to bear her full weight. Her screams
rose in full once he released the collar, and she found little comfort when he
also cuffed her wrists to rings in the floor, because spreading the weight had
reduced the risk of her thighs being torn off but increased the agony since her
arms had been cruelly twisted in their sockets.

A bitter sob of despair shook her heaving chest when she saw him produce a
sharp, thin blade and grab her left foot. With cruel determination, he snug
the blade under her partially healed toenail and cut, causing her to stiffen
and then arch in a scream of pain while the blade slowly lifted the nail off
its bed and freed the needle still lodged there from the morning. He let her
buckle in bitter woe for a while, then repeated the procedure on her other
foot, causing her to writhe in abysmal torment again and fanning her terror
as his hands caressed her other toes and the needles therein.

As he was fond of, he slowly protracted the torment of her toenails and then
repeated it on her fingernails, cutting under each nail and using the tip to
remove the needle piercing the nail bed with excruciating slowness while she
shook her head, screaming in renewed agony as she could not prevent her limbs
from jerking in response to the pain inflicted upon them, causing blasts of
hellish agony to surge from the torn strands of muscle at her joints.

Lyral had been tied with her hands and feet in front of her, trapped in a
pillory, and gasped when she saw Grod fetch a iron crusher, trapping her
middle finger in its serrated jaw. She started screaming when he closed the
jaws, as the device was essentially a fiendish nutcracker which was breaking
her finger bone, and her scream rose in shrill agony when it did.

The Easterner poured the contents of the jug in Kayleen's mouth, holding it
still with one hand as she quivered and sobbed bitterly, then moved behind her
and tied cords to a pair of hooks left in her buttock, pulling on them with
one hand to distend the skin in between before dragging the blade just enough
to slice it open, and kept pulling so that the wound was slowly ripped open
while she screamed from the mounting agony until one hook tore free with a
spurt of blood, which he quickly quenched by smearing paste in the shallow
wound. His hand caressed her buttock, lingering in the places where a hook or
a needle pierced it, causing her to shudder each time in anticipation of
further agonies, finally grabbing a needle and twisting it while the blade
slowly cut it free, wrenching a howl of pure agony from her sore throat.

With exquisite patience, he chased each hook and needle still piercing her
buttocks and used it as the pinpoint of new agonies. He would pull on each hook
until skin and flesh became taut as a drum, which often was enough to cause
her to writhe in unbearable pain, and then he would slowly cut through, leaving
a shallow slit which he excruciatingly ripped wider until a hook was torn
free. With needles, he would pull on one end while the tip of the blade dug
under their length, ripping them out by slowly lacerating the seat they had
been pushed into. Sometimes, he would also stitch the worst wounds, once they
were past their prime of pain and had thus fulfilled their purpose.

In either case, the agony thus inflicted surged through her hung frame in
spasmodic jerks of sharp pain, wrenching from her harsh gasps of bitter anguish
which burst into howls of unspeakable woe once the waves of searing torment
from the shredded muscles of her joints followed in reaction. He extended his
ministrations to her muscular back, and then to the back of her thighs, slowly
protracting her agonies until her screams waned to pitiful wheezes.

Lyral's own screams punctuated her friend's as Grod crushed her toes and
fingers, one at a time, letting her agonize over each for how long as it took
before breaking the next. The pain was so unbearable that she was tempted to
heal herself on the spot, but something told her that what their tormentors
wanted was just that, so she refrained from it, trying to gather resolve by
looking up at the courage of her friend suffering the hellish agonies of the
blade ripping heinous wounds in her mauled body.

Kayleen sputtered while attempting to drink the syrup the Easterner was
pouring in her mouth, craving and hating at the same time the liquid which
furthered her torment by lending her new strength but also exacerbating her
sensitivity to pain. He promptly demonstrated the latter by grabbing a hook
lodged in her thigh, using it to pull the skin taut and then slice it open
with his blade, since her howl rose to unprecedented heights as the skin had
been burned and blistered by the grease and the pain when the hook ripped it
open was beyond description.

As slicing through blistered skin proved vastly more painful than through
sound skin, he could bid his time and achieve the same level of torment, or
press the matter and wrench strangled howls of unparalleled agony and violent
convulsions, violent enough to bend and break some of the needles still lodged
deep in some of her muscles, which engendered fits of spasmodic jerking as the
pain from the shredded muscles of her joints fed on itself instead of
subsiding, until exhaustion mercifully prevented her from further wracking her
joints into hells of unbounded again. He coldly alternated between the two,
sparing her breasts and crotch for later but always watching her joints for
signs of tearing, although as the torture progressed he started to increase
the level of her torments in the hope of breaking her.

As each cut was often short, even when subsequently ripped open by a hook, he
could afford to inflict them in numbers, crisscrossing her blistered front with
agonizing lacerations but also occasionally returning to unscorched skin, such
as between her fingers or toes. He stayed well clear of her joints, well aware
that the strands of muscle connecting her limbs to her torso had been already
weakened and were however causing more than enough pain as they stood.

Having removed most of the hooks still lodged in her flesh, he introduced a new
twist in her torment by chasing the needles broken by her jerks, digging under
them with the tip of the blade so that the needle would be dislodged and its
tip would scratch the wound underneath while being pulled out. Rivulets of
blood traced their way down her front as he thus removed the needles, and
eventually, even if he tried to minimize the loss of blood, her oozing flesh
was covered in a sheen of blood and sweat, interrupted only by the dozens of
crimson slits where her skin had been ripped open. Her suspended body twitched
and shook as she screamed bitterly, and long howls of desperate agony surged
from her chest whenever the blade cut her skin open again.

As over half of Lyral's toes and fingers had been broken, Grod had begun to
bid his time in between, allowing Lyral's gaze to wander in the direction of
her friend's hellish screams. Although her vision was clouded by pain, she
gasped at the dozens of wounds slowly bleeding in her friend's muscular back,
taking some time to realize that they had been treated or her friend would
have been dead by now. Even so, considering the convulsions caused by the
ripping of the scorched front, she feared that her friend would not survive
long enough for her to effect any healing.

As Kayleen was sliding into exhaustion the Easterner poured the contents of
the jug into her mouth, restoring some energy to her voice, thus returned to
howls which echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber when he started
slicing through the blistered flesh of her breasts. As they had been seared by
the sizzling grease many times over and scorched deeply and repeatedly, the
blade even lightly applied lifted shreds of oozing flesh and traced gashes of
blinding pain even before the pull of the hooks blasted harrowing surges of
unspeakable woe through her heaving chest, wracking her like a rag doll while
her frothing mouth stood agape in a protracted howl of unbridled agony.

Such was the condition of her nipples that once he switched to torment them,
even his cruel inventiveness was unable to protract the torture for long,
although he managed to wreak howls of unprecedented anguish from her shaking
form by slowly peeling scorched tissue off the blistered bud until the
remaining hooks and needles could be freed by the tip, alternating between
left and right nipple and tightening the vises on the bleeding tatters of one
delectable bud while tormenting the other.

She sputtered, shaken by harsh cries of despair, when he brought the jug to
her lips again, aware in the haze of her agonies of what he would do next, the
next step down the pits of hell her tormentors were so fond of and which she
feared so deeply that she had tried her best to hide from them. He brought the
blade near her cunt lips and sliced them, bursting blisters open with
harrowing slowness and tracing short, shallow gashes of searing pain on taut
skin which he would then tear wider open by pulling on the last hooks, the
tiny hooks inserted by the Southerner and which he had not removed yet.

Such was the torment that her convulsions rattled the chains in spite of the
devastated state of her muscles, and as this was the result of jerks in her
torso, it also resulted in raucous screams of agony as the torn strands of
muscles in her joints were also rattled unmercifully. With savage cruelty, he
used the tip of the blade to rip pieces of scorched skin off her mons and
inner lips, lingering with the blade on the pulsating flesh until the pain
caused her to jerk spasmodically, ripping the scorched tissue off.

He had to bring the jug to her lips often now, because each application of the
thin blade engendered unprecedented agonies in the cut flesh, causing her to
scream her lungs out during the whole excruciating mutilation and also during
the subsequent frenzy of convulsed howling as the agony from her ripped
muscles was rekindled into a vicious spiral which lasted until she exhausted
herself to the point of being unable to jerk herself into further pain.

Unlike in previous occasions, he had chosen restraints which did not
immobilize her, so he kept the blade clear of vital areas lest a jerk caused a
lethal wound, but for her crotch he used his other hand to be sure.  She
jerked in mad terror when he removed the vise from her clitoris, in
anticipation of the horror which followed.

Using the tip of the blade, he scraped a bit of scorched tissue from her
tormented femininity, pulling towards himself until she pulled back in a jerk
as the pain of the tip twisting in a blister rose to unbearable agony and
surged in a howl of abysmal torment, causing as a reaction she could not
prevent another frenzy of torment of her joints.

As the tip tore the tiniest bits of scorched tissue, the torture could be
protracted on and on, even longer than the torment of the crabs as the
repeated application of sizzling grease had left burns which oozed slowly
rather than bleeding profusely. Although the tiny wounds he left were shallow
enough to not endanger the furthering of her abysmal torments, however, her
clitoris, like her nipples, had been subjected to such abuse that he could not
protract its torture for long.

As he started using the tip to carve tiny bits of flesh from the tattered rim
of her vagina and the sensitive initial tract of the love channel, extending
her torment with agonies maybe less intense but more deeply frightening, the
grip of despair clutched her heart. Beyond courage, beyond dedication to the
friends of a lifetime, her world had been narrowed to the agony of the blade
and the blazing pain of the ripped flesh.

Another gut-wrenching howl shook her as he ripped another wound in her
clitoris, rising in a surge of despair and torment not unlike the many which
had left her mouth today but with nothing of her resolve left behind. He cut
her again before tearing the inside of her vagina, and her howls formed a word
which broke the silence she had opposed to her tormentors in the last
sessions, a word of begging and defeat, a plea ... "Enough!".

Lyral had seen defeat in her friend's eyes, and saw everything crumble before
her eyes. In a split second, almost unaware of herself, she let her pain and
despair and agony vent in a scream, a "NOOOOOOOOO" louder than any other
scream they had managed to wrench from her, ... loud enough to dwarf her
friend's exhausted whisper.

The Easterner was an experienced executioner, and was aware of the fact that
Kayleen was on the verge of breaking, but she had looked on the verge of
breaking before and had always found the resolve to hold on. He subscribed to
the notion that Lyral could be broken by tormenting her friend, so finding his
approach confirmed, he moved so as to be able to watch Lyral's reactions
while he protracted Kayleen's torments.

The tip of the Easterner's blade ripped bits of blistered flesh from Kayleen's
clitoris and vagina, and unredeemed howls of unspeakable anguish from her
torn mouth, but in the depths of her agony she had found in her friend's
gesture an anchor for holding on a bit more, so she hid between her screams
and buckled in spasmodic agonies which subsided quickly. Even forcing her to
sip from the jug was no longer enough to prevent her from sliding into shock
whenever the blade ripped some flesh from her bleeding femininity, so after a
few more attempts her torture was finally interrupted.


Chapter 21 - Zhorun's Unsought Victory

Lyral screamed again as she dragged herself on the floor. Her crushed fingers
and toes had been encased in vises fastened to heavy lead weights, so her
wriggling on the floor had been turned into an odyssey, purposefully prolonged
by dropping her at the opposite end of the unlit chamber from her friend.

Locating Kayleen was not a problem, however, because the once proud warrior
kept sobbing bitterly and often burst in short, harsh screams of exhausted
agony. Lyral still remembered how they had tightened her new restraints and
then hung her, her full weight on her torn thigh and shoulder joints and her
mauled body bent at the waist, in the grip of the wicked iron waistband.

She had been spared the twisting of her arms behind her back, probably because
they feared her arms would not hold the strain for long, but her front had been
lowered amidst wooden stumps wrapped in stinging nettles. To avoid their sting
on blistered and wounded flesh, even temporarily, she still managed to pull
herself up, although this wracked her joints into further torment.

Lyral had been badly injured herself, but the memory of her friend's lapse
into bottomless despair haunted her and spurred her to reserve all her healing
power for Kayleen. Resting after another pull, which had gained her two feet
at the price of unbearable agonies in her toes, she told herself that it did
not matter how long it took her to reach Kayleen as long as she managed to
heal her before dawn, because the healing would have more or less the same
effectiveness no matter how long her friend kept suffering.

A garbled scream from Kayleen resounded in her ears as if to answer, and she
started in disbelief at her own callousness. She moved on with a harsh gasp,
spurred by guilt, and finally managed to get close enough to touch the wooden
base of the platform over which her friend hung in torment.

"Kayleen, I'm here. Don't cry, it's almost over."

It took her a few attempts before she managed to sit by the platform and reach
her friend's right side with her lips, letting the healing flow into the
pain-wracked body. She felt the goose bumps, and remembered how her friend had
been drenched in freezing cold salt water again. Her left arm brushed against
the nettles, severing contact as she cried briefly, but she resumed almost
immediately because she feared for her friend's life. The tortures inflicted
on Kayleen had been horrendous, and she had bled a lot in spite of the summary
staunching of her wounds by her tormentors. Her power mended her worst wounds,
the oozing burns, the wicked gashes cut in her softest flesh, but after that
Lyral realized that the worst had not been addressed yet.

The muscle and ligaments in Kayleen's joints had been torn and shredded, and
gangrene would set in soon unless constantly fought. Her power could repair
them, and this would eventually lead the dislocated bones to be reduced back
into their sockets, but not under traction. Trembling, Lyral realized that the
only way was to wriggle herself into supporting her friend's weight.

She balked at the thought of the burning agony of the nettles, an agony she
would have to inflict on her front if she wanted to use her hands to make the
most of her remaining healing power. It took her a long time to muster the
resolve for that, but the horror and pain she had glimpsed during the healing
gnawed at her conscience until she managed to.

"Kayleen, I am going to heal your joints now. You should pull yourself up, so
that I can wriggle under you and support your weight while healing them,"

"No, Lyral, don't. The nettles ...," croaked Kayleen.

"If you die, the nettles will be a pleasant refresher before the torments I
would be subjected to," spat Lyral, surprised at her own bluntness.

Kayleen did not answer, but cried under her breath in the effort of pulling
herself up again, and Lyral tried to follow through on her words. The platform
was not an obstacle, but the pain from her fingers was, and almost immediately
the burning caress of the nettles flared on her front, wrenching a scream from
her mouth not unlike those uttered during the torture sessions. Her friend
leaned on her left shoulder with a strangled cry and her left breast was
pushed into the leaves, causing her to scream and buckle and her friend's
joints to teeter as a consequence, rekindling her agonies into a bitter howl.

In spite of the agony from the nettles, in spite of the awkwardness of her
position, as she had managed to nudge her torso under her trembling friend but
not her legs, because of the weights on her crushed toes, Lyral's hands,
cuffed behind her back, sought her friend's to deliver their healing power.

Kayleen writhed and sobbed as her wounds were mended, her joints molded back
into shape, and her shredded feminine charms returned to wholeness. She had
longed for the fullness of Lyral's healing since she had been denied it, but
although it was as effective as always, her mind was heavy with dread at the
thought of facing another day of torture, although not enough to admit it.

"Lyral, your healing is a blessing. I am back into shape, you can spare
yourself now," she said, exaggerating her actual condition and managing only
partially to make her voice sound strong and confident as it used to be.

Lyral intensely wished she could believe her friend, as the sting of the
nettles was as fierce as ever, but she stubbornly kept up the restoration of
her friend until she sensed it was actually done, before rolling away with a
rasping sigh. The vises would not allow her to heal her fingers and toes, but
she could spare herself the sting of the nettles and she did.

It took her some time to realize that Kayleen, unlike before, was not pursuing
further conversation. Unsure of what this entailed, Lyral mused, "Unless I'm
mistaken, Zhorun was not there today."

"I did not notice," answered Kayleen, her voice but a whisper.

"He wasn't, but they dropped no clue about the reason. I guess it was no
surprise for them, however. I think Zhorun ordered those new restraints you
are wearing just for the occasion, so that he could carry with him the thought
of you suffering in his absence," whispered Lyral.

"Why ?" whispered Kayleen, keeping the dread off her voice as mentioning the
restraints had brought to her attention how much they hurt already, making her
almost sob at the thought of spending unknown amounts of time in their grip.

"He was not like that, in life. He was a tyrant, but had no actual interest in
cruelty, only in power. Whatever cruelty was necessary, he trusted to Grod,"
continued Lyral, deeply worried at her friend's sulkiness.

Both girls started as the familiar noise of the door being opened echoed in
the unlit room, surprised at how dawn had crept up without them noticing. A
low moan of fear and despair rumbled in Kayleen's throat.

Grod mercilessly grabbed the chains fastened to the vises crushing Lyral's
toes, dragging her away while she screamed in pain, and the Easterner set
about some preparations which Kayleen followed with dread until the Southerner
reached between her legs with his toothed blade and slowly cut first her labia
and then the rim of her vagina, lingering with the blade whenever she cried.

"Just keeping you interested, Whore Queen, while our friend from the East gets
ready. It seems that this old man will have to do the work of three men,"

While her voice still echoed in pain from the last cut, he grabbed her hips
and penetrated her vagina from behind, tearing the bleeding cuts and savoring
the bitter screams of her despair. He protracted her violation, even pulling
out occasionally, allowing the Easterner to complete his preparations.

Lyral had been tied upside down on the ladder and was now screaming her lungs
out as Grod trickled scalding water on her writhing body whenever her friend's
violation was suspended. Since the ladder had been moved to allow her a clear
view of her friend's upcoming ordeal, however, she managed to realize that
their approach had not changed in the slightest.

A large amount of coals had been lit and strewn in a blazing bed between two
platforms, about three feet high and sloping into the coals on both sides. The
Easterner reached Kayleen, still hanging in chains and sobbing harshly from
her bloody rape, let her drink from the jug, then tightened the iron collar
before letting her down and dragging her near the platform on the left.

A cylindrical metal cage lay on the platform, an assembly of circular steel
bands connected by rods as tall as her, as she found out when he pulled her
inside by her arms and secured her wrist cuffs to the last band with four
short chains, connecting them together with a fifth. Meanwhile, the Southerner
did the same with her ankle cuffs, and together they suspended her in mid air
inside the cage by short chains linking her restraints to the bands.

Although the chains were taut, she was by no means immobilized, although this
did not hinder them once they started smearing grease all over her luscious
body. She sobbed harshly, crying at the prospect of enduring fire as her
tormentor's preparations suggested, wishing her friend's healing had given her
new resolve and feeling dread clutch her stomach at the sight of the coals.

Her eyes widened when they stopped smearing her with grease and pushed the
cage down the slope, causing her to spin at sickening speed maybe once of
twice before reaching the blazing heat of the coals which seared her whole
body, hands to feet, wrenching from her a dreadful scream, whose sound was
distorted as she rolled past, but whose anguish was unmistakable.

A second scream, which included a strangled "Nooo", surged from her mouth once
her momentum waned and the cage stopped climbing the slope on the other side
and started rolling back, exposing her to the searing breath of the coals
again while she still twitched from the agony of the first pass.

The deviousness of the torment became immediately clear to her as she rolled
back and forth a few times, twitching crazily in the effort to distance
herself from the heat and screaming as the grease turned hotter on each pass,
protracting the torment by bubbling on singed skin without shielding it much
from the brunt of the heat. Her breasts and especially her nipples, which were
closer to the coals in spite of her efforts to twist them as far away as
possible, already showed the deep crimson of severe burns. At least the grease
prevented her hair from catching on fire.

Lyral, whenever Grod suspended the hellish trickle of scalding water on her
breasts, could not help but watch in horror as her friend was slowly burned
alive over the coals. Her friend's face was but a blur as she rolled back and
forth, but her screams betrayed unbounded depths of agony, dread and fear. By
targeting repeatedly what her friend feared most, they were crushing her.

Kayleen's screams increased in pitch and anguish as her speed decreased,
causing her exposure to the coals to last slightly longer on each pass, and
the grease to bubble hotter all over her body, even her face, when she failed
to jerk it away from the fiery breath of the coals. It took her several fits
of howling agony before she realized that by buckling and twisting she could
preserve some semblance of motion and spread the heat.

Her incredible endurance became her own undoing, as her muscles kept the cage
rolling back and forth, but could not bring her to rest on either platform and
she always rolled back over the coals. Slowly, as her tormentors pushed the
cage repeatedly, her singed skin started peeling here and there, forming
blisters which burst under the heat. Waves of inhuman agony wracked her body,
to the point of bending the steel rods connecting the bands together, while
her voice cracked as howls from the depths of hell tore through her throat.

Her burn-streaked face was a mask of woe, which deformed when her body
convulsed from the unrelenting torment of the bubbling grease or buckled from
the flash of utter agony of a bursting blister, pulling the chains taut before
snapping back with a demented scream. Her blonde mane shook endlessly, soaked
in sweat enough to prevent it from catching fire, while her supple body arched
and twitched, pulling at her restraints and being pulled back as the crimson
of raw flesh showed where the skin had peeled under the still fierce heat.

As exhaustion crept over her, she was still herself enough to summon the
strength to roll on her back, preserving her exposed breasts from the heat
before stopping on the coals, but the Southerner kicked the cage enough to
bring them back over the coals as a wailing scream wracked her exhausted body.
The game was repeated over and over, however, kicking her into suffering the
brunt of the heat on her nipples, until her exhaustion made it moot.

They rolled her off the coals and poured the contents of the jug in her mouth,
causing her to renew her screams as her mind cleared. But when the Easterner
pushed a small copper hook in the scorched flesh of her thigh, her screams
rose much louder, and they rose even louder when he used pliers to twist and
ply the soft metal so that the hook could not be easily dislodged.

Lyral watched in disbelief as more hooks were driven one after the other
through the raw, scorched flesh, twisted and bent with pliers and then
fastened with thin copper chains to the steel bands of the cage in spite of
her friend's pitiful cries and desperate twitches.

It took the Easterner a harrowing long time to stop pushing hooks into
Kayleen's twitching body, a protracted descent into a screaming hell whose
purpose was revealed once he deemed the hooks sufficient to hold her weight
and unfastened some of the chains from her waist, knee and elbow restraints. A
new howl of unbridled despair surged from her mouth as the hook chains tensed
under her weight and raked the hooks through her scorched flesh, although with
only a fraction of the force that would tear them off.

But the full measure of her torment was revealed when, after smearing more
grease over her and letting her sip from the jug again, the cage was pushed
down the slope while her scream of unbridled terror turned into a howl of
unparalleled pain as the shifting pull of the hooks ripped bloody gashes
through her scorched flesh while she spun in the cage.

Lyral shook frantically in her restraints, unable to withstand the onslaught
of her friend's demented howls and the sight of the wildly buckling body
ripping the hooks through the scorched flesh in a paroxysm of pain which knew
neither bounds nor respite. As she sank into hopeless anguish, unable to stop
herself from crying bitterly, her tormentors lifted the ladder and brought it
closer, undoubtedly to let her witness the full measure of her friend's pain.

But she also realized that, in their zeal, they had brought her close enough
to allow her hands a chance to touch her friend's, if she got her timing
right, as her left hand was near the point where Kayleen's cage stopped before
reversing its merciless rolling. It took her over a dozen attempts, but she
finally managed to grab her friend's fingers enough to deliver some healing.

Kayleen had been drowning in rolling waves of harrowing agony and unbridled
terror as her skin had been scorched and peeled over the coals, until fear and
fire had engulfed her mind into a neverending hell of uninterrupted torment,
whose only lapse resulted first in further agonies from the hooks and now in
unspeakable torment as they ripped back and forth through her flesh. The touch
of her friend's fingers would have been a beacon in the night of utter agony
she waded through even in ordinary circumstances, but as the soothing effect
of her healing power suffused her suffering body and caused the wounds ripped
open by the hooks and bubbling with hot grease to recede somewhat, it became
the object of a craving so desperate that only the unspeakable agonies she was
being subjected to surpassed its intensity.

Reaching her friend's fingers became the focus of the last tatters of her
resolve. When she managed to, the pain of the hooks tearing her blistered
flesh and exposing the raw, crimson muscle to the bubbling grease receded for
too brief an instant, allowing her mind to glimpse at something other than
uninterrupted, unparalleled, all-encompassing agony ... but when she failed,
the price of her strenuous efforts made itself felt horrendously as inch long
gashes lacerated her scorched flesh and the hot copper burned mercilessly the
places which could not be singed by the bubbling grease.

As her momentum diminished, it became harder and harder for her to reach her
friend's fingers, and she frantically increased her efforts to do so in spite
of the harrowing torment thus slowly wrought on her body. The copper hooks, by
now red hot, added their relentless agony to her writhing, causing her to
buckle and twitch uncontrollably in the cage, arching and screaming over the
merciless coals as she slowly rolled over them a body where most of the skin
which had not been blistered had been ripped through by the hooks.

It took Lyral a long time to progress from the elation of finally being able
to lessen her friend's suffering first hand to the realization of having again
played in their tormentor's hands, protracting beyond belief a torment which
otherwise would have had to be suspended if the victim was to remain alive.
But she could not bring herself to deny her healing as her friend's fingers
stretched strenuously to reach hers, her face contorted in a scream as hook
pairs stretched the oozing crimson flesh of her breasts over the fiery heat,
ripping a further fraction of an inch through their bloody seats.

In spite of the occasional healing, Kayleen's conditions worsened slowly as
her burns became so extensive that even the profusely bleeding gashes torn by
the hooks became secondary, as confirmed by the healing no longer addressing
them. Some hooks had actually dislodged, ripping horrid wounds through muscle
and leaving tatters of flesh which had been scorched raw by the heat, but the
atrocious burns now caused her to enjoy little respite from Lyral's power.

When the Easterner finally brought the cage to rest on the platform, a wailing
sigh of pitiful agony escaped Kayleen's lips, as the thought of having endured
even this torture allowed a glimpse of hope into her mind beyond the
neverending nightmare of burning agonies. But this hope was shattered in a
scream of unbounded despair by another copper hook being driven into her left
nipple, the first of a dozen hooks fastened to spiked weights being affixed to
the soft spots of her femininity. as if they had been spared thus far.

"Heavy hooks, great pain," announced the Easterner, his usually impenetrable
countenance revealing a kind of exhaustion while he twisted the copper hook
inside the scorched tissue of her clitoris, "Talk now. He away now".

Lyral jumped in her restraints, not believing her own ears in finding this
least likely of all allies, but soon cried in dismay as the Easterner pushed
Kayleen's cage down the slope, her tormentor still human enough to feel pity
and yet not human enough to act accordingly.

The weighted hooks raked new gashes through Kayleen's severely burnt flesh,
ripping through her nipples, her labia and her clitoris with feral cruelty
and tearing through the rim of her vagina as she spun over the coals, dragging
the weights through the ashes, rekindling the heat and sending fiery sparks
into the oozing burns and bleeding wounds covering her spinning body.

Ordinarily the hooks would have ripped free of the flesh after a few turns,
but the fine chains had been loosely wound around her limbs so that most of
the pull was actually sideways, rather than straight away, allowing the hooks
to protract the torment of her flesh long enough to become red hot, while her
voice found new depths of howling woe to recount under the echoing vaults.

Lyral managed again to impart some healing to her friend, but her efforts only
caused the most severe burns to recede before her friend rolled back over the
coals to have them renewed. Lyral realized in shuddering horror that she was
covered in blood droplets sprayed from her spinning friend's wounds, which her
healing would address only when they would worsen enough.
Kayleen's terrified mind was running in circles in the vain attempt to stem
the waves of pain which rolled over her, twitching madly to keep her nipples
away from the heat since they were now pierced by four hooks tugging in
opposite directions, which distended them increasing their exposure, or
convulsing spasmodically as the weighted hook ripping through her clitoris
became red hot and its chain scraped her scorched thighs.

It took a long time before her blood loss became worse than her burns, while
Lyral spent her power in desperation as tears streaked a path clear of blood
over her face and Kayleen's howls slowly lost any semblance of sanity. The
wounds receded then, barely enough to salvage some tatters of her friend's
nipples and clitoris, and the fact that the torturers failed to react to the
event proved to Lyral that they had counted on her healing.

The Easterner caught Kayleen's cage with his hands, holding it while Lyral
rushed to heal her friend again, eying him as if to dare him stop her. The
finally solid contact allowed her to realize the seriousness of her friend's
condition, and she let her power restore the blood losses and dress the worst
wounds and burns amidst the wheezing screams wracking her friend's body.

"Enough," cried the Southerner, dragging the ladder Lyral was fastened to
away from her friend, a smile forming on his lips as this caused a low moan
of utter despair to surge from Kayleen's panting chest. He set about removing
the hooks from her twitching body, intent on limiting the damage inflicted and
yet occasionally lapsing when losing control, such as when he started slowly
ripping off the hooks piercing her clitoris while she buckled in mad agony.

He dragged his sobbing victim to a post, lifted her by chains fastened to the
iron rings constricting the base of her breasts and cuffed her elbows and
wrists together behind her while she cried bitterly, the corners of her mouth
torn by the spider gag and her face streaked by angry burns which had been
healed only partially because worse injures had taken precedence. He fetched
a steel rod, which she recognized once he curled her pubic hair around its
barbed middle, and lifted her legs off the floor, bending them to cuff her
ankles to rings at its end and leaving her dangling by her breasts in agony.

He fastened her wrists to a ring in the floor, pulling on her arms and causing
her hips to lift as her shoulders were dragged down, then pushed a needle in
the rim of her vagina, pausing while she screamed before continuing to thread
a wire around the opening of her love channel. Once done, he lifted her by the
strands of her pubic hair spared from the coals and drove his hard member into
her vagina, savoring her scream of harrowing torment as the cuts reopened.

He cruelly tugged on the ends of the thread, tightening it whenever his member
pulled back in order to further shred her tormented love channel, and kept up
her violation, each thrust causing the bar to rip her pubic hair and rake her
burnt skin while his member tore the cuts in her vagina wider and wider.

Once sated, he kept tugging on the thread while she cried in rage and pain,
waiting until her teary gaze was focused enough to see him consume more of the
powder which rekindled male erections. In spite of the mind numbing pain she
just faced, terror gripped her at the prospect of facing another string of
rapes at the hands of a perpetrator who delighted in turning the violation of
her femininity into tortures on par with the worst devised by the other two.

Lyral burst in bitter tears as she saw that, finding herself unable to further
help her friend and knowing what lay ahead. Her mind returned to her own
predicament when the Easterner brought a thin blade to her chest and cut near
the inside of her soft, white breast, the tip scraping onto her sternum in a
flash of pain unlike any she had ever been subjected to before.

Kayleen was lowered on the floor, resting on her shoulders with her arms still
painfully stretched by the ring, and the Southerner pulled her legs wide above
her head before cuffing her ankles to rings on the floor and pushing his
flaccid member down her throat, smiling as she choked in fear and humiliation.

He then fetched a wedge fashioned from a bundle of thorn branches, used it to
scoop embers from a brazier and then pushed it down her exposed ass hole,
while her restrained form buckled and arched in unbridled agony and her
demented howls burst around his manhood. Smiling, he pulled the wedge and then
pushed it down at a slightly different angle, savoring her muffled screams and
repeatedly scraping her innards, adding more embers now and then to feel her
tongue twitch around his member in howls of wretched anguish.

After prolonging this torment, he did the same with her vagina, tugging at the
thread still lodged in her singed flesh to increase the pain when he pulled
the wedge out and the thorns raked the shreds of flesh pulled tight by the
thread. Her muffled screams rose in pitch as the embers repeatedly burned her
womb while the thorns scraped the scorched walls of her love channel raw.

As he felt his manhood harden again under the combined effect of her screams
and of the drugs, he undid her restraints, cuffed her knees and ankles
together and pulled her up by chains at her breast rings and ankles, raising
her until his member nudged her sphincter. He then pierced her nipples and
clitoris with tiny hooks and pulling on them penetrated her ass hole, causing
her to arch in agony as he had encased his member in a barbed leather harness
which renewed the scratches dug by the thorns in her scorched innards.

Lyral alternated between watching in horror the protracted violation of her
friend and enduring brief flashes of absolute agony as the Easterner cut into
her flesh, reaching for the bone while she writhed in unspeakable torment on
the ladder. In spite of what her friend was going through, she could not help
but heal herself a bit after the bites of the blade, although she tried to
save her power for the night.

Sated after violating Kayleen's ass over and over, the Southerner pulled out
his blood-stained member, laughing at the tormented sigh escaping her mouth.
The thought of being killed by too many rapes crossed her mind, and somehow
she wished that her tormentor stopped penetrating her vagina, because anal and
even oral rape, which she initially loathed, were still less harrowing than
the agonies his sick inventiveness conjured when violating her womb. Her fears
found immediate proof when he lowered her onto an upturned hacked cone,
guiding it up her scraped love channel and distending the cuts around her
vagina, drowning her howl by driving his flaccid manhood into her throat.

He reached her ankles, cuffed behind her back, and started ripping off her toe
nails with pliers, pliers he subsequently used to crush the bleeding nail beds
while her mouth screamed her unbridled agony around his member and her body
shuddered in inhuman pain. Each convulsed jerk scratched her scorched love
channel, and her eyes filled with tears each time the splinters gouged a
blister open, causing her body to be wracked by pain which burst in a muffled
howl around her tormentor's bulging manhood.

After her toes, he started ripping off her fingernails, twisting her arms
further up behind her shoulders, almost near dislocation, and panting in
ecstatic frenzy at her gurgling howls of raw agony while he pulled and twisted
her bloody fingers. Her thighs twitched spasmodically while her blood stained
the wooden wedge mercilessly ripping her vagina.

Her howls resounded unrestrained when he pulled his hardening member out of
her mouth, lifted her by her arms and cuffed her ankles to the ends of a wedge
shaped steel bar bent behind the small of her back. He wound a rope around her
neck and repeatedly adjusted its length and the chains fastened to the hooks
on her nipples and clitoris before lifting her, causing her to choke as her
air supply was cut, and sliding under her, his manhood unbelievably erect.

He released her slowly with one hand, pulling her love channel around his
member by grabbing her pubic hair with the other, smiling as she writhed down
his manhood with a scream of unbridled woe as the studded harness scraped her
innards and the hooks in her nipples and clitoris were pulled taut. When he
pulled the rope up again, her vaginal muscles clutched his member deliciously
while she gasped for the air which escaped her lungs as she howled in demented
agony, twitching from the pain of the studs raking scorched flesh.

Lyral watched her friend impaled by her own weight on his upturned member
repeatedly, unable to understand how her friend seemed to partake in the act
before she realized that the Southerner alternated between pulling her down by
her labia and pubic hair and pulling her up by the rope around her neck,
cutting off her air and causing her clutching vagina to grip the instrument of
her debasement and inflict on her innards the scraping torment of the studs.

In spite of Kayleen's bleeding, the Southerner repeatedly pulled her up and
down his erect manhood, savoring her spasmodic convulsions as pain burst from
her raked womb and ripped through her clitoris while her chest heaved in
desperate need of air after screaming her lungs out and droplets of blood
squirted from her nipples whenever she tried to breathe.

Spent, he lowered her on the floor again and dragged her, in spite of her
pitiful cries, to a bed of nettles, laying her front on the stinging leaves
and twisting her arms above her head to grind her breasts on the bed of agony
while screams poured uninterruptedly from her mouth. He bent her legs above
her back, spread wide, and then inserted a large studded hook in her ass,
pulling it to bend her back and lewdly expose her bleeding sex.

Lost amidst pain, searching for the tatters of her former pride and courage,
she found herself wishing he would go away, just go away and let her alone,
but instead his flaccid member slid into her vagina again just as his weight
renewed the agony of the nettles on her raw scorched flesh, causing her to
twitch and scream, unable to prevent herself from providing the stimulation
her tormentor needed to rekindle his arousal.

Once his member hardened again, he removed the hook and penetrated her ass,
letting the studs on the harness he wore follow up on the torment delivered by
those on the hook while she kept screaming from the grinding of her breasts on
the bed of nettles. He protracted the torment by pulling out frequently and
pushing a wedge in her love channel, so that subsequent thrusts pushed on it
compounding her torment into a nightmare of frenzied pain.

He released her at last, but by forcing the contents of the jug down her
throat made clear that more was to come. He fastened her wrists to a ring in
the floor and her knees to a chain dangling from the ceiling, by which he
pulled them up, leaving her suspended in mid air and forced to twist her waist
to reduce the pull on her shoulders. He then fastened two barbed cords to the
iron band around her waist and pulled them through her crotch before winding
them around her right shoulder and back to her ankles, forcing her to arch and
twist in mid air in an effort to reduce the pain from the barbs.

Lyral watched without understanding, sobbing at the sight of her friend's body
which she had almost managed to restore, glistening under the light of the
torches from the many burns which had not been healed fully, bleeding in the
softest feminine flesh which her tormentor had targeted mercilessly, scraped
and constricted by the harsh restraints she wore and trembling from the never
ceasing violation he enjoyed to the point of taking drugs to perpetrate them.

Tears of loathing filled Kayleen's eyes when the Southerner pushed his manhood
down her throat again, only to be soon followed by gurgling screams of torment
as he started caning her exposed soles with a barbed steel rod, obviously bent
on forcing her to grind her slit onto the barbed cords and scream her torment
around his member, the game he used to speed up the effect of the drugs.

She twitched and gurgled incessantly as the cane rained ever increasing pain
on the only part of her body which had been somewhat spared and the barbed
cords raked through the part which had been most targeted, choking on his
member whenever a scream erupted from her lungs, ever on the verge of retching
as her tongue sought a way around the loathsome intruder in her mouth.
Such became the agony inflicted on her soles, cut to bleeding ribbons by so
many slashes that she did not even want to count them, that the thought of
sucking his manhood to get him to stop flashed through her mind in a wave of
despair, although she rejected it somewhat at the thought of the triumph in
his face such a debasement of her last shreds of dignity would cause.

When at last his arousal was rekindled, he pulled out, forced her thighs open
and pulling on her labia forced his manhood in her vagina again, forcing her
to scream under the debasement she had been repeatedly subjected to and hated
most, quickly turning it to torture as her scorched love channel was scraped
again while the barbed cords raked the stretched labia.

As her profuse bleeding lubricated his penetration, he pulled out and smeared
a white powder all over his member and inside her orifice, smiling when her
cries rose bitter and desperate once he resumed her penetration and the dried
walls were flayed raw and gouged mercilessly by the iron studs.

He lowered her on the floor, then fastened her ankle cuffs to the iron bands
on her thighs and then stuffed his manhood into her mouth again, using both
hands to overcome her feeble attempts to oppose him, and enjoying immensely
how her teary eyes changed from wide eyed disbelief at his beastly lust,
through disheartened despair, to blank pools of demented agony as he hammered
a studded hook in her vagina and used it to lift her loins from the floor
while the screams from her convulsing body gurgled around his manhood.

He wound the thread still running through the shredded rim of her vagina
around a stick and used it as a tourniquet to tighten it, causing her screams
to increase as more of her weight was borne by the hook. Once her body hung
before him, he fetched a pair of pliers and started pulling savagely her
nipples and clitoris, distending them and rubbing them with the tip of the rod
used to cane her soles, now red hot and wrenching long harsh screams from her
heaving chest which licked his manhood filling her mouth deliciously.

Lyral burst in a harrowing scream of her own as the Easterner cut through her
breast flesh again, scraping on the rib near the base of her right breast
while her eyes were glued to the red hot tip rubbing her friend's love bud in
short stabs of howling torment.

"Talk now. Spare your friend more. Worse when he returns", whispered the quiet
man to the East, so softly that Lyral wondered if it was her own mind giving
way under the harrowing pain. The Easterner's eyes were maybe less cold than
they usually were, and yet he had just cut through the soft flesh of a young
innocent without hesitation. Somehow, Lyral guessed that he just wanted to put
an end to a matter which had grown weary of.

Once the Southerner felt his member harden, he pulled out and circled Kayleen
in order to penetrate her ass hole, grabbing the remains of her pubic hair to
lift her up in a vicious frenzy which let her screams flow from her now free
mouth one after the other, ignoring the bleeding caused by the cuts on her
tongue and gums left by the studs. He viciously pushed over and over, with the
precise intent of distending her sphincter to tear the cuts open some more
while she howled and twitched in demented torment.

The pain of the harrowing violation was so all consuming that it took her a
while to realize he was no longer ramming her sphincter, but harsh sobs shook
her chest once she felt the taste of syrup in her mouth. Her cuffed wrists
were brought up and fastened behind her, between her ankles, and a ringed
wedge was forced down her vagina in place of the hook, the girth of each ring
tearing it open in repeated waves of agony until he tightened the thread
around the last before lifting her off the floor, screaming madly from the
unbearable pain as the scorched shreds of her vagina bore her full weight.

The pain lasted mere moments because he let her down and started clamping the
cuts with the iron clips used to staunch bleeding wounds, tightening them with
pliers and fastening them with thin chains of different length to the wedge.
He then pierced her nipples with three fine hooks each, whose chains he left
dangling as he moved near Lyral's ladder.

The blade scraped Lyral's ribs again, as if the Easterner had wanted to try
one more time, and then the Southerner reached her, watching her with a cruel
smile which made her tremble and sob almost like the prospect of tasting the
blade of the Easterner again. But the swarthy old man only pulled on the
ladder, bringing Lyral back to where Kayleen was crying in bitter pain.

The Southerner lifted Kayleen off the ground by the chain pulling on the wedge
while her voice rose in a howl of unparalleled torment as its rings slipped
under her weight, rasping her torn innards and the rim of her vagina while the
clips pulled on the bleeding cuts as the fine chains went taut. In spite of
her convulsing jerks, however, he managed to pull on the hooks in her nipples
until he fastened them to those in Lyral's own, putting a clamp on each to
prevent the hooks from ripping through the distended flesh.

He then circled the two to grab Kayleen's hair, yank her head back and force
his member into her screaming throat, letting her down somewhat before pulling
on the chain fastened to her wedge to lift her body into another fit of agony
as the wedge tore again through her sex and the hooks tugged her bleeding
nipples while her screams burst around his spent manhood.

It took Lyral many rounds of ripping through her nipples before she realized
that most of the blood on her body was her friend's, her gaze watching in
horror as rivulets flowed down the crotch which had been horribly shredded by
the repeated tearing of the wedge. The pitiful gurgled howls surging from her
friend's mouth started hammering at the depth of her soul, where she found the
resolve to stretch her neck and reach her friend's left breast, just as her
tormentor lowered the trembling body for a moment, and impart some healing.

Lyral knew that she was playing in their tormentor's hands, but the glimpses
of her friend's crotch spurting blood as she was pulled up and down and the
rim of her vagina was savagely ripped and distended burned in her mind almost
as much as the red hot tip of the rod which he repeatedly used to burn her
friend's poor clitoris, because, she realized, she had a better view of it.

As the incredible arousal caused by the drugs managed to harden his member
again, the Southerner removed the studded leather harness and replaced it with
a leather covering, rubbed in sand, then pulled out the wedge and bent
Kayleens's loins back in order to thrust his manhood into her vagina, drooling
with lust in anticipation of the harrowing howl of agony which followed.

The sand flayed mercilessly the wounded, dry walls of her vagina, rubbing the
scorched flesh raw and seeping into the many blisters and gouges to wreak
unspeakable woe inside her womb while waves of harrowing agony wracked her
chest and burst from her torn mouth in howls of unparalleled torment.

Lyral had never witnessed so closely the rape of her friend, and managed to
deliver some healing once or twice while the Southerner protracted the
violation of her friend's womb, but her mind shrunk before the harrowing
agonies the fleeting contacts revealed. Despair, humiliation and rage coursed
through her friend's pain wracked body, washed over by waves of white hot pain
and then bubbling back to prominence as the torment waned and waxed without
interruption or mercy, not even that normally provided by exhaustion as the
drugs and the excitement of triumph lent Kayleen's violator the endurance to
protract her agony over and over beyond all boundaries of cruelty.

Hoarse from the uninterrupted screaming, Kayleen choked between bitter sobs as
the Southerner released her, letting her collapse in a heap onto her trembling
friend, her mind a single white hot nugget of pain trembling in awareness that
it was not over yet, that more was to come.

As the Southerner composed his disheveled robes, Lyral doubled her efforts to
heal her friend, fighting tears caused partly by the harsh cries of her friend
and partly by the vivid impression of her violation carried over through the
healing process. She felt ... dirty, crushed, annihilated, and well aware that
it was all a pale reflection of what her friend felt like.

Grod lowered Kayleen on the floor and removed most of the implements of agony
favored by the Southerner, but nary one of her restraints, tightening instead
her iron collar before dragging her near a device she recognized with a
strangled cry, the cross rack. He fastened her ankle cuffs and the iron bands
at the knee and hip to the lower arms of the rack, paying close attention to
the positioning of her hip joints, then cuffed her wrists and elbows together
behind her back and the wrists to a chain from the ceiling by which he pulled
her wrists up behind her back until she cried from the pain in her twisted
shoulder joints. He then cranked her thighs, wider and wider, in a split which
soon caused her harsh cries of pain.

After leaving her stretched near dislocation for a while, he procured a small
jug of milky liquid and used a small ladle to scoop some and dribble it on her
bent back. After a few seconds of dread, her face contorted in a scream of
inhuman pain as the quicklime burned her skin, causing her to convulse in
desperate jerks as the caustic trickled down her back.

She kept screaming uninterruptedly as the liquid peeled the singed skin,
flowing around the blisters left by the protracted exposure to the heat of the
coals without lingering too long. Her tormentor knew that, if allowed to form
a pool, the caustic could eat through flesh causing lethal wounds, and had
made sure that it would cause only surface burns, albeit horrid to behold and
even worse to suffer as his victim's desperate howls of torment testified.

He bid his time, adding more quicklime very sparingly whenever her screams
subsided, and inspecting her back where swaths of scorched skin had peeled,
revealing the pulsating raw flesh in the wounds while she convulsed in mad
agony, pulling desperately at her shoulder and hip joints and wracking them
into and out of dislocation in long fits of howling torment.

When her jerks subsided between wheezing screams after the protracted torture,
he brought the jug to her lips in spite of her feeble attempts to resist, a
gesture which they both knew meant worse was to come. She shuddered when he
grabbed her left breast between the jaws of a pair of pliers, distending it
until she cried in pain before dribbling the milky liquid on the tip of the
distended cone, causing her whole body to stiffen and then jerk in a spasmodic
howl of utter agony as the caustic flayed her scorched flesh.

One of her hip joints dislocated with a low thud as the strength of her jerks
grew beyond bounds alongside the pain in her breast, and the resulting anguish
compounded the latter on her distorted face, set in a raucous scream which
apparently lasted without end as new droplets of caustic dropped over her
peeled nipple, raising wisps of acrid smoke and howls of unspeakable pain.

When he switched to the other breast, her convulsions surged to new peaks of
mad agony and culminated in dislocation of her left shoulder, causing her to
shift in her restraints as her body buckled spasmodically in the attempt to
twist her breast away from the jaws which held it under the trickle of milky
liquid which simmered over the distended cone of feminine flesh.

Only after repeatedly tormenting her breasts, to the point of eating most of
the scorched skin away, did he bring the jug to her lips again, pouring the
contents down her throat while she sputtered and coughed, wracked by agonies
which flared whenever her attempts to take a deep breath pulled on the
seething flesh of her once proud mounds.

Obviously bent on dislocating her other limbs, her tormentor cranked the rack
some more and then dribbled quicklime along her distended legs, taking care to
let the droplets flow along the curve while she stiffened in a scream of utter
anguish before rattling the rack with spasmodic convulsions of hopeless pain.
Skin and flesh bubbled and simmered while her voice waxed and waned in howls
of desperate torment, her mind lost in mazes of unceasing woe and clinging to
the last strands of sanity as her only hope surged in tatters from her mouth
among screams of unspeakable agony.

"Lyral ... please! Lyral ...

In spite of his efforts in prolonging her agony, however, he failed to
dislocate her other limbs. He tried dribbling quicklime on her arms, on her
bleeding nail beds, he tried with letting if flow from the small of her back
down firm buttocks until they literally broiled and smoked while her
convulsions shook the rack's frame, but her exhausted screams started waning,
and he still had not managed to achieve his intent, so he poured some
quicklime in a bowl which he suspended just under her crotch.

He then climbed on the rack and used his feet to push onto her loins, until
her feminine flesh contacted the caustic and she jerked in agony, with such
strength that he almost fell down. But he held on, pushing her onto the liquid
which foamed around her femininity and splashed the inside of her thighs while
she howled in absolute agony and arched spasmodically, twisting her thighs and
legs and wracking them repeatedly until she dislocated her other hip with a
low popping sound, the ordinarily devastating pain barely registering before
the agonies consuming her tender femininity in waves of horrid torment.

The removal of the bowl brought her some respite, although she kept screaming
in wheezing fits of hopeless anguish interspersed by sputtering as he brought
the jug to her lips again, but the respite ended when he brought the bowl near
her left breast. The corners of her mouth almost tore as the scream which rose
from her chest surged through, as if her mouth could not stretch wide enough,
and her muscles stiffened in agony before snapping in spasmodic jerks as she
tried desperately to pull her broiling flesh from the caustic liquid.

He kept chasing her heaving chest and splashing her breast with the quicklime,
sometimes finding some on his heavy leather gloves, keeping her nipple bathed
in the caustic and simmering relentlessly in a bloody foam until her jerks
managed to pull her shoulder out of its seat with a sickly thud, leaving her
hanging from her dislocated arms and wracked by waves of bitter pain as her
flesh broiled and simmered in unspeakable agonies which burst from her mouth in
screeching howls of pain and despair, interspersed by almost inaudible calls

"Lyral ... help ... me!"

She sobbed bitterly even once he started unfastening her restraints, because
the simple touch of his hands was agony on her consumed flesh, and her hopes
were shattered once he made her drink from the jug and fastened her ankle
cuffs to the iron bands at her hips. A scream of raw despair surged from her
as he fastened her wrists between her ankles, behind her back, forcing her to
arch painfully, and then tightened iron clips on her burned labia and around
the scorched rim of her vagina which he then used to pull her off the ground.

Lost in a maze of harrowing pain, her head flailing as unrelenting agonies
radiated from her feminine flesh, the screams surging from her mouth stopped
once she saw between tears a pale face under hers, a face she took a while to
recognize as her friend's.

"Lyral, oh thanks! Help me, please, I'm burning ..."

It took a while for Kayleen to register the look of horror on Lyral's face as
it jerked away under hers, for a reason which became immediately apparent as
the burning bite of quicklime landed on the soft undersides of her breasts,
flowing around her mounds in simmering rivulets and broiling over her nipples,
trickling droplets of foaming caustic mixed with blood where her friend's face
had been, mere moments before a wave of unspeakable agony erased everything
from her mind but the all encompassing agony of her peeling flesh.

As she jerked in howling pain, rattling mercilessly her dislocated joints, her
tormentor kept dribbling droplets of quicklime on her raw flesh, exercising
some restraint only in what flowed down to her face which he did not want to
burn too much. Bleeding tears started ripping her labia and the rim of her
love channel as her weight and her spasmodic jerks wracked them repeatedly.

It took Lyral a long time to muster the courage to face the droplets of
caustic, but the harrowing screams of her friend's agonies gnawed at her until
she put caution aside and arched, stretching herself until her lips reached
her friend's forehead to deliver a sorely needed round of healing.

Satisfied that the torment could be protracted, Grod kept dribbling caustic
all over Kayleen's jerking form, pausing to wait for the full effect when he
let it flow down her long and once shapely legs, watching it broil the flesh
and form bloody rivulets of foam which dripped onto her chest whenever her
jerks brought her head almost at waist height. It was at those times that he
let some trickle around her sphincter, so that she arched back in reaction and
swung almost full circle, distending herself in mad agony and allowing her
friend a chance to heal her a bit.

As her torment was mercilessly prolonged, variants of pain she had never
thought of wracked her hanging body into new depths of this hell she had been
thrown into. White hot agonies surged from her chest and limbs whenever her
flesh was distended by her jerks, as the foaming residues of caustic found new
unmarred flesh to consume. Searing agony washed over her face when it was
crossed by rivulets of the milky liquid. The sensitive skin under her soles
simmered and curled while her legs twitched in agony, wracking her hip joints
in waves of harrowing torment. Her nipples burned in relentless pain, turned
into simmering stubs of broiled flesh which oozed bloody foam under the
application of more caustic whenever Lyral's healing partly restored them.

A brief pause was allowed when she was offered the jug again, from which she
drank in long gulps, almost out of her mind in pain and calling repeatedly her
friend between coughs. But her voice exploded in a howl which had seen few
equals when he dribbled some quicklime on her crotch, catching her clitoris
with a well aimed drop just after she stiffened in unspeakable agony and an
instant before she burst in a fit of convulsed jerks which made it extremely
difficult for Lyral to reach her flailing head.

A fire worse than the hot irons burned her feminine flesh, simmering all over
the distended skin and broiling it slowly and mercilessly while her own weight
and the jerks induced by the all consuming pain ripped bleeding gashes in the
flapping tatters of her labia and the shredded entrance of her womb.

Once, maybe twice, the soothing touch of Lyral's healing clamped the blazing
fires of her agony, but soon the caustic was brought onto her nipples again,
and as she descended the pits of hell in howling despair she realized that her
tormentor was observing what parts of her martyred flesh showed signs of
healing to target them with further drops of the hellish liquid, watching them
smolder and broil while she jerked her limbs and orifices into further agonies.

Just as her convulsed jerks waned into spasmodic twitches, just as she started
thinking that she had defied them once more, the screech of a hateful voice
from beyond the grave resonated in the room.

"Continue her interrogation, Grod. Until she realizes how foolish it is to
oppose me, she'll have to bear the consequences of her folly, just as your
ilk," he whispered, turning to Lyral, "faced those of theirs this morning,
and are now being brought here for questioning,"

The defining limit of Kayleen's agony became thus Lyral's ability to heal the
repeated abuse being wrought on her tender feminine flesh, but her tormentor
started interspersing it with occasional dribbling over her twitching muscles,
meant to wrack her dislocated joints into frenzies of trembling agony while
her nipples and clitoris returned to some semblance of their former selves
after being almost broiled away by the merciless application of quicklime
while she kept asking for her friend's help between wheezing screams.

"Lyral ... heaven's sake ..."

Her face burned by droplets of quicklime and streaked with tears, Lyral fought
the torments wracking her friend with a desperate strength fueled by the
awareness of being both an instrument of her agonies and the only remaining
anchor of her assaulted resolve. Foregoing any care of herself, she found
reserves of healing power she had not known existed, but slowly consumed them
one by one until only despair remained, until her kiss to her friend delivered
her desperate sorrow but no respite.

Always alert, Grod suspended the dribbling of quicklime on his screaming
victim shortly thereafter. For a moment, it looked like the silent corpse
was considering ordering him otherwise, but the words which followed were a
surprise for everybody.

"Grod and Chang, take the Priestess to the prison pits, and make an example of
her before interrogating her sisters - I want answers from them by tomorrow
morning.  Meanwhile, I'll question her friend myself. Make sure she is
unmarred and ready to resume tomorrow morning, however," whispered Zhorun.

Kayleen's screech of bitter despair echoed under the vaults of the chamber and
flared through Lyral's soul, spurring her to distend in a last desperate kiss
so bent on delivering any measure of healing that both girls snapped like rag
dolls while Kayleen's horrid burns visibly receded and Lyral passed out after
expending her last ounces of energy. When the two tormentors overcame their
surprise, she did not react as they dragged her away.

When the Southerner lowered her just enough to let her shoulders rest on the
floor, Kayleen tried to stop herself from crying bitterly as the friend who
had just spent her remaining energies to restore some of her health was being
dragged away, leaving her in the hands of the most sadistic of her tormentors
and of the rotting corpse of the tyrant she had deposed, bent on exacting the
most horrible revenge on her, or worse, if Lyral's hunches were correct.

There would be no respite tonight, no soothing caress or embrace in spite of
cruel restraints they always managed to circumvent. A scream of harrowing pain
surged from her mouth when the Southerner penetrated her ass with his hard
member sheathed in the same studded leather harness meant to scrape her
innards raw which he had been using in the morning, while Zhorun watched
intently every contortion of her visage, the twitching of her shoulders in her
swollen joints and the bleeding gashes ripped the hooks in her labia as she
jerked under her tormentor's frenzied thrusts.

"Harder! Make her scream!" screeched the corpse, causing the Southerner to
redouble his efforts with a smile, as if her pitiful, wheezing screams could
not be heard over and again under the vaults of the torture chamber.

But Zhorun craved for more, after being unable to relish in her agonies for
hours, and his voice rose menacingly

"If you cannot punish her adequately, I'll do it myself! Get out of my way!"

The Southerner, still panting and thrusting, jumped off mere moments before
blue streaks of lightning surged from Zhorun's gnarled hands, crackling over
Kayleen's restrained body. Stuttering screams of unabashed torment surged from
her mouth as her muscles contracted spasmodically and pain blasted from her
dislocated joints, while droplets of blood sprayed from the bleeding gashes in
her crotch as her jerks rattled the chains she hung from.

After carrying Lyral's chained body for a some time, Grod and Chang dropped
her on the floor of a poorly lit hall. As she had not really passed out, but
was just utterly exhausted by her last ditch effort to heal her friend, Lyral
had been forced to listen to the screams resounding in the torture chamber
until they had waned in the maze of corridors. The sounds of agony which ruled
this underground kingdom of pain soon reached her ears again, however, as
three sides of this hall consisted of cells occupied by disheveled and chained
Priestesses, their white robes in tatters, moaning and weeping.

The hall was small and not equipped for interrogation, a fact which caused
Grod to shake his head and leave. Two guards stood there, and their eyes ogled
Lyral's full breasts and creamy thighs with unmistakable lust. She lay there,
too exhausted to do anything but breathe, unable to answer the whispers from
those of her sisters who had not yet succumbed to despair. When Grod returned,
silence descended on the hall at the sight of the implements he carried, but
she could not even open her eyes yet.

A sudden agony burst in her shoulders once Grod started pulling her up by her
arms, twisting them in their sockets until she hung from a chain wound around
a pulley fastened to a beam in the ceiling, and almost immediately her scream
echoed in the small hall and on the scared visage of the onlooking prisoners.

With a desperate scream, Kayleen twitched spasmodically as the Southerner
poured salt water on her hanging form. Coils of barbed cord had been wound
around her limbs and chest, tightly enough to let them scrape the scorched and
broiled skin if she moved. And the subsequent onslaught of crackling blue
lightning from Zhorun's fingers caused her to arch and buckle, cutting long
bleeding gashes in the scorched skin and wrenching long howls of bitter
torment from her sore throat as her jerks wracked her dislocated joints.

The salt water mixed with her tears while he lowered her shoulders on the
floor to reduce the tear on her labia, because he kept close watch on the
hooks ripping through them and wanted to protract the torment of her
femininity. Some needles had been driven through the soft flesh around her
sphincter and the entrance of her love channel, to keep the shreds of her
flesh from being ripped away too quickly but also to carry the lightning where
it could cause the worst pain, especially once doused in salt water.

When Zhorun's lightning paused, the Southerner pulled her up again, watching
her face contort in agony as blood flowed from the gashes in her tender flesh
and salt seeped in the open wounds. He wished he had Grod's experience with
quicklime, but in its wake he would make do with a rasp, and after a glance at
the silent corpse, scraped it against her clitoris to see her dance in
unbridled agony while more lightning magic crackled around her nipples.

Lyral's own tears streaked her face as she hung from her twisted arms, moaning
and crying while Grod pulled her ankles up behind her to expose the soles. His
intent became obvious when he picked up a mean, braided whip and after testing
it a few times brought it down on her soles, causing her to arch in raw agony
as a bitter scream surged from her mouth. A wave of horror swept the faces
glued behind the bars, wide eyed before the agony of a sister many of them had
recognized and trembling at the prospect of facing the same soon.

Suddenly, after half a dozen strikes, a blinding flash of orange light burst
from one of the cells, engulfing the two armored guards in a shroud of fire
which also set some furniture ablaze. Some unknown force crushed the bars of a
cell outwards before a young Priestess, with lush red hair and flaring green
eyes. She rushed towards Lyral's hanging form, hurling arrows of orange fire
towards the two torturers. Chang narrowly escaped her fury by hiding behind a
pillar, but Grod was flung backwards by the impact of the orange flames.

With superhuman speed, the red haired Priestess reached Lyral's hanging form
and embraced her, softly whispering the words of a spell, a transportation
spell which caused both to fade away just as Lyral recognized her.

"Shandra", she whispered with a smile.


Chapter 22 - The Taste of Defeat

The lightning died on Zhorun's gnarled fingers as his mind registered the
warning from one of the many spells he had strewn in his lair, a spell meant
to tell him when somebody used magic on his premises. This was an old
precaution, from the times he still lived and feared for his life, and he now
found inconceivable that someone could think of standing up to him.

"Who dares ?" screeched the former wizard, his voice high pitched with rage.

In a split second, the Southerner found himself alone in the room, blinking at
the spot where Zhorun had been. Then a cruel smile curved his lips as his gaze
shifted towards Kayleen's hanging form,

"He left, but we're still here. And I don't feel like sleeping,"

He lowered her shoulders on the floor and cruelly penetrated her sphincter,
laughing at her scream of bitter despair. He had resented Zhorun's impatience,
but thought better of standing up against him. Besides, he knew that the
insult was unwarranted: the bitch really hated being taken against her will,
and the more painful and bloody the violation, the harder it was on her.

When Zhorun returned, the Southerner's drug-enhanced lust had been spent and
rekindled twice and he was now about violating the sobbing Kayleen again, but
the former wizard was in no mood to find this amusing.

"Idiot! Pig! I had told you to make her suffer, and you indulge your filthy
cravings instead ?"

Surprised, the Southerner darted away without even composing himself, fearing
the wizard's wrath, but no magic followed the enraged words.

"Grod, it's always you who I can count upon. Without the Priestess, we must
have this girl tell us where the Sorceress hides. Resume her interrogation on
the double, with quicklime if you still have some."

Grod, whose apron had saved him from the worst effects of the flame arrow, was
nevertheless badly burned, and in no shape to carry out his Master's orders.

"If I may speak, Master ?" he croaked hesitatingly, then continued.

"We should allow her to recover, Master. Her friend's healing no longer
offsets the damage we inflict. Besides, I am not at my best, at present."

"They think so, do they ? Her friend thinks that we'll have to be soft. But
they underestimated me. You, my loyal servant, are granted the use of any
healing potion found in the Priestesses' camp, and bring a spare one here.
We'll give it to her so that Chang can make sure she spends the rest of the
night in pain. And you had better get some sleep, Hadrad, because tomorrow
morning you are expected to put your rutting frenzies to some use. Myself,
I'll make sure the three of you can make her regret her defiance, unhindered."

After Grod and the Southerner departed Zhorun stood there, motionless, while
the Easterner lowered Kayleen on the floor and slowly removed the implements
of her torment, one by one, summarily treating the worst wounds. It took him a
long time, and he shook his head often, but finally Grod arrived and the two
poured the contents of a flask down Kayleen's throat.

Kayleen trembled and moaned as the liquid, created by the Priestesses for
their own use and occasionally sold for money, coursed through her body with
an effect similar to her friend's power, although of lesser impact. A hoarse
sigh escaped her lips as her worst wounds, those bleeding deep inside her
innards, were mended at least in part.

The Easterner cuffed her ankles together and tightened the iron bands at her
knees and thighs. Wrists and elbows were already tight enough, as the chafed
and bleeding skin testified, and the same could be said for the serrated iron
band at her waist and the iron rings at the base of her breasts. A low cry
escaped her lips when he reached for the barbed cord.

When they left, taking the light of the torches with them, Kayleen was already
sobbing softly from the pain of her restraints and the prospect of spending
the rest of the night in unrelenting torment. She had to stand with her
wounded feet wrapped in of barbed cord, her legs slightly bent at the knee so
that she could not find respite for her leg muscles and had to shift her
weight from one dislocated hip joint to the other as the barbs bit her soles.

She had to bend with her arms pulled up behind her back to prevent the barbed
cord around her breasts from raking the flesh broiled by the quicklime, but
this pulled two more strands of barbed cord through her bleeding crotch and
put most of her weight on her dislocated shoulder joints. The salt from the
repeated splashes with freezing cold salt water burned in her wounds, and she
shivered helplessly from the chilling water.

She hung there, and as time passed her agonies increased, causing her to sob
bitterly and scream occasionally when her shifting weight caused flashes of
agony in a hip joint or a barb raked the shredded flesh of her crotch and
forced her to swing from her swollen shoulder joints. The iron band at her
waist cut her skin whenever she tried to breathe, and the blood from her
wounded soles pooled at her feet. And she was alone.

She called Lyral countless times, hoping beyond all reason that she could
somehow appear out of nowhere. Her poor friend was no more, probably because
one of the two torturers went too far. Zhorun had been away just enough to win
a confrontation with the Priestesses, and if he had defeated them Shandra was
the only remaining hope that he could be stopped. She trembled at the thought
of how important her silence had become, because very little remained of the
proud Warrior Queen in the sobbing girl hanging in the dark.

In spite of her exhaustion, however badly her body craved rest, she only
managed to teeter on the brink of sleep, because as soon as her muscles
relaxed pain bit her somewhere, either the joints or the crotch mostly, and
she kept sobbing and screaming, unaware of Zhorun who stood in the darkness
and savored every bit of her anguish in lieu of pleasures now beyond him.

He had considered looking in his collection of magical treatises for some
means by which the damage inflicted during her torture could be offset, but
just now he wanted to see her suffer first and foremost. The battle had
provided a number of healing potions which were of no use to him, baneful
even, in his present condition. He would use them first.

When footsteps announced the return of the three torturers, a sigh of despair
coursed through Kayleen's body, softly rattling her chains. She was already in
bitter pain, most of her body covered in burns left by the raging heat of the
coals or broiled by quicklime, her dislocated joints swollen and ready to send
blazes of searing agony when stressed, her femininity bloodily ripped and
repeatedly torn. How could she face another day of torture, more harrowing
violations at the hands of the swarthy old pig, the exquisite cruelties of the
Easterner, or Grod's merciless grinding of muscle and bone, she did not know.

Then the torches lit the chamber, and she screamed in terror when the
Southerner neared, mostly naked, his slim build a silhouette of horror against
torchlight. He wore a harness of leather straps, with small iron studs, which
would rake her body mercilessly while he indulged in raping her. The straps
around his hands looked different, and as his gaze met hers as he rubbed the
left one against wood, letting the rasping noise confirm her fears.

"I see you appreciate what's next," whispered the Southerner.

Her scream had been caused by the sight of his member, which stood swollen and
prodigiously erect in a studded leather harness. The old man looked on the
verge of a stroke, and was drooling and cackling insanely while licking his
lips in anticipation. When he unfastened her restraints, she tried to escape
his grip, but her dislocated joints prevented her from achieving anything
beyond wracking herself into screaming agony.

He fastened her wrists behind her back, then drove hooks through her nipples,
reopening the partially healed wounds from the day before amidst her screams,
then lifted her off the floor by her ankles and wound the chains from the
hooks through her crotch, forcing her to bend and raise her chest until he
fastened them to her wrists. He left her there, straining to spare her nipples
from being ripped off, then grabbed her hips and penetrated her sphincter.

She screamed in raw pain as the rasping of her bowels compounded the the agony
in her joints, the ripping of her nipples, and the flaying of her scorched
thighs by the sharkskin stripes under his palms. Her voice rose in screeches
and rumbled in moans as he thrust, using his hands to find the partially
healed cuts from yesterday and guide his member to tear them open again.

It took an inordinate amount of time to slake his lust, but as he pulled out
of her bleeding orifice he immediately proved his cruelty was undiminished. He
lowered her briefly on the floor, only to lift her again shortly thereafter by
chains fastened to the bands around her elbows and knees. While she cried from
the pain in her joints, he fetched a heavy, braided whip and lashed the soles
of her feet, watching her bend and distend as screams surged from her mouth.

The heavy whip traced a bleeding strip on the soft underside of her thighs,
causing her to jerk and howl in unbridled pain. The next lash flared on her
arms, and when he stroke her buttocks blood sprayed all around as the whip had
cut scorched and broiled skin, causing her to arch and tremble in screaming
pain. When the whip flayed the tender flesh between her thighs, her voice
tinged with bitter despair, which he fanned by repeatedly lashing her labia.

She screamed and writhed as the whipping rekindled his drug-induced arousal,
whose resurgence she watched in loathing as he changed her restraints,
cuffing each wrist to the corresponding ankle and suspending her lewdly spread
between two pillars, her crotch ready to be shafted by his bulging member.

A scream erupted from her mouth when he pulled her up by the few curls of her
pubic hair left and penetrated her vagina with unbridled lust, tearing the
cuts around its rim open again while wracking her joints into depths of white
hot pain. The studs raked her insides, and when she started bleeding he paused
his assault to smear her insides with the white powder he used to dry them for
the pleasure of chafing them raw while she arched in mad agony.

As the violation continued, she realized he must have had taken extra doses of
whatever he had used before because his neck veins bulged, his eyes were about
twice their normal size and he seemed out of his mind, lost in a deranged
frenzy which scraped her love channel raw over and over before abating. As he
let her sip from the jug, the face of her friend flashed in her mind, only to
be obliterated by a wave of pain when he poured salt water over her.

While Zhorun watched intently, he changed her restraints, cuffing her elbows
and wrists together behind her to a chain from the ceiling, and bending her
left leg back until he could fasten the chains from her nipple hooks to its
ankle cuff. He then pulled her up slightly, forcing her to stand on the ball
of her right foot in a position which wracked unrelenting pain through her
dislocated joints and tugged on her bleeding nipples unmercifully.

When she saw him light a candle, she twisted in her restraints, crying as the
waist band bit her flesh again, dreading the searing touch which inevitably
rubbed her smarting skin as he let the flame lick the undersides of her breast
or the clitoris between the spread labia while she screamed, buckled and
twisted herself into frenzies of wracking pain from her joints or bloodily
ripped the hooks through her nipple flesh another fraction of an inch.

He used his hands to scrape her broiled skin with the sharkskin, and then
rake it with the studs or sear it with the candle, always moving from tender
spot to tender spot, watching her howl in demented pain as her nipple was
slowly peeled by the sharkskin or her clitoris twitched above the flame.

In spite of the uninterrupted torment, she saw in desperation that his member
was hardening again. As a confirmation, he put away the candle and changed her
restraints, pulling her arms up behind her and cuffing her ankles wide open to
chains from the ceiling, adjusted so that her belly was just an inch above the
floor. Laughing, he slid stinging tree branches under her belly and breasts,
and hammered a wedge soaked in hot pepper oil in her ass hole while her hoarse
screams echoed pitifully under the vaults of the chamber.

Only after savoring her convulsions for a while did he grab her pubic hair and
lift her vagina up to violate it again, drooling as his swollen cock raked the
studs on the burns left by the candle. Her voice rose in harsh screams as he
twisted her hips left and right around his rigid member, causing her front to
rub on the stinging leaves and renewing the agony in her joints.

As pain coursed through her violated body, her mind reeled behind clenched
eyes under the assault. Whenever a thrust raked the studs inside her bleeding
love channel or against the scorched labia, Lyral's screaming face flashed in
her mind and she was no longer sure whose screams echoed in the room, at least
in the instant before her suspended body swung and her nipples burned from the
caress of the stinging tree leaves. As she convulsed in mad agony, new blazes
of pain wracked her dislocated joints and her eyes sought her friend, wishing
that the young warm body could again support her weight and heal them.

So lost was her mind that she almost failed to notice that her tormentor had
momentarily expended his lust, although she kept screaming from the brush of
the leaves and the pitiful convulsions which wracked her rectum under the
relentless burn of the oiled wedge. She was given the jug again, and cold salt
water immediately thereafter, then he moved to her front, jerked her head up
to push his manhood down her reluctant throat and then lowered her loins so
that the leaves started burning the broiled flesh, seeking in her eyes the
glimpses of humiliation, rage and despair that would rekindle his arousal as
much as the involuntary licking from her tongue's relentless screaming.

Once her screams started waning, he rolled her on a side and cuffed her wrists
to a ring in the floor and her ankles to another two, a couple feet apart,
then lowered from the ceiling a contraption of steel bars from which he ran
hooks through her breasts and belly. Her intermittent gasps turned to
unbridled screaming once he pulled the contraption up, forcing her to swing
from the hooks with most of her weight on her bent arms and legs wracking her
dislocated joints to new depths of mad agony.

Only when every movement caused a shriek of raw pain did he push tiny hooks
through her nipples, labia and clitoris, keeping the fine chains leading to
the steel bars short so that each movement ripped them through the flesh a wee
bit more, forcing her to swing herself on her teetering joints. Her convulsed
jerks of mad pain resulted in harrowing fits of screaming torment which turned
to desperate gurgles as he penetrated her throat again, thrusting rhythmically
to cause her to pleasure his manhood with her desperate howls of agony.

As his member hardened in her mouth, she started choking spasmodically and he
pulled out, moving between her legs and adjusting the chains so that her loins
were pulled up, lifting her feet and hands above the floor, except for her
fingers, which tried spasmodically to relieve the pull of the hooks ripping
through her flesh. Her now unrestrained screams burst to new heights once he
violated her again, pulling with both hands the cords of a number of hooks
purposely left in her crotch without fastening them to the bars above.

She clenched her eyes in a sudden burst of rage at the thought of her violator
savoring the agony in them as his hands pulled the hooks to splay her bleeding
love channel before his ravaging member, an instant before unthinkable pain
swept through her. The tiny hooks had been pushed just under the skin and then
bent back and slid under the skin again, tiny enough to place four along the
distended sides of her bleeding clitoris and dozens along the rim of her
vagina, but fueling a wave of pain far beyond their size as they ripped
through broiled flesh while his member tore the cuts open some more.

As his drug-induced frenzy raked the studs on the harness around his swollen
manhood inside her bleeding love channel, she heard among her own screams the
sickly noise of hooks coming free after tearing through skin and flesh as
white hot blasts of pain surged from her breasts, labia and then clitoris,
causing her to howl her helpless despair and swing under his relentless
assault, wracking the torments of hell on her dislocated joints while cramps
shot through her rectum from the burning wooden intruder.

Still wearing a mask of deranged lust, once he had spent his arousal on her
twitching and bleeding body he circled her, reached for her mouth and pushed
his member between her lips again, while she cried bitterly in despair as her
debasement was being prolonged beyond all boundaries of cruelty. Her harsh
gasps turned into gurgling screams when he started dripping molten beeswax on
the bleeding gashes torn by the hooks, forcing her to jerk spasmodically under
the dripping fluid and tear further wounds in her flesh, while her tongue
screamed her torment onto his spent manhood.

Since each hook getting free caused her weight to spread among the remaining
hooks, her agonies increased steadily until the last remaining hooks tore
through her writhing flesh more or less together, dropping her on the floor in
a protracted gurgling scream while she buckled under the relentless stream of
molten wax. In spite of the insane lust distorting his face, he was still able
to assess her conditions and opt for pouring a healing potion down her throat.

She called softly for her friend between wracking pangs of hopeless torment,
because the potion had effects not unlike the healing delivered from Lyral's
own power, although on a lesser scale. Her worst wounds receded, especially
the bleeding gashes in her insides and those ripped by the hooks. As her agony
receded, she thought she saw Lyral's face ... but then a cruel smile cracked
the swarthy visage and she screamed in agony as twin hooks ripped through her
clitoris, lifting her off the floor before letting her fall down again.

He turned her on her back and twisted her arms up behind her until her screams
rose above the creaking noise from her tormented shoulders, then put a
wedge-shaped steel bar behind her elbows and twisted her legs, pulling them
out of her hip sockets until he managed to cuff them to the ends of the bent
bar while she trembled and shrieked from the pain in her joints.

He slowly added hooks on her clitoris, folds and labia, always pushing them in
and then bending them back with pliers so that they pierced the skin twice,
and then threaded a cord around the rim of her vagina, pulling it closed while
she screamed in uninterrupted pain. Her voice rose to a howl of hellish agony
when he tugged on the hooks, slowly ripping her vagina open enough to violate
it again while blood squirted from the gashes.

Her clenched eyes tried between tears to catch a glimpse of her friend's face,
but only saw his hand smear her insides with white powder before her violation
resumed without the lubrication offered by her blood and the agony from her
womb coursed through her wracked body in waves of searing hot pain which did
not stop until his drug induced lust waned.

The heat of red hot iron replaced his member as he seared her wounds, keeping
her buckling spasmodically and wracking her joints into helpless agony. The
iron scorched her skin and was repeatedly pushed inside her womb, but also
used to singe her clitoris as it was being distended by pulling on the hooks,
until his arousal returned and he could violate her again, in a frenzy which
wracked her into agonies which robbed her last shreds of hope.

Just as she hoped that he was done and would let her die, he pulled out,
poured cold salt water on her twitching form, let her sip from the jug and
then cut into the rims of her vagina with the toothed blade, lacerating the
scorched flesh and shredding her clitoris while distending it with the hooks,
and then violating her again while her heart sank in a sea of anguished
despair as each frenzied thrust tore the cuts wider and wider.

He paused her debasement, and she hoped for a moment it was over, but only to
drag folded sharkskin through the cuts, causing her to buckle spasmodically
in screeching torment before resuming her violation with renewed fury, pulling
on the hooks with unrestrained cruelty and slowly ripping one of the cuts
wider until it split her vulva to the point that the studs on the harness
around his member started raking her clitoris.

She screamed and howled in unrelenting torment for an amount of time which she
lost track of, sinking under waves of white hot pain which wracked her body
and burst from her mouth in pitiful screeches of helpless woe, a torn bundle
of suffering flesh and sinew now beyond resolve, rage and humiliation, but
whenever she was about to shout her defeat, a "NOOO" surged from inside her,
spoken in Lyral's anguished voice, and finally she realized that she was
hanging in twitching agony, her wheezing screams still echoing under the
vaults of the torture chamber, but her tormentor was no longer shredding the
rim of her vagina by tugging the cord around his thrusting member.

The Easterner lowered her on the floor, and she caught a glimpse of Grod
dragging the Southerner's limp body away. When the healing of a potion she was
given soothed her agonies, she realized that she had managed to hold on again,
for her friends, and for a moment thought that she would find the strength to
hold on whatever further torment they would come up with.

Silently, the Easterner cuffed her wrists behind her neck over the wedge
shaped cross bar of a wooden post and cranked up a spiked wooden seat, forcing
her to stand on the balls of her feet to avoid the spikes. He then pushed a
wooden wedge through a hole in the seat, forcing it up her rectum while she
cried as the hot pepper oil burned her insides again.

Her eyes widened as she saw another, larger wedge, but he pulled up her ankles
and fastened them to the iron rings around her thighs, causing her weight to
rest on the spikes until she managed to pause her screaming and pull herself
up by her arms in spite of the pain in her joints. At this point, when she was
arched and her muscles taut, did he drive the wedge up between her labia,
ignoring her pitiful howl as she raked the spikes across her buttocks in pain.

Her breasts were subsequently encased in a spiked vise, which he tightened as
she screamed herself hoarse until blood flowed in rivulets from her bulging
breasts, and finally he fastened a board under the wedges in her orifices so
that when she tired of arching, her own weight would drive them deeper inside,
denying her the support necessary to keep her buttocks off the spikes.

He let her like this, watching her tire and scream when the wedges and spikes
caused her to jerk in spasmodic pain, then grabbed a fold of her thigh flesh
and slowly cut through it with a thin steel blade. She arched in raw agony as
the blade cut just under the skin, avoiding blood vessels and slowly opening a
shallow wound which bled slowly as fits of screaming shook her while the blade
progressed mercilessly.

When he finally stopped dragging the blade, she barely had the time to take a
deep breath before another howl shook her as he dragged a feather inside the
wound, causing her to writhe spasmodically as the burning powder the feather
had been rubbed in seeped in the wound. A second feather followed, dipped in a
liquid which smelled like bleach and caused her to buckle spasmodically on the
spikes while wheezing shrieks wracked her heaving chest.

She shriveled on the spikes in hellish torment as he dragged feathers in
the open wound over and over, dipping them in different substances, each
bringing new depths of agony into her flesh and all causing her to wreak havoc
on her joints, which the Southerner had pulled beyond dislocation and the
healing potion had not restored fully. After unbelievable agonies, he closed
iron clips around the edges of the wound using pliers and then proceeded to
cut another in her other thigh, resuming her torment with a new set of
feathers while her wheezing cries surged to new peaks of howling anguish.

Slowly and deliberately, he protracted her agony by cutting shallow gashes in
expertly chosen folds of her flesh and then dragging feathers in the open
wounds, deviously dipping them in substances intended to cause pain or just
keep the pain from subsiding. After her legs, thighs and soles, he cut about a
dozen gashes in her belly and chest, one after the other, timing the use of
the feathers with her breathing so that the cuts under her ribcage burst in
agony whenever she fought for air after a long, protracted scream.

As rivulets of blood flowed over her twitching body, both from the clipped
wounds and from those being actively tormented, she felt like sliding under
a blanket, as if the pain was subsiding, and barely noticed that she was
being freed from her restraints. Her mouth drank the healing potion almost
without thinking, and her mind cleared while pain made itself felt again,
returning her to a world of misery as he cuffed her wrists to her ankles,
spread her legs wide and replaced the wedge in her vagina with a large hook,
suspending her from her wounded womb as her feet barely touched the floor.

The cries from the pain in her crotch surged in howls of unabated agony once
he grabbed a fold of her left breast and sliced through it, tracing another
shallow wound which he promptly savaged with a feather dipped in spider venom
which burned inside the wound and caused a bloody foam to bubble at the edges
just as froth trickled from the corner of her mouth as it vented her helpless
woe in trembling howls tinged with pitiful despair.

The cuts in her breasts accumulated, each one dragging her screaming down the
stairs of the hell she had found in this room as the firm flesh was slashed
and ravaged to new peaks of agony. Most cuts followed the curve of her breasts
and were not clipped, counting on her reclined position to limit her blood
loss while the feathers moved from one to another while she buckled on the
hook impaling herself amidst screams of harrowing woe.

A pair of pliers was used to distend the breast by the nipple, dragging the
feather through the distended flesh to increase the torment, especially when
using burning powder or salt. Her clenched eyes darted in anguish, attempting
to guess at what substance was about to rake its agonies through a bleeding
gash, as if this made any difference when the feather entered the wound and
was slowly dragged back and forth while her voice rose in howling pain.

He kept her screaming and twitching on the hook for as long as possible,
dousing her frequently with cold, salt water and bringing the jug to her lips
while she sputtered in screaming agony, clipping the bleeding gashes in her
breasts while dragging the feathers through fresh ones to keep the flames of
her agony fanned, until her howls waned to pitiful wheezes. She drank the
healing potion between tears, sobbing bitterly at the thought of more agonies
to come as her wounds receded, calling her friend under her breath.

Her brief respite was shattered with a gut-wrenching howl as he cut into her
left nipple, peeling a layer with a diagonal cut which exposed it to the
burning caress of a feather dipped in some acid, too mild to affect the
feather but still strong enough to bring unparalleled fire into her nipple and
fanning it through her shuddering chest until it burst from her throat in fits
of howling torment. As more cuts followed, in spite of her spasmodic attempts
to buckle her nipples away, her eyes almost glazed over as the pain became
more and more unbearable and yet impossible to escape.

Her mouth started gasping between screams as the blood from her nipples
reached it, often mixed with foul tastes of venom or acid which had wrought
hellish pain on her poor feminine flesh just moments before. She thought of
Lyral's face just as the blade cut her nipple flesh again, sending her mind
reeling from the agony and wondering how many times was it possible to cut
such a small piece of flesh before nothing remained. Her own subsequent howl,
however, confirmed that enough remained to suffer as a feather dipped in some
burning powder was dragged through her bleeding nipple, wreaking such pain
on the small piece of feminine flesh she found herself wishing he would just
chop them off rather than protracting her agonies thus.

In the end, although much later than she had wished, he actually reached the
point where no more cuts could be inflicted on her nipples, and repeated
splashing with cold, salt water resulted in little or no reaction, so he let
her down and poured the contents of the jug down her throat. While her mind
cleared, he encased her breasts in a spiked vise and bent her legs towards her
head, forcing the inside of the knee under the outstretched arms of the vise
before twisting her arms up behind her, wrenching a new scream of pain as her
weight rested on the wedge in her rectum and her legs pulled the vise
outwards, squeezing her bulging breasts into bleeding agony.

When she realized that her position proffered her crotch to the same treatment
inflicted on her breasts and nipples, she arched in such terror that her chains
rattled and blood squirted from the spikes raking her constricted breasts. The
thought of having her femininity subjected again to merciless torture gripped
her mind and rattled her exhausted body, and the resulting scream turned into
a demented howl as her fears materialized in the blade slicing across her
labia, reopening one of the gashes left by the hooks, and in the feather
immediately searing it with barbs dipped in venom.

With a swiftness which was a harrowing change from his usual procedure, he
practiced dozens of small cuts across her labia, folds and clitoris, rubbing
the feather repeatedly in each as the venom caused her to howl in unbridled
agony and her blood flowed lazily as she jerked in hellish torment, causing
the spikes to rake her wounded breasts mercilessly while the pain from her
joints shot through her in waves which never abated.

After a while, he returned to long, drawn-out cuts across folds of flesh
pinched between his fingers or pliers, followed by rubbing with feathers
dipped in bleach, vinegar or one of many varieties of venom which caused her
to twitch and buckle spasmodically as her pain surged from her mouth in mad
fits of protracted torment. Her eyes no longer sought her friend, her voice
no longer attempted to call her between screams, she only knew pain.

As her agony was slowly protracted, the swelling caused by the bee venom
caused her labia and clitoris to deform, twisting the hooks still in place
into wreaking further agonies through her bleeding wounds, distending her skin
and flesh before the merciless lacerations of the blade, and tugging on open
wounds while they twitched under the burning caress of a feather dipped in
heavily salted water. Her voice was hoarse and her visage a deformed mask of
helpless agony, but he kept up the torment splashing cold, salt water and
bringing the jug to her lips, without further recourse to potions.

She sputtered her own blood from the wounds cut in her breasts by the spiked
vise which her convulsed jerks rattled agonizingly, screaming in gut-wrenching
frenzies of mad torment as the blade slowly sliced along her swollen labia or
peeled a clitoris horribly distended by pulling on the accursed hooks while
foam frothed at her mouth between a howl and the next. Her joints teetered on
the verge of being pulled out of seat by her spasmodic jerks as a feather
dipped in burning powder was repeatedly dragged inside the cuts along the rim
of her vagina or along the lacerated edge of her swollen labia.

Pain washed over her in waves as he started sawing through the gashes in her
nipples with a feather tipped in some caustic powder, which burned on contact
and abraded flesh even under the delicate rubbing of the feather, causing her
voice to achieve peaks of demented screaming while she twitched spasmodically
trying in vain to escape the agony in her nipples.

Lost in unbearable pain, she fought to remember her friend's smile, but the
image of Lyral's face turned into a mask of bloody agony just as he sawed
through the gashes in her clitoris with a feather dipped in caustic powder,
causing her legs to twitch spasmodically out of their sockets while blood
spurted from her love bud which was starting to give as the hooks ripped
through its distended length and the caustic slowly abraded it. The agony of
the torture she most feared and hated blasted through her body, surging in
shrieks of unparalleled woe from her torn mouth.

He protracted her unbelievable agony, using cold, salt water to revive her,
the laced syrup to renew her energies, and clamps to keep the hooks from
shredding her femininity too quickly, continuing the slow abrasion of her
bleeding raw flesh while frenzies of demented screaming punctuated her descent
into yet deeper hells until so little remained that one after the other the
hooks ripped through the last tatters of her clitoris.

He kept her screaming by slowly abrading the tatters of the quartered piece of
feminine flesh, until her waning screams and pitiful twitching proved that she
was at least temporarily beyond pain. The cuts in her nipples alone numbered
in the dozens, and her breasts and crotch were awash in blood, and no amount
of treatment would restore her shredded femininity.

When the soothing warmth of healing suffused her body, the thought of Lyral
bubbled through the depths of her anguish, but the callous touch of hands
folding her legs to cuff her ankles to the bands constricting her thighs and
then bringing up her arms between her legs to cuff the wrists to the ankles
washed the memory of her friend's face away. As Grod pushed a thick, studded
hook down her vagina, using it to lift her loins off the floor and let her
rest just on her shoulders, she gasped in abject terror at the sight of the
implements of her forthcoming ordeal.

She had thought that Grod would bend or break her bones, stretch or strain
her muscles, then fear of the hot irons had grown inside her as she had caught
the unmistakable scent, but now in spite of her neck collar fastened to rings
in the floor she could see that it was due to a pair of metallic pears being
heated on a coal bed. Tears streaked her face and bitter sobs wracked her
chest as she realized that her femininity would be tormented again, scorched
raw and ripped open in spite of the atrocious tortures already inflicted on
the tender feminine parts that had become the crucible of her agonies.

As he inserted something in her rectum, she barely had time to realize it was
a kind of wooden wedge before the hacked and dented surface raked her bowels.
The horror of past violations returned to her mind just as she screamed in
sudden pain, compounded by the agony from many small cuts from what she would
later recognize as a spiked metal ring, wrought around the wedge.

When her tormentor fetched the small pear, dread mounted in her at the thought
of where he meant to push it, since both her orifices were occupied, and he
let her shudder for a while before pushing the red hot point into the rear end
of the wedge, splitting its four sections apart and allowing four red hot
spikes to descend in the resulting creases and scrape her bowels while she
arched desperately on the hook, twitching and buckling in desperate anguish.

Her pain reached a new peak when the pear forced its way through the spiked
ring, distending it at the expense of her bleeding innards after the hooks
caught against it, requiring her tormentor to twist and push the pear back and
forth to disengage them, rattling her in frenzies of screaming agony.

The wood in her bowels was being charred by the heat, causing her innards to
be slowly singed, causing slivers and splinters to wreak untold agonies to her
insides at the slightest twitch, twitches which he made sure she went through
plenty of. He slowly cranked the pear open causing her to howl in unbridled
torment as the hot spikes sank in the flesh and the spiked ring was slowly
guided back, tracing bleeding gouges in her singed insides.

He continued the torture of her sphincter, folding the pear to extract it and
heat it again before resuming the torment by cranking it slightly wider, and
unlike her previous ordeal with the pear felt no compunction in tearing her
orifice open, using a thin red hot blade to sear the lacerations while her
howls wracked her body in unparalleled frenzies of mad agony.

When he freed her of her restraints, she shook in horrible pain and the thick
wedge he pushed in her bleeding ass maybe reduced her blood loss but did
little to soothe her anguishes, especially since, as she realized while he
twisted her arms behind her back, it was coated with something whose sting was
mounting relentlessly and she was forced to sit on it. He doused her with cold
water, let her sip at length from the jug and pushed a large four section
wedge in her mauled vagina, and followed it with a red hot pear of gruesome
size which she tried in mad panic to avoid by buckling her hips, the agony by
the wedge in her rectum notwithstanding.

In spite of her convulsed jerks as the heat in her womb charred the wooden
sections of the wedge and even set them ablaze temporarily, he managed to
cuff her ankles together and fasten them to the ring of the pear. While she
still shook from pain, he grabbed her ankles and pulled them, distending her
arms behind her back and bringing her ass, legs and feet above the coal bed
where the pears had been heated. As he fastened her ankles to a chain, she
found herself with her calves and especially soles exposed to the heat of the
coals, which also caused the pear to heat, albeit slowly.

Almost immediately, her legs started twitching and snapping in the effort to
spare her tender soles, but this caused her strong legs to pull on the pear,
raking its red hot hooks against the singed walls of her love channel and
pulling the ring back towards the rim of her vagina while its spikes traced
bloody gashes in the martyred flesh. As the devious torture forced her to
jerk and buckle spasmodically, dozens of splinters and slivers pierced her
singed insides, often catching fire shortly thereafter.

To protract her agonies, he started tightening and releasing her iron collar,
causing her to gasp for air and her vagina to reflexively clutch the
instrument of her torment, sending more slivers through the flesh which was
now being scorched raw by the protracted exposure to the heat.

"I know a better way," chimed a voice she refused to acknowledge.

A swarthy hand caught her blonde mane and with a nod in Grod's direction, sort
of a mocking "May I ?", the Southerner pushed his member into her screaming
throat, fucking it violently and achieving an effect not unlike the collar as
she choked on his member while her screams gurgled in unspeakable torment and
pleasured his member and the insatiable lust induced by the drugs.

With savage abandon, the Southerner kept throat fucking her even after his
semen filled her mouth, once, twice, many times, in a debasement which would
have shocked her to the very roots of her soul in other circumstances but was
next to nothing before the unceasing scorching and tearing of her vagina.

Her nightmare of pain and debasement lasted for a time she lost track of,
until she caught herself gulping avidly a healing potion, trembling as her
burns and wounds receded before sputtering in horrified disgust once she
realized she had also been drinking the semen invading her mouth.

Her tormentor cuffed her ankles together and fastened them to a steel bar,
then bent her legs at the knee and forced her to arch until he could bend her
elbows around the bar, nudge her wrists between her calves and her arched back
and cuff them together in spite of her screams at the torment this position
wrought on her dislocated joints. But the horror returned on her face when he
inserted the four-section wedge and the pear in her rectum again, cranking it
open before using its end ring to pull her off the floor while she buckled
desperately in harrowing torment.

Although the pear was no longer red hot, its spikes still gouged her rectum
and its arms still cracked the wedge sections, driving splinters in the flesh
scorched raw by the preceding exposure to searing heat. Besides, as her harsh
cries soon testified, this wedge had been rubbed in sand and caustic power and
was abrading her bleeding bowels mercilessly.

In spite of her agonies, she tried to buckle away when he inserted a similar,
albeit larger, wedge in her vagina, and when he brought up the red hot pear
meant to follow it, her convulsed jerks wracked her into inflicting further
pain on herself as her almost pleading shrieks echoed in the torture chamber.

Her thighs twitched and tensed as the hot metal charred the wood and wracked
its agonies on her already singed womb while she howled in abysmal pain as he
cranked the device open, stretching her vagina and ripping the cuts along its
rim wider and wider. This pear had ridges, red hot ridges which seared the rim
and dug new blistered cuts where they failed to find an existing one, and he
slowly cranked it so wide that the wooden section cracked, driving splinters
into her innards which soon caught fire, causing her to arch in howling pain
as the small flames licked her insides.

Just as Grod twisted the device inside her, causing her to buckle her hips in
the desperate attempt to spare her insides some of the scraping and of the
splinters, the Southerner thrust his member down her throat again, causing her
to gag and clutch the instrument of her agony spasmodically as her vaginal
muscles contracted while she gasped for air. Choking on her own screams, she
howled in mad agony as her violated mouth was almost dislocated by his thrusts
and the pear ripped her vagina open while scorching it raw.

Even the short pauses of respite, when Grod heated the pear again and cold
water was poured over her, were but a nightmare of abraded flesh and searing
pain from her dislocated joints, a haze of bloody agony where she caught
passing glimpses of Lyral's smiling face only to have them blasted into
searing hot waves of torment when the pear was again inserted and cranked open
rekindling her agonies into fits of howling woe.

Gurgling screams and unbridled howling alternated under the vaults of the
torture chamber as the two torturers protracted the torment of the young
blonde woman while Zhorun watched silently, until the bleeding from the cuts
in her vagina and her insides became so severe that another potion was poured
down her throat while under her breath she called her friend's name.

True to self, Grod changed her restraints to increase the torment of her bones
and muscles, bending her legs back until he could nudge the leg under the
corresponding elbow and cuff the ankles behind her arched back, while pulling
her arms up between her knees and suspending her by chains fastened to her
wrist cuffs, chains he immediately started pulling apart causing her thighs to
spread and twist out of their sockets while she howled in unspeakable torment.

As wedge and pear were thrust into her vagina again, a new dimension of pain
was wrought upon her as the pulling on the pear stretched her dislocated
thighs, tearing the ligaments and sending white hot blasts of pain through her
convulsing body, thus wracking it into harrowing agonies as it ground its
scorched, raw innards against the splinters and spikes invading it. At the
same time, her body was swung against a reclined grid of blazing coals and
thick iron spikes, exposing her to the searing heat and to the merciless cuts
of the spikes across singed flesh.

Her exposed breasts turned slowly red and then crimson as the heat peeled them
raw, while the repeated cuts from the spikes wracked her chest as she rattled
her restraints in screams of harrowing torment. Fire had returned to fan her
agonies into nightmares of searing torment, and Lyral's touch was nowhere to
deliver her nipples after they curled in the heat or soothe her flesh as a
spike raked a oozing blister open while she screamed her lungs out in anguish.

It took him a number of perpetrations of this cruel procedure before he
managed to pull her clitoris onto one of the spikes protruding from the grid,
wrenching from her sore throat a howl where abysmal pain mixed with utter
despair as she found her deepest fears confirmed again. He prolonged her
torment, keeping her writhing there while the heat rose to blister her flesh
and the pear ripped the lacerations in her vagina a bit wider, stretching them
while the tendons in her neck strained from protracted howls of raw agony.

As the pear was cranked wider, its red hot ridges bulged under her flesh,
visibly distending the scorched tract between the tattered rim of the vagina
and the clitoris, while the spikes not only punctured her from the inside but
even ripped bleeding gashes through her belly. Blood started coursing in
rivulets along her convulsing body, while her screams turned hoarse and foam
dripped from her mouth as abject pain wracked her chest. Not visible, but ever
present in her screams, were the constant prodding of her cervix by the red
hot tip of the pear and the bloody abrasion of her rectum by the other pear.
"Don't stop, Grod," said Zhorun's voice, almost inaudible among the horrid
screams wracking Kayleen's convulsing body as the pear was slowly rupturing
the largest of the cuts inflicted on her vagina, tearing it slowly open as it
ripped its way up to her urethra. In spite of his prompt searing of the
profusely bleeding edges by hot iron, he could only keep this torment up for
a few minutes. Her howls of unbridled anguish echoed under the vaults of the
torture chamber for a time which looked endless to her, but then the soothing
of another potion diffused through her body while her screams broke in fits of
wheezing gasps as the healing remedied her worst wounds.

"Our esteemed guest from the South will now continue," the wizard announced.

A gasping sob shook Kayleen's pain-wracked body at she realized that her
torment would continue unabated, her mind worn by the torments enough to
perceive as unfair the additional session. The Southerner, still visibly
under the effect of the drugs, had been preparing this, as the tray of clear
jugs he fetched demonstrated. She tried not to look inside the jugs where a
number of largish, legged horrors twitched and turned.

He pulled out from one of the jugs a beetle, over two inches In size and with
long, serrated jaws which clacked ominously as the irritated insect wriggled
in the pinch of tweezers he wielded with much diminished adeptness because of
the drugs. Her subsequent scream as the jaws bit her left breast, however,
proved that he had retained enough to let his cruelty run its full course.

While the pears still invaded her orifices, he repeatedly brought the beetle
to bite the flesh of her exposed breasts, pausing between each bite to let
her jerk as the agony coursed through her body and rekindled the pain in her
joints and the merciless ripping of her orifices, temporarily alleviated by
the potion but bound to slowly wreak them to the same peaks of agony again.

Each bite left a nasty, lacerated wound where a bit of flesh was ripped off by
the strong serrated jaws while she arched in howling torment and then bled
profusely while howling in gasping fits of searing pain until he used pliers
to tighten clips around the bleeding gash.

He removed the pears and lowered her on the floor, on her back, and fastened
her ankles to chains in order to spread them wide, adjusting the chains so
that her feet hung about a foot high. He then circled her and pulled her arms,
twisting them in their sockets while she screamed madly and pulling them back
until he could fasten them also to a chain, which he pulled until her body was
lifted up while she convulsed in mad agony from the pain in her joints.

He then knelt between her legs and, just as her screams paused while dread
crept upon her as she focused on what he was doing, penetrated her violently,
pushing his member in her vagina with the obvious intent to rip the cuts just
healed open again. He kept thrusting into her with drooling rage while she
shook like a rag doll, screaming madly as he pulled savagely her wounded labia
after having ripped what little remained of her pubic hair.

He paused briefly to smear her innards with the white powder he used to offset
any lubrication bleeding may offer, then resumed her violation while her cries
rose harsher and harsher as her womb was repeatedly rasped dry. As he finally
came inside her, she was in such agony that she barely noticed.

Her voice barely had the time to recover in a series of low moans that her
chest heaved in a scream as another beetle sunk its serrated jaws under her
left sole, causing her to twitch and buckle in jarring pain. More bites
followed, harsh bites leaving shallow bleeding wounds which wrenched pitched
screams from her sore throat while her position mercilessly ground her torn
joints into swelling and straining torment.

After summarily clipping the wounds in her soles, he fetched a new beetle and
started dragging it along her legs, letting the irritated insect sink the
serrated jaws on her flesh and rip with surprising strength in spite of her
convulsed twitching and raucous howls of bitter torment. She had hoped that
the drugs had abated his lust, but when he squeezed the insect so that it tore
a bit of flesh she realized that his cruelty had no need of drugs.

He lowered her with her back on the floor, examining her ripped nails which
the applications of healing potion had not restored and then dragged her to a
iron trestle, forcing her to straddle it with her legs spread awkwardly, her
thighs splayed and her ass thrust up. He then trapped her toes and thumbs in
spiked iron vises, which he started tightening while she cried in mounting
pain until her voice exploded in a desperate howl when the thumbs were
cracked, followed by another when the same occurred to her toes.

He shifted her position so that the dull point of a trestle slid into her
vagina, and then cranked the device so that it pushed deeper and deeper into
her, causing her to raise her loins as the point was at the wrong angle to
penetrate her love channel, but stretching her legs between the dislocated hip
joints and the crushed toes and causing her voice to rise in recurring howls
of abject torment. When the jaws of a beetle closed on the flesh of her left
ass cheek, the jerk caused by the harsh pain turned into a fit of nightmarish
agonies as her joints were brutally shaken into abysmal pain by the strong
muscles of her own supple legs, just as her scream at the ripping wound turned
into a frenzy of bitter howls from the agonies in her joints.

Out of her mind with pain, she shook at the thought of the vast expanse of her
own white flesh which stood before the serrated jaws of the insect he wielded
with ability partially impaired by the drugs but with unbridled cruelty. Pray
was something she had been doing more often during her recent ordeals than in
any other moment of her life, but pray she did in bits and pieces between the
desperate howls of raw pain caused by the bites and the incessant agony of her
joints as her tormentor let beetle after beetle loose on her twitching flesh,
favoring her firm buttocks and the tenderness of the thigh.

In a haze of unrelenting pain from the protracted torment, she heard her
tormentor wonder aloud whether he should take her in her ass or in her mouth,
and somehow the dread at her impending violation was mitigated by the thought
that her vagina would be spared the hellish agonies he favored over simple
rape. The pain in her bowels told her of his choice, and although it mounted
while he thrust into her, waxing and waning as his thrusts rattled her joints,
she somehow found a measure of relief in the abject debasement.

After he pulled out, spent, her relief turned into abject horror when she felt
something prod her distended sphincter and was blown away by a wave of raw
agony when the insect ripped a wound in her sphincter, from a cut which had
been partially healed and then reopened during her violation. She buckled and
shuddered in her restraints, wracking untold pain on her swollen joints, but
could do nothing to prevent her tormentor from unleashing the beetle on her
distended bowels and letting it rip shallow, bleeding wounds inside.

The jug was brought to her mouth, allowing her a brief instant of respite as
she sipped avidly, then unquenchable agonies burst from her bowels again as
the insect ripped morsels of flesh from her bleeding innards. He proceeded
with cruel patience, nudging the jaws against her flesh to let her twitch in
terror before letting the beetle actually deliver its bite, and treating the
worst wounds to prevent excessive blood loss. But each morsel ripped from the
scorched innards came loose only after interminable seconds of excruciating
tearing, which sent blazes of white hot pain through her whole body, causing
her muscles to jerk spasmodically and wreak further agonies onto her joints.

She realized that he had freed her from the trestle only when she found
herself on the cold stone floor, twitching and weeping, wracked by spasms and
moaning hoarsely while he folded her legs, cuffing each ankle to the elbow and
the wrist to the iron band under the knee. As she lay on her back, her thighs
spread and shuddering between cries, he inspected her breasts. Between the
agonies wrought on her, the serrated iron bands tightened around the bases of
her breasts had been almost forgotten, and this spoke volumes of what she had
been through, because the unyielding iron constricted them mercilessly, chafed
the tender skin and caused them to bulge, ripe for the abuses which had not
failed to follow. Now, he used them to lift her off the floor, watching her
cringe and then scream as her breasts bore her full weight.

As if one of the horrid critters was not enough, he fetched two beetles, one
per hand, and let them sink the serrated jaws onto the soft flesh of her belly
while she arched in desperate pain, twitching her thighs invitingly as agony
coursed through her shuddering body. The tense muscles of her thighs were next
in his course of torment, and he bid his time while tugging the insects to
make sure they tore and ripped furiously while she howled in mad anguish.

He played with her terror, rubbing the jaws against her nipples or clitoris
before letting them sink somewhere else, edging closer and closer to the soft
attributes of femininity whose torment, as had been abundantly clear for days,
she feared above everything else. So the jaws dragged around the trembling
areolas of her bristles closed on the layer of flesh above a rib, while those
tracing the rim of her vagina sunk in the lower belly between the remnants of
her pubic hair, causing her protracted wails of abject terror to end in harsh
gasps of searing pain and fits of screaming anguish as the jaws tore and
ripped back and forth before drawing a morsel of bleeding flesh.

She shook in pain as cold, salt water was poured on her, and then jerked in
convulsed agony when he tired of his game and started ripping bleeding wounds
in her breasts and labia, watching her arch in sustained fits of howling agony
with enough force to wreak her hip and shoulder joints out of their sockets,
her muscles straining and trembling as she tried to evade the ripping torment
which repeatedly ripped her flesh. Her mind raced in abject terror at the
sight of the twitching jaws, alternating bits of mindless prayer to hoarse
invocations of her friend's healing touch.

What touched her tormented infinity, instead, was a pair of twitching jaws,
which sank in her love bud and started tearing and ripping while her howls
rose under the vaults of the torture chamber and her convulsed jerks rattled
the chains her breasts hung from. When the other beetle was unleashed on the
rim of her vagina and the inside of her love channel, ripping short threads of
scorched flesh off the innards ravaged by the red hot pear, she lost her last
shreds of resolve, sinking into unparalleled anguish and calling desperately
her friend's name between shrieking howls of deranged agony.

Her tormentor was an experienced executioner and would have noticed that his
victim had been effectively broken, but he was so inebriated by the drugs
that her defeat aroused his lust and he immediately put the beetles back to
violate her in a fit of demented lust, scraping her wounds with drooling
abandon in spite of the profuse bleeding which he did not bother to dry before
as his urge to inflict himself on her proved enough of a source of agony.

With his own hands and nails he started ripping the tatters of her labia,
reopening the cuts which had not been ripped open before and scraping new
bleeding wounds as white hot agonies coursed through her swinging body, always
thrusting mercilessly with his unnaturally erect manhood as if he wanted to
pierce her innards and split her in two, intoxicated by her uninterrupted howl
of unbridled anguish and drinking the wine of her agony directly from her
face, contorted in a mask of abject suffering.

Somehow, this beastly assault on her defeated body stirred something under the
haze of liquid pain which had submerged her soul, holding the pleading which
surged from the depths of her despair from escaping her lips and the terror of
further torment from rolling out a torrent of implorations. When his lust
waned, she had already found some shred of her former resolve, and in spite of
her bitter howls while he held two beetles on her nipples, repeatedly tearing
bits of bleeding flesh from them, she no longer feared. At the peak of her
agonies, when dignity, courage and even hope were being ripped from her by the
merciless tearing of the jaws, she had heard her friend's voice.

"Angels of heaven, make her strong. Uphold her bravery before the agonies she
endures, make me worthy of her bravery. Angels of heaven, make her strong."

Her tormentor protracted her agonies some more, but the drugs he had abused so
heavily were now abandoning him, and his grip started wavering until both
beetles escaped. As he was obviously no longer in the position to continue, he
was led away while Kayleen, although still screaming bitterly in abject pain,
almost smiled at the thought of having defied them all once again.


Chapter 23 - Betrayed

Kayleen hung from her wrists, sobbing bitterly in the unlit torture chamber
under the ruins of Zhorun's former castle. The tight cuffs almost crushed them
and badly chafed her skin, and a thumbscrew had been put on her crushed thumbs
causing them to shoot waves of pain down her trembling arms.

Steel rods fastened at the cuff crushing the ankle, at the iron band under
the knee and at the one at the thigh prevented her from bending her legs, and
sustained four wooden boards arranged in a pantograph. She was forced to keep
her legs spread as much as she could, because closing them caused the device
to push a wooden pole deeper up her ravaged rectum, but the weights hung to
her crushed toes made the effort excruciating.

Occasionally, unseen insects bit her blood encrusted nipples or clitoris,
causing her to jerk and scream from the pain in the thumbs or from the pole
rasping her bowels. The Southerner seemed to have an endless provision of jars
full of black, ugly flies, not unlike horseflies but able to find their mark
in the unlit torture chamber, although apparently they did not last long. Just
enough to torment her, as if the repeated spreading and folding of her aching
legs or the the uninterrupted agony in her joints were not enough.

In the darkness, the silent and motionless husk of the former wizard savored
every gasp, every rasping sigh, every bitter sob, every helpless call for the
gentle touch of a friend. He had longed for this even during the fight with
the Priestesses, and his patience with any interference had grown short.

Before leaving after the day's session, Grod had offered his opinion, as he
had been used to when Zhorun was still a living wizard.

"Shouldn't we end this, Master ? If the Sorceress managed to slip here, any
information the Queen may have had on her whereabouts is likely to be of
little use by now. Instead of questioning her, we should question those
Priestesses you brought along after the battle, as you originally ordered."

"I don't want her insolence rewarded! She defied me, and must suffer until she
submits completely, ready to answer all my demands. I wish she could be
questioned day and night, without interruption."

"This cannot be done, Master. The human body is frail, and without rest she
would soon slide into insensitiveness, no matter what we feed her, and then
escape into death. Inflicting pain is easy, keeping the victim alive less so.
Executioners usually favor using a progression of new torments, because this
engenders dread about what comes next; on occasion, it is effective to repeat
a torture which the victim is known to fear. You never want to push the victim
into being so numb as to be unable to prefer surrender over enduring further
torture. Unless you know some magic I ignore, Master"

Zhorun considered the exchange again. He did not want her to be numbed at all,
quite the opposite. The potions would not address exhaustion before actual
injuries, such as dislocations, so she would have to be restored to full
health every now an then, in the morning just before beginning a new session.
This would also offset the chance that she might develop some lung disease as
a consequence of being left to shiver for hours after being drenched with
freezing cold water. Maybe some spellbook recorded a way to address specific
symptoms. He was no longer in the position to research magic specifically
affecting the living, with whom he now shared very little.
Another pleading sob returned his attention to the prisoner. His netherwordly
gaze lingered on her breasts, on every laceration of the firm flesh, on the
blood encrusted nipples and then slithered down her heaving ribcage and the
wounded belly until, piercing the darkness which was no match for his own, it
reached the shredded tatters of her femininity and the torn rim distended
around the wooden wedge just as her thighs tired, causing the wedge to slide
up and her body to jerk while a harsh gasp escaped her lips.

Kayleen hung in a cocoon of dull agony, occasionally starting as sharp pain
rose from her wounded orifice when her thighs failed, sobbing from the toll of
the last session and trembling more at the prospect of facing another, alone,
than from the chilling water drenching her. She vaguely remembered proudly
facing torture in the first days, vague phantoms of courage and dignity she
longed for but could no longer grasp firmly. Only pain and terror remained.

For the rest of the night, she vainly sought respite from the pain of the
tight irons constricting her wrists and ankles, or grinding her thumbs and
toes. The dents in the iron band at her waist hurt whenever she tried to take
a deep breath, and the dull ache of her breasts constricted at the base by the
serrated iron ring never stopped. She remembered the concern for her wrists
the first night of her imprisonment, and almost laughed as her face brushed
her swollen left shoulder, the skin hot to the touch above a pulsating mass of
agony which surged to a scream whenever she twitched even slightly.

When the torches shone again on the grisly instruments of the chamber, a wail
escaped her torn lips, causing something to stir in Zhorun's mummified corpse
as if the contemplation of her forthcoming agonies could replace sensations he
could no longer enjoy in his present condition.

The Easterner lowered Kayleen on the floor, after making sure her collar was
well tightened, and led her to a wooden rail she recognized with a sob, from
the dents and splinters if nothing else. This time, the Easterner did not need
Grod's help in forcing her to straddle it, and when he lifted her ankles off
the floor to fasten them at the end of the rail, causing her full weight to
bear on the splintered edge, a scream left her mouth.

Her arms were easily cuffed behind her neck, and her nipples bled again as
hooks were driven through them and fastened to a chain from the ceiling,
distending her breasts into quivering cones of harsh torment. She was given a
potion after releasing the collar, and the temporary soothing of her wounds
only rekindled her fears as to what lay ahead.

The Easterner produced a whip, whose last two or three feet gleamed in
torchlight as they consisted of metal wire, and Kayleen's eyes widened when he
dragged the wire in some substance which he subsequently set ablaze, as if the
demons of hell had risen to provide him with a whip worthy of them. Her mouth
was about to form inarticulate words of abject terror when with a single fluid
flexing of muscles he flashed the flaming whip across her buttocks.

She writhed in pain as the wire slashed the flesh, leaving a bleeding cut with
drops of burning goo scattered along the edges. The first howl of desperate
agony was followed by more screams as the fire kept burning around the wound,
causing her to jerk spasmodically and grind her slit over the splintered edge
of the hellish rail. A second lash fell across her distended breasts, leaving
another deep cut and more drops of burning agony as she shook and buckled in
howling torment, rocking the rail back and forth.

A thin red strip slashed her soles as he flexed the whip again, while the
drops still burned on her buttocks, causing her to twist and buckle from the
burning agony and wrenching a scream as the splinters drew blood inside her
torn cunt lips. The tip of the whip landed again on her mons, just where she
touched the wood, tracing a deep cut which caused her to jerk and arch in mad
agony as the wire had cut near the folds of her clitoris and now the burning
pain had been brought near her femininity again.

Pausing only when the goo needed to be replenished or rekindled, he kept up
her hellish whipping without consideration for the blood oozing from the deep
cuts striping her already wounded body, and repeatedly slashing the soles of
her feet in order to cause her to jerk her loins forward, grinding them over
and over the blood-soaked rail while the splinters broke inside her wounds.
She was doused several time with cold, salt water, reviving her and adding to
the agony of her crotch as she writhed from its harsh bite.

As the edges of the cuts in her soles burned mercilessly, causing her legs to
twitch uninterruptedly, Kayleen's teary eyes lost sight of her surroundings
while her head rocked left and right when pain stabbed her crotch over and
over. The stench of her own flesh being slowly roasted reached her nostrils
well after the searing agony of the burnt flesh had shook her into frenzies of
howling torment, and her eyes sought in the dark corners of the vault above
her the face she had come to rely upon as her bulwark against pain.

Her screams mixed with inarticulate pleads of help when the whip lashed her
breasts, tracing a cut so painful that for a moment she thought her nipples
had been sliced off. She madly hoped Lyral's hand would emerge from the
darkness and wipe out the flaming liquid on the edges of the wound, only to
find herself screaming as it burned mercilessly in spite of her mad attempts
to shake it away. Her howls rose in pitch as the liquid seeped inside the
wound cutting her areolas, its edges being slowly burned raw while she jerked
spasmodically on the rail trashing her slit.

For a moment, she looked at herself with the eyes of the proud Warrior Queen
of once, just after the sharp agony of a splinter in her bleeding clitoris had
wrenched a torturous scream from her already sore throat. When Lyral had been
with her, at least she had faced each day of ordeals with her body in full
health, but now her endurance was being eroded by having only her worst wounds
healed. Maybe, she thought, she would not scream in desperate agony if the
splinters which found the cuts in the rim of her vagina had met her flesh
unblemished. Maybe she would stand the agony of the rail if the horrid cut at
the top of her vagina had not been sawed open as she howled from the repeated
burning of her tender soles, instead of howling dementedly as the splinters
entered the sides of the gash she deepened jerk after jerk.

When he undid her restrains, she curled on the floor, sobbing pitifully and
trying to cover her bleeding crotch which still sent stabs of agony through
her trembling body. She drank from the jug offered to her as if in a dream. Of
all things, maybe having wrists and elbows cuffed together and pulled behind
her back was among the few which could still reach her, at least judging by
her desperate scream as her wrists were pulled up and the spectre of further
torment of her dislocated joints reared its head.

She was raised off the floor in twitching agony, and paid little attention to
the platform being slid under her feet because two swarthy hands grabbed the
iron rings constricting her thighs and the Southerner pulled her loins up from
behind, nudging with his member her sphincter before penetrating her. A harsh
gasp shook her dangling form, followed by a half mouthed plea which his grunt
of sadistic pleasure all but covered. He kept violating her while short,
bitter screams surged from her mouth on cue with his violent thrusts, then let
her go once sated only to savor her howl as the feet rested on the platform,
which brimmed with tiny steel spikes.

She soon found that she could either let the spikes rake her wounded and
blistered soles, or hang with her full weight on her dislocated shoulder
joints. Screaming and gasping, she switched between the two, partly of her own
accord and partly writhing under the flaming lash again, which slashed her
belly or the rear of her thighs when she tried to rest on her feet for long,
forcing her to face the surge of agony in the shoulders while the edges of her
wounds burned slowly, leaving angry red blisters of hellish pain.

As the whip cut repeatedly across her ribcage, leaving bleeding gashes which
showed the white of bone in places, her howls rose steadily in pitch, while
her fingers contracted spasmodically and even her broken thumbs trembled when
agony howled from her mouth as her taut skin was slowly burned and her jerks
rattled the chains lifting her off the platform, whose spikes were deep red
with blood and the occasional bits of skin raked off her soles.

He repeatedly thwarted her attempts to spare her bleeding soles, slashing the
front of her thighs whenever her legs pulled her feet up. As there was about a
feet of chain between her ankles, he often managed to lash the insides of her
thigh and even her crotch, which still bled profusely and occasionally fumed
as drops burned slowly where the whip had cut a new wound while she writhed in
mad torment, rattling her chains and spasmodically buckling while her feet
darted back and forth over the spikes.

She was allowed a brief pause when the jug was emptied down her throat, but
the flaming whip soon cut her buttocks again, and when she arched forward as
much as her twisted arms allowed, it slashed across her breasts just as a
scream surged from her lungs. The flaming wire cut across both breasts, biting
the left one deeply and causing her to turn under the blow, pulling on her
dislocated shoulders while a second scream fought to rise above the first.

Her eyes locked between tears on the deep crimson cut on her once perfect
breast, unable to avert from the edges and the droplets burning lazily whose
pain registered just moments after that from her ass cheeks. As her head
jerked in agony, the image of the edges slowly blistering grew in her mind
alongside the pain, which a third lash on her other breast increased manifold.

As the flaming whip alternated between her buttocks and breasts, although on
occasion her tormentor moved to her legs so that she would pull them up in
writhing agony, the image of her own blistering flesh filled her mind, to the
point of imagining gentle fingers whose soothing touch she madly craved
lingering almost within reach and yet eluding contact while she buckled madly
to be touched. Howls surged from her mouth without interruption, whistling
past the foam which bubbled at the corners of her mouth as her breasts and
buttocks bled lazily and fumed from the burning liquid.

As her torture was protracted, her wounds became so horrid that were it not
for the atrocious pain she would have been chilled by the sight, as the cuts
left bleeding tatters of flesh hanging off her deformed buttocks and breasts,
especially since lashes had begun seeking her nipples slicing the top of her
delectable mounds repeatedly while she howled in demented agony from the
uninterrupted burning torment of the liquid seeping in the wounds and burning
the edges, where the skin curled and blistered slowly.

As the platform was removed, leaving her suspended inches from the floor, the
Easterner neared with a potion, which she quaffed spasmodically in spite of
the ever present pain in her shoulders, trembling as the soothing relief of
healing diffused in her body, redressing the cuts in her breast and buttocks.
A bitter sob ended her bliss when a male member nudged her sphincter, and she
recognized the growl mere moments before the Southerner violated her ass
again, rattling her chains as her body shook under his thrusts while she cried
and screamed in bitter despair.

His lust quickly spent, the Southerner receded, smiling at the impassible
Easterner whose face did not completely hide a trace of disgust. In spite of
her agonies, the notion of how her own ordeal weighed on her tormentors had
flashed through Kayleen's mind. As she was lowered on the floor, she felt in
the Easterner's touch a weariness which had not been there at the beginning,
as if her endurance of such ghastly torments had moved something within him,
even discounting his cold hatred after she had almost snapped his neck.

Her thoughts returned to a present of abject pain as he fastened her ankles to
chains and pulled her off the floor, spreading her taut legs wider and wider
until pain surged in her hip joints and rattled her chest in short, hissing
screams.  She realized in despair that even if the weariness was real, it just
meant that he wanted to be done with her quickly and would devise something to
break her will once for all. As his eyes coldly inspected her body, she saw no
mercy therein and found none in the blistering pain lashing her labia when the
flaming whip cut into them, sending her twitching in screaming pain.

The whip cut repeatedly her tender places, reopening the blood encrusted
wounds which had been healed only partially and leaving droplets of flaming
agony which smoldered along the edges while she twitched and buckled howling
in fits of demented agony which rattled her chains as she convulsed in mid
air, wracking her hip joints into hellish flashes of blazing pain.

Her arms were still twisted out of their sockets, fastened to a ring in the
floor, but it was her hip joints which quickly became the linchpin of her
anguish, because each lash forced her legs to contract, bringing her bones to
scrape against each other inside the joint, visibly teetering under the sunken
flesh while tendons and muscles strained repeatedly as new gashes were cut in
her flesh and blistered slowly, inflicting hellish agonies on the screaming
husk of the poor girl that had been a proud warrior.

Her tormentor's main target in that position could only be her crotch, but on
occasion he brought the whip to bite her breasts or her buttocks again, so as
to allow her tender places the bit of recovery that would allow her torment to
be protracted later. He took special care, in places such as her thighs, to
avoid major blood vessels, because the flaming wire cut deeply and would
probably cause excessive blood loss. The burning liquid, however, charred the
edges of shallow cuts as well as it did with deeper ones, as her desperate
screams repeatedly testified. Her only respite was the jug, although he poured
cold, salt water on her now and then.

When the whip returned to her slit, the agony of the burning liquid was
repeatedly wrought on the wounds in the rim of her vagina, and soon he took to
lashing repeatedly the horrid cut that opened in her vulva, as if to tear it
open lash after lash until it reached her clitoris, which had been already
slashed across twice causing her howls to echo under the vaults of the chamber
as she convulsed from the hellish agony radiating from the tender femininity
which had become the vehicle of her anguish.

As she buckled madly in howling torment, she could not help but gaze between
bitter tears as the wound splitting her sex inched down lash after lash from
the rim of her vagina, ripped wider and wider by each lash while droplets of
liquid lingered on the edges and seeped at the tip, adhering to the flesh
curling and charring from the uninterrupted heat. When not clenched in the
grip of horrid agony, her eyes bulged in terror as they watched blood mix with
the burning liquid, only to fill with tears just as her body snapped in a howl
of deranged pain when another lash cut into the wound again.

When the cut reached her shredded clitoris, her screams found heights they had
not touched even when the liquid had burned her urethra. Her jerks were so
spasmodic that the head of her hip bones bulged and sank under the muscles
straining at her hip joints, and blood spurted from the tatters of her
femininity as the flaming wire cut repeatedly the tender flesh. Even while
howling uninterruptedly in frenzied fits of raging anguish, inarticulate calls
for her friend's help lingered on her foaming mouth, only to be wiped away as
long, desperate screams of agony wracked her like a rag doll.

Lost in a nightmare of pain, she somehow caught herself sputtering while
avidly quaffing the potion being offered to her lips, even if it only soothed
the pain in her crotch from inhuman agony to the harsh pain of blistered flesh
along the edges of no longer bleeding wounds. Her tongue tried to chase the
last drops of soothing liquid as pain still wracked her body, but no more was
forthcoming and the hand holding the liquid was swarthy and gnarled.

While she was still trying to recover from mind numbing agony, the Southerner
freed his member from under his white robe, violently distended her torn labia
with both hands and penetrated her, drooling as she screamed in rage and then
panting heavily as his repeated thrusts wracked her into more bitter screams
as the wounds just healed were torn open again.

Once sated, the Southerner set about laboriously encasing her in a gibbet, a
woman-shaped contraption of metal bands which fit her almost like the suit of
armor she used to wear in battle, although it pinned her arms along her sides
and pushed her thighs uncomfortably apart at the crotch and tight together at
the knee. The gibbet accommodated the iron restraints she had been wearing for
some days but tormented her as if she had worn her former restraints for
months, latching onto the serrated bands at the base of her breasts and the
crushing cuffs at her ankles and wrists.

He lowered four thin chains from the ceiling, winding two under her crotch and
two under her armpits, sliding them through rings obviously purposely built
in the device. When he pulled the chains, her head jerked in a scream as pain
exploded in her dislocated joints when the chains pulled on the articulated
frame, tearing her arms and hips sideways out of their sockets. Unable to
afford the slightest movement, she could only shake her head in screaming pain
as her joints teetered and grated under her own weight.

Her anguish continued as the arm holding the chains was rotated, causing her
to rock back and forth in mounting agony until the movement left her dangling
over a pit in the floor. As her oscillations diminished, the torment of her
joints receded somewhat, enough to allow her to notice that he was fastening
folds of steel mesh to holes in the frame caging her.

It reminded her of chain mail, although more sparse and, as she noticed while
writhing from the pain in her joints, brimming with tiny hooks.  An armor it
was not, nor was it a dress, but she incongruously thought that it was the
first time she was being dressed instead of stripped - before a shiver crept
in her thoughts as she caught the squeaking of rats from below her feet.

After encasing her from the neck down in folds of barbed mesh, leaving only
her feet exposed, the Southerner lowered her slowly into the pit, his gaze
savoring how despair and terror overcame pain on her face.

A scream of harsh pain contorted the same face as she found out that the rats
were hungry. Her tormentor's gaze lingered on her body writhing inside the
metal frame, watching as her supple legs twitched spasmodically, straining
against the unyielding metal frame.

She kept screaming as the hungry rats bit her trapped feet, and her feet only,
avoiding the barbed mesh. She almost failed to notice the pain from the
scratches caused by the barbs, because the agony of the bites to her feet was
excruciating. The rats were small, but bit with ravenous hunger, ripping off
morsels of bleeding flesh while her constricted body was wracked by demented
howls of searing pain, even when he pulled her up to let her suffer the full
measure of pain from each bite before slowly lowering her back.

This torment continued between harrowing screams until the bites mauling her
twitching feet grew from dozens to so many that bone gleamed white in places,
at which he kept her above water and started wrapping her feet in barbed mesh
taken from her quivering legs, laughing as harsh screams shook her.

To her horror, he lowered her thus, with her supple legs exposed, except for
the steel bands, to the ravenous bites. The pitiful begging that was bubbling
in her mouth almost forced its way beyond the last tatters of her resolve, but
was washed away by a bellow of pure agony as new bites found their mark.

If the torment of her feet had been harrowing, the agonies of the assault on
her legs amply surpassed it. He kept it up far longer, pulling her up and
alternating splashes of icy water with generous sips from the jug to prevent
her from slipping into obliviousness, never allowing the pain to subside while
keeping a sharp eye on the ever growing number of bites which marred her
flesh, in some places to the bone. He had even left the mesh over the places
where blood vessels ran just below the skin.

As if this was not enough, the barbed mesh raked the ugly wounds in her feet
at her slightest movement, wrenching harsh screams from her sore mouth after
the fits of howling torment caused by a bite or the stabs of white hot agony
from her dislocated joints.

Just as she was about to be dropped in the pit again Zhorun, who had been
watching intently, suddenly snapped into a flurry of waving hands which
resulted in a halo of shadows gathering around him, a spell of protection
woven just as a disembodied feminine face took shape from the wisps of smoke
put forth by torches and braziers.

"I bow before thee, Master Zhorun," said Shandra's likeness in wisps of smoke.

"From a safe distance, I gather", answered the corpse.

"Discretion is the better part of valor, Master. The life of those versed in
the Art is not to be squandered", she replied.

"Sorcerers say that life is the Art. Wizards have always known that it's the
other way around, that the Art is life, and I am proof", whispered Zhorun.

"I acknowledge the limitation of my ways. That's because I lay before thy
scrutiny my petition for apprenticeship," said the female face.

"You want to become ... my apprentice ?", shrieked Zhorun's grating voice.

"Indeed, and not without consideration. I bear no illusions about what I will
have to do before gaining thy trust, nor about how sleepless and populated by
phantoms of guilt my nights will be, but ..."

"... but the Art at my command is worth the price."

"As you might remember, I have been seeking it on my own for some time. I come
to be taught, Master" said the face, using the words apprentices had been
using for centuries when seeking the teachings of their betters.

"And teaching you'll receive. What will you bring ?" whispered the corpse, not
even attempting to conceal the chilling glee in his netherwordly voice.

"Dedication, diligence, and ... obedience," said Shandra's voice, picking one
of the most common answers allowed by tradition.

"Shandra ... is it you ? What are doing ?" whispered Kayleen's hoarse voice,
from pits of anguish which had taken time to climb.

"Something beyond your comprehension, Kayleen. I was told she is being
questioned about my whereabouts, Master. I venture to say this is no longer
necessary, is it ?" said the face, the voice tinged by anxiety.

"It is a poor apprentice which demands to know his Master's motives even
before being tested. Besides, you took something from me"

"I'll return the prisoner, if this is your wish. I respectfully observe that
what may have been necessary no longer is, Master. You won"

"Shandra, don't. He'll kill you" croaked Kayleen, coughing blood.

"Shandra the Sorceress, I shall devise a test for thy apprenticeship. Should
thou show dedication, diligence and obedience in passing it, I shall accept
thee as my apprentice, and as such thou shalt be regarded until no further
teaching thou would gather," answered Zhorun in acceptance.

"I'll be there before sunset," said the face in the smoke as it faded and
dissolved while Kayleen cried bitterly between gasps, too lost in her anguish
to fully comprehend what had been said and not ready to accept that the friend
she had endured so many days of horrid agonies for ... had betrayed them all.

"Continue her interrogation, Hadrad. The whereabouts of my new apprentice are
still of utmost interest to me," whispered Zhorun.

A gleeful smile erased concern from the Southerner's old face as he dropped
Kayleen in the pit again, ready to savor the howls and twitches which started
rattling the gibbet while he drank the intoxicating elixir of her agony after
fearing that it would be denied to him by the sudden twist of events.

He was very proud of this torment he had devised, originally intended for
executions but where adept use of the barbed mesh allowed the pain to be
parceled and restricted to selected parts of the body, although it made
availing himself of female victims extremely impractical. If the rats were
hungry enough, they fought with each other as much as they bit the exposed
flesh, protracting the torment. It took experience to realize how the bite
wounds, apparently harrowing, were actually rather shallow. The sight of her
head jerking in a bitter scream as a rat bit the front of her leg, gnawing the
bone, was also an experience he would remember fondly.
It was time to move to more delectable places of the body, so he pulled her
out and wrapped her legs in barbed mesh, watching her scream as the folds
removed from her hands and arms wrought their raking agony on her horribly
mauled legs, turning red as blood seeped through. Her continued screaming made
pouring the contents of a potion down her throat difficult, although she
desperately craved every drop, and the liquid curtailed her profuse bleeding,
leaving her at the mercy of the barbs.

The brief respite allowed Kayleen's mind to return to the conversation she had
just witnessed, clinging at Shandra's attempt to have Zhorun dismiss her
torture as no longer needed. A sparkle of hope warmed her, because now her
plight was known, and a rescue would being staged. Shandra had probably hoped
to buy some time, a smart move from a woman prone to act directly.

The sharp pain of a bite on her middle finger interrupted her thoughts,
bringing her back into this antechamber of hell from which Shandra's newfound
astuteness had failed to deliver her. The thought of withstanding this and any
subsequent ordeal to help the Sorceress had crossed her mind, but her former
words of bravery paled before the screams escaping her mouth now. The torment
wrought on her fingers was the worst, with the sharp teeth shredding flesh and
scraping bone in spite of her twitching attempts to fend them off, and he
repeatedly lowered her just enough to let the rats gnaw at them.

She found herself sipping from the jug, chewing words between harsh screams
as if to say that she would not beg for mercy. Her mind returned in horror at
the first days of her ordeal, when the words she uttered in her agony had led
Lyral's capture. Somehow her help, or guilt at how she had suffered because
of those words, had prevented this from happening thereafter, until now.
Slowly, a shudder crept over her as barbs which hurt like knives raked the
wounds in her arms while her buttocks were stripped of mesh.

The subsequent agony of flesh was on par with the agonies of bone visited on
her thus far, and her voice rose to heights of delirious agony which even her
tormentor would rank as the most delicious he had witnessed. Bite after bite,
with frequent pauses which only offered a lesser degree of anguish, ugly raw
wounds slowly shredded her buttocks, mostly shallow but some deep where
already bitten flesh was available for the appetite of the rats.

She was bleeding so profusely that when he finally started wrapping folds
above her shredded buttocks she expected a potion, but none was forthcoming
and her tormentor was now removing mesh from her trembling thighs. At the
thought of of her thighs suffering what had been visited on her buttocks,
words rushed from her mouth in panic.

"No, please! Mercy! Enough, please!"

"Tell us where the Sorceress hides, girl" said Grod, almost with relief.

But Kayleen's gaze, wandering on the floor between a veil of tears, discovered
a rag which had once been white, forgotten for days: the remnants of Lyral's
white robe, stripped upon being brought to this place of agony because of a
weakness Kayleen could not suppress.

"Well ?", asked Grod, incredulous.

"She did it again, Grod. She probably thinks she's so smarter than us all, you
know, pretending to talk like this," said the Southerner.

"Indeed. Continue, Hadrad", whispered the wizard menacingly.

A wail surged from Kayleen's mouth as she was lowered in the pit, and pain
replaced again dread and exhaustion in her voice as the rats in the water got
at the tender flesh of her thighs, wracking her twitching body in brief
frenzies of harrowing torment which the Southerner engendered by pulling her
above water up to the knees, leaving the rodents swim near her legs which the
barbs still tormented, causing them to twitch and bleed maddening the rats
into a ravenous gluttony which the mesh defied - until she was lowered again.

When the mauling of her thighs reached a point where little skin had been
spared, leaving bleeding bite wounds where raw flesh pulsated as her muscles
twitched spasmodically, he brought a potion to her lips, watching intently
its effects while she drank it in desperate gurgles. As he had hoped, the
healing magic first addressed blood loss, bringing the edges of cuts to close
and a crust to form where the flesh had been bitten away.

Wishing he could cause her nails and pubic hair to grow back without healing
the rest of her wounds first, he stopped her potion intake as soon as he saw
that her legs were no longer shredded to the point of being of imminent danger
to her life, smiling at the thought of how they hurt.

The harrowing torture was repeated with her back, from which the mesh was
removed only partially, because exposing a large area would allow many rats to
bite her at the same time. Confident in how the potion had renewed her
endurance, he protracted her agony in the water longer than with her thighs,
watching her face contort in pain as the rats bit her left kidney area, right
ribcage and left shoulder blade in a frenzy of ravenous torment.

In the brief moments where her anguish did not include the laceration of flesh
by sharp incisors, her gaze wandered in search of the rag which had been
Lyral's dress. She wished she could find in the rag some of her lost resolve
again, but however much she craved it, the continued bites in her back, whose
other half had been exposed after the first had been thoroughly mauled, always
jerked her gaze up while her mouth distended in howls of agonizing torment.

Such was the pain of the barbed mesh in her back that it took her time to
realize in horror that it was being taken from her breasts. As he clamped her
nipples, the corners of her tormentor's leering smile curved up when that
terror showed on her face, and his eyes sought hers to drink that most
exalting wine through them.

"She's at it again, Master. I can see it in her eyes," said the Southerner,
moments before she started to beg.

"Ignore her pleads, my esteemed guest. Continue with the rigor her insolence
warrants," hissed Zhorun while Kayleen's mouth opened to utter words which
turned to a scream when she was dropped in the pit again.

The Southerner made sure she could never utter those pleads, keeping her at
bite range except for brief instants of little respite between atrocious
stretches of relentless mauling as morsels were torn from her breasts while
she howled in fits of demented agony. To protract the torment, he had left
the mesh on about half of each breast and changed it frequently so that the
barbs raked fresh wounds while the rest of the breast was repeatedly bitten.

To prevent her nipples from being ripped from her chest, he had clamped them,
but the rats still chewed the nubs of flesh as he had undoubtedly planned and
her mouth almost dislocated as she screamed from the excruciating pain, the
tendons of her neck straining while bloody foam bubbled at the corners of her
mouth while the rats crowded around her half immersed mounds, chewing bleeding
gashes in them which caused her to convulse in mad pain.

She was lowered in the pit over and over, each time leaving her to the rats
enough for her to progress from a couple of exhausted screams to terrified
howls of hellish agony as more rats joined in, after which she was partially
pulled up and left to rattle the gibbet in desperate pain until those rats
which hung on fell down when opening their mouths to bite again, while the
rest circled in the water, unable to climb because of the barbed mesh.

She was given a few sips from the potion, barely enough for the worst wounds
to stop bleeding, and then lowered in the pit again, leaving her breasts just
above water so rats had to jump to bite and would hang onto her ripped flesh,
jerking while she rattled the gibbet in convulsed agony. Each time the cruel
game was repeated, it took more of the potion to address the horrid wounds.

When he gave her a dose of syrupy liquid instead of potion she wailed in mad
despair, guessing at what would come next mere moments before he started
removing the mesh which had scratched the tender parts between the legs but
also preserved them from the rats. Terror shook her scream when he clamped her
clitoris, elongating it between the iron jaws to make it a more tempting
morsel for the ravenous rodents. He also inserted curved steel bars in her
ass and inside her vagina, stretching them both painfully.

When she was lowered in water, the mounting agony of her mauled flesh writhing
under the merciless raking of the barbed mesh wracked her body and surged in
fits of bitter screaming, which became gut-wrenching howls when her crotch
reached water level and the rats crowded on the exposed flesh.

The first bite was on her labia, followed by a second on the clitoris, and
by others, but the exposed area was small and the rats fought between them so
that instead of a frenzied assault her torture was protracted in long streaks
of atrocious agony interspersed by brief moments of respite brought by a sip of
the potion, administered when the bleeding from the ghastly wounds became
excessive. Each bite was a flash a devastating agony which kept flaring until
the rodent managed to actually tear the morsel off, after gnawing the flesh
being ripped back and forth as she twitched and jerked in fits of spasmodic
torment and howling agony.

As the torture continued, a rat who could not get to chew the flesh whose
blood slipped underwater and found her sphincter, distended open by the curved
bars to facilitate entry. A new agony shook her as the rat chewed its way in,
shaking her in bleeding frenzies of a torment which did not stop when she was
pulled up and which the potion soothed only temporarily.

After over a dozen sips from the potion, he pulled the three bars in her
vagina wider before dropping her in the pit again and listening to her pitiful
screams, smiling when pitched howls told him that the rats had finally found
the prize he wanted them to find. He kept her at their mercy, watching her
face contort in desperate howls of atrocious pain, foaming at the mouth and
shaking her head mindlessly between convulsed twitches of harrowing torment.
The horrid torment continued, alternating frenzies of atrocious agony with the
protracted anguish of dislocated joins and wounds raked through by her
convulsed jerks, until even full gulps of potion could no longer address the
extent of her wounds. After a glance at Grod, he rotated the arm holding the
gibbet and lowered her on the floor.

Grod brought another potion to her lips, letting her consume it slowly and
inspecting the bleeding bite wounds under the barbed mesh, making sure the
worst were receding in spite of her gasping cries. It took him a while to
extricate the quivering Kayleen from the gibbet, and he was about to give her
another potion when Zhorun spoke.

"Later, Grod. Her interrogation is not over yet,"

For a moment, it looked like Grod was about to say something. Instead, he
tightened the collar around her neck and dragged her to a corner she
recognized with a gasp, where the wooden wedge on whose bloodstained tip her
weight had rested for hours stood on a trestle. He fastened the chains hanging
from the pulleys to her elbow and knee bands, and as her weight rested on her
dislocated joints she screamed when he pulled her off the floor, bringing back
to her mind hazy memories of similar agonies. The ever present ache from the
studs in the iron restraints and the crushing grip at her ankles and wrists
made the recollections seem tame in comparison.

He lowered her on the point, letting it distend her sphincter before fastening
chains to her wrists and ankles, pulling her arms up behind her back and her
feet up at chin height so that the wedge entered her bowels at the slightest
squirm, rasping on the partially healed bite wounds inside.

Tears had never left her eyes, because the pain from the bites tormented her
still in spite of the healing, compounding the ache from her restraints, but
they flowed between sobs of bitter despair when she saw him encase her mauled
legs, covered in blood encrusted bites showing bone in places, between supple
wooden planks studded with tiny spikes. Even before he started to screw the
planks closer together, constricting her legs between, she started screaming
and buckling when the spikes raked her partially healed bite wounds, tracing
bleeding cuts through encrusted blood and ripping through raw flesh below.

As he tightened the planks, the spikes not only dug deeper but also shifted
within her twitching muscles, causing her to quiver and twist in screaming
torment, increasing the tearing of her sphincter as her weight shifted on the
merciless wooden tip. Her buckles caused the wood to bend and turn, causing
the points to jitter agonizingly out of seat tearing bleeding gashes through
raw, mauled flesh while harsh screams wracked her heaving chest.

He let her scream herself hoarse, occasionally adjusting the planks while she
buckled in uninterrupted pain, seeking respite from the wedge in her bowels
by pulling on the chains, twitching as her dislocated joins trembled from hot
blazes of agony as this put the strain of her weight on them, grinding the rim
of her nether orifice on the wedge as the bands bent and the spikes lacerated
the raw flesh of her mauled legs. Each torment wrought different pitches of
agony from her voice, from bitter gasps as pain flared in her joints to long,
teetering howls as her legs twitched between the planks.

With glacial slowness, he started encasing her arms in spiked planks, first
the forearms and then the upper arms. As this new pain sent the upper part of
her body jerking, the wedge in her rectum found previously untouched flesh to
torment as her sphincter was steadily being stretched and she could not stop
herself form quivering in trembling pain. Besides, her nostrils had caught
the whiff of iron being heated, and the fear of agonies which she knew from
repeated experience rose behind her pitiful screams, a fear which a sip from
the jug fanned as the syrupy liquid brought her drug induced strength.

While she twitched on the wedge, staining it with the blood trickling from her
bowels and the torn rim of her sphincter, he neared a brazier and picked up a
pair of small iron pliers, to confirm that the flattened heads were red hot.
With an impenetrable expression worthy of the Easterner standing nearby, he
used a pair of wooden pliers to grab the lacerated edges of a deep bite in her
right breast and sear them together with the red hot pliers.

A gut-wrenching scream burst from Kayleen's mouth, wracking her chest as it
convulsed around her breast pinned in the grip of the pliers while the rest of
her body buckled and twitched, rekindling the pain in her dislocated joints
and the raking of her mauled limbs by the spiked planks shifting in new
positions while her muscles tensed as she arched in agony.

After the briefest respite, he did the same to another nasty bite wound in the
underside of her other breast, pinching the encrusted edges between the red
hot jaws while she howled in mad pain, rattling the trestle onto which the
wedge tormenting her bowels rested. Between tears of anguish, she shook at the
thought of how many bite wounds marked her breasts alone.

The wounds he was tormenting had mostly been healed by the potion, but only to
the point of stopping bleeding with a crust of dried blood and serum, as if
the potion could only achieve in short order what natural body recovery would
take weeks if allowed to continue in spite of blood loss. Even the touch of
the wooden pliers pinching the flesh around each bite wound into a fold was
agonizing, but the searing pain as the red hot iron peeled the crust and
singed the raw flesh beneath before the two edges were forced one against the
other was excruciating to the point of wracking her into fits of howling pain.

After about a dozen cuts in her breasts, he moved to her feet. Although she
thought no pain could be worse than the red hot pliers grip on her lacerated
breasts, when the jaws closed on the throbbing flesh of her mauled soles her
legs betrayed her, jerking madly from the pain and wracking untold pain onto
her hip joints and, as a consequence, mercilessly scraping her distended
rectum as she twitched on the wedge point her weight rested upon.

She screamed madly when he pulled on the chains, lifting her off the blood
stained tip of the wedge and letting her gulp some potion, stuttering as she
hung in mid air with her swollen joints ablaze in hellish torment and the
spiked planks raking her wounded limbs. Without ever lowering her on the
floor, he undid enough of her restraints to twirl her in mid air, letting her
scream from the harsh pain in her shoulder joints as he hacked at the wood
until it brimmed with dents and splinters, which he then smeared with a thick
oily paste using gloves to protect his hands.

In spite of her exhaustion and anguish, in spite of the agony each jerk
brought onto her shoulder joints, she tried to oppose him when he started
guiding her descent so that she would be penetrated by the wedge. The strength
that once had been her pride could not be exerted through dislocated limbs
however, and she only managed to have her love channel scraped by dents and
slivers as the hot pepper in the paste burned skin and raw flesh. Her eyes
caught the Southerner smiling lewdly at her twitching crotch.

He brought the jug to her lips again and then just let her there, sobbing in
misery and occasionally screaming in anguish, slowly sliding down the wedge
which the paste made slippery but which was rasping and scraping her innards
causing her to twist and buckle, unable to prevent herself from wracking her
joints into further agony and the spiked planks from raking her limbs.

"Leave her like this, Grod. I have guests to attend to, but I'll be back as
soon as possible", whispered Zhorun all of a sudden.

Kayleen, lost in her anguish, took time to realize what was going on, but the
three executioners had their ideas.

"I hope we'll have a new subject. I would not mind a redhead, as long as she
is not off limits like the other girl" said the Southerner.

"Don't be silly. She would shrivel your cock and boil your balls before you
got within ten feet. Sorcery is raw magic at its worst," smirked Grod.

"Fire woman dangerous. Rip tongue and cut fingers before," said the Easterner,
visibly surprising Grod with his knowledge of how to contain a magic user.

"If Master won, I go home," he added, hesitantly.

"Myself, as long as I get paid, would not mind staying a bit more", commented
the Southerner, walking around Kayleen's twitching, screaming form, enjoying
the fear his sole presence engendered in the girl, causing her to torment
herself in the effort to follow his movements with eyes wide with fear.

"There's no hurry, Whore Queen. Grod's turn is not over yet, so we'll have to
wait until tomorrow to have you in my care again".

Conversation petered out, and the Southerner kept walking around Kayleen's
buckling form, as if he had something in mind. Kayleen kept alternating harsh
sobs and pitched screams, so overwhelmed by the accumulated pain of the ordeals
inflicted in the last days that she barely retained her sanity. In spite of
the repeated use of potions, blood still oozed from dozens of bite wounds all
over her body, her joints were both swollen and sunken, the dislocated heads
of her bones bulging in awkward misalignment while ligaments and muscles
trembled uncontrollably and the each movement raked the agony of the spikes
in the planks wound around her limbs through new tracts of mauled flesh.

"What ... demented horror is this ?", stammered a new voice, a rich female
voice from the door. Dressed in red and crowned by a mass of fiery red hair,
Shandra the Sorceress stood on the entrance to the torture chamber, her mouth
gaping in a face paler than usual.

"A place where defiance is given its due, my foul-mouthed apprentice,"
screeched Zhorun behind her.

After the frail wizard came two female figures carrying a third by arms and
legs, which Zhorun indicated with his bony finger.

"Grod, pick up our returning guest from the care of her former sisters,"

As Grod neared, the two turned their heads towards him, revealing cadaverous
faces devoid of any sign of life. He stopped, feigning a moment of pondering
but actually unnerved by the servants his master was showing a new propension
for, and uncertain about what to say.

"These two are dead, and pretty much cut up I might add," he whistled.

"I took the time to question them using the techniques I have learned from the
three of you, but lacking your vast experience I overdid it. However, they can
be still put to some use", replied Zhorun, while Shandra's green eyes widened.

"This is the young Priestess ... Lyral, unless I'm mistaken. Is she fair game
this time ?" asked the Southerner, licking his lips.

"Lyral, ... please! Lyral help me, it hurts"; croaked Kayleen's voice, rising
above the harsh sobs of her anguish.

"Her maidenhood must be preserved just like before, my esteemed guest"

"And the redhead here ?", added the swarthy old man, but his lewd smile froze
on his face as Shandra's green eyes flared at him and her hands rose, magic
surging with her fury. Only Zhorun's quick command saved him.

"Hold thy power, apprentice!"

"I heed thy command, Master," said the Sorceress with visible effort.

"You'll have to treat my apprentice with the respect she's due, my esteemed
guest. I will not always be around to stay her wrath," chuckled the corpse.

Meanwhile, Grod had returned with a full set of irons, very similar to those
already worn by Lyral, and a wizard gag. The young girl remained motionless
while her clothes were removed and the restraints applied, and Grod guessed
that she was under some spell of paralyzing which would wear out with time.

"My chief executioner, Grod, should be known to you by fame," continued
Zhorun, speaking between the pauses in Kayleen's bitter screams. "Together
with our guest from the South, Hadrad, and the worthy gentleman from the East,
Chang, they have been questioning our self-appointed Queen."

"Their grisly work is no longer necessary, Master. Even if what she knows had
still value, thy victory is certain by the might of thy magic alone. I saw it
with my own eyes, against the Priestesses," quipped Shandra.

"My power has become great indeed, apprentice, but I'm not done with our
self-appointed Queen just yet. I'll exact her complete submission, from the
full details about her armed forces to her public resignation of the usurped
crown in favor of its legitimate bearer," answered Zhorun.

"Shandra, w .. what are you doing ?" asked Kayleen's hoarse, sobbing voice.

"The magic thou shalt be taught straddles the border between life and death,
and embraces what the living flee in horror from. Tasting what lies on this
border shalt be thy test, my apprentice. If thy obedience, diligence and
dedication in using thy magic to bring about the usurper's submission will
prove thy worthiness, taught thou shalt be then." he continued.

At a gesture from his master, Grod dragged Lyral's limp body into a corner and
returned to heating the pliers in a brazier. Kayleen's eyes widened in fear as
her nostrils caught the horribly familiar smell.

"Shandra! Please, stop them, it hurts ... I can't take any more," she said.

After a quick glance at the sorceresses deathly pale face, Grod reached for
Kayleen's left breast and closed the red hot jaws along the bleeding gash of
a bite wound, turning her harsh sobs into a demented howl as pain radiated
from her breast and shook her whole body, renewing the agony in her joints and
raking new cuts in her constricted, twitching limbs.

The face of the sorceress turned if possible even paler while Kayleen's
pitiful howls continued as her breasts were repeatedly savaged by the red hot
pliers, wincing at the sight of the strong body convulsing in agony on the
cradle whose tip stretched her labia and scraped her insides, as testified by
the blood mixed with the hot paste which had made them purple and swollen.

When he moved to her buttocks, her voice was already hoarse in spite of a long
sip from the jug, and the subsequent screams wrenched from her did not help
the situation. When the jaws seared the bleeding edges of a bite wound in the
tender flesh of her ass cheeks, her efforts to escape the scorching agony only
pushed the tip deeper inside her, causing her labia to slide down and scoop
more of the burning paste, swelling along with her anguish.

He returned to her front, grabbing her left nipple between the red hot jaws
and twisting it while waves of unspeakable agony wracked her convulsing body
as the jaws scorched the lacerations in the tender flesh left by the bites
which only the iron clamps had prevented from ripping the nubs of flesh off
her chest. Now the heat scorched the mutilated flesh in repeated twists of
inhuman torment, wrenching howls of bitter anguish from her torn mouth.

After bringing the jug to her lips again, he grabbed the edges of a nasty bite
in her ribcage and seared them together, watching her contort in screaming
pain while the head of her dislocated thin bones bulged at her hips as her
convulsions had driven the wedge up inside her vagina enough to bulge inside
her and tear wounds in the rim of her vagina.

Slowly, meticulously keeping the pliers red hot, he took to grabbing the edges
of bite wounds in her chest and belly and pulling them together and down, so
that she impaled her further on the wooden wedge and the agony from the
scraped innards and the burning paste mounted on par with the howling pain
from the red hot jaws themselves. Where the wounds had been healed only in
part, the jaws shredded the encrusted blood and singed raw flesh, pulling
pitched howls of demented agony from her foaming mouth.

Since her thighs had been tightly encased between spiked planks, the wedge had
entered her vagina obliquely, distending the cleft at its top and then tearing
it slowly open, ripping through tissue which had been subjected to the horrid
laceration before and never fully healed since. Now it was wide enough to
push her shin bones sideways and bathe her clamped clitoris in the burning
paste, causing her to wail and scream dementedly as the agony was overwhelming
even when the red hot jaws let her alone.

She sputtered when the jug was brought to her lips again, trashing her head in
agony and craving the soothing of even a drop of healing potion, then gurgled
in horrid torment when the jaws pulled on a bite wound under her left breast,
her jerks strong enough to rattle the chains holding her wrists up behind her
back. After witnessing over a dozen times the grabbing of the tender flesh
under her friend's firm breasts, Shandra seemed on the point of speaking up,
then her gaze wandered in the room and she bit her lip.

Kayleen's raucous voice surged past the foam in her mouth finding new pitches
of howling torment when the red hot jaws closed on her clitoris, still clamped
from her ordeal in the rat pit, crushing it against the wood while the paste
bubbled under the heat and the tender flesh curled and charred between howls
of uninterrupted agony. She drank avidly from the jug when she was offered it,
out of her mind with pain, and returned to screaming when the red hot jaws
closed again on the purplish piece of clamped flesh.

As Grod alternated the red hot pliers between Kayleen's nipples and clitoris,
pulling and twisting to protract her howling frenzies of mad agony, Shandra
repeatedly brought her hands against her own nipples, wincing, apparently on
the verge of puking at least twice. But even as Kayleen's screams became
horrid wheezing howls of demented torment, as the repeated crushing between
jaws of red hot iron had left little but blistered tatters of raw flesh, she
was obviously trying her best to keep her sickly pale face impassible.

She failed when, after repeated pulling and twisting, the clamp fell from
Kayleen's left nipple, revealing a scorched tatter of purplish raw flesh onto
which the clamp no longer held. Shandra's shriek could barely be heard under
the uninterrupted howls surging from Kayleen's mouth, but Zhorun noticed it
and gestured to Grod to continue.

Kayleen's screaming agony continued, her body convulsing in mad pain on the
wedge and wracking bitter agonies in her dislocated joints while the red hot
pliers seared the edges of more bite wounds in her breasts, but she was
visibly nearing the point where further pain would be of little effectiveness.
Grod wrenched the last drops of howling torment from her twitching body by
grabbing her swollen labia between the red hot jaws, pushing the lower jaw
inside the wood before crushing the flesh between red hot iron and splintering
charred wood, but after a while even thus crushing her shredded clitoris only
obtained pitiful wheezing screams of mindless anguish.

"The interrogation can be suspended," said Zhorun, "Let my apprentice see how
such pauses should not be construed as a reward for defiance, since I have no
endeavors for her today. We'll begin again tomorrow morning."

Chapter 24 - Shriveling Hopes

For the first time after many days, a light shone in the torture chamber under
the ruins of Zhorun's castle. A reddish glow emanating from Shandra's hands
shone on Kayleen's tormented body. She hung upside down from a chain fastened
to her left ankle cuff, and her weight exacerbated the pain from the tight iron
and the studs placed to torment the ankle. A long oblique pole jutted from the
wall nearby and impaled her vagina, forcing her to angle her loins to lessen
the painful intrusion. Her other leg had been braided around the pole,
fastening the ankle to the iron ring under her left knee.

The worst of her agony, however, was not originated by her legs, nor by the
pole. Her left arm had been wound down behind her neck, and the right arm
twisted up behind her back, pulling the wrists close until they could be cuffed
together. It was almost a parody of the gesture which warriors used to draw a
sword carried on the back, but it caused a terrible strain in her muscles and
untold agonies in her dislocated shoulder joints. Even the serrated rings
constricting the base of her breasts were a nuisance in comparison.

The Sorceress had witnessed the preparation of her ordeal without a word, just
as she had watched without a word when the Southerner had violated Kayleen's
ass after she had been taken down from the cradle. She had waited silently
until the three torturers left, not sure about the latitude allowed to their
Master's apprentice after she showed no sign of following them.

"Shandra, please ... bring me down. It hurts, please." said Kayleen, starting
to come back to herself after being lost in numbing pain.

"I cannot, Kayleen" whispered the red-haired woman.

"Please, I can't ..." croaked Kayleen, her words ending in a scream.

"I am not here to oppose Zhorun. He won. He has become the mightiest mage ever
known, and ... I've asked to become his apprentice."

"Apprentice ? Shandra, I have been tortured for days because I refused him the
location of your place!" gurgled Kayleen, shaking violently.

"Lyral told me. I had hoped that with his victory Zhorun would no longer need
anything from you, but I was mistaken."

"Nothing," sobbed Kayleen, "I should just betray my soldiers and my people,
like you betrayed ..." A harsh cry prevented her from continuing.

"I am not happy about this, Kayleen. But magic defines a Sorcerer, and its toll
is sometimes steep. I helped you in the past, and I do not regret that. Now our
goals set us on different paths, and I know I am going to regret what I will
have to do to follow mine." she said with a sigh.

"There's no way to soften it, Kayleen. I will be asked to join them in
torturing you. Maybe in keeping you alive, although I guess only if Lyral does
not, since they wanted her back."

"You ... brought Lyral back into their hands ?", asked Kayleen.

"Zhorun would not have accepted otherwise" answered the red-haired woman.

For once, Kayleen's voice found again the strength of the former Warrior Queen
in addressing her former friend.

"May you live through hells ten times worse those I withstood on your behalf,
Shandra, and never attain the wretched prize you sold yourself for."

With a sigh the Sorceress left, taking the reddish light with her and plunging
the chamber in darkness. She winced hearing a bitter scream from her former
friend just before she closed the doors behind her.

In the chamber, Kayleen hung in pain, trembling from the ache in her shoulders
and occasionally quivering as her attempts to find a less painful position
stirred the wedge in her orifice or rattled her hip joint, wrenching harsh
gasps from her sore mouth. For an indeterminate amount of time, when lapses in
her torment allowed her mind to clear, she would curse her former friend.

"Kayleen ?" asked a young voice in the darkness.

"Lyral ? Thanks heaven, Lyral! I am almost mad with pain, ... help me." asked
Kayleen, pausing after rushing her first words.

"I wish I could, but I am chained to the wall, Kayleen. Maybe they'll allow me
to heal you tomorrow, like last time," said the young voice.

"Lyral, forgive me ... it hurts so much. I am ashamed ... you're back to hell
and my first thought has been ..."

"Don't ever say it, Kayleen. In your place, I would have done worse. I would
have betrayed you, my sisters, everybody, anything as long as they stopped the
torture. Your bravery has been beyond comparison,"

"It has all been in vain. You are a prisoner, Shandra betrayed us all for her
own perverted ends, and Zhorun will crush the whole kingdom under his heel
again," said Kayleen between brief, bitter cries.

"You make me afraid, Kayleen. What will be of me if you crumble ?"

Something clicked in Kayleen's mind. Zhorun had wanted Lyral back so that her
healing power could offset the damage from the torture. Potions did not cut it,
as she could testify, and Zhorun's supply would not last forever. The moment
he obtained her own submission, Lyral would become a toy for the swarthy old
pig to rape at leisure. The thought of her young friend being subjected to the
horrors the Southerner found pleasurable chilled her to the bone.

"I told you already, Lyral. I won't give up. But the toll is heavy," she said,
hoping that her words were enough, since her friend was sobbing softly.

During the rest of the night, she made an effort to stifle her screams of pain,
although the accursed spider gag which stretched her mouth wide open,
lacerated the corners and scratched her cheeks made it difficult. Lyral was
singing something under her breath, whose words Kayleen could not discern, but
which soothed her anguish somewhat. Somewhere between gratitude, hatred and
duty she would have to find some of her resolve again.

When morning came, Shandra entered after Zhorun. Grod lowered Kayleen on the
floor while the Southerner brought Lyral before Zhorun. The young Priestess
managed to ignore the old man, who used to scare her witless, because she had
eyes only for her poor friend. Torchlight revealed that Kayleen's formerly
stunning beauty had been horridly ravaged, with her body covered with ghastly
bite wounds and purple, oozing burns while her joints were swollen to almost
twice their size and her crotch was horribly battered and bleeding. Two shreds
of raw burned flesh oozed on top of the mauled mounds on her chest, and her
muscles trembled intermittently.

"May I heal her ?" she asked, her lip trembling, watching Zhorun. He nodded.

She crawled near her friend, turned to bring her hands onto her face and
concentrated. Almost immediately, a deep sigh coursed through Kayleen's body
as her wounds receded slowly. Lyral caressed her friend, muttering under her
breath continuing the healing process. She trembled when Kayleen's lips
brushed against her arms in anguished gratitude, fighting to hide her tears.

"Be strong, Kayleen. I'll be with you to the end," she whispered softly.

The Southerner waited for the blonde beauty to be fully healed, up to the
restoration of her pubic hair, then grabbed Kayleen's ankle cuffs and fastened
them to chains, pulling her off the floor, her legs spread taut. Grod
blindfolded Lyral, ignoring her pleads, and left her on the floor arched in a
savage hogtie. Kayleen's wrists and elbows were cuffed together behind her
back, then the swarthy old man fetched a thick braided whip.

The old man sent the whip across Kayleen's stretched buttocks, leaving an
angry welt and causing her to rattle her chains and arch between harsh gasps.
A second lash immediately followed, tracing a ragged purple stripe across her
firm breasts while she hissed in pain. Shandra stood silent.

With cruel abandon, the Southerner whipped Kayleen's writhing body, wrenching
harsh gasps and bitter cries from her mouth as her renewed health was again
confronted with pain. His aim was spotless, and angry welts accumulated on
Kayleen's thighs, buttocks and breasts. When the whip cut into her slit, a
scream surged from her mouth while her blonde mane shook in agony.

The untiring barrage was striping Kayleen's writhing body with purple welts,
some of which bled where another lash had crossed the first, wrenching harsh
gasps and brief screams from her mouth. When her labia and clitoris were
targeted, all could hear true agony creep in her howls.

At a gesture from Zhorun, the whipping stopped and Grod neared, tightened the
collar crushing Kayleen's windpipe, and dragged her to another torture device.
Kayleen had been forced to straddle wooden rails before, but this one
consisted of two iron plates forming a wedge, and as she was forced to
straddle it she noticed with a cry that the plates were set with small spikes.

He left her elbows cuffed together behind her back, but freed her wrists,
fastening them to chains from the ceiling. Her lip trembled when he placed her
breasts between the spiked jaws of a heavy breast press, to which he fastened
the chains which ran through pulleys to her wrists. When her ankles were
pulled off the floor and fastened to the back of the device, she soon found
herself forced to spread her thighs wide to avoid the spikes, sawing her slit
onto the edge of the iron planks which soon became stained with her blood.

Grod shortened the chains at her wrists so that her breasts were pulled up
painfully, forcing her arms to twist into a hitherto undiscovered source of
agony if she wanted to save her breasts from the crushing bite of the vise.

The torment in her slit and breasts was enough to wrench occasional harsh
screams from her, but the worst was about to come. Grod fetched a brazier and
placed it under the iron plates, then tightened the vise around her breasts
causing her to howl in agony as the spikes drew blood.

Her screams continued as she jerked her chest left and right, trashing madly
at the mauling of her breasts, but over time a new horror crept in her face as
the plates heated relentlessly, forcing her to flail her thighs in the vain
attempt to offset her fate. The spikes, whose body reached down into the
brazier, were already red hot, and each time they scraped the inside of her
thighs a howl escaped her mouth and she ground her slit on the edge.

As the heat increased, her efforts became frantic and the red hot spikes cut
shallow sizzling gashes inside her twitching thighs, causing her to trash
wildly and scream in bitter despair as the progression of her torment appeared
in all its deviousness. She lacked leverage to lift off the device, and soon
the heat would slowly scorch her bleeding sex.

She tried to push on the cuffs around her ankles, which had been fastened to
the rear of the device to pull her feet off the floor, but the legs had been
forced to fold and she only managed to push herself a few inches forward along
the edge, sawing the metal through her slit with a scream of quivering agony.

In her wild flailing, she realized that by exerting her arms she could pull on
the vise constricting her breasts, gaining a fraction of an inch of respite
for her singed slit at the expense of having her breasts ripped by the spikes
in the vise. She tried once, then twice, but soon the agony in the bleeding
breasts surpassed the searing pain between her legs and she let go, howling
upon contact with the hot iron.

New howls surged from her mouth once Grod started dragging a curved red hot
iron along the folds of her soles, scorching them piecewise while the agony
between her legs and on her breasts increased mercilessly. He also moved the
iron to her back, forcing her to lean forward, increasing the weight on her
breasts and forcing her to spread her thighs even wider.

The iron plates were now a dull red, and her screams an uninterrupted litany
of mad pain. She clenched her fists to pull on the breast vise, shredding her
bleeding breasts between howls of demented tormented, just to gain whatever
respite she could for her singed slit, where purple swaths of oozing skin
crisscrossed the soft flesh. In places, raw flesh already showed where the
skin had stuck to the red hot iron.

When the pain in her breasts became unbearable, her arms gave, and she fell on
the red hot edge with a tortured wail which rose to a pitch of howling torment
as her thighs were pierced by the spikes again, causing her to jerk them up
like wings bringing her weight to bear on the edge scorching her slit.

Grod poured the contents of the jug down her through, continuing in spite of
her sputtering as she choked in pain, listening as her repeated flailing
furthered her agonies and the burns between her labia turned to angry, oozing
blisters which burst when her arms gave and she dragged her raw flesh on the
red hot edge in frenzies of harrowing torment.

Her agony continued unabated as she kept writhing on the edge, screaming in
pain as the heat burned new blisters between her labia and the vise bloodily
savaged her purplish breasts. Grod had to repeatedly douse her with cold water
and pour the contents of the jug down her screaming mouth to keep her from
sliding into shock as her crotch was slowly scorched and peeled off.

Almost casually, Grod produced a pair of copper hooks which he slowly drove
through her nipples, causing her to buckle and scream as the new torment for a
moment surpassed the blistering agony in her slit. The hooks were connected to
long copper chains which he wound under the plates. He then released her ankle
cuffs, bending her legs behind her and pulling the ankle cuffs back until they
could be fastened to the copper chains pulled through holes in the plates.

Almost immediately, the pitch of Kayleen's screams changed because now each
convulsed twitch from her legs, especially when her thighs twitched from the
agony of the red hot spikes, pulled on the hooks, sending white hot blazes of
pain radiating from her distorted nipples. To prevent her increasingly
desperate jerks from ripping her nipples off, he used pliers to tighten iron
clamps on the elongated nubs of feminine flesh.

As the scorching of her femininity had seen no interruption, her agony was
leaping beyond the bounds of human endurance. Previous applications of fire
had been intermittent, but even restored to full health she could not endure
the torment wrought on her. When she tasted the healing potion in her mouth,
the soothing of her scorched flesh turned to dismay as she realized how her
tormentor had chosen to protract her torture, and the stabbing pain of hooks
stretching her clitoris confirmed her fears.

While she tried to preserve the temporarily restored flesh between her labia,
Grod reached for a screw on the front of the device and started twisting it,
causing a wickedly serrated steel rail to rise between the plates, already red
hot from having been near the brazier. She tried to pull herself away from the
cutting dents which drew blood from her blistered innards, screaming madly in
the vain effort to stay away before falling back with a squirt of blood as her
chest was wracked by howls of hopeless anguish.

If the agonies of the red hot plates had been harrowing, the dents in the
serrated edge introduced a new depth of horror. The slightest move raked the
red hot protrusions across blistered skin and raw flesh, and the incessant
torment in her thighs, breasts and nipples provided uninterrupted causes for
convulsed jerks of desperate agony. Her voice waned and waxed in howls of raw
pain, and blood from the cuts sizzled on the red hot iron plates.

Kayleen's eyes sought between tears Lyral's pale body, but focused on a mass
of red hairs and a pale face instead. With seething rage, she watched her
former friend strain to keep her horror hidden. As her head jerked up in a
scream when a red hot dent lacerated her inner labia again, any consideration
of how her former friend had put herself in a situation beyond her herself was
melted as the searing of her femininity fueled bitter hatred.

As her agony on the serrated edge continued, it took her time to realize that
a new pain was mounting, because the heat caught by the chains ended up making
the hooks in her nipples searing hot. Her jaw set between desperate howls, and
for a moment it looked like she could bend the steel of her spider gag, but
she only managed to arch in convulsed agony in the vain effort to rip the
hooks from her nipples before falling back on the dented edge with a tortured
scream of pitiful agony as she twisted her pelvis left and right, bringing her
thighs repeatedly at the mercy of the red hot spikes.

Just as she thought that no torment could be worse than the continued
shredding of her crotch by the red hot dented edge, Grod cranked something
under her and she felt in horror a red hot metal tip rising between the
plates, pushing into her sphincter whose skin stuck to the searing surface
causing her to pull madly on her nipples, her fists clenching in the effort to
distance her sphincter from the rising intruder tormenting it.

As the iron pole slowly rose to impale her, her howls rose under the vaults of
the torture chamber as her breasts distended into cones of bleeding agony
under the pull of her own mad jerks. The pole had ridges and spikes, and was
meant to rake and wound rather than distend, so when she could no longer hold
herself up, she fell down on its full length with a pitiful howl of defeat and
found the red hot dented edge ready to shred her femininity again.

She was given some drops of potion, which she tried to swallow between mad
screams as the torment of her bowels continued unabated, and the repeated
splashes with cold water eased her torment somewhat as they momentarily cooled
the device, but she was never once given further respite from the scorching
and shredding of her feminine flesh, which was cut through each time she fell
down from her trembling attempts to distance herself from the heat.

Her torment continued in spite of her rapidly dwindling endurance, of the
horrible agony in the crushed and torn breasts which after repeatedly bearing
her weight had been flattened to purple masses of raw agony which the spikes
ran through to scrape the wood on the opposite ends of the vise, of the
savage torment of her nipples as the blood sizzled on the red hot copper of
the hooks. Her crotch was crisscrossed by angry burns and oozing blisters
which the dented edges had repeatedly lacerated, and the spiked pole in her
bowels burned her flesh relentlessly as the last remnants of her voice surged
from her mouth in desperate howls of unparalleled anguish.

Just as the hooks in her clitoris became searing hot, Grod cranked something
under her again and a second red hot pole rose, pushing the iron plates aside
and making her stretch her thighs spasmodically to escape the spikes, although
she no longer had the strength to pull herself up and could only tremble and
twitch as the pole penetrated her, pushing aside the shreds of her labia
while its red hot spikes tore bleeding gashes inside her, wracking her sweat
soaked body into frenzies of convulsed howling as the torment reached heights
she had not imagined even in her worst nightmares.

With two red hot poles in her orifices, it took repeated doses of potion and
sips from the jug to keep her on the peak of agony, forcing her to lacerate
her nipples and clitoris in the desperate effort to remove the sizzling hooks
which had been solidly clamped in place. Now her thighs had little to nothing
room left to distance the red hot spikes, but the blood from the cuts inside
the thighs was but a fraction of what sizzled on the red hot edge as her
bowels and womb were being shredded while she jerked in spasmodic torment,
impaled on the spiked red hot poles. Her voice rose in pitched howls which
turned into wheezing fits of inarticulate gurgling, and spasms of agony
wracked her trembling body while foam bubbled in her mouth as she tried to
articulate a plea, calling for Lyral's soothing touch.

In spite of the uninterrupted torment, something in her still managed to hold
on, sustained by the thought of her last friend's fate and by blasts of hatred
for her tormentors. The Southerner was becoming restless, but disentangling
her quivering body from the device took quite some time, and Grod was about to
let her have some potion when the other gestured his disagreement.

He dragged Kayleen to a post, cuffed her elbows and wrists together and forced
her to bend her head until he could fasten both against the post, then cuffed
chains from the ceiling to her ankles and pulled her legs off the floor,
spreading her thighs obscenely before his aroused manhood.

Before a surprised Shandra could say anything, pausing only an instant to
take in Kayleen's muscular back, stretched buttocks and blistered sphincter,
the swarthy old man thrust his member into her scorched, scraped rectum, with
enough force to cause the wooden post to creak, although the noise was
immediately dwarfed by Kayleen's bitter scream.

"This is an accepted method of eliciting cooperation, my apprentice,"
whispered Zhorun, "I expect thee to devise something better."

Kayleen's harsh screams resonated in the torture chamber as the old man's
member raked her scraped and scorched insides, which he had not wanted healed
to savor how his manhood fanned the agony of lacerated flesh anew. His lust
quickly spent, the Southerner nonetheless lingered with his member inside
her bowels, enjoying for a while how his twists caused her further agonies.

After a while, he pulled out and fetched a tray, from which he picked up a
thick needle which he slid under the scorched flesh of Kayleen's left buttock,
pushing it sideways across the muscle while she howled shaking from pain.
When he used pliers to grab the tip of the needle and pull it, everybody
realized that the needle was being used to thread some kind of cord.

Her screams rose to desperate howls as the cord was pulled through the
scorched flesh, because it was knotted at regular intervals and the knots dug
a bloody trace of howling torment through blistered and burned tissue. The jug
was brought to her mouth, and she drank from it between gasps.

Each knotted cord subsequently threaded through her firm buttocks caused her
to madly rattle her chains, while her fingers wriggled helplessly above the
tight wrist cuffs and her toes curled and flexed as unspeakable torment
wracked her convulsing body. As more threads were pulled through the scorched
flesh, her agonies were increased by dragging them back and forth, or by
yanking two or three at the same time to watch her arch in midair, her muscles
rigid in unspeakable torment which could be protracted at leisure.

Cackling softly, he continued threading cords through her firm body, always
pushing the needle through stiff muscle when singed flesh was not available,
then slowly threading the knots one at a time through the wound, listening to
the progression of howls from her mouth as each knot added to the pain. After
her back, he threaded dozens of cords through her strained arms, watching her
long, supple legs rattle the chains holding them while she cried in despair.

The reason of this inspection turned up soon enough, when he started threading
cords through her lower limbs, alternating between the taut muscles of her
legs and the scorched, wounded insides of her thighs, causing her loins to
twitch spasmodically left and right while choked screams wracked her suspended
body as yanking the cords caused the flesh to pull and deform horribly.

Left alone, the cords by themselves would staunch the bleeding somewhat, but
pulling them back and forth as he repeatedly did caused blood to spurt while
unspeakable torment coursed through the wound, causing her voice to rise in
anguished despair followed by fits of choked howling.

She was doused with cold, salt water, causing her new agonies as the salt
seeped in her wounds. Her aroused tormentor, instead of grabbing her hips,
grabbed the ends of cords running through her thighs and pulled to drive his
erect member deep into her scorched rectum again, drooling at the desperate
howl which shook her body as a consequence.

Pulling left and right while he thrust his member violently inside her bowels,
the old man panted and cackled while Kayleen screamed in bitter pain, which
worsened when he pulled out to ream her insides with white powder which dried
them, denying even the respite of lubrication by blood when her rape was
subsequently resumed in earnest and cruelly protracted.

"Our esteemed guest from the South is no longer in his prime, and can use a
little help," commented Zhorun when Shandra noticed the Southerner consuming
something during Kayleen's violation. The explanation left the red-haired
sorceress gaping in disbelief at perversions she never contemplated before.

Panting, the Southerner released Kayleen from her suspension and fastened the
bands at her knees and thighs together before cuffing her ankles to a chain
from the ceiling. Like the wider band at her waist, these tight iron bands
worn without interruption for days had been a constant torment, chafing and
nicking skin and rubbing agonizingly over wounds as they slid over the limbs.

But this was nothing compared to the pain caused when he threaded the cords
running in her thighs and buttocks to those in her legs, shortening them so
that she had to keep her legs partially bent at the knee or have the knotted
cords rip through her flesh, a position sustaining which brought harrowing
screams when he lifted her completely off the floor by her ankles.

He let her hang there, screaming as the least attempt to distend her legs
resulted in devastating pain in her buttocks and thighs. After a while, he
produced a thick wooden pole and started pushing it in her vagina, screwing it
left and right while she howled in demented pain at the violation and at the
tearing of her flesh as keeping her legs bent proved almost beyond her means.

Somehow, she managed to endure the penetration without ripping the cords out
of her buttocks and thighs, although at the price of harrowing fits of
demented howling as the knots coursed back and forth in the wounds. When the
jug was offered to her, she drank avidly between fits of coughing.

The Southerner fetched another needle and slowly pushed it through her
dangling left breast, followed by the knotted cord and making sure to pull
down on it whenever she stopped screaming and convulsing from the pain. One
cord after another, he wound her breasts in a web of bloody torment, which
increased when he started soaking the cord in a powder which caused it to
chafe and burn inside the wounds, bringing her to spasmodic convulsions while
howls of unbridled agony surged uninterruptedly from her foaming mouth.

After both nipples had the fourth cord threaded through their sides,
distorting horribly whenever he yanked on the cords to force her to bend at
the waist in spite of the thick wooden pole impaling her, he straddled her and
grabbed the cords running through her bleeding breasts, pulling her chest up
between his legs and keeping her there, screaming and gurgling with her head
shaking left and right in relentless pain.

With a leer distorted by lust, he slid his erect manhood between her bleeding
breasts and pulled viciously on the cords, shredding the wounds as the knots
coursed through the firm flesh in rhythm with his thrusts. The first of many
desperate howls surged through her mouth as her neck distended in unbridled
agony, her jaw almost dislocating under the waves of torment rising from her
shredded nipples and the tormented flesh of her breasts. As he accompanied
each thrust downward with a pull on the cords, the agony of the knots coursing
inside the wounds in her thighs and buttocks raked her flesh mere moments
before the pain from her distorted breasts joined it, while the same cords
ripped another bit through her flesh each time he let her down.

Although the worst pain came from her nipples, which the knots were literally
shredding from inside between squirts of blood and gut-wrenching howls of mad
torment, he was pleasuring himself by tightening her breasts around his erect
manhood, folding the firm flesh to form a crevice of constricted flesh.

He clamped her nipples to prevent them from being shred to tatters, then kept
up his frenzied thrusts for a long time, tightening his grip on the cords in
search of a release which came only after many knots had ripped through her
breasts and nipples between bloody jerks and screams of desperate agony.

Even after his semen squirted on her neck and face, he continued yanking the
cords to rip more knots through her wounds, smiling while she tried between
screams to spit the drops entering her mouth. When he finally let her go,
hanging upside and swinging slowly, her breasts were crisscrossed by gashes
where the flesh had been ripped through by the cords, and to stop her profuse
bleeding he yanked her head until he brought her back against the face of her
friend, still sobbing from what she had been forced to witness.

The touch was enough to make Lyral tremble in horror, but she concentrated on
her power again, recognizing the need of her friend and conveying her healing
power through the inadequate conduct provided by the lips. Shandra watched
with surprise the horrid tears in Kayleen's breasts recede visibly, although
the nipples were still bleeding because other wounds were being healed.

"Priestly healing is not necessarily appropriate, my apprentice. Sometimes an
executioner would prefer sensitive areas to be restored first, in order to
bring them under duress sooner," quipped Zhorun.

Where the cords still coursed through wounds, Lyral's healing was nullified as
soon as it occurred, but the Southerner kept Kayleen in contact until he saw
her nipples recover, although not long enough to heal fully. Words formed in
Kayleen's mouth, but as she swung back they were drowned by a scream brought
about by the knots coursing again through the wounds in her thighs, and she
forgot them because he started yanking the cords in her breasts, left and
right, causing her to twirl in howling torment.

When he finally let her down, her breasts and nipples bled again, although not
as profusely as before, and he fastened her wrists to the chain, pulling her
arms up behind her back in a position which he had used on her so many times
that she shuddered, sobbing bitterly at the forthcoming pain. He subsequently
pulled her legs up, spreading them wide and fastening her ankles to a wedge
shaped steel bar placed behind her elbows, forcing her to bend at the waist.

To add his own personal touch to a technique he owed to Grod, he undid some of
the cords coursing through her legs to redo them differently, threading longer
cords through her breasts and nipples before reaching between her legs. Her
screams of bitter agony as knots coursed relentlessly inside her wounds raced
after each other when he pushed a needle through her left labia, threading a
cord soaked in caustic powder through the soft flesh, each knot wrenching a
ghastly scream from her torn mouth. The worst came when he threaded thin cords
through her clitoris, raking the knots through her flesh while she gurgled her
agony in desperate frenzies of fitful agony.

When ready, he pulled her off the floor by her wrists, twisting her arms in
their sockets while she cried in pain, and slid under her until his erect
member was placed under her vagina, painfully spread by the knotted cords
coursing through the labia and rim. He lowered her on his member, causing her
to howl like a demented animal because she was sliding down knotted threads
coursing through wounds all over her body, including her nipples and clitoris.
He then tightened the thread around her rim and yanked her up, pulling other
threads running through her breasts to lift her off in a howling jerk followed
by a hoarse scream as she slid down again.

He continued pulling her up and down with demented abandon, causing the cords
to course through her wounds among spurts of blood, distorting her breasts and
ripping the flesh open on each jerk. The knots in the tight ring constricting
her vagina rubbed his manhood through her flesh, bringing him further pleasure
and wreaking unspeakable agonies through her tender femininity. He made sure to
yank the thread occasionally, as it loosened from repeated traction, soaking
the despair this brought to her eyes like the finest of wines.

When he let her down, the orifice curled into folds by the knotted thread was
violently distended by his erect manhood, which found the knobbed grip almost
as pleasurable as her strangled howl of abject pain. The yank on her twisted
shoulder joints was almost forgotten before the agony of having her nipples
and clitoris violently traversed by two or three knots each time. If he had
not clamped them, they would have been shredded after a few pulls.

Under the effect of the drugs, his arousal was inordinately protracted and
quickly restoked, allowing him to enjoy her agonies several times, using the
white powder to dry her insides and wrapping his member in a spiked leather
harness to see her convulse in even more abject agony when he found the need
to compensate the dwindling of his frenzied lust. When he finally let her
down, her bleeding body was shaken by tremors while uninterrupted wheezing
screams surged from her foaming mouth.

The Southerner brought her briefly in contact with Lyral's lips again,
watching her wounds recede and proceeding to remove the cords, causing her to
scream again in demented pain, before letting Lyral heal her for some time. He
then dragged her under a chain which he fastened to her waist band, cuffing
her arms and belts to chains fastened to rings in the floor and pulling her up
by her waist until she hung belly up in mid air.

Kayleen had been unable to, but Lyral had paid attention to his preparations,
hearing metallic noises as items were being shuffled about, and the
recollection of her agony from the bronze cat jumped to her mind. He tightened
a vise shaped like a crocodile head across Kayleen's toes, enough to rekindle
her screams, and Lyral found her worst fears confirmed when he used a large
white hot pair of pliers to turn it red hot.

A gurgling scream wracked Kayleen's body because the device not only was
searing the tender flesh under her toes, but was apparently built of different
metals and deformed when heated, grinding its red hot metal teeth into her
flesh with relentlessly increasing force.

The same torment was repeated on her other foot and on her fingers, wrenching
howls of bitter pain from her twitching frame. Another crocodile encased her
left breast, and Lyral's eyes barely had time to widen before demented howls
of unbridled pain rose in the room as the red hot jaws cut into the firm
flesh, causing Kayleen's body to jerk spasmodically in screaming torment as
her breast was scorched and lacerated mercilessly while her tormentor kept
the crocodile red hot by frequently changing the pliers.

Although she tried to buckle away, another crocodile was placed on her labia
and soon she arched in demented agony as the tender flesh was scorched and
cut by the tightening copper jaws while she buckled and rattled her chains.

Pouring the contents of the jug down her mouth proved easy, thanks to her
position, but she fought the attempts to wind around her left arm a contraption
of metal bands in the fashion of a constrictor snake, twitching as the scales
cut bleeding scrapes in her skin. In spite of her efforts, he slowly tightened
it using screws and then started placing white hot iron nuggets in the
recesses spaced evenly along its length, causing it to contract around the
limb while the copper scales turned hotter and hotter.

Soon pain started wracking her limb and surging in pitiful screams as the
torment mounted uninterruptedly in spite of her convulsed jerks. Her eyes
darted to her other arm, where he was starting to assemble another metallic
snake, but the agony in the constricted limb increased beyond the shallow cuts
from the red hot scales as the bones of the forearm started hurting under the
mounting pressure. Meanwhile the constriction of her other arm had been
started and her tormentor started replacing the nuggets which had cooled off
with freshly heated ones, keeping her in screaming agony as her bones were
slowly cracked while red hot scales mercilessly raked her twitching limbs.

He continued the torment until the noise of cracking bone made itself heard
among her screams, although drowned immediately by a gut-wrenching howl from
her frothing mouth, and then set about winding a similar contraption around
her legs in spite of her convulsed attempts to wriggle free. As her hands
clenched and curled spasmodically, another crack could be heard between her
pitched howls as the agony from broken bones swept her twitching body.

Methodically, her tormentor heated the spires constricting her legs, bringing
her voice again to pitches of horrid agony after a brief lapse of sobbing
exhaustion. Her supple, strong legs took much longer to crack, a protracted
nightmare of red hot shredding by the copper scales while the bones creaked in
ever tightening anguish and foam bubbled from her mouth whenever she howled
her unbridled despair. When the sound of cracking bone echoed in the room, her
voice had been reduced to a wheezing croak, and the unspeakable pain wracked
her heaving chest like epileptic convulsions.

She drank from the jug in long, desperate gulps and immediately her renewed
energy burst from her throat in bitter screams. He lowered her on the floor,
and bent her broken and scratched legs at the knee against a wedge-shaped
steel bar before doing the same with her arms. Her wrists were then pulled
behind her up to her ankles, forcing her to arch to relieve the pain on her
broken limbs. The relief proved short lived because she was then hung between
the two bars, stretching her broken limbs into screaming torment.

Another metal contraption, fashioned after a coiling cobra, was fixed to her
chest and tightened on her left breast with pliers, bending the jaws until
they caught her nipple and distended the firm flesh by snapping back up while
she twitched in horrible agony as the pain had strained her broken limbs. New
tears streaked her face when a white hot iron nugget was inserted in the device
and it started singeing her nipple while the neck of the cobra distended,
stretching the bleeding nub of female flesh and the coil tightened on the rest
of her breast while the scales turned hot.

Her convulsed jerks made securing another coiled cobra on her other breast
difficult, but her tormentor had time and when the first one was already
making her left nipple sizzle and smoke between the fiery jaws, the second had
just began tightening. As she buckled and jerked spasmodically, screaming at
the top of her lungs, her broken limbs twitched under the flesh and even cut
through the skin in places, causing profuse bleeding which was summarily
staunched with cauterization. Slowly, her breasts were being blistered all
over by the tightening copper coils while, between hoarse screams of pure
agony, her nipples sizzled and oozed in the merciless grip of the fiery jaws.

After pouring the contents of the jug in her sputtering mouth, he placed a
spiderlike contraption on her vulva, pushing the legs under the folds of her
labia and tightening the oversized jaws on her clitoris while she arched in
pain while the second cobra heated fully. He let her buckle and scream until
the cobras started cooling off, then inserted a white hot iron nugget in the
device in her crotch. She felt it heat and started buckling in the mad attempt
to dislodge it, tearing ugly cuts in her clitoris but failing in her intent as
the legs of the device were distending and piercing the folds of her labia,
securing it into place and getting hotter by the minute.

The tendons of her neck distended in a wretched howl as the searing bite on
her femininity became intolerably hot and the red hot legs punctured her
insides, wracking spasms of unspeakable torment through her body which brought
her broken limbs to twitch agonizingly inside her aching limbs. Two freshly
heated nuggets rekindled the torment of her nipples, and the agony in her
vagina raged unabashed while she twitched between screams of raw agony.

Her screams waned and waxed as he changed the nuggets with freshly heated
ones, keeping her torment continuously stoked so that her convulsed jerks
wracked her broken limbs into twitching frenzies of wretched agony. Nipples
and clitoris were covered in sizzling blood and peeled raw by the heat, with
the copper jaws tearing them slowly to shreds while wracking fits of howling
torment shook her twitching frame and surged in hoarse cries from her mouth.

She was lowered and brought close enough for Lyral, still blindfolded, to
smell her and extend her lips to deliver her healing again. Tears streaked the
young Priestesses' face under the blindfold as she felt the anguish of her
friend, whose pain was such that she could barely articulate anything beyond
harsh gasps and wheezing screams.

"I can't ... " choked Kayleen, coughing blood. Lyral tried to intensify the
delivery of her healing power, crying in the hope to cover her friend's words.

"I can't ... take ..." repeated Kayleen, alerting the Easterner who yanked her
head to inspect the face, still contorted in unspeakable agony.

"The fabled Warrior Queen has collapsed rather quickly," spat Shandra, loud
enough to make onlookers turn in surprise. Lyral sobbed silently and tried to
whisper "I am here, Kayleen" in her friend's ear.

The words of the two women reached Kayleen's pain-wracked mind almost at the
same time, and stoked her rage. The friend she had betrayed was facing the
torments of hell with the her, while the one she had withstood untold agonies
for had betrayed her.

"It took you much less to sell yourself, bitch" spat Kayleen, enraged.

"You'll have ample occasion to regret your foul words," whispered Zhorun.

Kayleen was lowered on the floor, where her knees and thighs were cuffed
together, just like her elbows and wrists, behind her back. She was then
dragged screaming to a post, around whose base her feet were cuffed. A chain
was used to pull her wrists from behind her, forcing her body to slump forward
in a light arch while she screamed in horrid pain as heinous agonies wracked
her quivering, broken limbs forced to bear her full weight.

A long metal pole with the head fashioned after a porcupine was slid between
her distended legs until it reached her vagina, at which her tormentor guided
it so that it snug against the lower cleft and distended the upper, bulging
inside her and pushing her clitoris outward while she howled from the pain of
the violation, the barbs on the head and the pull on her broken legs. In her
pain, she failed to realize the deviousness of her predicament, because her
arms had been pulled back towards her calves, not up towards the ceiling, so
her weight now rested on the barbed head and yet pulled agonizingly on her
broken arms and legs, which twitched intermittently in bitter pain.

Ignoring her harsh sobs and occasional, pitched screams of despair, he wound
tightly around her body long threads of clamps fashioned after marching ants,
one following the other, the legs pinching her flesh after a quick grip with
the pliers which caused her to twitch with a brief scream.

The coals roaring nearby left little doubt about what would follow, and her
sobs turned into wracking jerks when he clasped her nipples and clitoris
between jaws fashioned after a dragon's head weighted down by a copper jug
heavy with liquid. The final step in the preparation of her ordeal was a long
wedge-shaped metal bar snug under her arms, to whose ends he fastened two
chains ending in two curved hooks, of which one from each side was used to
stretch her sphincter and the other to stretch her inner labia.

A sobbing scream of dread wracked her when he dragged a coal brazier under the
pole, because the heat immediately started licking her soles and she found out
that moving caused the barbed head she straddled to rake her insides and push
against the upper cleft of her vagina, while the curved hooks stretched her
orifices and the clasps drew tiny droplets of blood. As the torment of her
soles continued and the pole heated, the barbs on the head started rising and
her voice broke in a wretched scream as she realized that her innards would be
roasted and raked by the porcupine head she straddled.

Just as she started to twitch on the head, he dragged another, larger brazier
directly under her, from knees to breasts, whose heat rose immediately along
with her howl of agony and despair as the heat singed her flesh. He had made
sure that the ends of the chains of copper ants fell in the raging coals, so
that one by one each would heat, the pinch tightening and searing the flesh
while pulling it up against the scorching copper body.

She started convulsing in screaming pain, her scorched toes curling as the
heat reddened her soles and her hands clenching and stretching while her chest
heaved and buckled, wracked by howls of helpless torment which rose one after
the other as the searing barbs started cutting the tender flesh inside her
vagina while the ants pinched folds of her thighs, belly and breasts in a
vicious, scorching grip which rose along the chains wound around her body,
buckling left and right wracking heinous agonies through her quivering limbs
as she screamed and howled in wretched, raging pain.

Her tormentor grabbed her by the hair and poured the contents of the jug down
her sputtering mouth, well aware that soon her pain would increase. The oil
inside the jugs trapping her nipples and clitoris was beginning to sizzle the
trapped pieces of feminine flesh, rising between the clenched jaws with hot
droplets of unbearable pain which surged through her mouth as she convulsed
in spasms of atrocious torment. Her soles had turned crimson, and the flesh
caught in the grip of the copper ants blistered and oozed under the relentless
searing grip. Her innards sizzled and bled as she jerked spasmodically on the
red hot barbs, wracked by the torment of the porcupine head bulging under her
mons as if about to rip through, the barbs piecing through the flesh and
tearing blistering gashes in her vulva.

The sizzling agony in her nipples and clitoris mounted to unbearable levels
and compounded the agonies wracking her body, wrenching spasmodic howls of
absolute agony from her torn mouth before her voice waned to a pitiful wheeze
as her ability to vent the pain coursing through her body dwindled. She was
given a few sips of healing potion, which redressed her worst wounds and
restoked the agony in her voice, protracting her torment some more in spite of
the skin peeling from her soles and the blisters bursting in the grip of the
copper ants all over her body. A sip from the jug renewed her strength for a
while, and kept her convulsing on the barbed pole for some more time.

She had to be given a sip from the potion again, because her soles were now
scorched raw like the insides of her vagina, while the barbs had shredded her
vulva, with long gashes of singed flesh and crimson pieces of peeled meat hung
between copper jaws were her nipples and clitoris once stood. Her screams
echoed again under the vaults of the torture chamber.

The agony of her broken limbs was almost forgotten before the burst and
pierced blisters all over her body, especially her breasts where the flesh had
been shredded raw by too many copper ants, often hanging tenuously after
ripping through the burnt flesh under their weight. She kept howling as blood
mixed with foam at her mouth while she agonized on the barbed head.

Spasmodic jerks and demented howls wracked her body from toe to chin when her
exhausted muscles recovered enough to react to the uninterrupted torment,
while her voice rose in wheezing screams and waned in bitter gasps when they
didn't, her lips forming the name "Lyral" as her voice failed to speak it.

When her torturer decided to finally end the torment, it still took work and
further agonies to disentangle her from the post. When Grod stepped in, she
was dragged to where Lyral hung blindfolded and upon Zhorun's assent her head
was jerked up so that Lyral could reach her with her lips.

A harrowing moan shook Kayleen's devastated body as the soothing effect of her
friend's healing power coursed through her burns and wounds, the worst of
which were allowed to recede before Grod yanked her away. Kayleen's cry of
bitter dismay was desperate enough to crack the vaults above, but Lyral spoke
softly between tears, "I'll be with you to the very end, Kayleen."

The burly executioner dragged his sobbing victim to a table which she
recognized as a rack, but a rack where rows of spiked rollers awaited the
unfortunate victim. To Kayleen's horror, he placed her with her front on the
rollers, instead of her back, and she tried to put up a fight with her meager
forces when the barbs raked through the burns in her breasts. Her broken limbs
made her effort vain, and she was soon stretched over the rollers, her sobs
increasing when more rollers were laid across her back and buttocks and
screwed down, squeezing her on the rollers below.

When he cranked the rack, her wrists pulled her body through the spiked
rollers as if squeezing her through, leaving dozens of bleeding cuts in her
scorched flesh and wrenching a demented scream which rose to a howl once the
her muscles were pulled across the places where her bones had been broken.

When the pain waned, she shuddered in terror at the thought of what would come
next. Several of her long bones were broken, or badly cracked, and pulling on
her limbs would break and splinter them well before they could be torn off
their sockets. For a moment, she wished a splinter would sever an artery and
bleed her to death. A wave of atrocious pain flashed from her arms as the
stretching resumed, followed by the agony of dozens of cuts and the harsh
tearing of the flesh when her convulsed jerks raked the points inside the
cuts, burns and blisters fueling her voice into fits of helpless screaming.

Another wave of torment coursed through her arms when he released the tension
of the rack, and just as she twitched in spasmodic agony, a third blast of
white hot pain caught her when the rack was cranked again and blazing hot
torment rattled her arms and coursed through her quivering body while her
lungs shook from one harrowing screams after the other, her breath caught
short by the flashes of searing pain. He needed not bother with her joints if
healing could make her live through this, she realized.
He cranked the rack again, dragging her further along with a scream as the
cuts from the rollers compounded the agony in her arms, and then released her
before quickly cranking her back twice. Her screams echoed under the vaults in
harrowing fits of desperate pain. He kept cranking the rack, releasing her
occasionally so that she would snap back and twitch spasmodically from the
pain in her arms, raking the spikes inside her flesh between harrowing screams
of demented anguish. The places where her bones had been broken were now
visibly sunken, and he stopped her torment to encase them in tight splints and
let her sip avidly from the jug.

When her stretching resumed, she had been elongated enough that portions of
her back had been pulled clear of the rollers above, showing dozens of ugly
bleeding cuts. The rollers under her extended further, to make sure her
breasts would not fare so easily she thought, and the torment in her stretched
arms was slowly being matched by the agony of the rollers which increased with
each pull and the dozens of new cuts it brought. Her tremors were now almost
uninterrupted and the consequent trashing of her wounds wrenched uninterrupted
cries and screams from her drooling mouth.

As she was stretched further, another bone broke in her right arm and she
felt the tearing of her muscles as they stretched over the broken bone, while
pain mounted also where the bones of her legs had been broken. More cranking
and releasing wrought further harrowing screams from her wracked chest, and
when she was offered the jug again she was in such pain that most of what she
tried to drink she sputtered between screams.

Her tormentor moved to the other end of the rack and started cranking, pulling
on her legs and wrenching a desperate howl from her as pain coursed through
the broken bones in her lower limbs. After stretching her legs until her howls
became a single, uninterrupted bellow of desperate torment, he moved back and
released her arms one notch, an act which did not lessen her torment one bit
as her arms snapped from the release and the bones teetered along the fracture
lines, bringing gut-wrenching howls of helpless agony from her torn mouth.

He continued stretching her from her legs, slowly dragging her all the way
back through the rollers which had cut her when she was being pulled by her
arms. The points were her leg bones had been brisked were also wrapped with
splints. She was in too much pain to realize that the rollers had been made
small on purpose, so that over the course of a stretching they would complete
two or three full turns and subject her to the various kinds of spikes strewn
across them. Some were dull and long, some wickedly hooked, some had a forked
tip and the worst were thin razor sharp bristles of hard steel which shredded
the skin with a swath of parallel cuts.

When she had being dragged back about halfway, he reached her feet and pushed a
clamp under the nail of each pinky, which he then screwed wickedly shut while
her feet trembled as pain made her scream and bang her head on the wood. When
he resumed cranking, the clamps started pulling the nails out of their beds,
causing her to stiffen before bursting in a howl of mad torment which
continued while the nails were slowly ripped off.

She was doused with cold, salt water, and while she still writhed from the
salt seeping in her wounds two clamps were tightened on the nails of her
little fingers, and he resumed the stretching of her arms while slowly ripping
her fingernails off their beds between her protracted screams of wretched
agony. He methodically alternated between fingers and toes, occasionally using
salt water or a sip from the jug to revive her while ripping her fingernails,
stretching and releasing her broken limbs, dragging her back and forth through
the spiked rollers in abysses of pain and torment whose depth her voice soon
failed to relay, waning to wheezing howls of abject despair.

In the depths of atrocious torment, her broken limbs trembling from the
uninterrupted pull, it took her time to notice that he had bent under the
rack. A stab of searing white pain from her crotch fanned her voice to new
heights of deranged howling, because her tormentor was using a small scalpel
to trace crisscrossed shallow cuts through her mons, to which he patiently
attached small globs of sticky substance at the end of fine chains.

When done, a new agony burst from her crotch as a pan of coals was brought
under her, searing her flesh and clitoris as he moved it in small circles. The
scorching heat caused her to twitch and buckle, wracking horrendous pain in her
broken limbs and causing the spikes to trash in the wounds they seated in,
torments either of which would have been enough to wrench bitter screams from
her sore mouth but which together carried pain beyond her ability to voice it.

The true scope of the torment, however, was revealed when the candle was
removed and her legs cranked another notch, because her pubic hair had stuck
firmly in the dried globs and she felt its pull on the skin as her legs were
being stretched. After a few cranks, her howls were being fueled by the
ripping of her pubic hair, which often caused small patches of skin separated
by the shallow cuts to be pulled also. The release of the tension in her arms
wrenched new screams from her because of the agony from the broken bones but
helped none with the ripping of her pubic hair, and when the pull on her legs
resumed a patch of pubic hair and skin was pulled near ripping off while she
twitched in howling spams of wretched pain.

Slowly and excruciatingly, the first patch was ripped off her, while others
were being pulled from her bleeding mons in a steadily mounting nightmare of
unbridled anguish. Her pubic hair had been targeted before, but pulling by
hand was nothing like the protracted ripping notch by notch which wracked her
wounded body in wretched fits of convulsed pain between the spiked rollers.

The jug was brought to her lips, but her position and the continued pain made
sipping difficult. She drank enough to lend her voice some of her former
strength, which she spent soon after when after repeated cranking of her legs
she was dragged onto a roller unlike the others, a narrow wheel brimming with
short steel bristles placed to saw into her slit. The bristles punctured first
the area between her sphincter and the lower cleft of her vagina, then, guided
by his hands, the expanse between her inner lips and then, as he continued
pulling on her legs while she writhed in unspeakable torment from the agony of
her broken bones, the upper cleft. Slowly but inexorably, she was being
dragged into having her clitoris punctured by dozens of steel bristles.

Her agonies found new peaks, starting from her stretched limbs were the broken
bones showed under the trembling flesh, sunken and purplish from the traumas
of alternated stretching and releasing, the splints only intended to prevent
the severing of blood vessels. Her body from thighs to neck was punctured by
hundreds of wounds, some tiny and almost closed and others badly trashed,
bleeding and lacerated by her spasmodic twitches. Her mons was a bloody swath
of flayed flesh as hair and skin had been ripped off with excruciating
slowness, and the steel bristles were mercilessly piercing her clitoris.

The jug was brought to her lips again, and in spite of her efforts she all but
sputtered the contents between screams of harsh pain. Another liquid was then
poured on the rollers, and the acrid smell of bleach reached her nostrils just
as the substance flared in her bleeding wounds, causing her spasmodic jerks
desperate enough to rattle the wooden table in a howled frenzy of agony.

The bleach soaked the rollers at first, but as she was dragged back and forth
by stretching and releasing her limbs it was squeezed onto her wounds, burning
like molten lead and seeping in the cuts being further lacerated by her frenzy
of atrocious agony. Her voice waxed and waned endlessly in a pain which found
no avenue to its expanse, and even the splints barely managed to prevent her
from pushing the splintered head of her broken bones out of her own flesh.

"Lyral ..." she could be heard imploring between screams, a plea her young
friend could not fulfill until allowed by their torturers.

Her tormentor instead fulfilled Zhorun's silent will to the hilt, dragging her
back and forth on the bleach soaked rollers while her helpless scream rose
uninterrupted under the vaults of the torture chamber. She was never given
respite, except to let her sip from the jug in order to renew her strength.
She was squeezed mercilessly through the spiked rollers, notch by notch, by
pulling her from either pair or limbs until they almost tore at the point
where the broken bones teetered inside the trembling flesh, and then releasing
the other end while her voice surged in unbridled torment.

In a showoff of woeful expertise, Grod managed to protract her agonies until
she was in such deep shock that pain no longer reached her, all without having
her healed in any way. With Zhorun's assent, he extricated her from the rack
and dragged her trembling form near Lyral, letting the priestess heal her
friend for a while and then pulling Kayleen away when he noticed that her
fractured limbs were showing signs of redress. Kayleen's strangled cry of
bitter despair drowned Lyral's sobbing words as the splints were removed.

Zhorun gestured to have Kayleen brought before him. She lay there, coughing
and moaning, her broken arms kept together behind her back at the elbows and
wrists but her legs twitching as the ankle cuffs alone were no substitute for
the splints. Her body was still littered with spike wounds and her mons a
swath of pulsating raw flesh, but her tear-streaked face looked up.

"As thou should know, my apprentice, spells are devised to deal a decisive
blow," whispered Zhorun, raising his hands and then unleashing thin rays of
white light which traced bluish bruises on Kayleen's battered body, causing
her to buckle and scream as her flesh was being subjected to intense cold.

"Only the weakest, by virtue of the limited damage they inflict, can be of any
use in an interrogation," he added, and while Kayleen was still sobbing,
tongues of reddish flame left his gnarled fingers and washed over her body,
causing her to arch in screaming agony as the flames caused extensive burns.

"In any case, they're either instantaneous or soon expired. Thy test is about
this, my apprentice. I expect to be surprised by thy inventiveness."

Chapter 25 - The Mundane and the Magic

Kayleen's cries echoed at intervals in the darkness of the unlit chamber, her
back against the wall and her spread arms, cuffed at the wrists to rings set
just above her head, unable to provide the support which could prevent her
broken bones from teetering. The same applied to her legs, pulled wide in a
savage split with her ankles cuffed to rings at hip height and twisted
outwards because of a wooden wedge pushing her loins forward.

Forcing her weight on her outstretched limbs had displaced her fractures, but
her screams were in no small part due to the stinging tree branches set under
her slit, too low to lean on but just high enough to brush her nether regions.
She could spare her labia their caress by pulling herself up, at the price of
wracking hideous pain throughout her fractured limbs.

She was still shivering violently from the repeated splashes with cold, salt
water, a parting treatment whose inception she had lost track of, although she
remembered that Lyral was there. She had always been wounded enough for the
salt to find plenty of avenue to add its harsh bite to her torment well into
the night, but in the long run the cold and the bitter shivers were the worst.

Her friend hung nearby by her toes, close, yet not enough to provide healing,
moaning softly in the attempt to withstand the torment in her toes in order
to preserve her power. Just after the last torch left, Kayleen had called.

"Lyral ... help me, my arms ..." she had croaked.

"They hung me too far from you, Kayleen," replied Lyral.

"Please ... try, it hurts." cried Kayleen, sobbing when the rattling of the
chain Lyral hung from confirmed the harrowing truth.

Lyral bit her lip, then closed her eyes in resignation. She flexed her legs as
much as she could, and then let herself down, screaming at the top of her
lungs when the jerk savagely gouged the thumbscrews she hung from.

"Lyral, what's up ?" asked Kayleen, not realizing that her friend was trying
to sever her own toes in order to heal her. More rattling and screams.

"Lyral, what are you doing ?" cried Kayleen, her voice still hoarse.

"Don't ... worry, Kayleen. I am going to heal myself after", croaked the young
Priestess, dizzy with pain and surprised at how resilient her toes were - when
she had decided to try, she had thought that they were almost severed already.

"Please stop it, whatever you're doing. I'll need your help, tomorrow" sighed
Kayleen. Lyral gave up, worried at her friend's condition but realizing that
her desperate stunt had little chance to work anyway.

The rest of the night was an uninterrupted nightmare of agony for Kayleen, who
slowly abandoned any attempt to lift her crotch off the stinging leaves, even
as her labia began to swell horribly from the constant rubbing. She tried to
stifle her screams, but Lyral missed none of her bitter gasps and wretched
hisses, sobbing silently after running out of words of comfort.

When heavy footsteps announced morning, Kayleen's relief at the healing she
thought forthcoming almost overcame her dread at what lay ahead. A knot formed
in her stomach, however, when the Southerner cuffed her elbows and wrists
behind her back, and dragged her to where she had been whipped yesterday.

A desperate scream surged from her throat when she was pulled up by the
ankles, because the savage split that had been painful yesterday was now
excruciating for the broken bones of her legs. The Southerner splashed her
with cold water and then started whipping her breasts, buttocks and between
her legs, causing her to writhe and scream in renewed agony.

Such was the pain from her bones that it took her some time to realize how
much the whipping was being protracted this time, while the pain in her
striped breasts and buttocks mounted steadily. When the whip stroked her
swollen labia, a bright flash of white hot torment rattled her whole body and
wrought a scream of animal anguish from her torn mouth.

She continued to writhe and buckle in insane pain, hanging upside down with
her thighs spread for the whip and screaming in agonies whose origin was no
longer discernible in a haze of uninterrupted torment. She was finally let
down, at the hands of the impenetrable Easterner, and dragged to a place where
Lyral lay on the floor in a strict hogtie, the head encased in a wooden box.

The silent torturer pulled her arms up behind her, wrenching a howl of
desperate agony from her mouth as strain wracked the fractured limbs, further
displacing the bones inside the swollen flesh. She offered no resistance when
he guided her right foot into a hole in the box encasing Lyral's head.

When her toes leaned on something wet and mobile, as her ankle cuff was being
fastened to the box, she recognized Lyral's gurgled pleas and realized that
her foot had been forced into her friend's mouth. Her other leg had been bent
and fastened to the right wrist, leaving her suspended by the left arm, her
torso at an angle and Lyral's mouth under her right foot, shifting her weight
from which wrought unspeakable torment through her fractured left arm.

While she shifted her weight back and forth between bitter sobs and occasional
screams, she suddenly felt Lyral's soothing power course through her. Just as
warm tears of gratitude started replacing the bitter tears of woe streaking
her face, a devastating burst of white hot agony surged in her left foot. Her
tormentor was drilling a corkscrew in the tender sole, twisting it slowly by
its T-shaped handle while holding her curling toes with his other hand.

The excruciating pain continued unabated while she rattled her chains and
shook in a fit of howling woe, no longer able to spare her friend who saw her
precarious concentration shattered. Once the corkscrew stopped, she hung there
trembling in wretched pain, but as her screams diminished her tormentor
started twisting the corkscrew back, slowly pulling it out and rekindling her
screams of unbridled agony as blood squirted from the lacerated flesh.

Still wracked by pangs of throbbing agony, Kayleen could not believe her own
body when the soothing warmth of Lyral's power suffused her again. She wished
desperately that her tormentor would not notice, but she saw his gaze inspect
her teary eyes and his hands reach for her right breast. Just as she closed
her eyes, too late, the corkscrew drilled its way in the firm flesh of her
generous mammary, wracking her into a jerk of howling agony.

She continued jerking and buckling in hideous pain, with the blood squirting
from the wound while her tormentor grasped her flesh and twisted the corkscrew
slowly deeper and deeper, wrenching new howls of wretched torment each turn.
When the bloody tip broke through the other side, he just kept twisting while
she vented her anguish from hitherto unexplored depths of hellish agony.

The soothing from Lyral's attempts at healing her returned many times, always
followed by bursts of white hot torment as the corkscrew was twisted back and
forth through her quivering flesh. After drilling twice more through her poor
breasts, her thighs and legs were slowly drilled through in spite of her mad
jerks of deranged torment. The screw was never pushed deep in the flesh,
trashing through stiff muscle until the bloody tip emerged in a squirt of
blood while her mouth almost dislocated from the howls wracking her chest.

Moving behind her, he started drilling up from the back of the thigh until the
tip emerged from the buttock, twisting the corkscrew with excruciating
slowness through muscles stiffened by the strain of her position and spasming
from the compounded torment of the drill and the fractures, each turn causing
a new howl to burst through the foam in her mouth and jerk her head in a
snap before losing itself under the vaults of the chamber.

With methodical cruelty, he always returned to drilling through her bloody
breasts, squeezing a firm mammary in the hand while slowly twisting the long
corkscrew in until it pierced through the other end, and then continuing to
twist it while she howled in mad pain. In spite of Lyral's efforts, she bled
from dozens of excruciating wounds and when he started drilling the corkscrew
around her sphincter, keeping the tip buried inside the wall of her rectum,
repeated frenzies of howling agony and spasmodic buckling wracked her to the
point of badly displacing the fractures in her right arm and left leg.

When the Easterner let Kayleen down, Lyral put all her efforts into healing
her friend as quickly as possible, allowing some semblance of sanity to return
to a mind awash in mad pain for so long. Kayleen felt her friend's mouth, but
the warm flow of healing was suddenly broken when she was dragged away.

Kayleen was carried to a contraption not unlike a steel chair deprived of the
seat, and had her ankle and knee cuffs fastened to the front legs before being
forced to arch back until he could fasten her wrists to the ankles. He let her
sip from the jug, then twisted into her rectum between her screams of pain a
sturdy hook lowered from the ceiling and used it to lift her off the floor.

He then suspended Lyral's hogtied body from a wedge-shaped steel bar under her
arms, near enough to be able to yank Kayleen's hook until her face ran into
her friend's hands, bound behind the back. He spent some time adjusting the
position of the two girls, then grabbed Kayleen's dangling left breast,
clamped the nipple and pushed up the corkscrew between the jaws of the clamp,
slowly twisting it into her breast flesh between squirts of blood and hellish
screams bursting past her foaming mouth while she twitched madly on the hook.

The corkscrew pierced the sole of her right foot while a scream of desperate
pain shook her mouth, and she kept buckling and screaming her lungs out while
her tormentor protracted the torment of her twitching foot. When her screams
waned to a wheeze, he yanked her face between Lyral's hands.

"Kayleen, is it you ?" called the young Priestess, her fingers exploring the
features of Kayleen's face. She did not wait for a response to allow her power
to flow freely. The syrupy liquid of the jug tasted bitter in Kayleen's mouth.

Sobs and harsh gasps wracked Kayleen's hanging body until her tormentor let
go, causing her to swing back and the healing to stop. Grabbing the left fold
of her labia, he started driving the corkscrew through the tender flesh and
kept drilling in spite of her spasmodic jerks, wrenching hellish screams of
nightmarish torment from her her and bringing her agony to bottoms of depraved
cruelty when the tip reached her clitoris and he guided it through the
sensitive feminine flesh with a pair of pliers, continuing to twist the
corkscrew while her mouth distended in a frenzied howl of pain after another.

He protracted her torment drilling into her clitoris through the other labia,
and then squeezed her breasts together and drilled through the bases of her
nipples while she frothed at the mouth, gurgling in unabated anguish and
screaming when her voice found some of its former strength again. But a new
chill gripped her throat when she felt the tip of the corkscrew on her left
leg, where her fractured bone was easily felt in the swollen flesh.

The agony of a thousand hells raged through her body when the corkscrew
penetrated the swollen flesh at the fracture point and insinuated between the
displaced ends of the broken bone, howling through her foaming mouth in
shrieks of unabated torment and wracking her body into spasms of demented woe.

The pain shook her without mercy nor interruption and was protracted as each
limb in turn was savaged by the corkscrew while waves of blazing pain coursed
through her body and burst in gut-wrenching howls from her torn mouth. She
kept writhing in raw pain on the hook while the drill trashed her displaced
fractures, her voice waning and waxing in screams of harrowing agony, until
her tormentor pushed her contorted face between Lyral's hands again.

Only despair set apart Kayleen's scream when the healing was interrupted from
those which had echoed under the vaults before, and she hung sobbing bitterly
while the Southerner changed Lyral's restraints, connecting the wrists and
ankles with a slender chain wound around a pulley. He then let Kayleen down,
with a wedge under her back so that she was a few inches off the floor, and
spread her arms and legs wide, cuffing them to iron rings.

Lyral tried to dive and reach her friend's forehead, discovering with a scream
that this caused her shoulder joints to bear most of her weight. Yet, after a
few attempts she managed to reach her friend's forehead with her lips and kiss
it, causing Kayleen to burst in a sob of disillusioned relief.

"Lyral ... too much ... I can't ..." she whispered between bloody coughs.

"Do not despair, Kayleen. I'll be with you to the end" answered Lyral.

Slowly, Lyral's healing power coursed through Kayleen's wracked body, and soon
the fractures started to improve visibly. Kayleen's position no longer
prevented the magic from melding the bones together, and her agony was
receding rapidly when the devious imagination of her tormentor manifested
again as he put the tip of the corkscrew against the inside of her thigh and
started drilling obliquely, keeping the corkscrew inside the flesh while she
buckled in mad pain until he brought the tip against the bone and started
scraping it with forceful twists on the T-shaped handle of the corkscrew.

As unbridled agony wracked violently her stretched body, the soothing warmth
of Lyral's power was swept aside by the raging torment of the scraped bone,
and even when Lyral managed to resume the process, it addressed her fractures
before the comparatively minor but excruciating wounds reaching through stiff
muscle and chipping at her bones. Unspeakable torments wracked her stretched
body as the flesh of her limb was trashed by the corkscrew seeking the bone
to inflict protracted, spasmodic frenzies of hellish agony.

With uncharacteristic savagery, the Easterner slid the corkscrew through the
base of her breasts to repeatedly scrape her ribs, one after the other,
placing himself between Kayleen's buckling body and Lyral's lips. Wretched
howls of gasping torment surged from Kayleen's mouth as the blood squirting
from the pierced breasts flowed in rivulets down her heaving chest, so wracked
by screams that she could not find the breath to articulate the pleads
mounting within her. The Easterner could not discern the croaked syllables
which escaped her mouth between screams of unspeakable torment as he twisted
the corkscrew through the base of her clitoris to scrape her pubic bone.

When he moved off, to continue drilling from a more advantageous position,
Lyral plunged again, ignoring the pain in her shoulder joints, and reached
Kayleen's sweat-soaked forehead.

"Kayleen, I'm here! Don't shake your head, let me heal you" she whispered,
her teeth chattering from the agony in her shoulders.

However much Kayleen craved Lyral's soothing touch, keeping still before the
blazing agony tearing through her clitoris and scraping her pubic bone was a
feat beyond human possibilities, but the mirage of Lyral's healing gave her a
goal beyond making her pleads heard.

When the merciless continuation of the torture brought exhaustion, she had
managed to offer Lyral half a dozen chances to deliver her some healing
through kisses which suffused her pain-wracked body with temporary relief from
the unspeakable agonies inflicted on her, slowly mending her broken bones.

The wounds in her breasts and crotch still bled, and she still buckled in
horrid agony whenever a twist on the corkscrew scraped her pubic bone and
savaged the tattered strands of flesh from her clitoris, held between the jaws
of the pliers wielded by her tormentor, but the warmth of her friend's help
had temporarily swept the pall of despair away.

When Grod stepped in, she was still twitching in anguish while her restraints
were carefully changed. She had vaguely hoped to be left in Lyral's care, but
her tormentor had other plans and while she was left chained on the floor to
sip from the jug like a dog, Lyral was dragged to the cross rack. Kayleen's
sight cleared enough to realize what fate awaited her friend, and the terror
of having her friend's limbs broken like hers coursed through her, spurring
her to a mad jerk which caused Grod to lose his grip on her strong body.

Although not quite in her best shape, Kayleen seized the chance with the
strength of desperation and flexed her chained legs in a double kick, ignoring
the pain in her feet as her nail beds had not been healed. Grod was pushed
back, fighting for balance, and an armor clad figure materialized just as
Zhorun rose from his seat. With sudden quickness, Shandra extended her arms
and a shower of tiny sparkles engulfed Kayleen, leaving her paralyzed.

"I commend thy quickness, my apprentice. That spell I should learn," said
Zhorun, dismissing the armor clad figure once Grod nodded in confirmation.

"She'll be able to move soon. Just wait a few minutes," said Shandra.

"Why wait ?" said Zhorun after a while, "Grod, twist her fingers. Hard."

Grod did as ordered, puzzled at first, inspecting her while tentatively
twisting her stiff fingers and arms.

"The paralysis made the muscles stiff, although she still breathes. It seems
the effect is more intense on long, thin muscles. If I pull or twist them, I
can see signs of pain. Even her face contorts, albeit slowly"

"Unfortunately, we would have to wait the expiration of the spell to hear the
information being sought. A glaring opportunity for thy test, my apprentice,
if the spell can be made more selective. You may proceed, Grod."

Grod dragged Kayleen near the cross rack, but had to wait until her muscles
returned to normal before fastening her wrists and ankles to the device, her
shoulders and hips caught by the bands which allowed the pull to be applied on
the limbs without endangering the spine. She had been able to see Lyral hung
under the arms of the device, an obviously improvised predicament.

Once she was firmly fastened to the device, he started encasing her limbs
between heavy wooden planks, whose purpose Kayleen recognized as a knot formed
in her throat. She had already been tormented with a variant of the devices,
which squeezed the limbs and cracked bone under the relentless pressure of
hammered wooden wedges. These planks came in twin pairs, kept together by iron
screws at the four corners, and the inner planks had iron spikes.

He started tightening the planks, one at a time, verifying that the spikes did
not endanger major blood vessels, ignoring her gasps and cries as the skin was
being pierced. Under the device, Lyral felt the blood drip on her flesh while
Kayleen's screams mounted, and twisted left and right, attempting to reach her
friend's arms. Being shorter, she managed to reach the planks encasing the
forearms; the rack itself made landing a kiss with the lips out of question.

Kayleen's bitter gasps and short screams continued while her tormentor made
sure that the iron bands at her shoulders and hips were firmly in place, then
poured in her reluctant mouth a good third of the contents of the jug. When he
started cranking the rack, the left arm first, she was wracked by a scream of
bitter despair as the limb was stretched through the grip of the spiked planks
which cut bleeding gashes through her quivering flesh.

The torment of the spikes being dragged forcefully through her stiff muscles
surged from her mouth in protracted screams of helpless agony, broken by
pitiful choking and then resumed as another notch was measured in fractions of
an inch through bleeding, lacerated flesh. When the tension was released, the
limb snapped, in spite of the planks, and the spikes trashed the edge of the
wounds they had dug, causing her howls to rise to high heaven as she jerked
her head in demented agony. When tension was applied again, they resumed the
forceful ripping of her flesh as the pull of the rack dragged them inside
wounded flesh between trembling screams of convulsed torment.

As her limbs were slowly stretched, since each notch released was followed by
two notches of stretching, sometimes applied to both upper or lower limbs and
sometimes to an arm and a leg instead, her shoulder and hip joints were
brought almost to the point of dislocation, wracking savage waves of
excruciating pain through her convulsing body and gut-wrenching screams of
helpless agony through her heaving chest.

The heads of her long bones teetered agonizingly in their joints, ready to be
torn off at the slightest increase in tension ... such as a convulsed jerk
when a red hot iron was lightly dragged under her left breast, leaving a
smoking crimson burn in the tender flesh and a demented howl echoing in the
torture chamber. By repeated, protracted scorching of her breasts she was
slowly made to dislocate the left arm by her own convulsed jerks.

"May I help ?" asked the Southerner with a smirk, watching the robed corpse
and studiously avoiding Grod's irritated frown. When Zhorun assented, the old
man consumed some concoction with a loud sigh. He positioned between Kayleen's
arms and grabbed her head, thrusting his erect member down her throat with a
force which pushed on her neck and sent pangs of torment through her shoulder
joints, forcing her howl to envelope his manhood while she gurgled in despair.

"Hold the iron there ... closer, closer ... fine, I'll do the rest" said the
Southerner to an irritated Zhorun, making him hold the glowing red hot iron
across Kayleen's nipples, close enough to singe them upon each strangled
breath but not enough for actual contact. The Southerner continued enjoying
Kayleen's gurgled pleasuring of his member for a while, then grabbed her hair
and thrust forcefully his member into her mouth, pushing her enough to wrench
blazes of white hot agony from her shoulder joints and to push the nipples
into contact with the red hot iron, arching in rutting pleasure when her
spasmodic screams enveloped his bulging member while she shook in mad agony.

Lyral kept sobbing from impotence as her friend's torturous violation was
protracted a few inches from her head. When the Southerner's lust was spent at
last, Kayleen's screams as her breasts were slowly scorched with the hot iron
resumed, until the sound of her other shoulder tearing off its socket could be
heard for an instant before being drowned by a bitter howl of raw agony.

Just as she was consumed by the agony in her shoulders, Grod started hammering
wedges between the twin planks encasing her arms, each of different thickness,
forcing the planks to tighten their grip on her strained muscles and the
spikes to dig fractionally deeper. When the red hot iron rubbed her labia, she
arched in mad agony, not only from her scorched femininity but from the spasms
in the constricted muscles of the arm, forced to stiffen in the spiked grip of
the savagely tight planks. As the red hot iron was repeatedly dragged inside
her thighs, through her slit and under her clitoris, she twitched and buckled
between demented howls of raw agony until the Southerner moved between her
splayed legs, taking the iron from Grod's hand and thrusting it up her ass.

A gurgled howl burst from her mouth as she arched as much as her constraints
allowed, wracking her hip joints through white hot blazes of searing pain,
vainly attempting to escape the slow searing of her bowels. When the iron was
pulled out, the Southerner returned it to Grod and pointed insistently to her
nipples. Grod, still visibly irritated, heated the iron again and placed it
close to her nipples again, so that when the Southerner thrust his member up
Kayleen's scorched rectum his push brought the nipples in contact.

Kayleen's desperate screams continued unabated for the whole duration of her
violator's drug enhanced lust, fanned by the repeated scorching of her nipples
and the incessant scraping of his manhood on the oozing walls of her bowels.
She continued screaming even when he pulled out, quivering from the residual
pain and occasionally wracked by a wave of hellish agony.

With manifest irritation, Grod proceeded to hammer wedges between the planks
encasing her lower limbs, wrenching more screams of atrocious pain from her
shaking body which became demented howls once he started to brush her labia
and clitoris with the hot iron again, because the planks squeezed the spikes
into the muscle just as the limb strained near dislocation, and the agony from
the spasms in the twitching legs was almost on par with the searing pain from
burned flesh. Upon Zhorun's assent, Grod pushed the hot iron deep up Kayleen's
bowels, reaming them slowly while she arched and buckled in atrocious pain,
screaming mindlessly as her chest heaved in a convulsed jerk after the other.

The Southerner returned between her legs, savagely grabbed her scorched labia
and thrust his drug hardened manhood inside her blistered love channel, the
drool at the corners of his mouth matching the foam bubbling in hers as she
howled in pitiful agony under the repeated tearing of her scorched innards.

After a protracted frenzy of savage lust, her violator pulled out and pointed
to the red hot iron, as if to complain because it had been left in the
brazier; Grod's irritation was about to burst in violence when Zhorun's voice
slithered through the room, audible in spite of Kayleen's cries.

"Your exemplary cooperation has been noted, Grod," said the former wizard.

A strange expression distended Grod's lineaments, so quickly that Shandra was
not able to tell if she had really seen fear on the executioner's face, and he
again placed the red hot iron close to Kayleen's nipples just as the old man
was almost done smearing her love channel with white powder. When he resumed
her violation, the innards dried by the powder were deprived of the meager
benefit of lubrication from the blood and ooze from the blistered walls and
agonizingly chafed by the studded leather harness worn on his drug hardened
member, while new shrill screams of wretched agony coursed through her
convulsing body, until his frantic thrusts forced her left thigh to teeter
into and out its socket until ripped off between desperate howls of agony.

Lyral felt something drip on her buttocks and squirmed in horror at the
thought of the savage old man's semen being released inside her friend's
ravaged innards. It took her a while to realize that Kayleen's torturous
violation was continuing, because the Southerner's frenzied lust had been
fanned by his victim's agony and he continued to linger inside her, relishing
in her convulsed jerks and sobbing humiliation at being abused beyond lust.

Meanwhile, Grod started tightening strong iron bands at her knees and elbows,
apparently unconcerned with her predicament save for another sip from the jug,
Upon the old man's request, he handed over a small grater and ignored him when
he started rasping and peeling her blistered clitoris, drooling while she
twitched and buckled her pelvis around his member, massaging it in the
exhilarating rhythm of excruciating agony while her mouth sang the song of
pitiful woe which most aroused her deranged tormentor.

Before Grod was done with his work, the Southerner thrust violently into her
vagina with renewed lust, screaming hoarsely in rhythm with his pumping while
her voice croaked in pitiful shrieks of bitter torment. Grod was no longer
holding the iron to her nipples, but the Southerner kept her bleeding clitoris
between the rasp and his thumb so that each thrust brought a new squirt of
blood from her femininity and a new howl of hellish agony from her mouth.

At long last, his rabid thrusts managed to force the dislocation of her other
hip joint, at which her howls of abysmal pain brought him to increase his
rhythm in triumph, but in his frenzied lust he continued violating her, and
continued pushing violently with his loins even after squirting his release
within her womb with a strangled gasp of ecstatic pleasure.

Grod poured the remaining contents of the jug down Kayleen's distended mouth
and splashed her with cold water, but allowed her no other respite before
cranking the rack again. Slowly, arm by arm, the device stretched her limbs
further, pulling from ankles and wrists on her elbow and knee joints. Lyral
took a while to take stock of this new development and her mouth opened in
mute terror, as her training told her that a dislocation of the knee or elbow
was if possible even more painful than at the shoulder or hip.

Kayleen's wretched screams soon confirmed her friend's worst fears, and her
head alternated between banging on the rack and contorting into fits of
unbelievable agony, her mouth wracked by screams so devastating that it almost
looked like it could not stretch enough to accommodate them. The planks around
her limbs had been further tightened by hammering more wedges and squeezed her
limbs into misshapen bundles of unrelenting pain, turning the pull from the
rack and from her convulsed jerks into bone cracking pressure. The spikes dug
bleeding gashes in her strained muscles, causing them to snap and twitch in
abysmal torment while she howled in wretched anguish.

Just as her knees and elbows were slowly dislocated, the savage compression
started cracking her bones, one by one, arm by arm, protracting the hideous
torment of her deformed, convulsing body into a nightmare of hellish agony
which refused to end when marrow squirted from her thigh bones, when her voice
waned into wheezing howls as her forearms snapped from the elbows, even when
her knees tore while he crushed her feet inside spiked iron boots.

When the nightmare of hideous agonies and protracted screams finally ended
into a fitful aftermath of raucous moans as the rack was released, Lyral's
efforts to reach her friend succeeded as her fingers touched Kayleen's elbows,
which to Lyral's horror had been atrociously dislocated out of their
restraints and hung between the arms of the cross rack.

While Lyral managed to stop screaming and started delivering whatever healing
she could to the mangled body of her friend, the Southerner was disrobing and
wearing the same spiked harness he had worn a few days ago. Shandra, aghast,
looked at him in disbelief.

"What demented antics is this ?" she blurted.

"My apprentice does not appreciate your efforts, my esteemed guest" whispered
Zhorun, with a dangerous streak of cruelty in his chuckle.

"If my Master let me have my ways with her ..." commenced the Southerner, his
member already hardening in the leather harness.

"You forget your stature, my esteemed guest. Besides, this specific area of
expertise has traditionally been the province of sorcery, has it ?" he asked.

"What ..." replied Shandra, dumbfounded until realization hit her. Sorcery was
magic that sprung from within, unlike wizardry which took years of study, and
many budding sorcerers found their lot in life by selling love potions and
love spells. Or arousal spells. They sold well, Shandra remembered. She had
never shared the outrage and embarrassment which hung over such applications of
magic, but now a knot formed in her stomach at the implications.

"Make thyself useful, my apprentice. Put some of thy power to the help of our
aged guest here, and make sure his manhood is up to the task for the whole
duration of the forthcoming endeavor. I might still learn something."

"He ... he won't endure it. He's too old" stuttered Shandra, her eyes bulging.

"He can have a potion when necessary. I'm sure he's ready to take the chance,"
said Zhorun just as the Southerner nodded with a lewd grin.

Trembling, Shandra recalled the arousal spell and neared, extending her hand
to touch his erect member. It hardened visibly just as she recoiled.

Meanwhile, Lyral had continued pouring her healing power into Kayleen's
mangled body. The hideous cracks in the leg bones had been mended and almost
healed, but the position of the arms prevented a similarly effective healing,
which in turn made further efforts pointless. Lyral forced herself to stop and
conserve her power just as the Southerner neared and released her.

The old man seemed to notice that something had changed in the young Priestess
while she cuffed her wrists and ankles. The girl who used to shake in terror
before him no longer was, although her eyes still filled with tears when her
friend's voice rose in a gurgled, wheezing scream. He discarded the impulse of
investigating the matter as he wanted to possess the blonde Northern goddess
as soon as possible, and once done released Kayleen from the rack, letting her
slide to the floor in a heap of dislocated limbs like a screaming rag doll.

Spurred by hope, Lyral wriggled on the floor in the spasmodic effort to bring
her hands to touch Kayleen's trembling arms, which rested on the floor, cuffed
together in a position that would not impede healing. She started immediately,
her eyes closed, and sensed the bones mending and reshaping as desperation
lent her power an effectiveness she would not have expected in the times
devoid of nightmarish agonies that were but a dim shade of the past.

She was allowed to continue for some more time and then a swarthy hand yanked
her by the hair, breaking contact. Kayleen's scream of heart-rending despair
as the healing was interrupted short of fully restoring her dislocated limbs
tore through Lyral's tears like a whiplash.

The old man cuffed Kayleen's wrists and ankles together behind her back, then
pushed a small hook through the firm flesh of her left breast, wrenching a
protracted scream from her torn mouth. More followed, into both breasts,
thighs and belly, often tightened with pliers while she buckled in harrowing
pain, and fastened one by one to the crossed steel bars he favored for
suspensions. She continued to scream as more hooks pierced her feminine flesh,
distending her outer labia and deforming her vagina, one tearing at the bottom
cleft while two pulled on the inner labia tearing open the upper cleft.

When he pulled her up, demented howls of excruciating pain wracked her chest,
as there were not enough hooks to bear her weight and she had to support
herself with hands and feet to prevent the hooks from ripping off, a support
which her dislocated limbs could offer only at the price of harrowing agonies.
Her tormentor made sure the chains were barely long enough to let her stand on
her toes and fingers, and for a while just savored the sight of her spasmodic
trashing while her limbs teetered and twitched, wracking bitter screams
through her panting chest while the hooks tore at her flesh.

Suddenly, he grabbed her by the hips and thrust his sheathed manhood into her
vagina, tearing some hooks as he pushed violently into her scorched love
channel while she swung from the hooks and her dislocated limbs were savagely
shaken and trashed. Drinking her bitter screams like fine wine, he kept up her
violation, with a wide grin at the unnatural endurance allowed by magic.

When his arousal finally found release, he pulled out, panting heavily, and
slowly pushed a fine hook through the distended rim of her vagina, watching
her scream hoarsely as he twisted it left and right and then tightened it with
the pliers. Dozens more followed, their fine chains pulled together to a pair
of handles to which he also connected four more hooks which he raked through
her distended clitoris while her wretched howls echoed in the room.

After clamping the bleeding piece of feminine flesh, he smeared her insides
with the white powder which left them parched dry, and viciously pulled her
torn vagina onto his erect manhood, lifting her feet off the floor in a rut of
rabid lust. A shrill scream surged from her mouth, followed by many others as
her singed innards were scraped raw and the rim torn and shredded. Sustained
by both magic and drugs, he kept impaling her savagely up and down his erect
member, well beyond the expected endurance of even a healthy youngster, until
he burst in release between squirts of blood from her torn wounds.

Still panting, he circled her screaming form and grabbed her cheeks, seeking
fear in her bulging eyes before pushing a tiny hook through her lower lip. In
a bloody feast of cruelty, more hooks pierced her, all around her mouth and
under her tongue, until he pulled her screaming throat onto his unnaturally
hardening member, panting in excitement while viciously savaging her bleeding
mouth in a grunting rut punctuated by her desperate gurgling screams. Only
when his semen bubbled off her mouth, mixed with her blood, did her voice
surge again from the bloody mouth in a howl of hellish torment.

Fueled by magic, fanned by her pain, her tormentor's lust knew neither bounds
nor respite. He didn't bother with staples such as splashes with cold water or
a sip from the jug, and set about driving hooks in the rim of her sphincter in
prelude to another hideous violation. With untiring brutality, his sheathed
member tore her rectum as he pulled on the hooks, but her voice had already
lost its strength and her wheezing cries did not justice to the agony being
wrought onto her wracked body. Screaming and gasping, she continued buckling
in abject torment, impaled on his manhood until he finally let go of her.

While she teetered on her dislocated limbs, sobbing bitterly after being
splashed with cold, salt water, her tormentor had lowered from a sturdy steel
bar four chains ending in meat hooks. Once done, he started forcefully ripping
off the hooks suspending her to the crossed bars, lingering on those
lacerating her vagina while she convulsed in demented howling.

After cuffing elbows and wrists together behind her back, he thrust one meat
hook in the flesh of her forearm, just under the wrist, twisting it deeper and
deeper between the twin bones while she arched in spasmodic agony, until it
engaged the edge of the cuff. Once he had both her arms hooked, he pulled the
bar up until she was on her knees, cuffing her ankles to a ring while she
howled in unabated pain, then pulled her another inch off the floor, so that
she could not help her arms support her weight except with her toes.

Her screams surged and then waned to a helpless gurgle as he pulled her mouth
onto his unnaturally erect member again, drawing new blood from the gashes cut
by the hooks around her mouth. The repeated blasts of white hot pain from her
dislocated arms and legs, and the ripping agony in her violated mouth, gurgled
around his engorged manhood in screams of wretched woe, which so pleasured him
that he repeated the violation over and over, pausing to pour some syrup from
the jug down her sputtering mouth now and then.

His face red under the swarthy complexion, he reached for her calf and started
twisting a meat hook into the jerking limb, pushing it among her pitiful
screams until it engaged the cuff. He then bent her leg until he could fasten
the hook back to the chain, doing the same to her other leg while foam bubbled
in her mouth between screams of helpless anguish.

While she swung back and forth in mid air, convulsing in agony, he started
twisting fine hooks through the blistered flesh of her breasts, including the
nipples which he clamped with the pliers again. She had been subjected to such
protracted violations that her orifices were torn, scraped and shredded into
gaping holes of bleeding, pulsating crimson flesh, and only after a similar
fate was wrought on her quivering breasts did her tormentor leave her,
swinging and lost in the agonies of hanging from the hooks, her bloodied form
wracked by pangs of abysmal torment from her limbs and her mauled flesh.

Lyral was forced to sit with her back to her friend's face, which prevented
the delivery of any healing, screaming bitterly as the restraints were
perfected. The Southerner then moved behind Kayleen's splayed thighs, winding
the chains from the hooks in her breasts over the bar she swung from.

Cackling madly, he penetrated her sphincter again, thrusting forward until his
crotch pushed her thighs apart, while a wail of bitter despair wracked her
bloody chest. With both hands, he pulled on the chains leading to the hooks in
her breasts, viciously distending the latter into deformed cones of bleeding
agony and forcing her to arch forwards, sucking his member into exhilarating
pleasure as her spasming muscles clutched it and then engulfing it into raging
arousal as she swung back rending her own bleeding sphincter apart and chafing
her own bowels raw in a screeching howl of wretched anguish.

An unexpected bump in the back told Lyral that the swings were wide enough for
contact, but not enough to turn her head and deliver some healing. Kayleen
continued to swing back and forth, wracked by the agonies in her bowels, the
torment in her dislocated limbs and by the shredding of her breasts, but only
when she felt her tormentor's release inside, and realized that his arousal
was prodigiously being rekindled again, only then did desperate pleads for her
friend's help surge between her coughing frenzies of desperate screaming.

Trembling, Lyral arched back with a scream of her own, delivering a fleeting
wave of healing power through the brief contact, but also revealing that her
breasts were pierced by hooks whose chains ran to her toes, so that she could
arch only at the price of ripping horrid gashes through her flesh.

Relishing his own cruel debauchery, the Southerner had no wish to impede the
continuation of his victim's defilement and set about making her swings wider,
so that she could be healed longer, and find her agonies increased upon
swinging back. After coming within her bowels again, he replaced the harness
on his member with a studded one, then reiterated her violation with the
horrid implement over and over, wallowing in her convulsed screaming.

Not sated yet, he replaced the harness with another, smeared with hot pepper
oil and rubbed in sand, and resumed violating his victim's bowels before
Shandra's horrified eyes. The effect of his drugs and her magic had unleashed
a rabid lust a beast would be ashamed of, fueling it beyond any boundary of
nature. The violations continued, each long and harrowing, with the briefest
pause in between for a sip from the jug or a splash of cold water.

When Kayleen collapsed on the floor, the repeated brushes with her friend's
healing power had staved off death by blood loss, but bottomless pits of agony
burned behind her clear blue eyes. She twitched in terror when he placed a
chair under her and spread her legs wide in mid air, fastening heavy weights
to the iron bands at her knees. He wound the chains from the hooks in her
shredded breasts around a pulley above, lifted her with both hands to sit on
the chair, then among her screams of bitter despair pulled her vagina down his
unbelievably erect member, sheathed again in simple leather.

Relishing in the game he was fond of, he then pulled viciously on the chains,
lifting her by her shredded breasts between squirts of blood while the
scorched, defiled walls of her love channel clutched his member and her voice
trembled in a howl beyond her possibilities. When he let her drop down, the
weights at her knees pulled her thighs at the dislocated joints and rattled
her legs still suspended by the dreadful hooks, forcing her voice to rise in a
scream fueled by the devastating pain coursing through her lower limbs.

Lyral, no longer able to intervene, watched her friend's vagina repeatedly
shredded as she trashed up and down his erect member. When she was dropped,
her dislocated hip joins were jarred as her thighs were torn apart by the
weight, and after a few violations he treated her with the white powder which
parched her love channel dry, turning each slide down his impossibly erect
member into repeated scraping of her raw flesh, which wrenched long howls of
demented agony from her bleeding, torn mouth.

When he changed to the studded harness, the studs started scraping bits of
flesh which squirted together with blood each time she came down. Their traces
inside her womb could be seen as bruises tracing a dull point bulging under
the flesh, because the clutching reflex as she was pulled by her breasts stuck
them in the wall before they got dragged down between howls of abysmal pain.

Still panting but spurred by a lust which the exhilarating wine of her agony
only enraged, he let her down enough for Lyral to wriggle nearby in spite of
the torment in her breasts and stamp her lips on her friend's quivering back,
bent on delivering as much healing as possible while the Southerner changed
her restraints again. He freed her arms from their suspension and wound them
around a wedge-shaped steel bar under her elbows, then ran the chains from the
hooks in her breasts to the bands at her knees and the chain from the hooks in
her forearms to those at her ankles, forcing her arms to bend backwards and
her legs to twist outwards into renewed agony for her dislocated joints.

Using a needle, he then threaded a knotted cord all around the shredded rim of
her vagina, crudely stitching its tatters together into a smallish hole whose
flapping rim he pierced with hooks while Kayleen howled in pain so hideous
that her bloodied face had many facial muscles strained from the contortions
forced by the appalling agonies wrought on her quivering body, not least the
threading of the knotted cord through her shredded clitoris. When done he ran
the cord to her cuffs, and then pulled her by the bar under her elbows.

The agonies wracking her screaming body, from the strain on the dislocated
joints to the hooks ripping through her flesh whenever pain instigated her
convulsed jerks, found new hellish depths when he wore a sheath soaked in hot
pepper oil and rubbed in sand to penetrate her with a vicious thrust, which
reverberated through her body and forced her wrists to pull on the cord around
her vagina, tightening it while his member shredded it back and forth.

As her howls continued unabated, echoing under the vaults of the torture
chamber in trembling frenzies of wretched agony, he reiterated the violation
of her womb, always driven by a lust whose rage sustained an arousal beyond
mercy. He continued thrusting viciously, peeling the rim of her vagina raw and
slowly abrading it while desperate screams of excruciating agony wracked her
heaving chest, until the knotted cord was exposed and scraped free.

Shandra had to use a spell to prevent herself from puking, three times.
Lyral's eyes watched in bulging horror her suffering friend, hanging outside
her reach. Kayleen's nightmarish screams echoed in their ears without
interruption and it looked like the horror would never end. But the drugs and
the magic reached their limits, when the old man slowed his rhythm and then
pulled away with a hiss. Upon Zhorun's command, Grod unenthusiastically yanked
the Southerner's head and poured a generous helping of potion down his throat.

The Easterner lowered Kayleen on the floor and looked behind his back at the
silent corpse, who nodded. He cuffed Kayleen's wrists and ankles and dragged
her near an iron pillory. He then grabbed Lyral, freed her toes and dragged
her nearby. While he lowered a chain from the ceiling, Lyral wriggled near her
friend and managed to touch Kayleen's mangled body.

"Lyral ... it hurts ... please" croaked Kayleen's voice.

"Here, Kayleen. Be still. I am here now" answered Lyral.

"It never ... stops. Always worse. I can't take it" gurgled Kayleen.

"Don't let them win, Kayleen. Hold on," urged Lyral, trembling under the
impression of the anguish coursing through Kayleen's poor limbs.

She managed to address her friend's hideous wounds, stopping blood loss and
reversing some of the hideous damage, and was about to relocate her elbow and
knee joints when the Easterner grabbed her by the ankles, causing Kayleen to
arch in a cry of forlorn despair. Lyral was hung upside down from the ceiling,
arms and elbows cuffed behind her back. Before her eyes, Kayleen would be
plunged again into nightmarish agonies for Zhorun's ...  pleasure.  They no
longer bothered torturing her, but being proved right was torture enough.

The Easterner fastened Kayleen's wrist cuffs to a vertical steel pole and
pulled her ankles sideways and back, enough to fasten her ankle cuffs to rings
set in the floor, too far back for her to support her weight even on the toes.
Soon her sobs turned to bitter screams as pain wracked her dislocated limbs,
forced by her slumped position to bear the strain of her full weight.

He neared, holding in his hands two wooden handles connected by three strands
of thick, coarse rope, like hemp but darker and bristling with tiny hairs. He
wound the rope around her left forearm and started rubbing back and forth,
slowly at first and then with increasing intensity. Puzzlement immediately
turned to horror on her face, followed by a wretched howl as her elbow joint
teetered under the pull. The immediate pain momentarily overshadowed the
friction of the ropes burning and scraping, but as the chafing was protracted
and the ropes started drawing blood she started buckling, vainly attempting to
offset the progressive, burning abrasion of her skin.

The merciless chafing continued, scraping the skin burned by the relentless
friction to expose the pulsating flesh underneath while she arched and
buckled in excruciating pain, her mouth gaping in a wheezing howl for which
she no longer had the strength. The ropes had been wound around her forearm in
a simple loop designed to bring them, in adept hands, to chafe the skin around
the entire girth of the limb. Used forcefully, the dry, coarse rope generated
enough friction to burn the skin before abrading it slowly, wreaking atrocious
pain on Kayleen's twitching form as the burned skin was shredded raw.

When he stopped, panting, Lyral's eyes bulged at the swaths of chafed, bloody
and shredded skin crossed by gashes of torn flesh marring her friend's slender
forearm. As if this horror was not enough, he poured a liquid on the open,
shredded flesh and the acrid smell of vinegar reached Lyral's nostrils almost
at the same time as Kayleen's inhuman howl of wretched agony, which continued
unabated as she rattled her dislocated limbs arching between demented screams.

After catching his breath, he circled her and started chafing the right leg,
wringing new screams from her buckling chest because the back and forth motion
caused the leg to teeter at the dislocated knee. Kayleen was withering between
hellish torments which started with the white hot agonies from the dislocated
limbs, saw them eclipsed by the burning agony of friction on the skin and then
culminated in the shredding of the skin and the scraping of raw flesh below,
hideous lacerations slowly diminished by the blood lubricating the rope.

On taut muscle, such as her leg, the shredding caused spasmodic strains which
added to her agonies, drawing long howling screams as the leg quivered as if
burning from within. In some places, such as the shins, white bone showed
through in places. Lyral balked at the horrid torment, which proved how much
the torturers had come to rely on magical healing, absent which Kayleen, in
spite of her exceptional endurance would never live through such an ordeal.

Meanwhile, the Easterner had poured vinegar on Kayleen's leg and was catching
his breath while her screams echoed unabated in the room, fueled by the agony
of the acidic liquid as much as the uninterrupted torment of the joints. Her
elbows and knees were swollen and bruised, even worse than her shoulders and
hips, and her spasmodic jerks often allowed the heads of bones to be seen
twitching and displacing under the skin. Her face was a contorted mask of
sheer anguish, still bloody from the harrowing violations of her mouth
deformed by the spider gag into a gaping outlet of the agonies wrought on her.

Her other forearm was subjected to the chafing ropes, with the same merciless
cruelty visited on her other limbs. Lyral tried to swing closer, but Kayleen's
slumping position precluded contact, sometimes by mere inches. At least three
times her lips almost touched Kayleen's heaving shoulder blades, giving her a
close view of the harrowing screams wracking her heaving chest but not a
chance to deliver the healing her friend needed. When blood finally made the
ropes slippery, before vinegar was poured, Lyral called.

"Kayleen, I can't reach you. Try to lift your back!"

Her friend's strangled scream as vinegar washed over her shredded flesh made
Lyral fear that she might have not heard, but then she saw the muscles stiffen
in spite of the harrowing agony from her dislocated limbs, and Kayleen's pain
wracked back rose enough for her to touch her with her lips. The fleeting
contact did not allow much, and Kayleen's slumped position prevented her from
healing the dislocated joints, but Lyral could not stand aside before the
excruciating torments her friend was being subjected to.

The chafing of her other leg followed, slowly protracted until her shin bone
gleamed white in a number of places of the bleeding limb while Lyral's healing
at least stopped the blood loss from the swaths of shredded skin but could not
help with the frenzies of demented howling as the harrowing pain from the
burned skin being shredded wracked the leg, rattled the knee joint and coursed
in spasmodic jerks through the whole body before bursting from her torn mouth
in fitful, winded screams of uninterrupted anguish.

After bringing the jug to her lips, he splashed her with cold, salt water and
while she still trembled and gasped in wheezing agony, set a wrist free and
cuffed it to a chain from the ceiling, followed by the other. He then pulled
her arms up behind her back and fastened her ankle cuffs to chains from both
sides which he pulled until her legs opened in a savage split which fanned new
agonies in her dislocated hip joints. He adjusted the chains until she hung in
mid air, each arm twisted up behind her back and the legs spread in a
dislocated split which caused harsh screams upon each breath.

She trembled in a hissing sigh of bitter despair when he wound the ropes
around her left arm, a sigh which turned a scream as pain surged from her
shoulder and elbow in jarring waves of atrocious agony. Lyral continued her
fleeting deliveries of some healing, but the inability to address the
dislocations impeded treatment of lesser but equally painful wounds such as
the swaths of burned skin being shredded on her arm.

Vinegar was poured on her hand, flowing down her arm and renewing the agony
in the forearm before evoking it in the newly shredded upper arm, and healing
could help little with the white hot bursts of raw torment rattling her hung
body while gut-wrenching winded screams jerked her head back and forth. Nor
could it help when the skin of her left thigh was slowly shredded, fold by
fold, protracting the agony with the white powder which left it parched dry
so that on softer skin the rope could inflict its burning agonies much longer
and then shred it unmercifully while harrowing frenzies of excruciating pain
wracked her buckling body into mad fits of demented screaming.

Vinegar was poured again on a leg twitching in torment, turning the twitches
to spasmodic jerks as the liquid seeped in the crisscrossing swaths of chafed,
burned and shredded skin to reach the crimson of raw flesh or the gleaming
white of exposed bone, reverberating through the convulsing body with hideous
wheezing howls of forlorn anguish interspersed by choked gasps of raw pain.

She drank avidly from the jug again, unable to refuse the strength which only
made the pain worse. The torment of her other thigh began and was carried out
while she rattled her chains from the torment in her joints, convulsed in
frenzies of howling anguish from the burning of the skin, and arched in
spasmodic jerks as it was shredded between winded howls of excruciating agony.

When he wound the ropes around her belly, Lyral burst in tears at the sight of
the expression in Kayleen's blue eyes. She had tried to heal her repeatedly,
but could not shield her from such agonies. The ropes chafed her belly and her
chest, wrenching hideous screams from her mouth as her limbs rattled under her
demented buckling, rising up and down and leaving angry red swaths of chafed
skin which turned angry red as it was slowly burned by the friction from the
merciless rope, augmented by generous helpings of white powder.

Slowly the burned skin was rasped away by the ropes, torn and shredded in
bloody tatters as the ropes dug shallow gashes of fiery torment in her
quivering body while she screamed her lungs out. The white of her ribs was
exposed in several places, but that was nothing before the atrocious torment
inflicted on her breasts when a single rope was dragged under the iron rings
constricting their base, slowly sawing them off her chest through relentless
friction while her mouth tore at the corners from the withering howls surging
through it and then chafing them raw while tight nipple clamps distended them
into pulsating cones of raw tormented flesh.

Not even the harrowing torment of abundant aspersions with vinegar over her
mostly flayed body wrenched from her howls like those wracking her convulsing
chest when her breasts were slowly shredded raw in atrocious fits of howling
agony, seizing her visage into a mask of contorted torment shaken by screams
bursting through the foam bubbling in her mouth. The distended nipples were
peeled off between the unyielding jaws of the clamps, scraped raw and slowly
shredded until torn off by her spasmodic jerks. Nobody objected.

As vinegar was poured on her wounds, her wheezing screams waned and waxed
pitifully, and continued while her tormentor lowered her on the floor, keeping
her legs spread and lowering her shoulders until her elbows reached the
ground. She was in such pain that when he twisted her arms in their sockets,
pulling the elbows back behind the head and then stretching them to a ring in
the floor, her reaction was a pitiful wheezing scream. But she trembled in
dread when he wound the ropes through her crotch, while Lyral turned her gaze
praying softly under her breath. The jug was emptied in her mouth, and cold,
salt water was repeatedly splashed on her quivering body.

The chafing started slowly, with the ropes pulling her loins off the floor in
jerks which wracked her dislocated joints and wrenched winded screams of raw
pain from a throat which supposedly could no longer contain the agonies she
was enduring. The chafing and burning were mercilessly protracted by repeated
use of the white powder and frequent recourse to new, dry ropes, dragging her
screaming feminine parts through nightmarish hells of endless torment as the
soft flesh was chafed and burned with atrocious deliberation.

A clamp distended her clitoris, bearing a good fraction of her weight, and
exposed it to relentless chafing and burning in spite of her spasmodic efforts
to lessen the agony of having it slowly peeled raw. The ropes wound back and
forth through her feminine flesh, searing the cleft between her legs from the
sphincter through her vulva and shredding her labia raw. In spite of the
demented howls wracking her convulsing chest, the chafing was protracted,
shredding skin and flesh and tearing through her inner lips. No respite was
given, scraping the rim of the vagina and the distended clitoris raw while
drawn out frenzies of inhuman woe shook her buckling body. New ropes were
produced, shredding the raw flesh in thin strands while atrocious screams
wracked her spasmodically convulsing chest, over and over until the tatters
of her shredded clitoris were torn off from the clamp.

Lyral's pleads, which could not be heard between Kayleen's barrage of screams,
were silently acknowledged and she was brought down and allowed to heal her
friend. She wriggled to bring her hands in contact with Kayleen's twitching
body, and almost puked when she felt the agony coursing through it, worried
sick at the torn nipples and clitoris because healing magic could not attach
severed body parts. She silently prayed for a miracle, for the power to help
her friend ... and her heart sang when she saw her horrid wounds slowly
recede, her swollen joints deflate and her pulsating flesh stop bleeding.

A swarthy hand yanked Lyral's head while Kayleen screamed in despair, while
the Southerner's voice mocked, "That's enough. She gets feisty otherwise."

"Indeed," whispered Zhorun, adding "Would my apprentice show us how her study
progresses so far ?"

Still trembling, Shandra concentrated, and moments later a bullwhip uncoiled
from a table nearby and snaked to Kayleen's limp body. The whip cracked across
her shoulder blades, drawing a hissing scream from the torn chest. The lashes
followed one another, in quick succession, tracing angry red welts on the
twitching shoulders.

"Too quick," commented Grod after a dozen lashes.

"We defer to your expertise in these matters, Grod, but if this is a variation
of the rope animation spell, it does not last long, pauses would be wasteful.
The concept is interesting, however. Please arrange the prisoner suitably, my
apprentice needs more tuition"

Grod cuffed Kayleen's wrists to chains from the ceiling, twisting the arms up
wide behind her back, then cuffed each ankle to the corresponding wrist by a
chain shortened until the leg was pulled off the floor. While she started
screaming from the strain in her dislocated limbs, he spread her ankles until
her shins came to rest on wedges, to which he fastened the bands at her knees.

Zhorun concentrated, reanimating the bullwhip that lay on the ground after
about two dozen lashes. The whip coiled and cracked inside Kayleen's splayed
thighs, alternating quickly between left and right as she arched screaming.

"Switching target helps deliver more lashes," commented Zhorun.

The handle turned upwards and impaled Kayleen's rectum, while the tip moved to
her soles, always alternating between left and right while she jerked with a
strangled scream upon each thrust from the handle.

"Two hands are no longer a limitation", added the corpse.

The tip cut across a nipple and then switched to the other with blinding
speed while the handle snaked inside her vagina, about to draw blood again.

"The spell allows remarkable precision", he chirped.

Shandra watched in disbelief as the lashing continued, its duration a measure
of Zhorun's power. After over sixty lashes, the tip left the nipples and slid
inside Kayleen's vagina, vibrating inside as it lashed her innards under the
impulse of the spell while she buckled and howled in bitter pain.

"Areas ordinarily hard to reach can be targeted", said Zhorun.

The lashes started tearing at her clitoris while the handle penetrated her
rectum again, and continued for a dozen strikes before falling on the floor
while Kayleen's body arched and twitched in screaming agony.

"Amusing, but too brief," whispered the grating voice of the former wizard.


Chapter 26 - Diligence Demonstrated

The rattling of chains was drowned by a bitter cry as Kayleen twitched in the
vain attempt to lessen her torment. She hung in mid-air, her knees wound over
the serrated edge of a wedge-shaped steel bar and her arms pulled between the
thighs, under the bar, the wrists cuffed to the inside of the ankles.

Her own arms squeezed together her breasts, still constricted by the serrated
iron rings around their base. Her thumbs bled in thumbscrews fastened to the
wooden wedge penetrating her womb up to the cervix, but the worst agonies came
from the dislocated joints, which her position strained mercilessly, and the
swaths of skin chafed raw, which rubbed together at the slightest movement.

"Lyral .. are you here ?" she croaked, her mind still lost in a haze of pain,
not able to see that her friend was there but could not answer, her mouth
stuffed with rags so that she could only moan and rattle the chains she hung
from, too far to reach Kayleen's shivering body.

"Lyral ..." cried Kayleen again, wracked by pain as the shivers she had tried
to control coursed through her drenched body. The wedge made bending at the
waist painful, its dents and slivers cut her insides and its girth rubbed the
lacerated rim of her vagina incessantly. A pearly glow enveloped Lyral's head,
revealing her predicament to her sobbing friend, whose head sank in despair.

Deprived even of the comfort of a friendly voice, Kayleen shivered in misery
and bitter pain for a time she lost track of, until heavy footsteps turned her
nightmares into reality again. Desperation wracked her bitter sighs.

"No ... please. Not already," she muttered.

Zhorun entered, followed by Grod and the Southerner. It was actually very
early, before dawn, and Kayleen could not yet realize that he had ordered
changes in how she would be interrogated. She was lowered on the floor, then
Lyral was brought nearby, still gagged and blindfolded, and allowed to heal
Kayleen's mercilessly restrained body at length.

As the healing power coursed through her body, Kayleen's mind climbed back to
some semblance of sanity from unfathomable depths of horrid agony, enough to
weep softly at the prospect of more tortures to come. Although she had craved
her friend's healing power until now, she caught herself wondering if she
could ask not to be healed, as this only allowed her torturers more latitude.

Just as the thought of conceding defeat grew in her mind, the Southerner, who
had been waiting for blonde curls to appear again in Kayleen's pubic area,
yanked Lyral away by her hair.

Grod tightened Kayleen's collar first, to make sure she would have severe
difficulties breathing until fully restrained again, then cuffed her wrists
and elbows behind the back and pulled her off the floor by chains fastened to
the ankles, her thighs stretched in a painful split. As he fetched a heavy
bullwhip, she sobbed bitterly, smelling the bleach drenching it.

The first whiplash traced a crimson stripe on the exposed underside of her
breasts, causing her to bend at the waist while screaming her lungs out. The
second cut through her slit, leaving a thin bleeding laceration while she
arched in howling torment, and the following crisscrossed her exposed flesh,
each administered with ample pauses during which she twitched, crying in pain
as bleach seeped in the cuts. The whipping was long and brutal.

At last, the Southerner lowered her, seized her arms and dragged her to an
elevated platform where a wooden pole stood ominously. The top end was a
tapering cone, dull at the tip but hacked and dented along the sides, and the
pole had creases and ridges at least half of the way down. Kayleen's eyes
filled with tears, because she had experienced what agonies similar devices
could bring, but she could barely walk, much less struggle.

She was made to climb the platform and had to stand on the balls of her feet
as her ankle cuffs were locked in a sliding vise, the dull tip nudging at her
sphincter already. He tightened the bands at her knees, thighs and elbows
while she screamed bitterly, until droplets of blood trickled from under the
edges, which showed glimpses of the bruised, chafed and scraped skin below.

He carefully wound a thin hemp rope under her collar, and pulled both ends up
behind her ears, fastening them to an iron handle dangling from a chain above.
Once satisfied with her restraints, he pulled a lever and the platform gave
under her feet, causing her to slide down the pole while the cone violently
distended her sphincter and penetrated her bowels.

Maybe reflexively, maybe remembering similar torments she had been subjected
to, she managed to clench her thighs around the pole, slowing her descent but
not stopping it. She twitched and screamed in fits of heinous agony as she
found out all the cruel angles of her torment. The violent stretching of her
sphincter had torn it in several places, and the quick succession of creases
and ridges tearing at it had left it in bleeding tatters. Her bowels had been
raked and pierced by dents and splinters, and the incessant burning mounting
inside her meant that the wood was soaked in something caustic.

She continued sliding down slowly, clenching her thighs spasmodically while
her chest heaved and turned in fits of hoarse screaming. Her rectum was being
forcibly straightened inside her, and the burning increased mercilessly. The
dents and splinters raked the sensitive walls, and the torn muscle at the
sphincter was about to be distended again to accommodate another ridge.

She slid down some more, twitching as the pole forced her to shift her stance
to reduce the agony and the wooden surface scraped her thighs. The dull point
had found a turn in her insides and was pushing against something, causing
waves of dull ache to wrack her into trembling screams of wretched woe.

She was in such pain that when her tormentor violently penetrated her vagina,
pushing up with a leather sheathed member engorged by frenzied lust, her cry
was almost indistinguishable from those which preceded it, although during her
protracted violation humiliation and despair fueled her screams.

Her nostrils widened at the smell of a brazier just before she opened her
eyes to see her tormentor grab a fold of her breast flesh with a pair of
pliers and skewer it with a red hot copper needle. She arched in a howl of raw
pain, and her thighs let go for a fraction of second, causing the dull point
to carry her full weight and pierce whatever barrier had stopped its advance,
with a sickening squish which was followed by mad screams of hideous pain.

She had barely managed to clench her thighs again that her tormentor twisted
the skewer inside her wounded breast, demonstrating that it carried dozens of
barbs which brought a howl of harrowing pain from her distended mouth. With a
smile, he tightened the grip of the pliers, causing unthinkable pain to the
flesh being torn by the barbs while in the tight grip of the pliers.

She resumed her harrowing descent, each fraction of an inch punctuated by a
new scream as she twitched and turned from the consuming torment in her bowels
and from the blazes of searing agony wracking her as the point lacerated her
insides. She realized that the rope around her neck had slowly tightened,
supporting a fraction of her weight, because now her thighs managed to prevent
her from sliding further down.

Shortly thereafter, her tormentor pulled on the handle, tightening the cord
around her neck and causing her to gurgle as the lift pulled the pole back
through her wounded insides, revealing that the hacked edges of each ridge
doubled as barbs, especially when her muscles spasmed as she fought for
breath. He slowly dragged her up by her neck, her face contorting in agonies
she could not vent but her thighs twitching spasmodically while droplets of
blood from her sphincter stained her legs and feet.

Once pulled up almost to the point of being free from the pole, she was
abruptly let down just as she was shaking from the harrowing howl of anguished
torment been building up inside her chest. Her sphincter and rectal walls were
torn and scraped again by the dented ridges, and bits of skin were scraped
from the insides of her thighs as they stopped her descent.

A gurgling, pitiful howl wracked her as she twitched spasmodically, sliding
again down the pole as he skewered her other breast with a red hot needle,
twisting it in flesh discolored by the pliers' grip while she arched as much
as the pole rising through her bowels allowed. As her voice waned, she was
splashed with cold, salt water, and a sip from the jug revived her screams.

The harrowing torment was reiterated several times, always twisting new red
hot needles through some part of her body when she managed to suspend her
descent into hell and dragging her up between choked gurgles when she caught
up with the slack in her suspension. As the dull point lacerated her innards,
it reached higher and higher up inside her, tearing wounds which she would die
from in a few hours had this been an ordinary impalement.

When repeated splashes with cold, salt water and generous sips from the jug
failed to revive her screams beyond pitiful wheezing, the blindfolded Lyral
was brought forth and allowed to heal her friend, while the Southerner
replaced the pole with a thicker one, coated with multiple layers of encrusted
salt hacked into jagged, upturned dents and ridges.

Kayleen was dragged to the platform again, screaming in terror at the sight of
the device she was made to straddle, restrained almost the same as before but
for subtle shifts in the placement whose purpose became immediately clear as
her feet failed to find purchase and the conic tip tore her inner labia, while
the jagged edges lacerated the flesh among her howls of pain.

Just as she arched in torment, trembling from the agony of the salt dents
against her tightly clenched thighs, a pan of glowing coals was placed under
her cuffed feet, not close enough for contact but enough for the heat to lick
the soles of her feet and make her twitching on the pole restless.

She arched in a scream of despair when her tormentor penetrated her torn
sphincter, pushing upwards and supporting her without actually lifting her
feet off the flames, grasping her pubic hair from behind while her convulsions
pleasured his manhood. Gurgling meaningless words escaped her mouth until the
violation of her bleeding rectum was finally over.

As she slid down, more jagged ridges lacerated her love channel and the rim of
her vagina in spite of her desperate attempts to slow the progression of the
dull tip, while the salt encrusting the shaft was slowly melting and burning
her insides, freeing wooden splinters which pierced the parched tissues
causing her mouth to distend in howls of wretched anguish as the heat under
her soles made itself felt against her trembling feet.

Her descent continued until the rope around her neck started strangling her,
but unlike before her tormentor allowed her frantic legs some leeway to avoid
the licking heat, the pain in the singed feet enough to keep her awake. Freed
to do his bidding, he grabbed her left nipple between pliers and twisted a red
hot barbed needle inside the gripped feminine flesh, savoring how her visage
contorted in excruciating pain as he twisted it back and forth.

Having let her writhe while tormenting both nipples and clitoris, the latter
with a finely barbed needle which reached to the pole within, he then lifted
her by the rope around her neck, stifling her howl into a fit of desperate
gurgles as the movement caused the tip of the needle to teeter against the
surface of the pole and the barbs to trash the blistered flesh with jerks
which caused blood to sputter from the tip of the twitching feminine nub just
as the ridges caused howls to burst from her mouth.

When she was finally dropped, the ridges on the hellish pole ripped the cuts
in the rim of her vagina again, causing her head to jerk upwards in a gut
wrenching howl of abysmal torment. She resumed her screaming descent, and when
her soles felt the heat of the coals again her legs twitched and she shook in
atrocious pain as her cervix was ripped through by the dull point.

The torture was reiterated several times but, unlike with her rectum, each
time she was dropped the tip followed a different path before reaching the
cervix, repeatedly lacerating her insides with wounds which required Lyral's
intervention while Kayleen twitched in screaming agony.

The repeated lifting and dropping had pushed the teetering tip of the needle
transfixing her clitoris somewhat back, but at the price of having the barbs
shred the feminine flesh mercilessly, scraping a wound which healing could not
address as long as the needle tore through it back and forth, wrenching
pitched screams of unabated torment from her hoarse throat.

Each time she was lifted, her eyes went blank as the rope choked her throat
and pain burst from her womb while the ridges traveled back through her
wounded insides, scraping the tissue inflated by the burning caustic while she
lacked even the breath for venting her agony. Fire invaded her lungs and
throat while her body spasmed and her vaginal muscles reflexively clutched the
instrument of their own agony just as it shred them mercilessly.

After dropping her dozens of times, he stopped her in mid descent by keeping
the chain short and started threading a knotted cord through the shredded rim
of her vagina, a cord which burned from the unknown venom it was soaked with,
and waited for the shredded inner labia to swell painfully before resuming her
torment, smiling lewdly at the renewed intensity of her wretched screams.

Once her womb was ruptured and the tip tore through her stomach, the expert
hand of her tormentor guided her slow, screaming descent into hell, repeatedly
drenching her in cold, salt water to keep her awake. As she slowly slid down
the pole, the tip started bulging above her stomach, and horrid bruises burst
from within her when she was lifted and dropped again and again as he tried to
drive the pole up her esophagus, counting on the melting of the salt crust to
bring the girth that had torn her vagina open to lesser proportions.

Smiling cruelly, he continued lifting and dropping her, short stunts of less
than a foot which gained less than inch each time, while her face turned red
and then blue as the pole compressed her trachea. Lyral was sobbing at her
friend's feet, unable to see and hear but hideously aware of the agonies of
her friend whenever her lips were forced against Kayleen's bleeding thighs.

Kayleen's feet continued flailing in spasmodic agony as the heat had peeled
her soles raw, but the coals had also slowly heated the inside of the pole
which was now charring her from within, smoking here and there, revealing red
hot iron spikes whose burning cuts caused her to shrivel like a paper doll on
a spit, her voice wheezing in frenzies of pitiful shrieking which shook her
convulsing body from toe to mouth.

When the Southerner guided the tip to protrude from her open mouth, the blood
on top bubbled while her screams had turned to a wretched gurgle of demented
agony, her feet spasmodically rattling the irons at her ankles and her fingers
curling and clenching under the splashes of cold, salt water drenching her,

while her body shook and trembled impaled on the fuming pole which ran it
through, the old man was not done yet. Pulling on the thread around her inner
lips, he brought her wheezing form another inch down, until a crown of jutting
red hot spikes pierced her labia causing her twitches to become more
spasmodic. He then sat down below her, his manhood hard under the robes as he
savored the elixir of her descent into deeper and deeper hells.

Lyral was allowed to heal her friend briefly, then dragged away as the
torturers closed the door behind them, leaving Kayleen convulsing on the pole,
plunged in the near darkness of a torture chamber echoing of her own pitched,
harrowing screams, lit only by the coals placed under her feet, whose reddish
light did not reach the shadows where the silent corpse of the former wizard
stood motionless. Zhorun found solace in her agonies and yet could never be
satisfied, as the most harrowing torments always seemed inadequate to him
after the fact. His mind went to past tortures, reveling in how they could
have been made more excruciating.

The salt crust was melting inside her, causing the caustic brine to burn her
parched insides while protracted exposure was bringing the abraded tissue to
swell, starting from the labia and the shredded vaginal rim, making her slide
more excruciating by the minute and fanning the agony behind her howls.

The ridge of embedded iron spikes, red hot under the bubbling crust, had not
completely stopped her descent by hooking her swollen labia, and thereafter
whenever she sought a moment of respite for her charred soles, the spikes
would rake the swollen flesh while she convulsed in gurgling agony.

Her twitching anguish continued in a litany of restless screaming, an horrid,
protracted nightmare whose length she could not gauge, an apparently endless
torment which kept her convulsing in excruciating pain under Zhorun's silent
gaze while her howls echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber.
When the torches returned, she vaguely felt Lyral's lips on her belly just as
Grod's strong hands lifted her from the pole, her agonies so overwhelming that
even her friend's soothing touch could not calm her convulsed jerks of pain.

"I cannot ... take ..." croaked Kayleen's broken voice. Her awareness ebbed
under waves of abysmal pain, and the pall of dread often clenched its grip on
her resolve. Had she believed that conceding defeat would have really stopped
the torture, the tatters of her resolve would have been too few and too far
between to stop her from doing so.

Lyral, still gagged, managed to take her friend's head between her arms, as
awkwardly as the wrists tied behind the back entailed, and cuddle her, sobbing
in unison and attempting to deliver more healing to her dying friend.

After Kayleen's horrid wounds receded, Grod dragged her on the floor near the
ominous wooden mass of the rack. She twitched, her legs recoiling while a
hoarse scream tore from her mouth, as her back found spikes on the wooden
planks. No change of irons occurred, and the chains of the rack were fastened
to the same heavy irons she had worn for days.

Her delirious mind returned to her first time on the rack, when Grod had been
afraid of cutting into her blood vessels at the wrists. Now she wore cuffs
that had been screwed savagely tight, enough to chafe and cut the skin, with
studs inside which had dug bloody grooves of agony in her flesh, although not
where major blood vessels ran. The agony at her wrists and ankles had been the
bitter companion of her relentless torment, and yet it looked tame before the
horrid torments being heaped on her.

Instead of the leather bands he had used to prevent the rack from breaking her
spine, he produced a thin, barbed chain, which he wound under her shoulders
and through her crotch while she convulsed in pain. The chains cut through the
folds of her sex, two outside and two inside the labia, crushing a clitoris
cruelly distended by a clamp tightened with iron pliers.

He cranked the rack until her body was taut, splendid again after Lyral's
power had restored it almost fully, except at the elbows, waist and knees
where the tight iron rings dug into chafed and bleeding skin. The serrated
rings around the bases of her heaving breasts made them bulge, but not enough
to hide the gashes dug in the soft skin which had been another source of
uninterrupted pain for days. A shiver coursed through the splendid stretched
body when she saw Grod retrieve a red hot piton from a brazier.

The knifeblade piton had an almond cross section and a cloven head, which did
not hinder Grod as he hammered it through her forearm while she screamed in
mad pain. He expertly slid the blade between the bones of her forearm without
breaking them, slowly driving the implement through amidst squirts of blood
and smoke as the wound was scorched by the heat.

The serrated edges made the agony all the more excruciating, and Kayleen
convulsed and screamed, frothing at the mouth in pain well beyond what wounds
wrought by blades of like size had caused. Grod continued hammering it until
it pushed through and stuck in the wood. The hammering stopped only when the
piton had been deeply driven in the wood, but resumed immediately with another
through her other forearm before she caught her breath.

After both pitons were driven into the wood, the upper roller of the rack was
cranked, pulling at her wrists and causing her stretched arms to be pulled
against the serrated edge of the pitons, slowly tearing twin bloody gashes
through her stretched muscles and scraping the bone while she convulsed amidst
pitched screams of deranged agony.

The torment was repeated several times, cranking the rack a few notches more
each time so that the edge of the gash would be cut again each time, causing
her to arch in howling agony as much as her restraints allowed. After
splashing her with cold water and letting her sip from the jug, another pair
of pitons was driven into her legs, again sliding the implements obliquely
between the bones and avoiding major vessels while she trembled and shook,
banging her head against the wood while pain contorted her features in
reiterated frenzies of demented howling.

Grod moved to the lower roller, cranking it to tear the pitons through her
legs just as he had done with her forearms, progressively increasing the pull
to add the agony of racking proper to the shredding of her twitching leg
muscles while she howled in uninterrupted woe. Cold water and the jug became
the only moments of respite in the hellish tug of war being wrought through
her limbs, especially since Grod started operating both rollers, pulling in
opposite directions and releasing either in turn.

She tried to twist away when Grod put a piton against her ribcage, but she was
stretched taut and could only scream and tremble while the red hot blade was
driven between her ribs, expertly avoiding the lungs but tearing through
muscles taut from the tension of the rack. The spiked chains had dug through
her crotch bloody gashes of searing agony, the spikes tore at the muscles of
her back and when he cranked the rollers untold agonies surged from her
ribcage as the serrated blade scraped the ribs while she convulsed in demented
frenzies of excruciating torment.

As the blades cooled, the agony came from the shredding of the stretched
muscles and, especially in the case of those braiding her ribcage, the
scraping of the bone by the serrated edges. Lyral was brought forward to heal
her friend several times, allowing her only the time to mend the worst wounds
while Kayleen convulsed in uninterrupted agony, bleeding profusely in spite of
the repeated healing. As more blades were driven through her ribcage, each
scream became a hell unto itself and broke in fits of desperate, choking woe
which shook her chest and reverberated through her limbs.

Grod proceeded to encase her bulging breasts in an ominous wooden vise,
screwing it tight until her screams returned as the constricted flesh turned
purple within the wooden jaws, and then drove a red hot blade through the
squeezed flesh, ignoring the shrill screams of pleading woe surging from her
torn mouth as blood squirted from the laceration and hammering the blade until
it stuck securely in the wooden device.

When he operated the roller again, the hot blade bent and slowly cut through
her breast flesh, tearing a horrid gash which pulsated while her mouth almost
dislocated in inarticulate screams of demented agony as the shredding of her
breast matched the torment in her limbs and ribcage.

The rack was momentarily released to allow another blade to pierce her other
breast, and then cranked back slowly while she howled again in pitiful
torment, her eyes wide in agony and terror at the sight of her own shredded
breasts being repeatedly cut through as another blade was slowly introduced in
her bleeding breast flesh before the rack was released and then cranked back
while her howls of excruciating agony echoed in the chamber.

The torture continued slowly, pausing for splashes with cold, salt water but
stretching her writhing form either from above or from below, or heating the
pitons again with white hot pliers before the pull dragged them another
fraction of an inch in the gashes which alternated between being cauterized
raw from the heat and being sawed through again by the serrated edges while
Kayleen's head trashed left and right in hoarse screams of deranged agony.

Lyral was brought forth, blindfolded and weeping, and turned back so that her
hands could feel for her friend's quivering breasts and provide enough healing
to stem the blood loss. Kayleen's blue eyes barely focused on her friend's
pale figure when the process began, as if from far away.

"Make it ... stop, please. No more" pleaded her torn lips.

Lyral was immediately dragged away and a thick wooden pole was placed against
Kayleen's vagina while the rack was cranked a few notches, dragging her labia
along the roughly hacked surface of its tip while the pitons drew now blood
from the wounds in her limbs and breasts, scraping her ribs while she writhed
in atrocious torment and screamed mindlessly through the foam in her mouth.

The roller above her head was released a few notches, causing her stretched
limbs to snap and another howl to wrack her as the muscles contracted onto the
serrated edges shredding themselves even more while she stiffened from the
horrendous pain in her ribs. The roller under her feet was cranked the same
number of notches, pulling her further down onto the wooden intruder while her
mind returned to similar torments inflicted on her during the preceding days
and contrasted them with the added agony of the pitons.

She was splashed with cold, salt water again and then the pitons were heated
again, lingering on those shredding her disfigured breasts while her howls
rose frantically and alternating with stretching her trembling limbs one notch
at a time until the pole had torn open her vagina and bulged visibly inside
her womb, scraping her innards while she writhed spasmodically as each breath
wrought unspeakable agonies through her scraped ribs.

The contents of the jug were poured down her throat and then another piton
was driven through her labia, searing them and nailing them to the pole while
she stiffened and howled in wheezing agony, unable to vent her anguish as her
ribcage could not gather enough hair without shrinking from the atrocious pain
of the pitons braiding the scraped bones.

Her tormentor started cranking both rollers, one notch each, stretching her
already taut body and hammering new pitons through her labia and the folds of
her clitoris, trapping it between two red hot serrated edges. Each crank of
the roller below her pulled it further along, and he used heavy pliers to bend
the pitons back against her pubic bone.

As the pull continued, the tips of the pitons pierced the skin and started
scraping her pubic bone while her clitoris was forced against the cleft of the
two bent pitons crossing, dragging the sensitive flesh between as if between
serrated scissors which her tormentor took care to heat repeatedly.

The flesh at her joints started showing bruises as the muscle tore under the
relentless pull, slowly nearing dislocation while being yanked and tugged by
her spasmodic jerks as howls of unremitting agony wracked her drenched body
and blood squirted from her wounded limbs and shredded breasts.

Her eyes rolled and foam bubbled in her mouth while the atrocious pain fanned
occasional hoarse screams from a wheezing throat, and notch after notch her
joints were brought on the brink of dislocation ... and left there. She was
given more syrup from the jug, and then Grod simply continued heating the
pitons with white hot pliers, lingering until one was red hot and unspeakable
pain surged again in her desperate screams.

On the brink of dislocation, the slightest movement pulled her arm or leg out
of its socket for a brief moment, but the traction of muscles and ligaments
pulled it back, although only after the pain of dislocation had wracked her
stretched body into screaming her excruciating agonies with the little voice
she still had. This traction ran counter to the pitons piercing her limbs, and
shredded her muscles some more each time, forcing her to twitch and pull some
more each time in order to redress the devastating torment of dislocation.

Unfortunately for her, this also caused the pitons to shred her breasts even
further, scrape her ribs and pubic bone and saw along her clitoris, now
trapped between the serrated edges and stretched upwards, bloodily scraped raw
by the repeated dragging against the tiny red hot teeth. Her agony grew as her
voice waned, causing her horrendous screams to alternate between wheezing
shrieks of pitiful anguish and fits of choked screaming as pain coursed
through her stretched body and inside her sunken, twitching joints.

After being wounded and slowly shredded, her muscles one by one reached the
point where they could no longer pull back her limbs, and the limbs were torn
out of their sockets while her visage contorted in unspeakable agony as the
muscles trembled from the protracted pain. Her tormentor continued heating the
pitons, keeping her screaming until all four of her limbs were dislocated by
her spasmodic convulsions and wretched howls rose again from her torn lips.

The torture continued while she howled in mindless agony, writhing and jerking
spasmodically as the pitons shredding her clitoris or scraping her ribs were
heated repeatedly, until the emptiness in her eyes and the hollow echo of her
wheezing screams suggested to Grod that she was almost beyond pain, enough to
make further torture pointless.

Lyral was brought forth to heal her again, and then Grod extricated her from
the rack, exchanging a glance with the silent corpse before continuing. In
ordinary circumstances, the victim should have been allowed to rest in order
for the memory of the agony to play in her mind and erode her resolve while
her body recovered enough to bring before her the prospect of giving up to
avoid farther torture, but there had been nothing ordinary in this woman's
ordeal and Zhorun's orders had been explicit.

Her tormentor cuffed Kayleen's left ankle to a chain dangling from the
ceiling, while the right ankle was fastened to a ring in the floor. Her right
hand was pulled up behind her while she screamed incoherently until he managed
to tighten a thumbscrew onto her left toe and right thumb, stretching her
dislocated limbs while she howled from the excruciating pain.

He bent her left arm behind her back and pulled it down until he caught it in
a thumbscrew fastened to the ring constricting her leg under the knee.  He
then started pulling her left leg up, watching her writhe from the horrid
stretching of her dislocated limbs, while Zhorun's gaze inspected the sunken
flesh at the joints as they twitched in abysmal pain.

Grod placed a stout spike under the ball of her right foot, adjusting the
chain so that she could relieve the stretching of her legs in the excruciating
split, which only her dislocated joints made possible, by standing with her
full weight on the spike. He finally tied a bundle of stinging tree branches
to her right elbow, so that they rubbed through her crotch.

Her tormentors left her thus, straining to stand on the ball of her feet to
ease the abysmal agony of having her dislocated hip joints stretched, and
screaming hoarsely when her muscles failed her nevertheless. The spike soon
became slippery as blood trickled from the gash ground under her foot, and the
branches caused her to convulse when their touch burned her feminine parts.

She continued crying and screaming in the dark, a feast for Zhorun's silent
enjoyment, slowly gyrating on the spike while her body trembled from the
repeated waves of wretched torment. Her mind was spinning in nightmarish agony
and it took her long to stop begging for Lyral's touch, although she knew that
her friend had been taken elsewhere.

When they returned, she had barely managed to recognize the Southerner when
the bundle was removed and she reeled under the violent penetration of her
swollen vagina by his leather sheathed member, in a rut of frenzied lust which
her desperate screams did nothing to shorten. She was then taken down and
Lyral was briefly allowed to heal her again, but this did not lift the pall of
despair from her soul. She trembled and begged incoherently when the gnarly
hands of the Southerner dragged her to the corner where the pyramid awaited.

"Our Whore Queen has become much more malleable", cackled the Southerner.

"If only the fools dying in her name could see her now", spat Zhorun.

Kayleen's pleading stopped, but the remark that once would have pricked her
pride now simply added to her humiliation. Teetering on the brink of collapse,
she barely held onto herself as the Southerner fastened her wrists and elbows
together behind her. After cuffing together ankles and knees, he placed a vise
between her thighs and fastened a number of chains to the iron band at her
waist and her other restraints, which he then made use of to lift her and
deposit her on the pyramid so that the tip distended her sphincter and
penetrated her bowels as he skillfully caused her weight to bear on the
hellish implement while she convulsed from the pain in her dislocated joints.

He then produced a collection of jars, most crawling with various kinds of
ants with disproportionately large mandibles and one full of a fine yellow
powder. He pulled her chains so that her soles were at eye level, then waited
for her screams to subside before fetching an ant and dousing it with the
powder, which apparently was rather sticky.

He immediately placed the ant against the sole of her left foot, just as the
insect started fuming and burning. She cried in pain as the sole was burned
red and then crimson, but her spasmodic twitching added to the torment from
her joints without dislocating the insect which, burning slowly, started
biting madly the singed flesh as if to dig through.

Her convulsions turned to a rattling frenzy as the burning insect gnawed into
the scorched flesh, while her head shook frantically left and right as she
screamed herself hoarse from the abysmal torment. Even the scraping of her
bowels by the wooden tip and the jolts of white hot agony from her dislocated
hips and shoulders paled before the horrid torment burrowing through her.

The ant finally died after burning over the skin and deep inside the wound in
an excruciatingly protracted agony, but another was placed on her other foot
and her torment was reinstated amidst her rising howls of desperate woe. The
ant sought instinctively the wound left by the spike, leaving a fiery trail on
her sole which turned red and then crimson as it burned from the residues of
yellow powder. The cords in her neck strained under her pitched howl as the
ant burrowed in the wound, searing it with the fuming flame in its mindless
search for safety from the fire consuming it.

When the second ant died, she was splashed with cold, salt water and allowed
to sip from the jug, but then another ant was let loose on her supple left
leg, proving that the ants had no problem clinging to her trembling skin,
searing it thoroughly while the insect crawled madly along the limb before
sinking its jaws in the tenderized flesh and ripping with mindless desperation
while her own jaw almost dislocated as howling screams of abysmal pain tore
through her throat and echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber.

Lyral shook and cried desperately, reeling at her friend's desperate howls as
if physically overwhelmed by the agonies she endured. Slowly, one after
another, dozens of ants were brought to bear against her twitching limbs,
tracing long crimson trails of scorched agony on the perfect skin and leaving
ugly charred wounds where the insects had died ripping through the flesh.
Lyral could not see the convulsed twitching, the hands opening and closing
spasmodically, clutching at thin air, the chest heaving and buckling in
restless woe or the blood trickling down the pyramid, but could imagine all of
this and much worse from the uninterrupted screams of excruciating torment.

The Southerner lavished his hellish attentions on Kayleen's thighs, bringing
ant after ant to bear onto the soft skin under the supple, twitching limbs,
drinking the agony shooting through her clear blue eyes when they bulged from
the abysmal pain of an ant burrowing through scorched flesh as a howl of pure
torment shook her contorted visage. He occasionally splashed her with cold
water, but otherwise continued the torment while she screamed herself hoarse.

He then screwed the vise between her thighs open, pulling them apart and out
of their sockets enough to leave a cleft in between and send her in a frenzy
of screaming woe from the excruciating pain in her hips. The next ant was put
between the curls of her mons, which caught fire as the insect started running
around mindlessly while she convulsed spasmodically, screaming in choked gasps
through the froth at the corners of her mouth. Her body stiffened and arched
in a protracted bellow as the insect found her vagina and entered, bringing
the fiery trail inside her love channel and up her womb.

Lyral prayed desperately for her friend's screams to pause, even for a moment,
because the agony of this ant lasted much longer and wrought fiery torments
throughout Kayleen's womb for its entire duration. No sooner had her screams
subsided that another ant was stuck under her clitoris, searing it amidst her
howls before seeking refuge in her womb again and reiterating a long frenzy of
convulsing jerks punctuated by desperate screams of hellish pain.

The horrid torment continued while she twitched spasmodically on the blood
soaked tip of the pyramid, arching and buckling while the mad ants burned her
labia and love channel in their desperate rushes to a grisly end inside her
womb, wreaking protracted agonies throughout her insides while the neverending
torment of her dislocated joints waxed and waned alongside her howling jerks.

She was offered the jug again, and then pulled up and left to hang screaming
from her dislocated arms twisted behind her back while her tormentor hacked
the wooden tip of the pyramid, tearing thick splinters and deep dents with a
heavy woodcarving tool before repositioning the restraints on her legs so that
he could spread them in a painful split and lower her on the pyramid with the
gaping opening of her vagina engaging the tip, slowly letting her weight bring
it deeper inside her in spite of her twitches and screams.

A chain fastened the iron band constricting her waist to a ring in the floor,
and her legs were spread even more, causing her to jerk and twitch from the
agony in the hip joints and the scraping of her singed innards as splinters
and slivers lodged in the scorched walls of her love channel. When he circled
her and pushed his leather sheathed member into her torn, bleeding sphincter,
the despair in her voice made Lyral collapse in a weeping heap.

Kayleen's violation continued in a frenzy of vicious thrusts, hideous screams
from the jarring of the dislocated joints which twitched and teetered under
the stretched skin and blood squirting from her vagina as slivers and dents
cut her singed innards. He lingered inside even after his lust was spent,
savoring her twitches and the clutching of his member by her strained muscles,
then pulled off and placed an ant near the torn sphincter, waiting for her to
buckle as the flame seared the delicate muscle and then scream while the
insect climbed inside her to renew the agonies visited inside her.

More fiery ants were set loose on her ass cheeks and inside her bowels, always
pausing in between to let her bear the brunt of the torment to its full extent
and occasionally splashing her with cold, salt water or letting her sip from
the jug to renew her sagging strength. Lyral was brought forth once to heal
her when the blood flowing from her scraped vagina seemed excessive, with a
large splinter piercing it from within and jutting through a gash just under
her left labia, but one of a few ripping through the distended rim.
With cackling glee, her tormentor nudged an ant under her left breast, just
past the chafing caused by the serrated ring constricting the base. An
hitherto unknown level of torment was wrought on her when the flame seared the
soft underside of her mammary, only to be followed by the ripping from the
frantic jaws seeking an impossible escape. Her head snapped in a howl of
abysmal pain which her voice could not sustain and broke in gasping screams
fueled by the continuing agony burrowing through the firm flesh of her breast.

He moved to the other breast before she stopped convulsing from the rippling
agony, watching her writhe in the vain attempt to prevent him from doing it
again and then grabbing her by the curls of her pubic hair to pull her further
down on the wooden pillar of her agony while the flesh of her breast was being
scorched and ripped by the frenzied insect.

Pausing occasionally to drench in cold, salt water or let her sip from the
jug, he kept setting loose the flaming ants on her breasts, mostly on the
undersides before adjusting her restraints to force her to recline so that the
ants could course through the full extent of her mounds while she screamed
from the pain in her scorched breasts but also from the wooden tip bulging
inside her and causing some splinters to jut through bleeding gashes in her
pierced womb which each convulsed jerk tore wider.

Lost in ecstasy at her agonies, he continued the torture of her breasts until
dozens of dead insects had dug their fiery grave in her flesh, licking his
lips at the sight of the proud globes quivering while she howled in demented
pain through the foam at the corners of her mouth. He fetched a pair of small
pliers and savagely distended a nipple to cut a gash at the base, wide enough
to push the twitching mandibles of an ant inside just as it caught fire.

Kayleen's jerk caused blood to squirt from the wounds pierced by the splinters
in her crotch and belly as she stiffened and arched spasmodically from the
agony as her nipple was slowly roasted in the flame while the frenzied ant bit
the piece of feminine flesh tearing its way through. Her pitched screams kept
shaking her heaving chest while the tiny mandibles ripped minuscule nips of
scorched, oozing flesh in the frantic attempt to escape the fire but only
managing to bring it deeper inside the excruciating wound.
Lyral could not believe how Kayleen's voice managed to rise even higher when
the Southerner pulled on her clitoris, cut a gash at the base and stuck a tiny
ant in, causing it to sear again the heart of a femininity Kayleen had been
brutally discovering as a prime source of agony. The tiny insect ripped
mercilessly at the sensitive flesh, making so little progress that when it
died there was room for more to follow, protracting Kayleen's excruciating
torment into an hellish nightmare whose end was nowhere in sight.

He doused her with salt water and let her sip from the jug before returning
his diabolical attentions to her neglected nipple, which soon twitched in the
flame consuming another ant biting it mercilessly. Another ant was then placed
on her previously scorched nipple, wrenching new screams from her frothing
mouth, and then more tiny ants were placed in cuts around her rim or though
her labia, causing her to twitch spasmodically on the pyramid which her
buckling had turned into a heap of wooden splinters, one of which her
tormentor had managed to drive up to stab at her cervix.

Kayleen continued screaming even after being lowered to the floor, consumed by
agonies which wracked through her chest and burst in wheezing screams of raw
torment, and when he cuffed her elbows and wrists behind her back after
pulling her up from the floor by spreading her legs with chains pulling at her
ankles from the ceiling resumed her incoherent pleading for mercy.

After a quick glance at Zhorun, the Southerner pulled savagely on her left
nipple and cut another gash at its base, placing another flaming ant to sear
the upper side of the nipple which had been somewhat spared thus far, and
repeating the torment on her other nipple shortly thereafter while she still
buckled in convulsed jerks of howling torment.

"Please ... enough. Mercy!" she croaked once she managed to catch enough
breath before a vicious clamp was tightened on her distended clitoris.

"No more, I can't ... take," wheezed her hoarse voice as Zhorun neared.

"If she concedes defeat, Master, may I claim the Priestess as mine instead of
the prize ?" asked the Southerner hurriedly, like a petulant child being
deprived of his favorite toy. A strangled cry of bottomless anguish erupted
behind Lyral's gag, its inarticulate words of despair cutting into Kayleen's
soul just as another ant was cutting through her scorched feminine flesh.

"Do you submit to me, then ?" asked Zhorun's voice, for once booming like a
thunder under the vaults of the torture chamber.

Kayleen hesitated, still shaking from the torment of her clitoris but also
from the weeping anguish coursing through her poor friend's body. She sought
within herself the pride of the former Warrior Queen, the courage which had
carried her through many battles, the resolve to further endure unfathomable
stretches of harrowing torment with no prospect of respite.

Another ant burned her feminine flesh, biting through the charred flesh and
wrenching her from her brief moment of awareness back into the unending
nightmare of her torment. She sought the words to vent her hatred, but they
escaped her as she was swept by waves of searing agony.

"No" she croaked at last, causing the Southerner's lips to curve in a wicked
smile and Zhorun to start. Long tendrils of blue lightning arched from his
gnarled hands and reached her breasts, tracing crimson stripes of smoking
agony and causing her to twitch uncontrollably while her voice waned in a long
speechless scream. The tendrils seared her nipples and clitoris, dozens of
times, until Zhorun gestured the Southerner to continue.

As gash after gash was cut between the curls of Kayleen's pubic hair, each
soon hosted another tiny flaming ant whose heat seared her cruelly distended
clitoris, slowly turning the clamp red hot while her tormentor placed tiny
ants inside the gashes cut in the broiling crimson flesh to watch her stiffen,
arch and buckle in excruciating agony while howls of wretched woe shook her
convulsing body and Lyral kept sobbing and stumbling on the words of a prayer.

When the torture finally had to be suspended, Lyral was brought forth and had
to feel for her friend, gasping when her hands reached her hot, quivering
flesh and the first flow of healing allowed her to perceive the horrid agonies
coursing through her body. She was only allowed a few moments before her
friend was lowered on the floor and a metal bar with a wooden cone on top was
fastened to the bands constricting the base of her thighs and to her ankle
cuffs, adjusting it so that the cone penetrated deeply her bowels, causing her
to scream in renewed anguish. Her arms were pulled down behind her until her
wrists could be fastened between the rings clinched under her knees.

Three crooked iron spreaders were placed in her vagina, one pulling on the
lower cleft and two tearing at the upper corners, distorting it into an
obscene triangle whose border immediately tore where cuts had been ripped in
the rim, bleeding again. Her tormentor tightened vicious jagged clamps on her
nipples and clitoris, pulling their chains to the last ring of a stout chain
dangling from the ceiling which he then pulled until she hung screaming from
her clamped femininity while pliers were used to rip the nails from her toes.

A large bowel full of water was then bolted to the floor under her feet, and
when she was lowered again and attempted to relieve the pull on her feminine
flesh she realized that the water was actually salty as brine, causing her to
jerk her feet up, screaming from the pain of her suspension and the cone
distending her sphincter while the salt burned her bleeding nail beds.

They left her again, forced to inflict on herself the harsh bite of brine to
find respite from the horrid tearing of her scorched nipples and clitoris
while gyrating on the pole in constant pain from the stretching of her
dislocated joints and the scraping of her seared bowels. However she twitched,
however she tried to spare her bleeding nail beds, the scorched flesh of her
nipples and clitoris was torn and scraped by the tiny jaws, causing her to
burst in harsh screams of wretched pain amid bitter moans of helpless anguish.

Zhorun watched her from the shadows, her agony coursing through his loins as
the heat from a fireplace coursed through a traveler finally safe in the inn,
and yet wishing he could enjoy her torment as much as the Southerner did,
wishing he could make her suffer himself, wishing he could have her twitching
in pain on the manhood he had forever lost.

He kept watching her eerie dance with his netherwordly gaze, enjoying the
convulsing agonies and bitter screams of this marionette of pain whose strings
he could pull only through intermediaries, savoring her wretched woe while
time trickled by in a long, dark nightmare of uninterrupted torment.

When the light returned to the room, it was the Easterner who cautiously undid
her restrains after tightening her iron collar on the windpipe. Lyral was
allowed to heal her briefly, and she tried once more to deliver through her
soothing touch something above physical healing, something she could not
define herself but which she felt her friend desperately needed.

Lost in pain, Kayleen recovered her awareness only when, after putting some
implements in a brazier, the Easterner dragged her under a chain dangling from
the ceiling, cuffed her wrists and elbows together behind her back and lifted
her off the floor by her wrists, ignoring her screams from the agony in her
dislocated shoulder joints. He then wound around her twitching body a thin
barbed chain, whose sharp hooks soon ripped tiny wounds through her convulsing
flesh as she rattled her restraints, jerking from the devastating pain in her
torn shoulders.

Her eyes filled with tears when he produced a small red hot blade and a pair
of equally hot pliers, with elongated, flat jaws brimming with tiny spikes
which he used to grab a fold of flesh on her left thigh, slicing it open with
the blade while her screams rose to high heaven in a desperate fit of
gut-wrenching agony.

While her screams trailed off, he used a spoon to scoop a pinch of tiny white
crystals and pour them in the gaping wound, tightening the grip with the
pliers to prevent them from trickling away and then twisting the wounded flesh
between the jaws while she convulsed in demented pain. Her howls continued
unabated while the red hot pliers crushed the tiny rock salt shards inside her
bleeding, scorched wound, grinding them back and forth and twisting the flesh
through unthinkable depths of protracted, excruciating torment.

When he finally let go, she continued twitching and rattling her chains
between coughing screams of miserable anguish, her chest heaving in bitter
sobs at the prospect of more to follow. Pain exploded in her left arm when the
pliers tightened on a fold of her stretched muscle, and then rocked her when
the red hot blade cut through the taut fibers amidst her pitched howls of
unabated torment. Her ears picked up, among the echoes of her own screams,
Lyral's soft voice, singing an old country song she used to sing in the lulls
between a battle and the next, when they discussed what would be of their
lives once Zhorun's tyranny had been lifted.

The wretched agony of a thousand needles bursting inside her stretched muscles
cut through her recollections like an hurricane, howling in despair and
filling her mouth like molten lead before surging in raucous howls of
gut-wrenching anguish. The pliers ground the tiny shards into recesses of
twitching flesh she never suspected a wound could hide, and the memory of
happier times wavered under the relentless torment wracking her mind.

The Easterner grabbed a fold of her left ass cheek, cutting through the soft
crease between buttock and thigh, through skin already scorched by the ants,
up to a point where one had found its demise. The horrid pain of the
constricted, scorched flesh being sliced through prevented her from
appreciating the care her tormentor used to stay clear of major blood vessels,
although the wounds bled profusely until the crushed salt inside mingled with
blood to form a crust which left the wound open and hurting but reduced blood
loss considerably. Her restraints allowed her ample room to buckle and twitch
for the enjoyment of Zhorun's eyes, and her spasmodic jerks raked the hooks
of the thin barbed chain encircling her all over her bleeding body.

Her soles were next, savagely sliced open, the grip of the pliers fighting the
flailing of her strong legs while she howled in demented agony and the smell
of charred flesh lingered as the torture was mercilessly protracted. The agony
was made worse by twisting the pliers back and forth, or left and right,
forcing her to arch and buckle in spasmodic torment and wreak further agony on
her dislocated joints to lessen the devastating pain of the shards being
repeatedly ground inside scorched flesh.

Another wound was cut in her other thigh, and her torturer hung with his full
weight on the pliers to add his weight to the torment of her torn shoulders
and drag the crushed salt shards down the length of the wound while blood
squirted from the constricted flesh and harrowing screams of demented agony
surged from her foaming mouth. Cutting across the straining muscle of a limb
always resulted in harrowing pain, and her tormentor availed himself of this
opportunity over and over until Lyral had to be brought forth to stop her
friend from dying from excessive blood loss.

After drenching Kayleen with cold, salt water and bringing the jug to her
lips, the Easterner reached for her firm buttocks again and cut, slicing
through a fold of firm flesh an inch at a time and using the blade to scoop
shards into the newly cut wound, progressing slowly amidst her raucous
screams until he reached the cleft between her buttocks and then proceeding to
crush the salt inside the bleeding cut. This was but the first of many
harrowing gashes cut through her buttocks, experimenting several variations of
the torment which all resulted in desperate shrieks of harrowing pain and
spasmodic convulsions in the raking embrace of the barbed chain.

She was lowered on the floor and then stretched between chains leading to four
pillars, her full weight hanging on her dislocated hip and shoulder joints
torn mercilessly while she hung lewdly exposed in mid air, her head sagging as
a cry rattled her torn mouth. Then the Easterner grabbed a fold of flesh on
her left side, and cut deep enough to scrape a rib while she rattled her
chains from the unimaginable agony her convulsions wrought through her joints.

After stuffing the wound with salt shards, he crushed them with the red hot
pliers, positioning the jaws so that the shards would scrape the flesh from
the bone and grind the bone itself, a horrid refinement of bone scraping which
wracked excruciating agonies through Kayleen's heaving chest and kept her
stiffening and arching between wheezing howls of wretched torment and
convulsed jerks, mercilessly jarring her dislocated joints

The torment alternated between ribs on either side, pausing only to splash her
with cold water whose salt added little to her screaming agonies, or to bring
the jug to her torn lips, unable to articulate as they trembled and frothed
from depths of pain she could not fathom. Somehow she still realized that the
syrupy liquid fed to her was meant to protract and intensify her agony, but
she craved it, hating this telltale sign of how her will had been broken.

Lyral was brought forth again when the white of several ribs showed under the
bleeding gashes, still praying under her breath for her screaming friend,
whose spirit was being mercilessly crushed. When the healing process allowed
Lyral to feel her friend's plight, she could not help but sob in horror.

"Kayleen, angels of heaven ..." she whimpered behind her gag.

Her friend's voice reached Kayleen in spite of all odds, possibly because of
the healing process, a feeble anchor between the waves of an ocean of pain in
which she was being drowned. She had withstood day after day of atrocious
torture, brutal rape and unrelenting suffering, first through her own resolve
and then with the strength lent by Lyral's power, but what remained of her
resolve had been savagely eroded and Lyral was beyond her reach, healing her
body but unable to soothe her weary soul, leaving her alone with pain.

She tried to whisper something just as her friend was pulled away and then a
howl surged from her mouth as the pliers caught a fold of her breast and
seared it for the blade to slowly slice open, followed by more pitiful screams
as salt shards were poured in the bleeding wound and crushed inside while
white hot agony blazed through her suspended, convulsing body.

Her breasts were slowly shredded, alternating between them so that she could
better sustain the agony, slicing horrid wounds and twisting them savagely
while the salt inside wrought unspeakable torment through her writhing body
and demented howls coursed through her bleeding chest. The crust formed by the
searing jaws did not hold when a fresh wound was savaged nearby, and returning
to open wounds to break the crust and renew the agony slowly became obligatory
as wound after wound striped her proud breasts.

Her mind raced through halls echoing with her own screams as her tormentor
moved between her legs and grabbed a fold of her pubic mound, cutting through
with excruciating slowness while the red hot tip exposed the pubic bone. She
had always known that it would come to this, that her femininity would be next
and that more horrid torments would descend on her, almost reading the mind of
her torturer as he poured tiny salt shards in the wound and then closed the
red hot jaws over it, viciously crushing them onto her scorched flesh and
pubic bone while she arched in a protracted howl of demented pain.

With exquisite slowness, he cut another gash in her mound and repeated the
torment, wracking unspeakable agonies through her body and repeatedly crushing
and twisting the salt in her wounded flesh, pulling against her convulsed
jerks and grinding bone while she stiffened in long screams of inhuman agony.

After protracting the torment at leisure, he moved the pliers to her left
nipple and sliced it open from tip to the areola, sliding shards in and then
crushing the nub of feminine flesh between red hot serrated jaws while her
howls rose desperately under the vaults of the torture chamber. He splashed
her with cold, salt water before repeating the torture on her other nipple and
clitoris, and then splashed her again before cross cutting each cut again
while she arched and jerked in atrocious agony, screaming hoarsely in fits
of hopeless woe as her mouth almost tore from the effort.

The red hot jaws repeatedly crushed the bloody crust inside the slashed nubs
of feminine flesh in protracted fits of excruciating torment which shook her
body almost to the point of tearing her limbs off her dislocated joints, while
desperate howls of wretched agony consumed her wheezing voice which only
unspeakable waves of pain could fan beyond a wheezing moan.

New howls echoed in the torture chamber when the jaws closed on the labia
being sliced through, and then on the rim of the vagina being cut and twisted
while the salt shards found little purchase and the torment was attempted over
and over while she convulsed uninterruptedly, screaming in inhuman pain.

Even when the jaws allowed her an instant of respite, unspeakable agony surged
white hot from her stretched joints and burned from her exposed ribs and
scorched breast wounds, drowning her in a maelstrom of anguish which she tried
to escape by calling upon her friend, begging for her touch, straining to
reach her beyond the walls of hellish agony crumbling on her from all sides.

The pliers closed repeatedly on her nipples, searing the scorched flesh again
and scraping it while she tried in vain to listen for Lyral's answers to her
inarticulate pleas. She was in such pain that she could not have answered any
of the questions she was supposedly being tortured for, and her mind reeled in
the vain search of any answer that would stop the pain, although Lyral had
guessed that she was being tortured for Zhorun's pleasure only.

When the jaws scorched her shredded clitoris and the encrusted salt pierced
her sensitive femininity again, her eyes rolled over as excruciating agonies
tore through her frothing mouth in piercing howls of wretched torment. Blood
squirted from the torn petals of the nub as they were crushed onto the shards
inside by red hot serrated jaws which peeled and scraped the sensitive tissue
as the pliers were savagely twisted left and right, forcing her writhing body
to arch and buckle in spasmodic agony, rattling the chains pulling her limbs
while gut-wrenching screams of demented pain shook her dangling body.

When Lyral was brought forth again, she gasped when the healing revealed to
her the extent of the agonies wrought on her screaming friend's dangling body.
Although the empathy of healing was no substitute for direct inspection, she
shuddered at the thought that Kayleen's nipples and clitoris had been shredded
and burned even beyond her ability to restore them, and doubled her efforts to
bring some respite to her screaming friend's flesh.

Well before Kayleen's wounds were completely healed, Lyral's comforting touch
was abruptly taken away. As she was thrown onto he ground, Kayleen cried in
bitter despair, still unable to articulate the pleads she could not prevent
from wracking her will as the thought of further torments loomed before her.
Her wrists and elbows were cuffed together, and her legs were next.

The torn corners of her vagina were stretched by crooked hooks which distended
the bottom cleft and the top corners while she was forced to stand on the
balls of her feet by clamps savagely tightened on her peeled and scorched
nipples and attached to a chain from the ceiling. A ridged meat hook was
pushed up her bowels and attached to thumbscrews clinching her thumbs, and a
clamp on her clitoris forced her to bend her knees as it was pulled down and
fastened to a ring in the floor, stretching her partially healed breasts by
the nipples and forcing her in a precarious position which brought about a
wheezed cry of pain and despair as she realized how this restraint would
torment her in the subsequent hours.

Even as her tormentor left, plunging her in darkness, her fears materialized as
her agonizing legs gave and unbearable pain enveloped her nipples as most of
her weight rested on them, causing her to jerk up with a bitter scream and
then shudder as white hot agony shot from the clamp savaging her clitoris. Any
position she found entailed various degrees of pain in the nubs of feminine
flesh and, much to the delight of the silently observing Zhorun, could not be
maintained for long. She had ran out of tears, and even of screams, but the
hoarse, wheezing noises which wracked her torn mouth in the subsequent hours
proved satisfying for the silent spectator of her torment.

Even when the agony from the numbed bits of tormented feminine flesh turned
almost bearable, Kayleen was still in hellish pain from her dislocated joints
and from the restraints which had been her most inseparable tormentors for
days and nights of relentless anguish. Her wrists and ankles were cuffed so
tightly that they sometimes cracked, and even whey they didn't the dull studs
inside dug bleeding sores in the flesh and rubbed the bruised flesh onto bone.

The iron band clenching her waist had serrated edges which cut tiny gashes on
each breath and chafed the tender skin into purple bruises of relentless
torment. The bands at her elbows were the excruciating instrument through
which her shoulders were visited with the most relentless torments, as she had
been for so long subjected to painful pulling of her arms behind her back in
various positions that she barely remembered the times when her arms flexed
with might instead of trembling in relentless pain.

The bands at her knees and thighs at least only caused chafing and bruising,
except at the knees where the studs inside dug thin flesh onto the bone. The
thigh bands hurt the most when her hip joints were not dislocated, as they
brought the thighs cruelly together and dug into the soft flesh mercilessly.

The worst, however, were the serrated rings constricting the base of her
breasts and the crooked hooks distending her vagina into a gaping, obscene
triangle. It was not the first time that their pull kept the wounds left by a
session in her feminine parts open and bleeding. Yet, the soft skin of her
breasts had been uninterruptedly chafed and bruised by the dents of the rings
squeezing them into sore bags of throbbing pain.

As a light shone in the chamber of horrors she sobbed bitterly, fearing new
torments, and then croaked and coughed as she recognized Shandra, alone before
her. Hope clutched her heart.

"Shandra ... please," she managed to articulate, choking.

Obviously distressed, and pale as death, the Sorceress looked behind as
Zhorun caught up, pretending to join her from the corridor.

"As you can see, my apprentice, even harsh, protracted punishment is not
enough to bring down her defiance, although some progress has been achieved
with due perseverance. Although we feed her with herbs which enhance her
sensitivity and awareness, her resolve outlasts her endurance," said Zhorun.

"Maybe her will can be weakned," said Shandra noncommittally.

"I would much prefer her endurance to be protracted instead," retorted Zhorun.

"From what I've seen, the tortures already take her on the brink of death
already. The torturer's experience would not help them to stop in time, if the
telltale signs of the victim are suppressed," answered Shandra, her face
ghostly pale and wincing at Kayleen's wheezing cries.

Kayleen had managed to wade through her painful recollections enough to
remember Shandra's betrayal, and could not help but sob as the hope of being
rescued on seeing her former friend was shelved.

Suddenly, Zhorun cast a spell and the band around Kayleen's waist warmed
slowly, then turned hot. As the heat increased she buckled in pain and her
nipples and clitoris were brutally stretched and scraped while a howl rose
from her mouth. She continued screaming as the iron turned red hot, jerking
in convulsed agony while her head shook in pain and continuing as the band
cooled with excruciating slowness between her harsh gasps.

"Less than a minute," whispered Zhorun.

Shandra extended her hand to touch Kayleen's forehead, and touched it while
murmuring the words of a spell. Kayleen's mind cleared, and her clear blue
eyes opened wide in hatred at the red haired Sorceress. She was about to say
something when the iron band constricting the base of her left breast turned
warm, and soon her newfound voice surged in bitter screams as it slowly turned
red hot while she convulsed in howling agony until the metal slowly cooled.

"Enough! Make him stop!" cried Kayleen repeatedly, pleading her former friend
as if she had forgot her betrayal, the toll of weeks of torment crushing her
into incoherent terror, her resolve shattered. She would have answered any
question by now, but Zhorun was not interested in asking.

Under Shandra's transfixed gaze, Zhorun meticulously used his magic to heat
the iron restraints constricting Kayleen's body, returning to her breasts,
nipples and clitoris most often as they elicited the most heinous convulsions
and desperate screams as she rattled her chains, twitching in harsh pain but
apparently never losing the unnatural awareness brought about by magic.

After a while, however, the effect apparently faded and Kayleen's eyes lost
focus as pain distended her mouth in a scream from the searing heat sizzling
her clitoris in the vicious grip of the tight clamp linked to the floor.

"Again," commanded Zhorun, and Shandra obliged with a dreary expression, cold
sweat all over her face as she cast another spell on her former friend.

The torture continued for maybe an hour, until Shandra protested that her
ability to cast the spell again had burned out. Kayleen had been repeatedly
seared by her red hot restraints, although she had never begged for mercy
again, as if Shandra's magic had bolstered her resolve. Zhorun considered for
a while, then continued heating the clamps on Kayleen's nipples, watching her
writhe in convulsing agony while her voice screamed in choked fits of wretched
woe, only to finally give up in blatant irritation.

"You have thy task lain before thee, my apprentice," he whispered.

Chapter 27 - Tears Beyond Respite

Kayleen's occasional screams echoed in the unlit chamber, calling for Lyral's
help even as she knew that no help would be forthcoming. Her restraints forced
her to crouch slightly, unable to sit or stand, crying from the agonies still
wracking her joints and croaking when a wave of pain surged from her wounds.

In the cold darkness, she started trembling in fear mere moments before the
noise and the torches heralded the return of her tormentors. A moan coursed
through her writhing body as the realization that they were no longer allowing
her even the little respite allowed by the night-long pauses was swept away by
sheer terror at the sight of the lewdly grinning man from the South.

She was freed from her restraints and brought down, her hands chained behind
the back, near Lyral's knees. He pulled his member from under his robe and
straddled Kayleen's face, rubbing his member on lips still torn by the gag.

"Let's see what it feels like when she heals you," said the swarthy Southerner
whose sharp eyes had noticed how Kayleen reacted to Lyral's healing.

Kayleen's wheezing cry turned to a gurgle when he forced his manhood down her
throat, while Lyral hesitated nearby, sobbing under the blindfold which had
not prevented her from guessing what was going on. When her fingers rubbed
against Kayleen's horribly wounded breasts, however, she started for a moment
and then set about healing her suffering friend.

The relief coursing through Kayleen's body was a bliss she craved desperately,
especially when it was protracted and she was allowed to hope that they would
let her be healed fully and at least temporarily relieved of pain. Even the
violation of her mouth was almost acceptable before that.

As no special sensation accrued from his victim except some trembling and
long, deep breaths, the Southerner felt scorned and yanked her blonde hair,
violently fucking her face to see her gag, writhe and scream. He repeatedly
thrust viciously inside her throat, but his own lust betrayed him and a squirt
of semen filled her mouth while her eyes barely focused on him, lost in bliss
as the agony in her hip joints receded.

He pulled out, incensed at his perceived humiliation before Zhorun and Grod
who was actually carrying out some preparations nearby and rose up, pretending
to oversee Kayleen's healing. Lyral was allowed to heal her friend until
blonde curls formed on the pubic mound, although her power could only soothe
the chafed and bruised wrists and ankles or the relentlessly excoriated base
of her bulging breasts. The old man's mouth turned dry as his gaze lingered on
her slender legs and the heaving chest now restored to full beauty.

"Lyral ... I cannot thank you enough," whispered Kayleen.

"Be strong, Kayleen. I'll be always with you," answered the Priestess, her
voice low as if oppressed by some unimaginable weight.

"I have no more strength, Lyral. I cannot take any more," murmured Kayleen,
momentarily surprised at her own candor.

"Don't say that. Don't let them win after what they did to us," said Lyral,
trying to cuddle her head between her arms tied between her back.

"I used to say so, did I ?" mused Kayleen, oblivious to her tormentors,
basking in the warm echo of her friend's voice, desperately wishing this
moment lasted forever and well aware it would not.

When Lyral was yanked back by her hair, her yelp was drowned by Kayleen's
bitter cry of harrowing despair. The Southerner fastened the Priestess to a
ring in the wall and then returned to the blonde Warrior Queen and cuffed her
wrists and elbows together behind her back before freeing her legs and
dragging her under two dangling chains which he fastened to her ankles.

He pulled her off the floor and proceeded to tighten a thin wire around her
nipples and clitoris, savagely distending them to increase the pain which
wracked her screaming body. He then stretched her labia with clamps, pulling
their chains short after fastening them to her wrists

Kayleen clenched her eyes, hoping to send the images of impending pain and
merciless torture away from her mind, seeking the sound of Lyral's voice,
trying to find some of her lost resolve.

The Southerner thoroughly rubbed a long, braided whip in red hot pepper before
cracking it across the distended crease between her buttocks and thighs, as if
he could no longer wait, wrenching a screeching howl from her torn mouth. The
next lash singed her distended left labia, and the third left a reddish mark
on her inner thigh. Soon dozens of welts crowded her twitching thighs, and as
the pepper burned them the whip moved to her bulging breasts, striping them
while she buckled and twitched between pitched screams of bitter pain.

The intense whipping moved to her firm buttocks, which turned red as the welts
crisscrossed them mercilessly while her voice continued her song of bitter
pain in prelude of harsher torments to follow. When the whip returned to her
breasts, her screams rose by an octave as the whip lashed welts smarting from
the pepper, but she managed to shriek even louder when the lashes seared her
spread vagina and repeatedly reddened her outstretched clitoris.

With devilish precision, the leering Southerner concentrated on her nipples
and clitoris, never breaking his rhythm while she screamed uninterruptedly in a
torment meant to brutally deprive her of the fleeting wellness of having just
being healed. She tried to return to her previous whippings, remembering how
she used to roll with the lashes, to defy her captors, attempting to achieve
something beyond howling and buckling under the kiss of the lash.

It was Grod who caused her whipping to stop, reaching for the winch and
lowering her on the floor. Moaning in pain, she let him drag her to a steel
contraption and force her to kneel on serrated wedges while her ankles were
fastened to poles at her sides and her arms were pulled under her, forcing her
to raise her buttocks and lean on her bulging breasts. He adjusted her elbow
bands to constrict her bulging breasts between the arms and then pulled her
nipples, forcing them through the small openings of a studded breast crusher
while she writhed and shook her head from the pain of the apparently
impossible abuse thus visited on her quivering mammaries.

Once he managed to pull her breasts through the studded harness, trapping the
deformed and bruised flesh with a final tug on the nipples, he then pulled on
her wrists, stretching her arms under her so that they pressed on the trapped
breasts and tore at her awkwardly drooping shoulders. For a moment, he left
her there, her knees bleeding on the wedges, her soles twitching in the air
and her wrists pulled between her spread thighs, forcing her buttocks up and
stretching her breasts into disfigured depths of bitter pain.

He then fetched a jar and started smearing her with a dark, sticky hot paste,
tracing inch-long blots not unlike the war colors used by savage tribes in the
western plains. Black traces, smelling of autumn forest and something more
pungent. Tar pitch, she realized while her eyes bulged in horror.

She turned her head frantically, looking for her tormentor as if knowing in
advance what he was looking for, but her position prevented her from seeing
him fetch the chain whip from the brazier, its copper links catching on each
other's tiny hooks. The whip landed on her buttocks, tracing a purplish red
welt which started bleeding just as she contorted in her restraints and shook
under the bitter howl coursing from her torn buttock to her gaping mouth.

The red hot chain traced another welt across her left sole, and then another
in the cleft between her spread legs, expertly wielded with just enough force
to rip skin and scorch it at the same time, wrenching animal howls of harsh
pain from her already taxed voice. Another lash shredded the skin of her
muscular back, and one of the sticky patches started fuming.

Her face contorted in a mask of unexpected pain as the pitch started boiling
and caught on, bubbling slowly while wisps of smoke rose and her restrained
form buckled in wretched convulsions and desperate howls of excruciating pain
shook her from toe to chin. Patches were mostly two to three inches long, but
the resinous substance burned slowly, bubbling and seeping in the wounds torn
by the tiny barbs, inflicting unspeakable agonies while searing skin and flesh
into a protracted hell of nightmarish pain.

He let her scream and writhe while the whip was heated again on the brazier,
and then returned to whipping her screaming body, occasionally sending the tip
of the chain whip to lacerate her constricted breasts although they were not
marked by the sticky black goo. She continued screaming from the single patch
as it kept burning slowly, and it took many lashes all over her folded body
before a patch under her left sole caught fire and renewed the burning agony
on the soft flesh under her foot, causing her supple leg to writhe and tremble
spasmodically in the grip of the ankle cuff, vainly attempting to kick away
the agony slowly eating at the sensitive flesh.

She continued howling and buckling while he heated the whip again and resumed
the slow whipping, setting fire to another patch on her shoulder which doubled
her screams as her head shook left and right in spasmodic pain and her arms
tore mindlessly against the chain pulling her wrists, vainly attempting to get
free. The repeated lashes cut the flesh, lingered on the wounds just enough to
scorch the wound and then ripped the singed flesh off while unspeakable agony
wracked her convulsing body and her repeated screams from the slow burning of
the skin burst into howls of unrestrained anguish.

When her hair caught fire, he poured cold, salt water on her head to soak them
thoroughly before continuing, setting fire one by one to patches in the back
of her thighs and buttocks before concentrating on the crease between her
labia, until fire lit between the folds causing her shrieks of agony to rise
to new heights as the feminine flesh was slowly singed and broiled amidst
inhuman howls of excruciating torment.

Her agony continued unabated between occasional lashes of the red hot whip and
wheezing screams of excruciating pain, rekindled by a few sips from the jug
now and then until the fire finally petered off and she was freed of her
restraints. Lyral managed to twist herself into providing her a modicum of
healing, but was brutally kicked away by the Southerner.

"Please ..." moaned Kayleen, unable to articulate between harsh gasps.

Her wrists and elbows were cuffed behind her while her ankles were fastened to
the ends of a spreader bar, and then she was pulled up by her wrists until her
flailing feet left the cold stone floor. As pain returned to her shoulder
joints, despair crept up her face and her torn lips trembled in the attempt to
say something which got drowned in the first scream as her toes cracked in the
grip of thumbscrews carrying hefty lead weights.

"No, stop ... mercy," she whispered as a sip from the jug returned her some
strength and she realized that her tormentor was tracing more patches on her
slowly twirling body, and where.

The red hot barbed whip slashed Kayleen's stretched thighs, tearing a bloody
and singed welt across the slender muscles which contracted as agony shook her
chest with desperate screams, lifting the weights for a moment before they
pulled her toes down with an excruciating tug which made her legs tremble
almost as much as the fiery lash.

Another lash lacerated her belly, and the third drew blood from her bruised
breasts while the barbs sent ripped bits of singed skin flying into her face
as it contorted in a scream of inhuman agony. It took a number of lashes
before a patch under her right breast caught fire, starting to scorch the skin
and reddening the underside of the breast above while she twitched and buckled
in pangs of wretched woe which rattled her chains and her shoulder joints.

Lyral was still blindfolded, but she hummed Kayleen's name repeatedly under
her gag, bent on making herself heard in spite of her friend's desperate howls
as the tar broiled the skin and seeped into the cuts left by the whip. It took
more lashes and further hellish agonies as one patch slowly burned before the
other was lit until Kayleen in her mindless screaming finally realized that
the hums from her friend carried her name.

Her attempt to answer died in another scream as the whip lacerated the sole of
her left foot, pulled down by the weight on the toe and already scorched by
bubbling tar. The lashes on the back of her thighs and on her breasts had
striped her muscular flesh with jagged gashes of scorched and ripped skin,
which trembled under the pull exerted by gravity and by her own convulsed
jerks from the whip and from the slowly burning patches. When a patch on her
breast caught on, she started screaming in such mindless agony that her arms
twisted spasmodically while the muscles strained in vain, rattling her chest
until her left shoulder was dislocated.

She was repeatedly drenched with cold, salt water and made to drink from the
jug while the whip was being heated again, but the torturer continued to light
one patch after another, bringing the slowly burning agony to her crotch
again. As the pitch bubbled inside her twitching labia, she frantically
twisted her hips, obscenely spreading her trembling thighs in the vain attempt
to lessen the agony inside her soft feminine flesh.

The whip repeatedly ripped bits of skin and curls of hair from her pubic
mound, leaving dozens of criss-crossed lacerations each of which wrought
shuddering agonies through her dangling body and inhuman screams from her
mouth. When the patch on her mound was lit, the pitch seeped in the jagged
wounds wracking her into a frenzy of screaming convulsions which rattled her
right shoulder through the brink of dislocation.

The torture continued mercilessly, using the whip to make her twirl left and
right so that the agony on a dislocated shoulder was followed by the tug of a
weight on a cracked toe. When a patch was lit, wheezing shrieks of demented
torment shook her dangling body and only a sip from the jug allowed her to
plead incoherently again for a while.

"Lyral ... stop the pain ... enough", she choked when Grod finally lowered
her on the cold stone floor, tantalizingly close to her friend yet not close
enough. She trembled and twitched from the bleeding lacerations and the
many burns, but Lyral was not allowed to heal her.

Her arms were cuffed behind her back in the reverse prayer position, and she
was dragged between two sturdy steel poles. Her tormentor pulled her thighs
in a painful split, bent her legs at the knee and twisted each leg behind the
thigh, fastening a chain to the ankle cuff and using it to pull her loins off
the ground while she screamed as her knees bent under her weight.

As the pull on her ankles increased while her loins were slowly pulled higher,
her wrists were fastened to a ring in the floor and her bent elbows joined her
knees in wracking hideous torments through her glistening body. When she
cleared the floor, her dislocated joints burned like molten knots of liquid
agony under the excruciating strain.

Lyral was still desperately humming her name, but Kayleen could only scream
and writhe as Grod traced more patches on her soaked body, adding despair to
her torment as he made sure to thoroughly coat the nubs of her femininity
which had become the seats of her most wretched agonies. Jagged teeth bit the
scorched pieces of tormented flesh as he encased them in clamps.

Just leaving her in mid air, hanging from her twisted limbs, would have torn
scream after scream from her frothing mouth, but Grod was still the torturer
who targeted muscle and bone and he had other plans. He heated the whip again
and lashed her spread thighs, causing her to buckle and scream as bits of
scorched flesh were torn from her oozing wounds. The whip now most often than
not landed where the skin had been either badly lacerated or slowly singed
under the bubbling pitch, and in either case ripped off bits of flesh amidst
pitiful screams of demented agony.

Her mouth formed repeatedly the word "No", or maybe was just stretching near
break point in long howls of unparalleled anguish as the patches caught fire
and the bubbling tar seeped inside bleeding lacerations. The clamps had also
been coated with tar and as the one biting her nipple also caught on, the heat
started singing the bitten nub of feminine flesh.

As fire scorched her singed and lacerated nipple, her convulsed jerks turned
spasmodic, causing untold agonies to burst from her elbows and her thigh
joints. The clamp bit her scorched clitoris most painfully, exposing it to
being repeatedly ripped through by the whip until low lazy flames enveloped it
and her convulsed twitches wracked her hips into blistering flares of mad pain
as muscles and tendons strained under her quivering thigh flesh in the frantic
effort to escape the searing torment.

With vicious persistence, Grod continued lashing her with the red hot chain
whip, making sure the barbs ripped scorched flesh now from one thigh and then
from another just at the height of the spasmodic splits her terror inflicted
on her quivering thigh muscles, sending excruciating torment flaring through
her soaked body and surging from her frothing mouth as she repeatedly brought
herself on the verge of dislocating her own thigh joints.

She continued screaming uninterruptedly and jerking spasmodically from the
burning tar and the repeated lashes, even when a desperate jerk pulled her
left thigh out of its socket and, in spite of a croaked scream of utter
torment, continued until her repeated frenzies of atrocious agony dislocated
the other, leaving her screaming in wheezing anguish through the foam at the
corners of her mouth, wracked by pleads of mercy she was unable to utter.

She could have been left there, as her position brought bitter pain through
her limbs at the slightest twitch, but the Southerner had completed his
preparations and wanted to step in, although he studied her restraints
intently. She was prevented from curling up in a weeping bundle of trembling
flesh and dragged by her iron collar to a sturdy wooden chair nearby. Her
ankle cuffs were locked just under the seat, pulling her folded legs up and
her knees high, and her arms left in the reverse prayer position painfully
separated and fastened behind the back at the wrists while her head jerked in
a scream from the agony in her shoulders.

Fresh clamps bit her nipples and clitoris, painfully distending them as her
tormentor adjusted the fine chains pulling their jaws until she was forced to
lift herself off the seat pushing onto her trembling, dislocated joints while
her chest heaved in brief gasps of wretched torment.

"Please no more ... heal me ... please," she moaned incoherently.

Her tormentor's hands yanked her head down and she was silenced by his
engorged member thrust down her throat, the only delectable place of her body
not coated in hot pitch. Her desperate screams gurgled as he viciously ravaged
her gag-torn mouth, thrusting with a mad lust which wracked her bound form.

A plank brimming with barbed spikes was slid under her buttocks, and when her
muscles tired their bite was announced by her bitter scream and panting
efforts to pull up again. As sweat soaked her trembling body, stinging tree
branches were carefully positioned so that her trapped pieces of feminine
flesh would brush them whenever she pulled herself clear from the spikes.

"No ... don't let me like this please ... don't go," she croaked as they left.

A guttural scream of despair wracked her as the closing door plunged the
chamber into darkness, except for the red glow of the dwindling braziers, and
turned into a howl as the barbed spikes pierced the scorched skin of her
buttocks. As she pulled clear, the bitter taste of tears in her mouth brought
home how they were effectively torturing her without pause, alternating
perpetration of unspeakable torments with taxing of her shaken endurance.

This time, to relieve her buttocks, she had to push on her arms and legs,
lifting her loins and putting most of her weight on her hip and shoulder
joints which rattled agonizingly under the effort, causing her to teeter on
the brink of blinding agony until her swollen nubs of feminine flesh fatally
rubbed against the stinging leaves, bringing her crashing down on the barbed
spikes again with a shriek of wretched pain.

Her strong muscles, recently restored to full health, carried her through many
such cycles of screaming torment, horribly wracking her dislocated joints for
the secret pleasure of the corpse silently watching from the dark recesses of
the chamber. However exhausted she was, the temptation of relieving her burnt
buttock from the torment of the barbed spikes brought her to lift her loins as
soon as her forces allowed, but the intent to stay just clear of the leaves
was invariably thwarted by a jerk of pain from her joints.

When the torches brought light into the chamber again, the Southerner circled
her and yanked her head down again, viciously penetrating her mouth with a
cackling smile while she screamed her agonies onto his manhood, writhing from
the pain in her joints and the burning sting of the leaves which her forcibly
distended position had forced into contact with her feminine flesh.

Once his lust was spent, he freed her from the chair and cuffed her wrists
and elbows behind her back before dragging her to a wooden post, where her
ankles were cuffed and she was made to bend forward, twisting her arms above
her head while she howled from the pain in her shoulders. A meat hook was
lowered from the ceiling and deeply engaged in the cleft of her vagina,
causing her to scream mindlessly when it was used to pull her up.

As her toes twitched in the effort to find some support, her tormentor pulled
her arms further down until her wrists could be cuffed to a ring in the wooden
platform and her chest twisted between her spread, twitching legs. The agony
in her vagina as the meat hook menaced to tear it open was indescribable.

He produced a pair of tweezers which he used to grab the flesh of her thigh on
both sides of a laceration left by the barbed whip, where pitch had seared it
leaving the edges charred and oozing, and then pulled on the scorched skin
tearing it open again while her teary blue eyes bulged in horror and scream
wracked her chest. She was still screaming when he rubbed a red hot poker in
the wound, heating the pitch until it started bubbling.

Her wretched screams froze as horror descended on her face when he picked up a
tiny writhing centipede from a jar and stuck it in the laceration. Inhuman
agony contorted her face as the critter, trapped in the hot pitch, started
wriggling, biting and raking its many legs in the wound, tearing flesh in the
frantic attempt to find purchase with the tiny claws while the pitch seeped in
and her thigh muscles trembled from the horrid agonies which rattled her
convulsing form and surged from her howling mouth.

Her jerks in such a cruelly stretched position naturally renewed the torment
in her dislocated joints, and waves of horrid pain rolled through her as the
centipede wrought abysmal pain in her wounded flesh in its frantic efforts to
wriggle away. The critter fought vigorously against the hot pitch protracting
her abysmal torment beyond her ability to keep track of time, its throes
bringing each new unspeakable frenzies of convulsed screaming as the pitch
found new places to sear while the scorched flesh was ripped off.

With meticulous cruelty, he brought his tweezers to rip open another cut in
her left buttock and repeated the torment, savoring her convulsed agonies and
almost considering penetrating her exposed orifices as she contorted
desperately before his eyes. He opted to stick to his procedure instead, and
once this centipede also died proceeded with more, tormenting her other thigh
and then her buttocks and arms. He often doused her with cold, salt water
although making her sip from the jug in her position proved difficult, so
after a dozen of centipedes Lyral was brought forth to heal her friend.

Still blindfolded, Lyral almost puked when the empathy of the healing act
gave her a glimpse of the agonies Kayleen was undergoing. She tried again to
infuse her power with something beyond mere physical healing, sensing how her
friend's will had been eroded by the uninterrupted sufferings.

"Lyral ... stop the pain ... please," croaked Kayleen under her touch.

Lyral could only hum her friend's name, but tears flowed from under her
blindfold just as the last throes of a centipede stuck in a gash through her
friend's shin stopped, although the pitiful trembling did not.

"Lyral ... tell them ... I'll tell them," murmured Kayleen.

The Southerner pulled Lyral away, sending her sprawling on the cold stone
floor, and while Kayleen sobbed bitterly reached for a pouch and grabbed her
torn mouth. With a swift move, he punctured her tongue with a thin needle
coated in greenish goo, repeatedly, and kept his grip on her mouth until he
saw her tongue swell. This will not prevent her from screaming but will garble
any speech beyond recognition, he congratulated himself.

He freed her, ignoring her attempts to speak between screams, and pulled her
wrists behind her back until he hung her from the top of the post while she
flailed about in jarring pain. He caught and cuffed first one and then her
other leg, twisting them at the knee until he could lock her ankles to the
post spreading her thighs painfully. With vicious abandon, he hammered a four
part wedge up her vagina and inserted a fifth in between to spread it open
until the wounds ripped by the barbed whip tore open again.

With his tweezers he ripped open a wound on her right breast, heating the
pitch with a hot poker and then sticking a centipede in the quivering flesh
while her screams echoed pitifully under the vaults of the torture chamber,
staring in her tear-filled eyes as anguish and terror wracked her mind just
like agony and exhaustion wracked her convulsing chest. When the centipede
finally died, another was stuck in a wound in her other breast.

Her agonies intensified as he continued ripping open her breast flesh and
heating the pitch while she screamed herself hoarse in what was but a prelude
to the agony inflicted by the trapped critter. The beasts were actually quite
strong, and in their effort to get free grabbed on bits of scorched flesh with
the claws at the end of their legs, although they only managed to tear off the
tissue tenderized by the slowly burning pitch, exposing new flesh to the heat
in a progression of excruciating pain which caused little bleeding and
protracted horrific agonies to the madly convulsing Kayleen.

She screamed pitifully when the torment was inflicted on the soles of her
feet, although she could now sip from the jug in between even as she vainly
attempted to make her pleads of mercy understood. But her swollen tongue only
allowed her to howl and scream, and she did when her thighs were again made to
suffer the agony of the trapped critters while she gurgled her torment through
the foam bubbling from her mouth just as her body convulsed madly against the
creaking wooden post, wracked by excruciating pain.

His tweezers ripped open a long laceration in her muscular abdomen, which bled
where it had not been steeped in pitch before he used the hot poker to stir
the sticky goo while she rattled the post from her screaming convulsions, and
then jerked when a centipede was stuck in her living flesh and started its
twitching dance, causing such horrid pain that her strong abdominals rippled
spasmodically and her hip joints twitched in abysmal agony as pitiful wheezing
cries tore through her torn mouth, pitched in spite of her swollen tongue.

More lacerations across her belly were subjected to the atrocious torment, but
the Southerner liked to watch her eyes bulge at the sight of the critters in
her breasts and ripped many cuts on their upper slopes, savoring her writhing
agonies and terrified screams as the breast flesh bulged and twitched from the
excruciating throes of the trapped critters. For her nipples, however, he used
a blade to cut a gash through the base, on which he poured bubbling pitch just
as he stuck a tiny centipede in the wound.

Her agonies peaked as convulsed jerks rattled her dislocated limbs, because
the trapped critter had been folded in the wound, his tail forceps savaging
her nipple tissue while its jaws ripped flesh from her areola as it tried to
distend, painfully stretching the nipple from the within as hot pitch scorched
the distended feminine flesh and the creature violently trashing it. Her
screams from the torment of her nipples and the convulsed jarring of her
joints waxed and waned in fits of frenzied agony.

After protracting her nightmarish agonies beyond the unspeakable, he freed her
of her restraints, letting her curl besides her friend's hands for a brief
healing which he only allowed to make sure she could gulp the contents of the
jug. He cuffed her arms behind her back in the reverse prayer position, and
then pulled her off the floor by a chain on her left ankle while her swollen
tongue turned her howls from the pain in her left hip joint into gurgles.

He cruelly twisted her other leg and forced her to bend at the waist until he
managed to cuff her other ankle to her iron collar and pull her breasts around
her stretched leg, trapping the distended nipples in a vicious screw which
wrenched pitched screams from her drooling mouth. Her crotch was so stretched
that wrinkles formed in the skin under the sticky pitch.

With fiendish cruelty, he used tweezers to tear open the lacerations in her
sphincter and the rim of her vagina, letting her jerk in convulsed pain as
they bled before being seared by hot pitch. He fastened her arms to a ring on
the floor only when he wanted her unable to move, as he used a serrated blade
to tear the lacerations further inside her gaping orifices, dripping more hot
pitch while inhuman screams of agony gurgled around her swollen tongue.

Once the first centipede was stuck in a gash cut in her rectum, her convulsed
jerks rattled the chains just as her pitiful screams wracked her torn mouth
and Lyral's trembling frame nearby. As the critters tried to climb their way
through the lacerations the ripping of tiny bits of flesh was even fiercer and
the agonies wracking Kayleen's dislocated joints worse than ever. As a third
and a fourth centipede took their turns inside her seared innards, pitiful
jerks and wheezing gurgles left little room for her pleads of mercy.

After repeated dousing with cold water, and over a dozen creatures brought to
savage her innards, Lyral was briefly called upon to heal her as her voice had
dwindled to a pitiful hiss, which barely flinched when a cut was ripped in her
dangling, disfigured left breast to stick another critter. Lyral's touch gave
her some strength, just enough for her screams to rise again as her tormentor
ripped open a gash in the underside of her other breast.

Her innards suffered the agony of the trapped centipedes a few more times, and
then the Southerner ripped open a gash in her mound, using the blade to make
it reach her clitoris while she writhed in spasmodic agony. When the critter
was placed in the wound, it reflexively anchored its jaws on the nub of
feminine flesh, attempting to anchor itself to pull out, but the hot, sticky
goo only made it mercilessly tear bits of flesh from the laceration while
repeatedly biting the clitoris in search of firmer purchase.

If human strength could break iron chains, Kayleen's spasmodic convulsions
would have broken the chain she hung from or the one pulling her wrists toward
the floor, because amidst pitched screams of excruciating agony she jerked in
frenzies of wretched woe as the centipede was ripping her clitoris to shreds
while unspeakable agonies wracked her dislocated joints.

The protracted whipping had left dozens of lacerations in her mound, very
little of which had been spared the boiling pitch, so between repeated dousing
with cold water and brief moments of respite at Lyral's hands Kayleen was
dragged down into the depth of hells she could not fathom as each laceration
was ripped open, seared until the pitch bubbled enough to stick another
centipede and ravaged by the twitching legs while the jaws bit her poor
femininity into protracted nightmares of convulsed pain from which no respite
and no mercy could be hoped for.

She gurgled and howled in uninterrupted pain as the reiteration of the torment
peeled piece by piece the feminine flesh from her mound, crotch and innards,
exposing layers of fat and tissue to the bubbling pitch and then ripping them
off while inflicting unspeakable torment and uninterrupted woe on her
twitching body. Kayleen lost track of herself and her horizon shrank to the
agony surging from her shredded clitoris and wracking her torn joints, unable
to think of anything but the pain wracking her body and shaking her chest.

When she was finally freed from her restraints, she shook uncontrollably in
wheezing agony, pleading incoherently between screams which shook her from toe
to chin while Lyral was brought forth to restore a clitoris which had been
torn and savagely shredded to twitching tatters mired in bubbling pitch,
spread like petals from a flower and scorched raw from heat.

The Easterner neared, but the gnarly Southerner gestured him away and the small
man stepped back, his face carefully hiding his reaction. The old man lowered
Kayleen onto the floor and cuffed her wrists behind her neck, then dragged her
under a chain from the ceiling ending in a thick meat hook. He made her kneel
on the floor and brutally inserted the hook in her vagina, twisting it left
and right to make its crooked arm lodged firmly or maybe just to enjoy her
choked screams as it ravaged her scorched innards.

He closed the jaws of savage clamps on her disfigured labia, fastening them
with fine chains to her ankle cuffs, and pulled her breasts forward until they
smothered the chain pulling on the meat hook and he managed to screw a vise on
her shredded nipples, wrenching a gurgling scream from her torn mouth. Another
vise crushed her thumbs and two barbed chains were pulled through her crotch
to tiny clamps which bit the torn sides of her shredded clitoris.

She was still jerking and screaming from the pain of these clamps when he
pulled on the chain, slowly lifting her off the floor. Choked howls of bitter
torment wracked her chest as the pain from the hook splitting her in two
forced her to arch back, causing the barbed chain to rake the cleavage between
her breasts and rattle the vise crushing her nipples, although the pull on her
clitoris from the chains sawing through her crotch was worse even discounting
how her flailing legs pulled spasmodically on the stretched labia.

The chamber was plunged into darkness while Kayleen was still convulsing on
the meat hook, her screams garbled by the swollen tongue but pitched and
uninterrupted. Unaware of Zhorun's malevolent gaze, she twitched and jerked in
the effort to find a position which lessened her anguish, but only managed to
shift it from place to place as time went by, marked only by her bitter cries.

She tried to wrap her mind around the agonies they were inflicting on her,
almost longing for the days when each torturer got to hurt her for a few hours
and she was then left for the night, in some torturous restraint but at least
in Lyral's company. Now she was being tortured at least four times per day,
and certainly not for shorter periods, and in between was subjected to
fiendish torments which she had to suffer alone, each lasting a quarter of
what her nightly pause used to last, but much more savage.

When the torches brought back some light, such had been her uninterrupted
suffering that gratitude enveloped her when the Easterner lowered her on the
floor and removed the meat hook, allowing her to crawl weeping within reach of
Lyral's outstretched hands. She had no need of meowing pitifully words which
her swollen tongue made unintelligible anyway, because the small hands of the
young priestess found her tear-streaked face as if she wasn't blindfolded.

Kayleen jerked when the Easterner grabbed her and started rubbing her wounded
body, gasping as a stiff brush was rubbed on the sticky patches and the smell
of turpentine reached her nostrils. The solvent and the brush were harshly
applied, but somehow Kayleen thought she sensed the intent to cause no more
pain than necessary. But the jug brought to her lips told her that this would
be the extent of the mercy she could expect.

As she was separated from Lyral, Kayleen thought she could hear her friend
weep and beg her forgiveness, which confused her as the memories of past
nights mixed with the agonies of the present. She was dragged to an implement
she recognized with dread, the wooden rail, but although partially healed she
was unable to oppose her tormentor when he made her straddle it and cuffed
her ankles to a ring in the floor, stretching her legs forward.

Pain wracked her dislocated joints again when he cuffed her wrists and elbows
behind her, twisting her arms above her head and forcing her to bend at the
waist, further and further down until her wrists could be fastened to the far
end of the rail while her breasts rubbed the hacked, splintered sides of the
wooden wedge, which cut increasingly through her slit as the tail end was
cranked lower, reclining it while blood already trickled down the edge.

Her mouth was still filled by her horribly swollen tongue, so her muffled
pleas conveyed no meaning as she saw the Easterner bring forth the coils of
rough rope which had ravaged her limbs recently, rub them in a sticky brown
paste and then in a glittering powder. When two or three coils tightened
around her forearm she tried to discern its nature, which became clear as he
started pulling the rope back and forth raking her stretched forearm through
waves of blinding agony. The coarse rope was grinding powdered glass and red
hot pepper across her lacerated and burned skin, ripping it bit by bit while
the fiery powder stung mercilessly the excoriated flesh.

Gut-wrenching gurgles of excruciating agony wracked her chest and choked her
mouth as the rope left her forearm a bloody, twitching bundle of scraped flesh
and her tormentor switched to her left leg, fully aware that her convulsed
twitching was scraping her femininity raw as she could not help but rub it
against the splintered edge of the rail.

The agony coursing through the stretched body made the legs pull her forward in
spasmodic jerks, thus dragging her lacerated vulva and crushed clitoris along
the edge for the inch or so which her legs could achieve before the angle of
her arms in the twisted sockets made further progress impossible and she let
go, sliding back with excruciating slowness on the blood soaked edge.

The merciless stretching and the spasmodic convulsions from the scraping of
her limbs wracked untold agonies through her dislocated joints, the molten
knots of white hot torment which bulged under her stretched muscles as harsh
jerks wracked her strained tendons and surged from her mouth in choked howls
of atrocious pain. The wretched coils chafed and abraded her lacerated skin,
leaving raw flesh burning with the sting of red hot pepper while long,
convulsed frenzies of desperate screaming echoed in the torture chamber.
She was repeatedly drenched in cold, salt water, whose sting replaced that of
the red hot pepper it washed away, mixing with the tears on her face, scraped
and cut from the occasional rubbing against the splintered edge. With cold,
calculated cruelty her tormentor alternated the excoriating ropes between her
arms and her legs, shredding sound and scorched skin while her screams gurgled
past her swollen tongue in pitiful fits of wretched anguish.

Lyral was called upon a few times when the ropes bit too deep where some blood
vessel ran, but her tormentor's expertise allowed him to slowly excoriate her
limbs, limiting immediate damage but inflicting increasingly atrocious agonies
on her twitching body. Her screams rose in pitch as he moved to her thighs,
chafing one from behind and the other from her side so that she would slide
back and forth over the agonizing, blood-soaked edge.

Kayleen lost herself under the nightmarish torment, her mind clearing only
when she felt Lyral's soothing touch and realized she was trembling on the
floor, unable to find rest as any contact with her excoriated limbs was pure
agony.  She barely managed to voice some garbled pleads when her tormentor
dragged her away, trapped her arms behind her back in the reverse prayer
position and fastened her knee bands to chains dangling from the ceiling.

Once another chain was fastened to her wrists, she was lifted from the floor,
screaming garbled cries of bitter anguish from the torment of the suspension
on her torn joints. As she hung there, iron vises were tightened on her toes
until they cracked and used to spread her in an excruciating split by pulling
on thin chains coiled around small rollers. A thick wooden pole was secured
under her spread vagina and her screaming, glistening body was slowly lowered
on the hacked tip by releasing the chains suspending her, causing her arms to
bend behind her back and her thigh bones to bulge out of their sockets.

Her tormentor fetched more coarse rope, rubbed it in red hot pepper and
powdered glass and started dragging it across her ass cheeks, winding it just
under the hips or diagonally between the legs. The pushing and pulling caused
her to whirl and buckle against the wickedly dented pole, while her chest was
wracked by screams of such desperate anguish that her congested face shook as
if about to burst, her shrieks so high pitched that they sounded like choked
whistles as they soared past her swollen tongue.

The merciless ropes left swathes of bleeding skin crisscrossed by wounds slit
open by the glass fragments, trickling blood and having their edges repeatedly
pulled open by the coils of rope for the burning kiss of the red hot pepper.
As her buttocks were shredded by pulling on the ropes, her loins were lifted a
fraction of an inch, raking her innards against the splintered girth of the
pole, and then dropped, jarring her arms and thighs as the strained muscles
twitched spasmodically  and fits of screaming anguish wracked her chest.

She was repeatedly drenched with cold, salt water and made to sip from the
jug, and the torment was continued mercilessly, interrupting it only to wind
the atrocious rope coils around her brutally stretched feet, scraping them
somewhat haphazardly while her head arched in gurgling agony from the jarring
of her cracked toes and the shredding of the skin.

A longer coil was then wound around her loins, dragging powdered glass over
her taut belly and slender sides while the muscles of her her back stretched
and pulled spasmodically as she turned with the rope, screwing herself against
the splintered sides of the pole tearing her open while a raucous, trembling
scream waxed and waned with the alternating motion of the ropes.

The swaths of skin shredded by the ropes climbed up her front until, after a
sip from the jug, the powdered glass started shredding her scorched breasts,
climbing from the undersides to the disfigured nipples while her compressed
chest heaved as her wretched agony fueled frenzies of choked screaming which
tore past her swollen tongue and the foam at the corners of her mouth.

When the ropes were wrapped around her chafed and scraped left thigh, a deep
shudder wracked Kayleen's suspended form and unintelligible pleads of mercy
bubbled from her mouth as she contemplated the effect on the ropes on already
lacerated skin. The swollen tongue prevented the full volume of her howls to
echo under the vaults of the torture chamber, but the spasmodically heaving
chest, the pitiful twitching of the muscles in her other thigh and the noise
of the chains rattled by her jerks left little doubt.

After a few buckets of cold, salt water, her torment was resumed as the ropes
were raked against her crotch, shredding her stretched labia against the
splintered sides of the wooden pole and scraping raw the cleft around the
sphincter. She continued buckling spasmodically and gurgling pitifully while
bloody tatters of skin flapped from her scraped flesh, and her face contorted
in atrocious agony while the ropes scraped the scorched skin from her mound.

Her pitiful moans, interspersed with vain attempts to plead mercy, continued
even as she was extricated from her torment and left in a heap on the floor,
trembling under Lyral's touch, unable to lie without being wracked by pain.

"Make them stop," she managed to croak, her feet shaking in bitter twitches.

Lyral was sobbing, with warm, bitter tears streaking her face under her
blindfold, bent on healing her friend's horrid wounds and desperately seeking
to buttress Kayleen's shattered resolve, humming her name behind the gag while
cuddling her trembling head even as the Easterner dragged Kayleen away.

Kayleen's muffled screams resumed as her legs were folded at the knee pulling
her ankles above the thigh and cuffing them to chains dangling from the
ceiling, wound behind so that when she was lifted off the floor her legs were
atrociously split and bent at the knees, tearing her thighs out of their
sockets as the ankle was pulled up behind the rotated thigh while she howled
in fiendish pain. Another chain was ran from her wrists in the reverse prayer
position and a ring in the floor, using it to stretch her in mid air while the
heads of her dislocated bones bulged under the strained muscles, jarred by her
convulsed frenzies of screaming agony.

Her eyes bulged when he pierced the tips of her nipples with tiny hooks,
pulling on them to distend the nubs of feminine flesh and the mounds of chafed
and scraped skin, turning them into streaked cones crisscrossed by bleeding
shallow cuts and dangling tatters of shredded skin while she vainly tried to
ask for mercy or respite between harsh, protracted screams.

Another hook distended her clitoris, still peeled raw from the repeated
scorching from the boiling pitch and shredded by the twitching of the horrid
critters. She almost expected the coils of coarse rope which her tormentor
draped inside her slit, already burning with red hot pepper and soon bound to
rake powdered glass across her scorched and scraped flesh.

For an instant, her eyes sought in his expression any trace of what in past
occasions had looked like mercy, or maybe respect, but met only a grim intent
to put an end to the matter which was painfully confirmed when he started
sewing her bleeding labia around the coarse rope

Another coil of rope was wound around her breasts, supplementing the iron
rings which always constricted their bases, and pulled up between them. When
he started pulling the ropes back and forth, the powdered glass traced new
cuts in the shredded breasts just as the ropes squeezed them and the jerks
induced by the pain in her bleeding mounds jarred her joints while she howled
pitifully, vainly venting her agony beyond her swollen tongue.

Pain burst in waves across her chest and soared in howling bouts of spasmodic
twitching as the coarse rope chafed scorched skin and rubbed the edges of
extant cuts open to the red hot pepper, while the grass fragments sliced the
taut scorched skin as her firm mounds were squeezed, opening new bleeding
traces of blinding agony as the torture was protracted mercilessly.

After a few buckets of cold, salt water, her tormentor grabbed the ends of the
rope hanging off her sewn labia and started dragging them back and forth, as
if to saw through her slit but actually making sure the ropes chafed raw the
stretched tatters of her clitoris while her screams managed to make themselves
heard even past her swollen tongue in spite of the creaking and rattling of
the chains as she jerked in spasmodic torment.

Blood trickled from her slit as the edge was scraped raw and the rope started
to bite the flesh, while the tatters of her clitoris twitched upon each pull
on the ropes while her screams continued and her joints, especially her hips,
trembled from the twisting of her limbs, the bones bulging under the swollen
flesh while strained muscles and tendons were wracked by her buckling and her
chest heaved in frenzies of desperate agony.

The torture was protracted mercilessly, and the obvious intent to cause as
much pain as possible replaced the usual care to minimize damage dealt. Lyral
was repeatedly called upon, sometimes without even suspending the torture, and
yet when the torture was finally interrupted Kayleen's disfigured breasts and
crotch had been scraped raw and the flesh pitifully shredded. The ropes had
torn through her sewn labia and her clitoris had been almost scraped off.

A strangled cry shook Lyral when she started healing her twitching friend, and
she muttered the words of an ancient prayer as her hands sought to soothe
agonies beyond her worst nightmares. As the worst wounds receded, Lyral
started when Kayleen jerked with a gurgled scream of despair, unaware that her
friend had just seen the Southerner inspecting her crotch to make sure her
clitoris would be restored enough for further tortures.

Kayleen was dragged away as soon as her worst wounds were dressed, and forced
against a contraption dangling from the ceiling. Her elbows were cuffed
together and pulled up behind her above a studded steel bar, while her feet
were forced to rest on another and a third was nudged behind her slightly bent
knees and used to secure a thick wooden pole, whose dented girth was viciously
driven up her vagina, forcing her to straighten her back.

Her thumbs were crushed in a vise fastened to barbed chains which ran through
her shredded slit to a jagged clamp on her clitoris, and similar clamps with
lead weights crushed her nipples. To relieve the agony in her womb she could
straighten her legs, but this dug the dull spikes in her lacerated soles and
was a position which her trembling, taxed legs could not hold for long against
the agony radiating from her dislocated hip joints. When her legs tired, her
weight and the pain moved to her shoulder sockets as she hung from her elbows,
her nipples stretched by the dangling weighted clamps and her clitoris pulled
back from the chains sawing through her slit.

Darkness enveloped her as she sobbed in pain, shrinking before another pause
which would bring no respite, only the strain of bouncing between equally
taxing positions while undergoing subtle but not less exhausting torments. For
a moment, she thought a robed figure lurked in the shadows, but dismissed the
thought once pain shot from her crushed clitoris as her feet slipped.

The excruciating torments just suffered still shook her, but the recollections
of the depravities inflicted on her in the last days raging through her
wavering thoughts were almost worse. Lyral's healing power restored her to the
extent allowed by her tormentors, and also compensated for the lack of sleep
when it was protracted long enough, but could not shield her from the horrors
she was being subjected to. She shrunk at the thought of more tortures.

As she writhed in her restraints, she pictured herself pleading for mercy, and
her sobs tasted bitter in her mouth when she realized that the thought of
groveling before her captors was no longer shameful to her. Pain surged from
her stretched rectum in a scream as she faced the shattering of her resolve.

Time passed with hellish slowness as she turned and screamed, loathing the
thoughts crowding her mind when pain let go of its grip and loathing herself
for entertaining them, tempted by visions such as having her poor breasts
freed even for an instant from the unmerciful iron rings which constricted
their bases, making them bulge and unrelentingly chafing the tender flesh.

When she heard the noise of approaching footsteps, heralding new torments, a
sob harsher than any uttered so far wracked her restrained body. She called
desperately Lyral's name, as she heard the rattling of chains, but her tongue
muffled the words and torchlight framed the lewd grin of a gnarly old man.

Kayleen screamed pitifully at the sight, and the Southerner, reveling in her
terror as if savoring a rare wine, started undoing her restraints and cuffing
her ankles to chains fastened to rings in the floor. Her wrists were hung to
chains from the ceiling, and then she was lifted screaming bitterly from the
pain in her dislocated shoulders, pulling her limbs taut. Grod would have
pulled her to the brink of tearing her limbs off, but the Southerner had other
intentions and thrust his leather sheathed manhood inside her torn vagina.

Her attempts to plead were lost in her own screams as his frenzied thrusts
jarred her hip joints and her torn shoulders burst in agony when she slumped
down under her weight after each thrust, as even a fraction of an inch wrought
unspeakable pain through the dislocated sockets. Penetration and friction sent
blasts of white hot pain through her lacerated innards, and her violation
lasted until his lust was finally spent, leaving her wracked by bitter sobs.

As the jug was brought to her lips, she choked at the fearful smell of metal
being heated in a brazier. He fetched a piece of barbed copper wire and looped
it around her outstretched arm, smiling when she gasped as a barb raked her
scorched and lacerated flesh. It was nothing before the pain he subsequently
inflicted by twisting the ends of the wire together, tightening the wire to
cut mercilessly through skin and flesh while she rattled her chains in agony.

She screamed madly in muffled shrieks of wretched agony as the barbs raked the
scorched flesh or scraped inside the lacerations criss crossing her arms, and
twitched spasmodically as more and more wires were slowly tightened on her
sore flesh, squeezing it into bulging grotesquely while the wires cut in her
stretched muscles and the barbs ripped open her lacerations again.

A splash with cold, salt water made her writhe spasmodically as a long scream
wracked her chest, followed by pitched shrieks as more wires slowly cut into
her limbs. She realized that he was placing the wires to make the barbs tear
into the skin scorched by the boiling pitch, so that when the wire was
tightened a bleeding gash would slowly be cut through the sensitized tissue.

When he started wrapping longer, thicker wires around her belly and chest she
could not help but buckle and arch spasmodically as burns and lacerations were
horrendously scraped, howling behind her swollen tongue and shaking her head
in the throes of demented pain. The tightened wires cut bloody trails across
her torso and limbs, as if to slice through her.

After making her sip from the jug, he fetched a piece of red hot wire from the
brazier, pulled on the wire digging into her flesh and slid the red hot wire
below, across those already cutting into her thigh flesh as if to carve it
up into square wallops of searing torment while she arched in pain as the red
hot barbs seared open a lacerated gash, screaming at the top of her lungs.

More pieces of heated wire followed, distributed across her limbs while her
muffled screams followed the rattling of her chains as she shook in abysmal
pain from the red hot barbs and the trashing of the wires already cutting into
her flesh. As her head reeled under the waves of agony rattling her stretched
body, she agonizingly realized that the wires circling her limbs pressed their
red hot counterparts into the bulging flesh with unyielding force, drawing
horrid agonies as skin and flesh were slowly seared away while the red hot
metal was unrelentingly pressed down and the barbs cut through.

Her screams continued to engulf her torn mouth, too desperate for her chest
to contain, rising under the vaults even if muffled by her swollen tongue as
her head arched in spasmodic agony. The jerks and twitches caused by the
wretched carving of her bulging flesh periodically rekindled the agony in her
dislocated joints, rattling them whenever pain coursed through her stretched
limbs. A checkerboard of jagged creases and scorched deep cuts slowly grew
over larger and larger swathes of lacerated skin, intersecting bleeding
gashes with the deep scorched cuts sawed by the cooling wires.

With devious cruelty, he clenched the wires on her ribcage savagely tight, so
that the red hot wires ground deeper through the scorched flesh whenever her
lungs fought to breathe for her next scream. A desperate shudder wracked her
when she was repeatedly drenched with cold, salt water. In a few places the
red hot wire had cut to the rib before cooling, and now stabs of white hot
pain shot from those places where the barbs scraped the bone.

When her tormentor freed her arms, she moaned Lyral's name between her
screams, looking forward to her soothing touch, but was bitterly disappointed
when her elbows were cuffed together over a studded steel bar slid under the
armpits. The ends of the bar were fastened to chains dangling from the ceiling
and then her ankles were pulled back, leaving her weight on the steel bar
pushing her dislocated arms up out of their sockets.

As if her screams from the pain in her shoulders were not enough, her wrists
were pulled down behind her, forcing her to arch and push her breasts and
crotch forward while the screams wracking her chest increased with the angle
cut by the steel bar between her armpits and her twisted arms.

With a smile, her tormentor looped a long, barbed wire across her left ass
cheek, winding it inside the thigh and then diagonally before turning it back
above the hip and twisting the ends together. The reason for these first two
became painfully clear to her when he used them to fasten more wires winding
across her buttocks, all pulling on the first two so that when she moved
dozens of barbs raked the lacerated and scorched skin of her buttocks.

She continued her pitiful frenzies of bitter screaming as more barbed wires
were added, because the wires on her buttocks engaged repeatedly those on her
bound arms, whose movements under the strain of her position carried to the
former, causing the firm flesh to be repeatedly raked mercilessly.

When a red hot wire was pushed under one of the wires sawing through her firm
ass cheeks, she jerked so desperately her left arm was grotesquely pulled away
from the shoulder, almost tearing the tendon as the muscle strained while her
throat echoed with her muffled screams of wretched woe. She continued shaking
and rattling until the wire slowly cooled off, after scorching a deep gash
through the lacerations in her ass flesh. Cold, salt water was splashed over
her before another hot copper wire rekindled her pitiful screams.

One by one, more red hot wires were inserted under the warp weaved across her
ass cheeks, searing them deep into the quivering flesh while excruciating
agonies wracked her hanging form and rattled her dislocated joints. Foam
bubbled at the corners of her mouth as her screams still could not surge past
her swollen tongue, although the spasmodic quivering of her limbs and chest
left no doubt about the agonies wracking her body.

Pure, unabridged terror flashed through her teary blue eyes when he brought
a loop of barbed wire around her left breast and started tightening it with
pliers. The barbs raked the lacerations in the firm mound, constricted as
always by the iron rings around the base and now being squeezed tighter by the
excruciating wire. She would have begged for mercy, but she managed to utter
only a few garbled words before her screams left her no breath for pleading.

Lost in his drooling word of depraved pleasure, the Southerner had chosen for
her breasts a thinner wire, so that he could wind more coils of barbed torment
across her delectable mounds. He relentlessly lingered on the crisscrossing
coils, pulling, tightening and adjusting them as often as he added new ones to
increase her agony. The barbs repeatedly tore open the lacerations left on her
poor breasts, and while she was almost out of breath from howling her anguish
over and over, he stuck the first red hot wire onto her quivering flesh.

White hot pain shot through Kayleen's clenched eyes as a desperate howl burst
past her swollen tongue and drooling lips, echoing under the vaults of the
torture chamber while she rattled her torn joints in the vain effort to
dislodge the agony searing through her constricted breast flesh. Reeling in
anguish, she tried to call for her friend, even if at some level she was aware
that this torture deviously managed to draw little blood and was thus not
likely to spur her tormentors into having her healed.

She was doused with cold, salt water, washing away the sheen of blood trickled
on her breasts from dozens of lacerations, and then the gnarly old man started
twisting short barbed stubs of red hot copper wire under the coils squeezing
her firm breasts, letting them sizzle while she arched in agony as the skin
was scorched through and the flesh underneath slowly seared open.

Howling frenzies of demented agony wracked her restrained body as her breasts
sizzled and bled, crisscrossed by a checkerboard of copper wires whose barbs
scraped mercilessly the deep gashes burned through the flesh from the cooling
wires. Her swollen tongue no longer prevented her hoarse screams from echoing
in the underground chamber as her head shook spasmodically while one after
another sizzling wire tore scorched gashes through her quivering breasts.

When she was finally freed from her restraints, she lay on the floor, choking
and delirious with pain, but in spite of her garbled pleads Lyral was not
allowed to heal her and the Southerner folded her legs and bent her arms
behind her neck until he could cuff each wrist outside the corresponding ankle
and fasten the elbows together. She was then lifted by chains pulling on the
iron bands above her knees, spreading her thighs and bending her arms at the
elbow while she screamed as the pain in her joints was renewed.

The old man moved behind her and tightened more barbed wire on her fingers,
one by one, drawing blood as the barbs scraped bone and dragging thin red hot
wire under her fingernails while she buckled and twitching, wracked by screams
which burst through her foaming mouth in spite of her still swollen tongue.
Her face contorted as if ripped through by invisible claws while her nails
were slowly ripped off one by one by sawing back and forth with red hot barbed
wire, and her mouth almost tore at the bleeding corners when he twisted red
hot wire on her labia, distending them mercilessly while the barbs cut through
the scorched flesh and bitter howls wheezed past her mouth.

He twisted more wire around her toes before searing the toenails off one by
one, keeping her screaming uninterruptedly as pain wracked her into fits of
spasmodic buckling alternated by arching when the torment from her joints
overcame the agony of her sizzled and ripped toenails. Garbled pleads for a
stop to her wretched agonies repeatedly formed on her lips, always crushed by
desperate screams of excruciating pain tearing through the foam in her mouth.

Her howls rose to a paroxysm of spasmodic shrieks when he started twisting red
hot wires on her nipples and clitoris, squeezing the delicate nubs and tearing
scorched gashes deeper and deeper in the twitching flesh while she stiffened
and arched, rattling her chains in desperate jerks of atrocious agony. He used
very fine chains, with tiny barbs, alternating between ordinary pliers to pull
the flesh taut and smallish tweezers to twist the sizzling metal tighter and
tighter, slowly cutting a scorched gash in the raw flesh.

She buckled frantically when he poured the contents of the jug down her
throat, and immediately resumed screaming in agony as the wires were twisted
with sadistic glee and the nubs stretched to find room for more, lost in pain
so overwhelming that she was certain she could not possibly endure it any
longer and would die, but the jug was brought to her mouth again.

Her tormentor fetched some thicker wire from the brazier and using a pair of
pliers in each hand bent it so that one end could be pushed down her gaping
vagina and the other pulled down, tearing through the rim of her love channel
and raking the red hot barbs across her vulva and mound, sawing back and forth
to deepen the scorched gash while blood trickled from the lacerations being
torn open again by the sizzling barbs. Her screams burst in fits of coughing
and sputtering as her mouth had not fully ingested the liquid yet.

After scraping her mound to tatters and tearing a dozen of bloody gashes in
the rim of her vagina, he continued cutting into her nipples and clitoris,
even as the latter was so stretched and wrapped in wire that he was tightening
the wire on metal as she gurgled in unspeakable torment, shaking under
twitches of excruciating pain which crushed her garbled attempts at pleading
as the nubs of her femininity were slowly seared to shreds.

Lyral was finally brought on to heal her croaking, twitching friend, but then
the old man started ripping the wire from Kayleen's wounds, twisting and
pulling with savage abandon until he cleared enough of her hanging form to
penetrate her with his erect manhood, violating her in a rut of bloody lust
which lasted enough to wrench new garbled screams from her mouth, leaving him
panting but still bent on ripping the rest of the wires one by one.

As this last installment of her nightmare finished, she hung in trembling
pain, her screams wheezing pitifully while the swarthy old man was already
arranging for her torments to continue. Zhorun gestured towards a wooden
splinter, which lifted of its own and idly flew to her shaking body. The old
Southerner turned in surprise, and started smiling watching the splinter trace
the gashes crisscrossing her breasts while her head arched in a hoarse scream.

Chapter 28 - Agonies Beyond Tears

In the cold darkness of the torture chamber, Kayleen croaked in despair as
pain surged from the thin barbed chain sawing through her slit. She had been
left on the cold floor, arms and legs clenched together by the irons whose
studs had been inseparable instruments of her torment for days. A studded
steel bar had been nudged between shoulders and arms, its left end linked by a
short chain to the right end of a similar bar stuck behind her ankles, and a
similar chain connected the other ends of both, forcing her to twist and bend
at the waist, exacerbating the chafing from the iron band clinching it.

With fiendish cruelty, clamps had been screwed on her nipples and fastened to
fine chains crossed behind her neck and reaching to a screw crushing her toes,
while a similar chain pulled a chain connecting her clitoris through the slit
to a screw crushing the thumbs. The usual drenching with cold, salt water had
been but the last straw of her misery, because her body was so crisscrossed by
burns and lacerations that she could rest on no part of it for long, twitching
and screaming as each movement renewed her torment. Her shivering, however,
was more from terror at the prospect of further torture than from cold.

Her thoughts whirled in fear as images of past torments loomed in the few
pauses her anguish encountered. She craved Lyral's touch desperately, even if
sometimes bitterly realizing that it would further her agonies, so badly that
she repeatedly imagined her friend's fingers barely touching her bleeding
lacerations before some stabbing agony crushed her fantasies. If only she
could be freed for an instant, she sobbed within as the studs in her wrists
bit the bruised flesh again. Maybe just having the serrated rings squeezing
her breasts removed, no longer chafing and biting the sore skin.

When her tormentors returned, however, she was instead treated to the sight of
the Southerner ingesting something, eloquently pointing to his manhood as a
desperate sob wracked her restrained form. Her mind shriveled and she almost
wished they wrapped her in spikes, rather than face rape at his hands.

Lyral's trembling touch was a sudden bliss, but it soothed her pain, not her
fears. She had forgotten about rape, she had hoped they would not use it
again. Mad with fear, she looked around, as if to call for more torture at
Grod's hands, or from the Easterner, anybody but him, shrieking in despair at
a circumstance she once would have tried to put to her advantage.

Laughing, the Southerner dragged her away by her twitching feet, up to a low
wooden platform. He clenched her arms together behind her back in the reverse
prayer position, cuffing the wrists at the base of the platform while her
elbows pressed against the top of the slope, forcing her to raise her loins to
reduce the pain in her twisted elbows. He cuffed her knees to loose chains and
then fastened chains to the screws crushing her toes, stretching her legs in a
savage split while pain shot from her still dislocated joints.

He used pliers to twist and stretch her partially healed nipples, tightening a
wire at the base while she howled in pain. Her voice echoed under the vaults
of the torture chamber again, as her tongue was returning to normal, but this
only made her shrieks more desperate when he did the same with her clitoris.

As she quivered in agony, a crack echoed and a long, bristled whip slashed her
squeezed breast, just under the nipple, making her jerk with a scream. More
lashes followed, aimed at her pinched nipples and clitoris, leaving angry
welts across the lacerations which Lyral had been allowed to heal only in
part. As more lashes seared her crotch, while blinding pain shot from her
clitoris as the blisters peeled it, frantic pleads rose to her lips, no longer
shameful as the terror of further pain swept anything else aside.

The whip lacerated her nipples, wrenching shrill screams from her torn mouth
as she loathed the thoughts crowding her mind when pain paused for an instant,
while the tortures that she knew would follow the whip loomed in her mind. She
would falter and crumble after pointlessly enduring the unendurable. The pain
of the bristles searing her labia would be nothing before what lied ahead.

The Southerner dropped the whip, grabbed her loins and penetrated her, pushing
with savage abandon while pain wracked her dislocated joints under his thrusts
and her voice vented her anguish and despair. Her mind twitched at what would
follow as pain from her dry innards burst in screams until his lust was spent.

Panting, he freed her from the platform, turned her on the belly and pulled up
her supple legs by her sides, almost purring as he felt them quiver from the
agony in her dislocated joints. With her left ankle at breast height, he
pulled her right arm until he could tighten a screw on her thumb and toe,
twisting wrist and ankle inside the studded cuffs while she cried desperately.

Her screams became ever more desperate when he set about doing the same with
her left arm and right leg, and reached blood-curling heights when he pulled
her off the floor by chains fastened to her wrist cuffs, fading into a gurgle
when he forced his manhood into her mouth, still torn by the spider gag.

Her gurgles increased when his gloved hands pinched a fold of stretched muscle
on her back, rubbed it with nettles and then stuck a thick green thorn in the
irritated flesh. Her tongue darted over his manhood as the pain of more thorns
flared across her back, each releasing an irritant which was the reason he was
plucking them green while garbled screams of wretched anguish wracked her.

He continued to savor her screams as humiliation and terror gained free reign
over her traumatized mind, bouncing her between the searing flames of pain
from another thorn being pushed in irritated flesh and the burning rash of the
irritant being released by those already in place. He finally came in her
mouth, almost choking her as she gurgled from yet another thorn being twisted
into a fold of twitching thigh flesh turned angry red by the nettles.

Still lingering in her mouth just because he could, he stretched to stick
thorns over the parts of her body he could reach while waiting for his
drug-induced arousal to return. Where the thorns stuck close to each other, he
started using a dried leather strap whose hard slap left swaths of skins
flaring in crimson agony, wrenching hoarse screams from her throat as if from
the depths of her very soul.

Her twitching buttocks slowly turned into angry red mounds, pinpointed by tiny
black speckles where thorns stuck deeply in the flesh and sap was squeezed
into the wounds by the repeated slaps as her screams returned to gurgling
around his aroused manhood and she was forced to take more of what was now
beyond her ability to endure. Unable to restrain her spasmodic screams, she
continued writhing as more thorns wrought unspeakable agonies through her
distended thigh muscles, enveloping his pulsating member with her desperate
shrieks of mad agony when the strap seared the rosette of her anus.

She lost count of how many times the drugs had allowed him to fill her mouth,
regurgitating foam and semen in a single scream once he pulled out as the
strap singed the sole of her left foot, jerking toe and thumb into spasmodic
agony in the grip of the thumbscrew. But his lust found a new target as he
violently penetrated her sphincter with his leather sheathed member while his
weight added to the agony of her suspension and of his savage grip on her
thighs, squeezing the thorns into her irritated flesh upon each brutal thrust.

Waves of unspeakable pain wracked her over and over, alternating the fire of
the leather strap with the repeated scraping of her bowels, worsened by using
the white powder he was so fond of to dry them up in the middle of each
screaming violation. After a while her sphincter was so torn and distended
that he had little trouble in sticking thorns inside, some deep down and some
just behind the torn rim. Subsequent violations scraped them inside, making
the irritated, dry walls swell and bringing the agony of the penetration on
par with the howls wracking her incessantly.

When she was brought down, Lyral was allowed only the briefest of contact, a
refined cruelty, but her humming carried words, words Kayleen wished she could
make sense of. Deprived of her friend's voice, not even questioned any longer,
rocked by waves of unquenched pain, her gaze happened on Zhorun's silent form,
always nearby, and the thought of how their fates were becoming similar
flashed through her mind as the Southerner changed her restraints.

Her tormentor screwed her breasts in a cruel vise and pulled her legs up until
he managed to twist the back of her knees under its steel arms, then clenched
elbows and wrists together tightly behind her back. As if her agony was not
enough already, he inserted a wooden pear in her bowels, screwing it open
among her insane cries until he could use it to hang her upside down, her
shoulders on the floor but her body wracked by the pain of the thorns behind
the rim of her sphincter pushed by the pear deep into her swollen bowels.

A meat hook was placed to stretch the cleft of her vagina, fastened to her
wrists by a chain pulled savagely short, and another two tore it open at the
folds of her labia, pulled by chains wound behind her waist to her ankles so
whenever she tried to bend her legs her vagina would be torn open.

As her shoulders left the floor her screams rose in unbridled agony, until she
reached a height where he could thrust his member into her mouth and have his
brutal pleasure again, pushing forcefully while her mind was stunned by her
own garbled screams echoing inside the head rocked by his wretched lust. True
to himself, he lingered inside after she gurgled his semen in pitiful agony.

With panting abandon, he started pinching folds of flesh to be rubbed with
nettles and pierced with thorns, savoring every shudder and scream which
licked his manhood. Conversely,she had to endure his urges as her screams
gurgled around his member, his lust as he pushed thorns between her toes and
into the partially healed nail beds, and his triumph as her howls fanned his
arousal again, unable to resist the onslaught of pain.

His hands lingered on the trembling muscles of her inner thighs, stroking them
over and over with the stinging nettles before sticking the thick thorns where
the flesh was taut, while her jerks and twitches almost made thrusting into
her mouth unnecessary. Each thorn pushed in her taut belly was like a glass of
fine wine, each shudder under the nettles a kiss of dark lust, each muffled
scream as his hands squeezed irritated flesh music to his ears.

He reached for her squeezed breasts, and arched when the caress of the nettles
over the firm flesh wrenched a delicious, protracted scream from her torn
throat and sent her tongue pleasuring his engorged manhood in spasmodic agony.
Each thorn thereafter brought new heights of pleasure as she stiffened and
gurgled pitifully in excruciating pain. The soft undersides, the areolas
deliciously rubbed with stinging nettles until they turned crimson against the
dark red of the peeled nipples, any part of her mounds writhed as he stuck
thorns with his thumbs and her misery grew beyond bounds.

Sustained by lust as much as by drugs, he rubbed fresh nettles against the rim
of her stretched vagina, watching it turn deep red while her mouth fought the
semen and foam choking her between screams she barely had breath enough for.
He was too close for the strap, but protracted use of the nettles allowed the
drugs time to act. His heart pounded as her screams were stifled and he pushed
a thorn in her swollen crimson labia, missing a beat when she stiffened and
arched in demented agony, screaming her anguish on his aroused manhood.

Thorn after thorn decorated the canvas of her agony, reaching deep inside her
womb to drive thorns as far as he could reach while the strength restored by
Lyral's healing was consumed in the bonfire of her torment. He studiously
rubbed the nettles inside the partially healed lacerations still straddling
her mound, circling around her femininity and occasionally draping the nettles
in anticipation around the peeled nub of flesh, black from engorged blood.

He protracted her anguished pleasuring of his member, sticking thorns where
her pubic hair used to be, under the folds of her clitoris and just behind the
stretched rim of her vagina, occasionally returning to her squeezed breasts
but otherwise concentrating on dragging her softest feminine flesh through
depths of agony beyond human endurance. The fresh sap burned like the fires of
hell and merely kneading flesh made her arch and buckle between muffled howls,
while her swollen innards burned as more thorns pierced them.

He finally pulled out from her mouth, lowering her on the floor again before
dragging her to where Lyral sat trembling. Kayleen tried to overcome her
craving for Lyral's touch enough to understand the words behind her friend's
desperate humming, but pain was her sole master now and she failed.

Her tormentor soon yanked her away, bringing her to lie on her back between
two chains which he fastened to her ankles, lifting them about a foot above
the floor and pulling them in an excruciating suspended split, wrenching a
new, hoarse scream from her torn mouth. He then grabbed her arms, cuffed the
elbows and wrists together and twisted them up, savagely tearing them from
their dislocated sockets again. As he continued to pull she was forced to bend
at the waist, rotating her thigh bones in their sockets with a long scream
from the deepest pits of anguish as her wrists were pulled up behind her and
her weight rested on her twisted, dislocated joints.

The chain fastened to her wrists was actually connected to a pulley, and he
pulled the other end down until he managed to fasten it to the vise still
constricting her breasts, tightening it and releasing the pulley so that her
torso oscillated between tearing her arms out of their sockets and stretching
her thorn studded breasts away from her chest. She screamed in pain and
terror, trembling as she expected the nubs of feminine flesh which had so far
escaped his attention to be targeted as usual.

With renewed lust, he grabbed the edges of her sphincter with his thumbs and
tore at the muscle, pulling her loins up to impale her vagina on his leather
sheathed member and jarring her shoulder joints while the vise squeezed her
sore breasts. Unspeakable pain scraped her womb as the dry leather squeezed
the thorns deeper into the irritated flesh, so swollen that each thrust
abraded it even before he started smearing the leather with sand, bringing her
screams to a spasmodic peak of wretched atrocity.

After his drug induced lust was sated, he started using the strap on her
breasts and crotch, each slap making her buckle and jerk in her suspension as
the stinging pain coupled with the fiery agony of the thorns renewed the
uninterrupted torment of her joints. The thought that this most sadistic of
her tormentors was obviously learning from the other two rattled her mind as
pitched shrieks surged from her mouth when the strap landed on her taut
breasts, leaving a swath of crimson agony while she howled helplessly.

Rekindled by her agonies, his manhood penetrated her again, scraping the
thorns through her irritated innards just as his brutal thrusts pushed those
in her mound deeper, squeezing more burning sap into her swollen flesh while
the dry leather tore bloody swaths of tissue from her violated love channel.
Each push crushed her clitoris, still constricted by the wire at the base and
peeled from the whipping, and the stabbing agony reminded her that there was
still something worse he could do to her.

After repeatedly violating her, he moved to her left foot, tightened a screw
on her toe until it cracked and then pulled it with a chain, forcing her foot
to twist backwards, imparting the same rotation to her stretched leg and
pulling until the head of her thigh was rotated out of its socket while she
stiffened and arched in a helpless scream of primal torment which was soon
repeated as the same fate was visited on her other toe.

Having rekindled the agony of her joints almost to the point of ripping her
legs off, he helped his flaccid manhood into her torn vagina. Grinning, he
stretched her left nipple and rubbed it thoroughly with stinging nettles,
taking his time so that her spasmodic twitches and desperate screams would
massage his member into renewed arousal. Alternating between left and right
nipple, he satisfied himself that they were an angry crimson before sticking
small thorns through them and crushing them savagely, smelling her sweat and
terror as pain coursed through her flesh and her screams rattled her chains.

While his arousal returned, he similarly rubbed her clitoris into fiery agony
before piercing it with tiny thorns, timing each so that her screams took on
the rhythm of his throbbing pleasure in spite of the cramped space his fingers
had to negotiate. Between flashes of atrocious pain, she realized that he was
making her pleasure him like a whore, rubbing and clutching his manhood while
the leather abraded her insides and the thorns turned inside her wounds, and
sank in self loathing at her inability to do anything but writhe and scream.

He grabbed her nipples and stretched them, pulling her body arching up in
howling pain and then yanking it down, crushing the thorns in her clitoris as
his member impaled her womb and a grueling scream wracked her twitching body.
She jerked like a rag doll when he pulled up and down again, howling as thorns
cut from behind the ripped rim of her vagina, and her jerks and screams
continued until his pleasure and her humiliation were complete.

As he fetched the strap, she hung sobbing at the prospect of a string of
horrid violations such as the one she had just endured. The dry leather left
a crimson mark across her bespeckled mound as pain overwhelmed her thoughts
and nothing else remained. When the agony from the strap paused, she tried to
plead mercy, loathing her weakness but unable to endure more.

Ignoring her garbled words, the Southerner pinched her nipples and penetrated
her stretched vagina again, crushing her burning mound with savage abandon.
Only after more harrowing passes at the torn orifice, interspersed with
increasingly savage applications of the strap all over her striped body, did
his savage lust fade as the effect of the drugs waned.

He did not object as the Easterner stepped in and lowered the delirious
Kayleen on the floor where she lay, still restrained, trembling and craving
Lyral's soothing touch. But to the experienced eyes of her tormentor she was
not in immediate danger, and he set about preparing her for further suffering.

She was placed on her back, with her arms nudged under knees and cuffed
together at the wrist. He then started pulling them up between her legs and
towards her chest, twisting her left wrist so that a thumbscrew could crush
her thumbs. Her ankles were then cuffed together and she was made to stand on
the balls of her feet while another screw was tightened on her toes. A chain
from the ceiling was then fastened to her thumbs and used to pull them up, and
a steel pillory with three holes was used to lock the wrists to her neck.

Once they left her in the dark, visions of harrowing torment descended upon
her as the constricted position she hung in squeezed the thorns still piercing
her flesh and rubbed together swaths of skin irritated by the nettles. The
ache in her joints turned to agony since her own weight, through the thighs,
pulled her arms out of their sockets, the strain inescapable as she rocked on
the balls of her feet and had her thumbs crushed back and forth.

This simple and excruciating torment was but another step, she realized, the
harbinger of further unimaginably refined tortures at the hands of the
Easterner. His torments were maybe less obsessed with her femininity than
others, but no less harrowing. The pauses were meant to plunge her into
terror, keeping her waiting in the dark while the pain of her predicament
hinted at the tortures looming ahead. It worked, she sobbed within.

When her tormentors returned, she was shuddering and sobbing, but in spite of
her obvious inability to do any harm the Easterner made sure her collar
crushed her windpipe before undoing her restraints. He cuffed one ankle to a
chain from the ceiling and the other to a ring in the floor, then pulled her
up until she hung in a vertical split,  already screaming because of the
traction on her dislocated hip joints. Her screams increased when he pulled
her right wrist high up against the left ankle, and the left wrist down to the
right ankle, forcing her to bend and twist her hips amidst a frenzy of pitiful
shrieks or have her arms torn off their sockets.

Her nostrils flared as a pungent smell reached them. He was mixing something
in a bowl, and there were a few lying about. He picked up some and dribbled
it in two bespeckled wounds while muscles of her quivering body cound not stop
twitching. She jerked frantically, screaming in demented pain as the lye
burned inside the wounds, partially diluted but still concentrated enough to
sizzle as it slowly seeped in the wound and contacted blood.

Her screams continued unabated as the burning nightmare seared the wounds,
never receding and biting remorselessly inside the flesh while she wracked
her joints through hellish agonies as the pain made her jerk and buckle
spasmodically. Already beyond herself, she could not withstand the onslaught
of relentless agony wracking her back. Her mind spun unhinged as the pain
unrelentingly scourged her wounded flesh, showing no sign of receding as time
passed and more blood reached the festering wound.

When the pain finally subsided, she continued twitching and buckling from the
residues of the white hot anguish still lingering in her panicked mind, to the
point of failing to notice that her tormentor was tipping tiny flakes of white
powder on her stretched leg. She notice when the flakes started fuming as they
contacted the sweat glistening on her strong body and renewed pain wracked her
as the skin still itching from the savage rubbing with the stinging nettles
was enveloped in a cloud of burning agony.

The powder was not actually burning, but it gave off heat which seared the
irritated skin and peeled it off with excruciating slowness, protracting her
anguish through frenzies of spasmodic jerking which left her breathless from
too much screaming but with cause for screaming more, making her voice rise
and fall as her jerks rattled her chains and wracked her joints.

When this second nightmare ran its course, more drops were dipped in a pair of
wounds in her back and her voice echoed again under the vaults of the torture
chamber in mindless fits of hoarse screaming. She was allowed some pause when
the jug was brought to her mouth, but the powder followed immediately and her
tormentor continued alternating powder and liquid while she screamed herself
hoarse from the unrelenting torment.

This was worse than her worst fears, an uninterrupted nightmare of hellish
agony like burning in sizzling oil, protracted without pause for minutes and
beyond minutes, with flesh and skin sending desperate twitches of horrid pain
wracking her nerves into spasmodic buckling while her position made even minor
movements a torment for the strained joints. She could not have endured it
even if lasted a tenth of what it lasted, and the pain kept mounting and never
receded. She wished to scream for mercy, she wished to beg and grovel, but all
she could do was scream in delirious agony, lost in a maze of burning pain.

Her tormentor continued with drops of liquid in the wounds of her back and
limbs, while handfuls of flakes seared her in places where the liquid had not
been applied yet. The liquid was more painful in wounds irritated by the heat,
it seemed, although her screams made it hard to tell the difference.

Even when she was made to sip from the jug, she was so wracked by pain that
she failed to articulate her misery and continued helplessly to suffer,
shrieking pitifully as drops were poured one by one in the wounds in her toe
and finger nail beds and twitching spasmodically when flakes stuck to the sides
of her hanging breasts, slowly making the reddened skin parched and cracked as
the lingering heat ate at it relentlessly.

When he released her from her restraints, she was delirious with pain and not
even drenching her in cold, salt water made her stop screaming. She gurgled as
the jug was brought to her mouth, and the only change was the creeping note of
terror in her screams as he pulled her arms between her legs, making her bend
at the waist and cuffing each ankle to the corresponding wrist and each elbow
to the corresponding knee, snapping the forearm to the shin and then using two
meat hooks to stretch her vagina and lift her from the floor.

Heavy lead weights were then fastened to screws crushing her thumbs, pulling
them down and twisting her thighs in an increasingly painful split, which she
tried to contain by force of muscle. But while her arms tensed in the effort
to hold the weights, her tormentor dipped a few drops in a wound in her left
breast and the flames of hell started eating at its flesh, sending her in a
frenzy of twitching and howling while her thighs spread with a snap and tears
appeared in the rim of her vagina where it rested on the hooks.

As flakes were slowly scattered over her stretched thighs, her howls rose in
pitch as she spread them in spasmodic agony, squirming and buckling on the
meat hooks while pain rattled her joints and the weights pulled inexorably on
her crushed, bleeding thumbs. Her face contorted into a mask of hellish
torments when more drops descended on wounds in her other breast, three of
them this time as if her agonies were not severe enough.

The liquid seeped lazily at first, apparently eating away at the thorn stuck
in the wound more readily than at the flesh, but it actually burned slowly
through the outer layer of skin and the encrusted blood in the wound until it
touched fresh blood. As soon as it did, it heated and sizzled, slowly
consuming itself in a nightmare of protracted anguish as tiny amounts of
substance slowly seeped into contact with blood, protracting the torment for
unendurable lengths of frenzied screaming and spasmodic twitching.

Another drop fell on a thorn stuck in her labia, while flakes covered her
breast which soon shimmered as the substance slowly heated its skin, parching
and cracking it while the tendons of her throat almost snapped as she arched in
blood-curling screams of inhuman anguish. Two or three drops at the same time
were the limit of her endurance, anything beyond sent her in screaming hells
where the mind was buffeted by gales of white hot, blinding agony.

With meticulous deliberation, her tormentor started increasing the drops being
poured on the thorn wounds in her breasts, gauging intently her reactions from
the mask of inhuman agony straining the muscles of her face, since her voice
was so taxed that the most wretched screams came as hissing wheezes.

The soft skin of her thighs, still bright red from the protracted rubbing with
nettles, slowly fumed and parched while wrinkles and sores opened where the
dry tissue tore under the strain of her spasmodic flailing. The heads of the
thigh bone bulged under the stretched muscles as inch by inch the weights
pulled her thighs out of their sockets.

Only when she was lowered on the floor did Kayleen recover from the onslaught
enough to finally pay attention to Lyral's muffled calls. Her friend was only
allowed to heal her briefly, but somehow this contact almost managed to carry
some consolation. Kayleen thought she could understand her friend's words,
maybe because they sounded like words formerly her own, words of courage and
resolve, hope in the face of evil incarnate.

But these words were put to the test as Kayleen's tormentor slightly altered
her restraints, fastening each elbow behind the knee and twisting the forearm
before cuffing the wrist to the corresponding ankle. While the studded iron
bands at the knees and above the elbows could slide around the limb, albeit at
the price of pain from the studded insides, the cuffs encased the flat sides of
wrists and ankles very tightly, pressing ankle and wrist bone to bone.

Her fear that stressful confinement was not enough for the sessions taking
place under Zhorun's eye was immediately confirmed when clamps bit her nipples
and clitoris and she was slowly lifted off the floor, her wheezes barely
audible as her jerks rattled the chains, but plainly visible on her contorted
face. Twin lead weights were fastened to her elbows, pulling her knees in a
harrowing split which her arms could not fight against while she arched in a
howl of excruciating woe, her hanging face streaked by drool.

Flakes were copiously strewn across her exposed crotch, and as smoke started
to form, drops of liquid dipped inside the clamps to bathe her stretched and
constricted nipples. Her strained voice rose in a frenzy of harsh screams
which echoed under the vaults as she jerked madly, in spite of the pain
inflicted on the nubs she hung from, unable to resist the onslaught of the
caustic as it burned through her stretched nipples.

As more drops landed on the sores where the hideous thorns still hurt the
flesh, her agonies increased beyond what her wheezing voice could vent and her
terrified mind could sustain. The horizon of her teary gaze narrowed to the
stretched, fuming nubs of feminine flesh straining under her weight and being
ripped bit by bit as she jerked them in her anguished twitching.

She knew they would tear beyond repair and wash her pain in waves of blood, and
when flakes were strewn on her distended breasts, in a flash she entertained
the thought of ripping them off herself to get at least an instant of respite.
Her screams gathered new strength as her breasts started parching, such that
some lingering flakes seemed to roll away from her pitched shrieks, and lasted
while the torment continued unabated in a nightmare apparently without end.

More drops were dipped here and there, landing with cruel precision in the
irritated wounds where a thorn still festered, and those in her mound wrought
new heights of searing agony inside her wounded flesh and tore the worst
screams from her burning lungs. She tried repeatedly to beg for mercy, to plead
for a pause, but her voice was so broken that only the most atrocious torments
could fan it to rage through her lungs and throat out of her foaming mouth.

And most atrocious became her agonies when flakes were strewn across her
mauled femininity, over the spread labia and around the rim of her vagina.
The skin folded and wrinkled, and her twitching jerks rattled her stretched
nubs near tearing several times. The fiendish construction of the clamps
spread the pressure and protracted the pain. Also, as she immediately found
out when drops were poured on the clitoris, it included paths through which
the caustic could drip and reach the places where traction tore the flesh.

With the help of tweezers he dripped some caustic on thorns lodged in her
sphincter, timing them so that they dropped when a frenzy of screaming howls
left her breathless and spent, denying her even the respite of exhaustion. The
hunt for wounds to bathe in caustic continued with agonizing slowness while
she reeled in a nightmare of screams, crossing new howling boundaries of agony
as drops consumed thorns piercing her labia and mound.

However clever their design, the clamps could not hold her weight forever as
the flesh they gripped was slowly consumed by repeated applications of the
caustic, and her tormentor kept her screaming in excruciating torment to the
very brink of the endurance of her feminine nubs before stopping.

She found herself cuddled by Lyral's arms, her friend's best attempt at giving
her some support against the unbearable. When she was yanked away, her words
did not make it into sound, her voice lost except from the most horrid
agonies. Lyral was still trying to tell her something Kayleen knew already,
because the truth was that she was too cowardly to stand any more of this.

Her arms and legs were clenched together and she was forced to bend at the
waist, encased in a vise built of a bar nudged behind her knees and another
behind her arms, which got brutally tightened until her ribs creaked audibly
while she cried from the constriction of her mauled breasts. Her arms were
pulled up behind her back, forcing her to bend down and stand on the balls of
her feet while a screw was tightened on the toes. The chain from her wrists
was wound over a pulley and fastened to a thick meat hook invading her rectum.

After copiously drenching her with cold, salt water the Easterner left with
Zhorun, purportedly leaving her alone with her screams in the unlit chamber.
Still trembling in agony, she screamed in the dark when a harsh sob made her
lean forward, jarring her dislocated shoulder joints and making her legs
quiver as her crushed toes shifted in the grip of the vise. In the effort to
spare her shoulder she tried to pull back, but the agony of her weight on the
hook scraping her abraded insides proved unbearable.

Shivering, she kept shifting helplessly back and forth, trying to lessen the
pain which surged from her toes each time. The heavy irons tightened on the
ankles and wrists were no longer enough, the chafing of the studded iron bands
at the knees and elbows caused too little pain, she cried, why did they have
to use the thumbscrews ... she was crushed already.

Each breath reminded her of the dented band around the waist and wrought new
pain from her breasts, whose lacerations rubbed painfully against the equally
lacerated skin of her thighs. The pain of the serrated rings constricting the
base of her breasts felt like the grip of rabid hands, bringing images of the
horrid rapes she would face if the Southerner was next.

When Grod entered, dragging Lyral on her knees, Kayleen felt almost relieved,
although a jab of pain in her shoulder joints immediately reminded her what
would happen next. Lyral was brought forth to heal her, and again Kayleen
could almost feel within herself her friend's affection, if not her muffled
words, a warm, soothing sense of being there. The cold hand of fear gripped
Kayleen's throat when the realization that after obtaining what he wanted
Zhorun would have no use for the young Priestess returned to her clouded mind.

After Lyral was yanked away, Kayleen tried to speak, her voice barely audible
after countless hours of screaming, but Zhorun gestured to Grod that the
torture was to be continued. He fetched a heavy iron vise and secured her
breasts in its grip, then forced her arms against the ribcage, fastened the
elbows to the dented band around her waist and pulled her wrists down to the
ankles, folding the legs in spite of any attempts to resist. Her restraints
would have been enough to bring her to tears if she had any left, but chains
were fastened to the breast vise and she was lifted off the floor screaming.

The agony of her suspension mounted quickly as the squeezed globes bulged in
the grip of the vise, made worse by her arms pressing it whenever she jerked
from pain. Her eyes, however, told her that more was to come. He was setting
up a trestle, ending in a four-sided sharp pyramid not unlike the cradle she
had already suffered on. This one was of iron and being heated by coals.

The first drop almost came as a surprise to her, and when the red hot tip
lacerated her sphincter and the barbs scorched shallow gashes along its rim
she almost refused to acknowledge them. Then her voice rose, riding on top of
agonies so atrocious that mere screams hardly rendered them justice. Lyral
started, recognizing in her friend's screams her own name.

Grod left Kayleen screaming and twitching on the red hot barbed pyramid for a
while, then pulled her up and immediately dropped her again, wrenching from
her another scream which echoed as if uttered from the deepest pit of hell
while Lyral's head sank between sobs. After leaving Kayleen on the tip for a
while, howling like a demented animal, he lifted her and dropped her again.

Each time he lifted her a little higher, making the impact more jarring and
ripping the tears in the bleeding sphincter a little wider. As the heat singed
the lacerated skin, it enhanced its sensitivity so that subsequent cuts from
the barbs exacted agonies more excruciating than they would on their own.

The torture continued, each time leaving her to scream on the pyramid a bit
longer, except for the occasional pause to let her sip from the jug. Blood
streaked the inside of her thighs in rivulets hailing from the distended
orifice, torn by horrid gashes radiating around its lacerated rim. Now each
drop was followed by a slow descent against the red hot iron barbs, punctuated
by spasmodic jerks and bloodcurdling howls of wretched woe.

Heavy lead weights were hung to the bands around her knees, so that subsequent
drops would jar her dislocated thighs while her bowels were ravaged by the
hellish pyramid. The weights pulled her further down each time, making her
slide on the girth of the pyramid and making its four edges saw corresponding
gashes in the shredded orifice, wider and wider, abrading scorched flesh to
expose the twitching underneath to more agony.

Her voice was fanned to howls of unspeakable torment, pitched when she was
pulled up and her crimson breasts were squeezed in the vise and hoarse when
she writhed on the pyramid whose barbs cut through singed skin and scorched
the many bleeding lacerations while foam bubbled from her mouth and waves of
anguish wracked her contorted face. The memory of Lyral's warmth faded in the
waves of unendurable torment, and the thought of her fate receded among the
horrid agonies assaulting her without respite.

As yet another drop momentarily lessened the torment from her bulging breasts,
she felt the corners of the pyramid tear bits of flesh from her innards and
the barbs rake her scorched rectum while pain mounted from her bowels and sent
her head arching in a wheezing scream. Wracked by spasms rising from her
bowels, the only thing which kept her from pleading defeat was her voice.

She found some of her voice in Lyral's arms, screaming and sobbing as her
power healed her barely fast enough to save her from bleeding to death from
the lacerated cuts shredding her bowels. She tried to speak to her friend.

"Forgive me, Lyral. I cannot take any more. I'll tell them", she wheezed.

Lyral's answer was a tremor, and Kayleen felt her friend's warm tears on her
cheeks, their burn in the scratches left by the spider gag a drop in the waves
of pain wracking her mind and yet burning through her soul unlike the most
horrid wounds. She wished the Warrior Queen was still with her, ready to spit
her defiance in the face of her tormentors, she sought the resolve to keep
her friend safe from harm, but the truth was that she no longer had any.

Grod yanked her away and cuffed her elbows and wrists behind her back,
twisting her arms up behind her to a chain from the ceiling, then fastened two
chains to the arms of the vise still squeezing her breasts, now bluish globes
of throbbing agony, and fastened it to a six foot steel bar under her back. He
then pulled her ankles up and cuffed them to the ends of the bar, spreading
them in a harrowing split which she could lessen by pulling on her breasts.

A long teetering howl of desperate agony wracked her when he pulled her off
the floor, rekindling the agonies of dislocation in her shoulder and hip
joints while her breasts became orbs of liquid fire again. She was so wracked
by choking screams that the trestle being prepared under her crotch did not
catch her gaze until he suddenly dropped her on its upturned tip.

As the iron pyramid violently distended the rim of her vagina, her gaping
mouth contorted in a scream too spasmodic for her burning lungs, and let out a
choked shriek which made her friend buckle in her chains as if stabbed. Fits
of bloody coughing shook her head as she was lifted away screaming from the
hot iron tip.

Her next scream was worse, and the third gut-wrenching enough to tear plaster
from the walls of the torture chamber. This pyramid had but three sides, set
with nasty upturned barbs red hot from the coals inside, and its girth was
meant to lacerate her love channel from the very beginning. After several
drops, blood flowed inside her thighs from the cuts torn in the rim of her
vagina, stretched and seared by the unyielding iron edges.

She was drenched in cold, salt water while squirming on the red hot tip,
howling while a cruelly placed barb was searing a laceration in the middle of
the stretched rim, crimson from the repeated searing and tearing. Her mouth
snapped open in a demented howl which drenched the noise of ripping flesh as
the red hot barb rose with excruciating slowness through the stretched flesh
while she slid down screaming in abysmal pain.

Like before, after each drop he left her to squirm on the heated pyramid for a
little longer, singing her distended innards with excruciating slowness while
the barbs, much hotter, stirred bleeding gashes in her innards after catching
the lacerations in the rim of her vagina or cutting new ones. The girth of the
device ripped open the cuts as she slid down, screaming and jerking in such
spasmodic frenzies of howling agony that her legs pulled on the bar behind her
back with such force that it bent, its pull disfiguring her torn breasts.

Unlike before, the girth of the pyramid increased slowly but steadily and the
deeper she slid, the more atrocious the pain from the ripping of her orifice
became. At some point, he hung lead weights to her labia, stretching them near
tearing and raking them on the sides of the pyramid while she writhed in
howling torment after being dropped yet again. Of the three edges of the
pyramid, one pressed on the bottom cleft of her orifice, abrading it inch by
inch on each drop with serrated, red hot teeth, while the other two distended
the rim of her vagina, dragging it against the red hot barbs.

The atrocity of the torment rose higher the longer she was kept writhing on
the heated pyramid, and the pain in her dislocated joints matched it each time
she was dropped on the hellish device. Her head shook uncontrollably, and her
screams burst through bloody foam as wheezing shrieks, unable to carry the
words of defeat and pleading raging in her mind. She could not withstand such
agonies, she said to herself, she would scream her defeat for all to hear.

Her tormentor pulled her up again after letting her sip from the jug, and
lowered from the ceiling chains ending in wicked meat hooks. When he drove the
first under her left breast, blood squirted profusely from the engorged globe
while her neck strained as she arched in a hollow scream of abysmal torment.
Her other breast took longer, as she madly trashed in her restraints to avoid
the same fate, jarring her joints amidst frantic screams of boundless terror.

The chains hung somewhat loose while waves of bitter pain wracked her hanging
body, and he lowered three more, ending in thick crooked hooks whose flat head
was not meant to pierce. One was stuck in the lower cleft of her vagina, and
the other two deformed it into a gaping triangle whose edges stretched and
tore as she buckled, howling in helpless agony.

Her teary eyes bulged when she saw him brandish a pair of pincers, large and
heated red, and her mouth tried frantically to plead for mercy before he slid
them up her love channel, one jaw inside and the other outside until he could
close the points on her pubic bone. An ear-splitting scream of inhuman agony
wracked her suspended form as the iron jaws seared her flesh and pressed the
pubic bone, twisting and crushing until it cracked.

She was drenched in cold, salt water again, and then the pincers cracked her
pubic bone again while mindless screams of wretched woe shook her ribcage and
blood from her pierced breasts splattered her hanging form. The pincers bit
several times, each time the smell of burnt flesh announced the upcoming flash
of white hot pain and fanned her voice beyond the boundaries of endurance for
a scream which rivaled the worst uttered in her descent into this hell.

She hung screaming in demented pain, her mind reeling and shriveling under the
assault of agonies too terrible to endure and yet unable to cross into
oblivion, and her eyes caught her tormentor's movement only too late. She was
dropped on the upturned pyramid, but this time her weight pulled the hooks
through her breast flesh while her broken pubic bone crashed on the dull tip
of the pyramid just as its girth renewed the searing and raking of her womb.

Droplets of blood splattered her face as they squirted from her breasts while
a spasmodic scream rattled her form and the pyramid bulged behind her broken
pelvis, Heinous screams of demented agony wracked her buckling form as she
twitched on the searing device, grinding her cracked pubic bone on its tip and
bleeding from the tears ripped at the corners of her vagina.

When he lifted her from the horrendous instrument of her agony, his gaze
caught her eyes and locked into them, asking a question she desperately wished
to be asked. She could not stand more pain, she would fail her friend and her
people, condemn everybody to slavery under Zhorun's rule and Lyral to a fate
worse than death. Her bravery and resolve had been in vain. Her lips tried to
croak the words that would seal her defeat, but only moans came.

He lifted her up and dropped her again, turning those moans into another howl
of unspeakable woe and let her buckle in a frenzy of screaming torment on the
red hot iron pyramid before lifting her and seeking her gaze. The hooks had
torn a bleeding, inch long gash in her breasts, and blood spurted from her
mouth with each scream. Words of pleading and defeat crowded in her mind, but
her mouth only twitched meaninglessly and after watching her shudder in agony
for a while, he dropped her again.

The hooks had torn her vagina beyond recognition, ripping the cuts seared by
the red hot barbs into bleeding gashes through scorched flesh, and the dull
tip of the pyramid had repeatedly broken her cracked public bone and sent
white slivers of bone stained in blood jutting out of her lacerated mound. Her
screams still managed to echo under the vaults of the torture chamber whenever
she crashed on the dull tip, but the uninterrupted agonies wracking her before
and after by now could only be read on her contorted face. Against this
pitiful wheezing, Lyral's humming behind her gag could be heard again, as if
it could carry something to her suffering friend.

The torture was repeated mercilessly, dropping her on the iron device from
increasing heights and protracting her writhing on the red hot barbs after
each drop, but her mouth only twitched and babbled between screams of inhuman
torment, her last ditch against despair and defeat. Zhorun insisted that the
torture be continued even when it became plain that it was pointless, but
finally allowed Grod to lower her on the floor and let Lyral heal her.

The soothing warmth from Lyral's sobbing embrace was soon interrupted, even
earlier than usual, and Kayleen's spinning mind almost welcomed the thought
that they would let her die. Her breasts no longer bled, and the worst cuts
in her vagina had receded, but the pain from her broken pubic bone still
radiated through her like a furnace.

Her tormentor brought her to a wooden rail and made her straddle it, pulling
her thighs open and hanging lead weights to her knees while cuffing her arms
behind her back in reversed prayer position and running fine chains from a
screw crushing her thumbs to clamps on her nipples. When they left, after
drenching her thoroughly in cold, salt water, the agony of the rail pressing
against her broken pubic bone was already wrenching bitter screams from her.

In the dark, her woe increased steadily. At first she could not help but
twitch in search of a less painful position, but bending at the waist just
increased the pressure on the broken pubic bone and the spread thighs did not
allow her to roll off the rail. The clamps on her nipples had rekindled the
pain from her previous tortures and each breath stretched them so slightly,
just enough to make her gasp and cry. The rail was soon stained in blood.

Much to Zhorun's secret pleasure, her screams slowly mounted as much as her
voice allowed, because the dented wood of the rail pressed against the cracked
pubic bone, sending excruciating agonies through her arching body which got
worse at the least attempt to shift her position. Crack by crack, her weight
and jerks fractured the bone amidst her desperate screams, and the unrelenting
pull of the weights pressed the splinters deep into the wounded flesh,
wreaking inhuman torments through her stretched crotch.

When the chamber was lit again, the Southerner was holding the torch, and
Kayleen's eyes clenched in despair when she recognized him. She was already
suffering agonies beyond the unspeakable horrors wrought on her for days, and
now she would be in the hands of the most sadistic of her three tormentors.
Maybe he would spare me if I took his manhood in my mouth, he would not hurt
me too much then, I would keep him busy, she thought.

Her lips twitched as words of humiliated defeat rolled on her mouth, their
taste bitter as ash as she loathed her weakness, but at least the pain would
stop. He could not hurt me so much again if I keep him pleasured, she mused,
just as white hot pain flashed from her broken pubic bone. But only garbled
noises sputtered from her foaming mouth.

The gnarly old man smiled, and with a flourish produced a tray where yellowish
bone tools gleamed. Scissors and pincers, she gawked as her clear blue eyes
explored the jagged edges and dull dents, meant to lacerate while being ground
forcibly through flesh rather than cut neatly. He circled her trembling form,
letting his gaze travel over her mauled body, then grabbed her wrists and
pushed her face down on the rail, wrenching from her a scream of pain as this
pressed her broken bone on the rail and stretched her nipples near tearing.

Keeping her down with one hand, he pulled out his manhood, sheathed it in
thick leather and thrust into her rectum, cackling at her desperate screams
and savoring her writhing as unspeakable agonies surged from her broken
pelvis. The thought of how could he find in the depths of his depravity a lust
younger men would covet sailed through her mind between waves of bitter pain.

Once sated, he finally freed her from the rail, letting her curl on the floor
wracked by tearless sobs and babbling incoherently. Lyral neared and touched
her friend, but the Southerner only allowed a brief contact before dragging
Kayleen away. He twisted her arms behind the back and pulled them up, forcing
her to bend crying while he cuffed them to a post.

He then proceeded to pull her ankles off the floor and fasten them to chains
hanging from the ceiling, leaving her suspended in mid air with her belly
hanging above the floor, screaming from the torment wracking her dislocated
joints. She started in surprise when he introduced a thick meat hook in her
vagina and pulled her loins down, making her arch further with a teetering
howl as the hook pulled down against the splintered pubic bone.

Kayleen hung in mindless agony, her breath broken by hoarse screams, her mind
spinning as images of hellish torture chased it between rolling waves of fear
and her ravaged body screamed at her relentlessly. They would not allow her to
die, they would not allow her to beg, she wished for a moment of respite to
the point of welcoming a sip from the jug just as she realized what it meant.

A stream of hot vinegar splashed on her buttock, catching her by surprise for
a split second before making her arch in a scream of raw terror as the heat
singed her lacerated and broiled flesh. She continued twitching and rattling
both joints and bone into frenzies of savage pain, but just as the thought
that it could not get worse the old man closed the scissors on her ass cheek.

Unbearable agony surged from her torn mouth as she stiffened and jerked in a
frenzy of terrified howling while the scissors gnawed a grisly laceration
through her seared skin and blood squirted from the gash cut by the dull jaws
rending skin and flesh by force applied rather than by keen edge. While she
still screamed, he poured hot vinegar on her other buttock and then savaged it
also, lingering with the scissors in the wound and resuming the gnawing each
time her screams waned in exhaustion.

The only trace of the former restraint her tormentors observed in wounding her
showed only after the scissors opened horrid lacerations in her seared ass
cheeks, when he started stitching summarily the bleeding gashes before she
bled to death, turning even this into a further instrument of her torment.

He then started pouring hot vinegar on her muscular back and rending folds of
twitching muscle while she arched and buckled in her bounds, screaming her
despair in frenzies of twitching woe and coughing blood while her voice
rapidly waned again. Lyral's name, pleads for mercy, calls for help and
prayers whirled in her mind as pain and terror reigned unchallenged, but her
frothing mouth only carried pitiful screams and frantic babbling.

Her tormentor moved the scissors to her limbs, cutting jagged gashes in her
strained muscles while she stiffened and shook in abysmal pain, howling in
such mindless despair that the echoes lingered in the torture chamber even
when her voice cracked and bile rose to her mouth. The streams of hot vinegar
ran all over her jerking body and the dull edges ground through the reddened,
seared flesh only under the strength of the scissors' lever.

The pincers engaged the precarious stitching of a wound and ripped it just
when her last fragments of coherent thought told her that she could not suffer
more than this, and tore new heights of demented shrieking from the depths of
her screaming throat. The return of the scissors in the wounds whose stitches
he ripped with gleeful abandon echoed in the torture chamber with screams so
heart-rending that even her tormentor paused ... in ecstatic rapture.

He ended up stitching her wounds again, because she was bleeding to death, and
he quickly dragged Lyral nearby to stop it. The young blindfolded Priestess
was shaking under the impression of her friend's pitiful screams, yet she did
not hesitate even when the contact brought her to understand the horrors her
friend was being subjected to. Her mouth hummed words of prayer under the gag.

The brief respite was of no consequence for Kayleen's mind, still wading in
unbearable anguish. The Southerner dragged her away with a carelessness the
former Warrior Queen would have made him pay dearly, but now Kayleen's mind
trembled at the thought of his hands just as Lyral used to. He made her sit on
the floor against a post, twisted her arms behind her back and cuffed them to
an overhanging wooden bar. He then fastened her ankles to chains wound around
pulleys set in the floor, stretching her in a split which rekindled the agony
in her wheezing voice when her thigh bones bulged under the strained muscles.

When the wooden bar was slowly pulled up, her voice broke in pitiful gasps as
it could no longer sustain the screams surging from the pain in her shoulder
joints, but rose in a shriek when he forced a meat hook in her vagina under
her shattered pubic bone and used it to pull her loins up while pouring hot
vinegar on her mound pierced by the splinters of her pubic bone.

He sank the scissors in her mound lazily, toying with the tatters of her
clitoris without actually cutting much, drinking the terror on her contorted
face like fine wine. When her head arched in a long, broken scream he moved
the stream of hot vinegar to her belly and then lingered on her breasts,
following up with the scissors when the skin turned crimson. He stopped to
pour the contents of the jug in her gaping mouth, feasting on the terror in
her clear blue eyes as she recognized the act for what it would bring.

The jagged edges opened shallow bleeding gashes in her breasts, the breasts
which had become one of the focal points of her agonies after her capture and
which the scissors were slowly shredding, tearing on strands of twitching
flesh with savage abandon while the hot vinegar ran with blood and her voice
strained in gut-wrenching howls which bubbled through her foaming mouth mixing
with some residual syrup. The dull jaws bit her nipples a few times, almost
teasing them, but this was nothing before the dozens of lacerated gashes
savagely torn in the firm flesh of her globes.

After stitching the gashes on her bloodied front, he moved to her left hand
and caught with the pincers the torn nail bed of her middle finger, using it to
hold the finger while the scissors gnawed the flesh, in a bloody feast of mad
screaming which slowly moved from one finger to the next, lingering on the
tender cleft between the fingers while her face contorted in inhuman agony.

Vinegar and scissors returned to her breasts as he used pincers to rip the
stitches open, and the most excruciating torment returned to echo in her
demented screams as blood flowed from the many lacerated wounds in her mauled
globes. More summary stitching followed, but he soon proved more interested in
bringing to her toes the same agonies wrought on her fingers and lingered on
the former with cackling abandon while her voice broke into pitiful gasps.
As if to complete the canvas of her agony, he then climbed up with the hot
vinegar along her stretched legs, and the scissors repeatedly lacerated the
strained muscles of her thighs, excruciatingly drawing blood in spite of the
care in avoiding prominent blood vessels and stitching the horrid gashes. He
often lingered with the dull edges in the wound, waiting after each scream
before pressing them savagely into the flesh again.

Wracked by agonies atrocious beyond imagination, Kayleen's mind shook with
each broken scream and burned under the hot vinegar, blanking when the dull
dented edges broke the seared skin or tore strands of twitching flesh. If
there was a limit to pain, even under the effect of what she was being fed,
she should have crossed it by now. The thought of finding a point beyond which
the pain could not increase waned and waxed between the flashes of blinding
pain when the pincers ripped the stitches from her wounds, but found less and
less confirmation as her agonies were mercilessly protracted.

With devilish cruelty, he managed to keep her bleeding in check long enough to
return the scissors into most of the wounds cut in her quivering flesh,
searing them with hot vinegar and ripping the stitching with the pincers while
her voice was consumed by screams of such excruciating torment that hell
itself would shudder at them.

Lyral was brought forth again, without freeing Kayleen from her strenuous
suspension. He pulled Lyral's head between under Kayleen's ass cheeks, forcing
her to heal by her mouth as if aware that this was much less effective.
Actually, he knew that prisoners often soiled themselves when being subjected
to this torture and wanted to humiliate the Priestess, but since Kayleen had
been fed only syrup for days, his little game was foiled, although he found
ample compensation in Kayleen's agonized jerking and hoarse screams.

After yanking Lyral away, he lowered Kayleen on the floor, and proceeded to
cuff her ankles to chains from the ceiling and twist her arms behind her back
in reverse prayer position while she screamed from the painful split forced on
her thighs, whose heads teetered in their sockets and bulged under the muscle
at her stretched hips. He then used the meat hook to catch her broken pubic
bone again, pulling her loins forwards while her hanging form arched and her
voice teetered on the brink of madness as agony returned her sole master.

He started pouring hot vinegar on her stretched thighs, savoring how they
stiffened and twitched while she buckled in abysmal pain, jarring her hip
joints and her broken pubic bone half from the searing agony and half from
sheer terror at what would follow. When the bloody jaws of the bone scissors
gnawed through the seared skin, her howls rose at least an octave and wracked
her like a rag doll burning in the furnaces of hell.

More vinegar was poured on her stretched crotch, some seeping down her
orifices and searing her insides mercilessly, but the real target was her
mound and belly and the scissors reopened dented lacerations through the soft
flesh stretched by the pincers ripping their summary stitching while rivulets
of blood streaked her spasmodically jerking body and her chest almost burst
from the effort of venting her wretched agony.

The scissors closed on the tendons in her stretched thighs, marking another
step in her descent to hell as the agonies of her joints and her flesh met
each other and surged from her frothing mouth as one. She could not even think
about why he was doing this to her, she was so wracked by the howling torment
that she could only suffer and scream, an animal maddened by agonies beyond
description and teetering on the brink of annihilation.

After stitching her breasts he played with her terror for a while, ripping
some stitching and gnawing through wounds here and there, teasing the nubs of
her femininity which she had harrowingly learned would become the pinnacle of
her torment. He twisted and ripped the rim of her vagina, abundantly searing
it with hot vinegar while she rattled her chains screaming mindlessly.

Hot vinegar poured on her left nipple, its tatters crushed in the grip of the
pincers and stretched so that the scissors could rake it back and forth,
scraping it along its entire distended length while her head snapped in a howl
of gasping torment. As the torment was protracted, moved to her other nipple
and then slowly repeated on both over and over, she caught herself wishing he
would just rip her nipples off, and the sick plea even bubbled to her lips
between frenzies of gasping howls.

He closed the pincers on her labia and stretched them for the scissors, whose
dull jaws gnawed bleeding gashes through the distended folds while hot vinegar
was poured liberally and flowed inside her and down her body, some droplets
spraying as she jerked in fits of spasmodic howling. When the time for
stitching came, he twisted the meat hook inside her vagina and stitched her
labia together, trapping the hook behind the mauled folds of bleeding flesh.

He pulled up the meat hook slowly, pulling her loins up until her splayed legs
were almost parallel to the floor and vinegar could be easily poured on her
clitoris, but he stopped after a while to yank her head up behind her back and
bring the jug to her mouth. She drank between coughs, craving the liquid and
yet trembling at what it heralded.

The pincers closed on her shredded femininity, pulling and twisting it while
hot vinegar was slowly poured on the trapped flesh and pangs of atrocious
agony wracked her suspended body. The dull jaws closed around its base and
pressed the jagged dents on the seared flesh, sawing without cutting as he
carefully slid them around the nub while exerting as much pressure as her
stretched flesh would stand without tearing. No such care was being spent on
her voice, which strained under the agony bursting from her clitoris but
failed to bring out the full measure of her woe as frenzied screams of unholy
pain echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber, waning and waxing while
the torment was mercilessly protracted beyond the boundaries of cruelty.

The pitiful howls stopped only when her jerks became so spasmodic that the
meat hook ripped through her stitched labia, causing her to swing back almost
to the point of tearing her thighs off, hanging in a paroxysm of agony so
overwhelming that no scream could capture it. Smiling, he neared, grabbed her
wrists yanking her head up and violently penetrated her shredded vagina from
behind, thrusting in rutting excitement while her mouth stood agape in a
silent scream of agony as bitter as the bile retching through her throat.

Only when sated did he drop her twitching body on the floor and allow Lyral to
cuddle her friend between her arms while using her power to the fullest extent
of her capability, albeit sobbing and whispering behind her gag words which no
one could hear but which she hoped Kayleen could understand some day.


Chapter 29 - Painful Lies

In the torture chamber deep under the ruins of Zhorun's former castle, Kayleen
hung in bitter pain. Her wrists and elbows had been clenched together behind
her back, and she hung upside down from a chain in the ceiling fastened to a
vise screwed on her cracked thumbs. Her legs had been folded in a strict
hogtie until her ankles could be fastened to her elbows, while iron bands
clenched her legs against the thighs.

Iron clamps had been screwed on the shredded tatters of her feminine nubs, and
even if their bite was agonizing, at least they had cooled off. Once the
Southerner had completed her restraints, Zhorun had brought into being a small
eldritch flame and sent it to wander on her twitching body. The flame had
roasted her toes and lingered under her soles, then crawled over her belly and
danced in her orifices while she buckled screaming spasmodically, and heated
the iron screws on her nipples while her head shook in demented pain.

The wizard repeatedly created new flames to torment her, almost purring at her
strangled howls, but each lasted very little and she was finally left alone,
screaming in the darkness lit only by the reddish glow of the iron screws
still searing the three tattered pieces of sensitive female flesh.

The horrors of her agony weighed on her tormented mind as soon as the raw pain
subsided, although her torn shoulder joints and crushed thumbs still made her
shudder whenever agony howled through her hanging body and surged from her
mouth in a rasping hiss, beyond which her voice could no longer rise. She had
tried to hold out, but the pain was too much, the tortures too horrid, and the
repeated rapes too depraved. She would beg Zhorun, grovel before him, tell him
anything and do anything he wanted, if only he would stop the torture.

Her terrified mind clung to this only hope to avert further torment, and even
if something within her suggested that, if Lyral was right, Zhorun would just
find some other reason to continue torturing her, she would not resist more
torments, The thought of the fate of her friend made her shudder, and for a
moment she considered holding out some more for her sake, but then the thought
of being raped again, of sand encrusted leather scraping her seared innards,
rattled her soul while she loathed herself bitterly.

She could not make out for how long they had left her hanging in the dark, but
their return heralded another streak of horrid torments which loomed in her
mind like clouds on a stormy day. As the Easterner lowered her on the floor
and changed her restraints, the words of her defeat made it out of her mouth.

"Please, no more. I'll do whatever you want," rasped her broken voice.

A bitter sob burst behind Lyral's gag, and Kayleen's head dropped in shame.

"This might be another attempt to buy time," hissed Zhorun, while the wry man
from the East dragged Kayleen to a thick wooden bar jutting diagonally from a
wall and made her lie on it, twisting her arms behind her back and fastening
her wrist cuffs to a ring above her head.

"I beg you! I can't stand it any more," cried Kayleen, trembling in fear.

Lyral was brought forth and allowed to heal her friend, kissing the bound body
which the Easterner was pulling down the wooden rail so that her ass hung off
the end and her ankles could be fastened to a ring under the bar. The influx
of healing power carried a prayer Kayleen could almost hear within herself,
but which she could no longer oblige.

"Please! I beg you!" cried Kayleen as her friend was yanked away.

The Easterner fetched a long, braided whip and lashed her partially healed
breasts, turning her last words into a strangled cry. The next lashes landed
on her belly, and more followed on her stretched arms and twitching thighs as
her voice broke in frenzies of hissing and screaming.

She tried to beg again, but the whip traced bleeding welts across her breasts
and under her soles too often for her to catch her breath and make her pleads
heard. Pain burst in her joints as they bore her weight while she jerked under
the lashes of the heavy whip.

Even what looked like a pause turned into a fit of spasmodic howling as bleach
was dipped on the welts, drop by drop while she buckled madly. Her weight made
her thrust her loins forward, and her restrained ankles did not allow her
soles to escape the lashes, but she could otherwise twist and buckle to avoid
the whip when her tormentor targeted her thighs or her belly ... just enough
to make the spectacle of her agonies more pleasurable.

The Easterner started lashing the undersides of her globes, then suddenly sent
the tip of the whip across her crotch and into the slit, making her arch in a
scream of unrestrained agony which was protracted by a few drops of bleach.
Her wounds had been healed only partially, and her jerks wrought new agonies
through her joints, while the bleach burned the new welts as well as the cuts
and wounds from the last days of uninterrupted torture.

The whip assaulted her breasts mercilessly, making her scream like a wild
animal when the bleach followed, but wrought the worst agonies on her spread
crotch. Besides tracing searing welts on what remained of her mauled skin, the
tip repeatedly slashed from above the folds covering her clitoris. Rather than
pulling the nub of female flesh to expose it to torture, her tormentor was
literally digging it out with the whip while she screamed to high heaven.

"Now is there anything you wish to say ?" hissed Zhorun, his unearthly voice
almost mirthful against the backdrop of her pitiful screams.

"Please ... no more. No more pain. I'll do it," rasped Kayleen.

"Very well. Should you answer to my satisfaction, of course" replied Zhorun.

Still burning from the bleach, Kayleen was then asked about the kingdom's
army, at length and in detail. When she hesitated, the whip descended in the
cleft of her vagina sending droplets of blood flying while her howls rose
under the vaults of the chamber. Often the whip slashed a nipple for no
apparent reason. Her answers came in croaking whispers, as tears she could no
longer shed burned in her eyes. She was betraying her people. Many times the
thought of refusing came to her, but as her gaze wandered across the
instruments of torture in this hell she had been dragged into, her resolve was
consumed by the thought of the unbearable agonies that would follow.

"I have reliable sources telling me this is not the case," whispered the
corpse menacingly, cutting through her musing like a razor blade.  "Do you
think I'm so easily fooled ?"

"No! Please, I am ... telling the truth," begged Kayleen, her eyes bulging
with panic. The whip slashed her left nipple.

"We shall see," said Zhorun, concentrating in spite of Kayleen's screams as
the whip slashed her breasts and thighs blow after blow.

After an apparently interminable wait, Shandra entered the room.

"Master," she bowed.

"My apprentice, I have an endeavor for thee. Our stubborn guest here has been
answering questions at last, but I reckon she might be lying," said Zhorun.

Shandra started at Kayleen's bitter scream from a lash across the left nipple,
and her green eyes flared in horror as she took in the sight.

The muscular body of the Queen hung trembling from her twisted arms, her
shoulders swollen and misshapen from days of tearing and dislocation. Her back
found little purchase on the reclined rail, so each jerk under the whip
rattled her shoulder joints through hells of all-consuming torment. Most of
her supple body was covered in partially healed wounds and burns, the skin
torn and peeled, broiled and quivering under the whip.

The once proud globes of her breasts were cut and lacerated, and the nipples
horribly mauled and almost in tatters. The strong thighs trembled as her
ankles offered her little leverage when pain shot through her body, and blood
dipped from the slashes cut by the whip in her tender soles. Horrid
lacerations disfigured her mound and the gaping orifice of her vagina, while
blood trickled from the shredded, disfigured nub of her clitoris.

Unspeakable agonies burned behind Kayleen's clenched eyes as she tried to
meet Shandra's gaze, but the Sorceress was looking within herself as her power
gathered, trying to concentrate in spite of the horror she was confronted
with, her teeth chattering as if she was mad with fear.

"She's lying, Master" whispered the trembling Sorceress.

"I thought so!" cried Zhorun's hollow voice just as a gut-wrenching, strangled
"No" issued from Kayleen's torn mouth.

Upon a gesture from Zhorun, the Easterner resumed the torment of Kayleen's
dangling body while Shandra rushed away, almost in tears, and Zhorun rose,
his unearthly voice filled with rage and hatred.

"You'll pay the price of your folly!" hissed the undead necromancer.

While the Easterner continued whipping Kayleen, Grod entered and set about
preparing her next torment. Kayleen could only buckle and scream under the
whip, unable to avoid the dripping bleach, falling prey to agonies which were
but a shadow of the terrors to come. She cried pitifully when Grod lifted her
off the rail and carried her to face a nightmare cast in iron.

"Please! I was not lying!" she cried helplessly, her voice broken in terror.

From the ceiling hung a tall iron pole, from which several bands protruded,
hinged at both sides of the pole and adjustable with screws. The bands could
be tightened around a body, trapping it in an armor-like cage of wickedly
studded iron bands which could be screwed tighter and tighter. Some of the
bands had complex articulations, meant to constrict the mounds of a well
endowed female body. Some hinged contraptions hinted at even worse horrors.

"No ..." she croaked, her eyes wide open in demented fear.

Kayleen trembled and cried, trying to resist with her crippled strength
against Grod's nightmarish device, but her wrists were fastened to locks at
the top of the pole, and the pole was pulled up, renewing the twisting of her
arms in their sockets while screams of bitter pain wracked her jerking form.

Her ankles were similarly locked at the bottom of the pole, which was then
lifted some more until her toes left the floor. Grod started operating a crank
which elongated the pole, stretching her body mercilessly from ankle to wrist
and twisting the arms in their shoulder sockets beyond dislocation, pulling
tendons and muscles while a long, helpless scream rose from her burning lungs
and raged out of her mouth. Lyral was briefly brought forth to heal Kayleen's
worst wounds, but her restraints were so hellishly painful that the usual
soothing effect of the act went barely noticed.

Iron protrusions were placed above her shoulders, pressing on the collar
bones, and between her thighs, distancing them and pushing the heads of her
dislocated thighs further away from their sockets. As the pole was cranked
some more, unspeakable agonies rose in her voice as her joints were pulled and
torn while she howled in unbearable pain. Cold, salt water drenched her
stretched form while she writhed in bitter torment, babbling pleas which Zhorun
denied vigorously as Grod turned to him.

Slowly, band after band of iron was tightened on her limbs, the studs placed
to rub where the bone was closer to the surface so that the screws could grind
the dull tip against the bone, extending the pain of the restraints which had
become the inseparable instruments of her uninterrupted agonies all over her
stretched limbs. More bands were then tightened on her ribcage, adjusting them
so that the studs pressed on the ribs near cracking point and each intake of
breath for a scream rekindled dozens of stabbing lances of white hot agony,
cutting the scream as it rose and turning it into a desperate hiss.

As her position made drinking difficult, a funnel was used to pour the
contents of the jug down her sore throat. Her spinning mind craved the liquid
even if she knew that it slaked her tormentor's thirst for her suffering as
much as it slaked the thirst of her body, but drinking it in the grip of the
bands cracking her ribs proved another agony, a long nightmare of sputtering
and screaming as the liquid made her more sensitive to pain.

Through holes in the iron bands, long skewers were slowly pushed through her
torn and distended joints, causing her voice to rise in howls of unbearable
torment as the bands and stretching allowed her very little else. A leather
band encased her forehead, stopping her from trashing her head, but such were
the contortions which pain wrought on her face that this band creaked and
shuddered while her mouth opened in howl after howl of demented agony.

With a small hammer used to tap on the skewers piercing the joints, her
torture was protracted mercilessly while her howls slowly lost any semblance
of sanity under the relentless onslaught of unbearable pain. She had been put
through the most horrid agonies for days, her only respite being strenuous
bondage, and she was crumbling, shaking in terror and desperately begging for
mercy, too wracked by pain to come up with coherent words any more.

Waves of primal pain rocked her screaming soul just as spasmodic twitching
rocked her stretched body, making it twirl slowly as the pole turned and her
howls waned and waxed under the vaults of the torture chamber. The pain never
stopped, each breath renewed agonies hell would have been proud of, and foam
bubbled from her torn mouth as her voice cracked when her agonies fanned a
scream beyond its exhausted range. More cold water washed over her quivering
body, each shudder fanning a new scream which often broke in a low hiss.

Her clenched eyes bulged in disbelief when she felt iron on her breasts, as if
the pain wracking her could be increased. Paired webs of thinner bands were
being closed on her mauled flesh, like dozen-fingered claws ready to constrict
and deform the delectable globes. When Grod started tightening them, she felt
the prick of curved hooks, not dull studs, and as they were screwed tighter
the white hot agony of hooks raking the lacerated flesh laced her mammaries
and burst from her mouth in a desperate scream of horrendous torment,
reverberating through her stretched body and rekindling the torment of her
constricted limbs, the pain in her torn and pierced joints and the
breathtaking agony of the ribs teetering on the brink of cracking as her lungs
fought for breath to replenish what her demented howls consumed.

Grod brought forth more iron horrors, small thumbscrews designed to crush the
phalanx of each finger, and started tightening them on her twitching fingers.
He slowly secured a few of them, alternating between her hands, but did not
tighten them fully, splashing her with cold, salt water repeatedly instead.
When he tightened the screw on her thumb near cracking point, the pain raced
down her twisted arm, coursed through her stretched body in a howl of mad
torment, finally bubbling up her ribcage in a garbled scream of insane agony.
As more screws were tightned the pain from her cage of agony was rekindled all
over her body, from the joints, to the ribs, to the limbs which could not
escape the grinding of the dull iron points on the bone.

After the fourth screw was tightened, Lyral was pushed forth to heal her
friend, her hands blindly seeking the trembling flesh while tears flowed from
under her blindfold. Her power could not heal the stretched, pierced joints or
the cracked ribs, but it could prevent Kayleen's condition from worsening into
death, and as such had been turned into another instrument of her friend's
torture. If the words she hummed behind her gag were about this, nobody could
say, and Kayleen was in such pain that nothing else could reach her mind now.

Her screams and trashing returned when the fifth screw was tightened, and did
not stop until all had wrought their measure of agony through her stretched
body, in a long nightmare of white hot torment which echoed at length under
the vaults of the torture chamber, protracted by Grod's fiendish expertise at
crushing bone up to the brink of cracking. The band biting her waist and
constricting her breathing had been a pale harbinger of the agonies studded
iron bands could wreak on flesh and bone.

When he reached for the bands clawing her breasts, her eyes opened and her
mouth sputtered in the effort to beg him, nobody else but him, seeking his
gaze, a last plea from a broken soul, a plea which would have cracked the
heart of a demon from hell. Grod froze, his hands on the screws that would
wreak further torments through the stretched, quivering body.

Bluish tendrils of lightning surged from Zhorun's hands and played on the
hanging, stretched body, wracking it through spasms as the lightning forced
the distended muscles to contract and wrought unimaginable pain through the
limbs trapped in the grip of the iron studs.

"Proceed, Grod. I intend her punishment to last far longer," said the withered
corpse of the former wizard, unleashing a second wave of lightning.

Grod stepped back, trembling slightly, his eyes fixed on the body twitching in
restraints tight enough to prevent the slightest movement. Kayleen's eyes
glazed over as her gaping mouth spit blood mixed with foam, and her cracked
voice burst in screams which could barely be heard above the rattling of the
banded iron cage under her spasmodic jerks.

When Zhorun stopped, Grod splashed her with cold water again, and used a
funnel to make her drink some more. A spark twinkled in her dead eyes as she
recognized the syrupy taste, a spark of terror which made the stretched body
shudder with a broken gasp. When Grod operated the screws, the bands clawing
her breasts turned a few degrees, pulling her right breast clockwise and her
left breast counterclockwise. The hooks opened bleeding gashes in the broiled
skin and the claws tightened their grip on her firm flesh.

The slow raking of her globes made her scream in pain, but the fiendishness of
the torment was not in what was wrought on her breasts, but in how it forced
her to twitch, arch and tremble in the grip of the iron bands. The joints she
could not move trembled in the effort to wring her off from the agony slowly
shredding her breasts, her strong limbs twitched in the grip of the studded
iron bands to turn away, and her ribs fought repeatedly against the points
pressing them near cracking as her lungs fought for each scream.

As the torment was protracted, her breasts were turned with excruciating
slowness into twisted, disfigured cones of shredded bleeding flesh, which
trembled when cold, salt water washed over them. A hellish nightmare of horrid
pain coursed through the firm globes as they were savagely raked and
disfigured, among bitter screams of inhuman torment, until they had been
stretched almost to the point of tearing them off her chest. Lyral's repeated
touching barely made Kayleen's screams subside a little.

When Grod reached for her feet and started securing small screws on her toes,
Kayleen shuddered and gasped pitifully. The cold, salt water and the syrupy
liquid mixing with blood in her mouth meant that the torment was not over, but
now terror rattled her even when her tormentor stayed his hand. She was still
trying to beg and plead, babbling half words between bitter gasps and stinted
screams, but there was nothing but agony in store for her.

When the first screw was tightened on her left toe, the horrid agonies of her
torment returned all together. Her limbs twitched against the grip of the
studded iron bands in the frantic effort to distance her foot from the source
of its torments, her joints trembled and tore in the attempt to pull away
while the pain of the skewers laced them, and her ribs howled as dozens of
points stabbed the bone near cracking. This time, however, her disfigured
breasts added their own measure of agony as her jerks pulled the hooks through
the flesh, with movements so spasmodic that if not for the grip of the iron
bands on her ribcage she would rip her own breasts off in agony.

One after another, nine more screws crushed her toes and protracted her
descent into a living hell of unrelenting torture and unspeakable torment. She
had to be healed by her friend twice, the healing touch barely registering
between screams of maddening torment. The drool from her gaping mouth was
washed away by repeated splashes with cold, salt water, but nothing could wash
the mad terror in her eyes when Grod kneeled before her.

Her trembling, dislocated thighs could not stop him from pushing a dull iron
cylinder up her sphincter, slowly twisting it up inside her while she howled
in renewed agony. The iron surface was crisscrossed by the teeth of a grater,
and once blood started to flow from her scraped rectum, he started cranking
it, causing it to open in four pieces inside her and stretch her sphincter,
puncturing its rim with small downward hooks which started ripping through as
he slowly cranked it wider while her voice found the strength to scream again.

The last shreds of her mind twitched in the grip of the relentless agonies
wracking her body and lacing it with blasts of inhuman torment. She barely
noticed her tormentor rising and tightening something on the tip of each
finger, connecting it with the screws crushing the finger nearby, until he
revealed their purpose by pulling on the finger, like a miniature rack
intended to dislocate the finger phalanx by phalanx.

The blinding pain as her fingers were stretched, dislocated and broken was but
a drop in the pain fanned throughout her body, from constricted libs to
cracked ribs, but even the agony of her disfigured breasts was surpassed by
the merciless scraping of her rectum as her spasmodic twitching under the pull
on her fingers abraded her innards and ripped the distended rim of her
sphincter. She slowly lost track of how many fingers had been broken, of how
the splashes of cold water turned shudders into fits of frenzied torment, of
the brief moments when Lyral touched her, pain was her sole master now.

When another cylinder was forced in her vagina, the most abject terror gave
her back temporarily some of her former strength, enough to babble and beg,
enough to shudder while he cranked the device open. This one had been rubbed
in white powder, which reduced the lubrication effect of the blood from her
scraped innards, but its hooks caught onto the rim of her vagina just as well
as those of its counterpart, in a long, hollow scream which distended as the
device stretched her orifice to the brink of tearing.

When Grod secured the screws on her toes and started stretching them into
dislocation, the agony in her innards surged through Kayleen's body like a
river of molten fire which burst form her mouth in frenzied screams and
sputtering froth, while her limbs jerked spasmodically from agonies whose
repetition made them no less excruciating. The funnel filled her mouth with
the syrupy liquid which heralded further agonies.

One after another, each toe exacted its share of torment from the constricted
limbs twitching in the grip of the studded iron bands, through the skewered
joints teetering under the spasmodic pull of her taut muscles, to the ribs
cracked by the iron points after edging on the brink through countless screams
of demented agony. Blood gurgled in her foaming mouth as her convulsions raked
the hooks deforming her breasts through their wounds, cutting through each
scream as her lungs fought for breath.

The spasmodic jerks, which the tight bands restrained severely, were enough to
brutally abrade her distended innards, ripping the hooks through the distended
rims of her orifices just as pitched howls of unbearable pain ripped through
her protracted frenzies of hoarse screaming. There was no need to crank them
wider, as her convulsions scraped her innards raw and the hooks ripped through
the distended muscles without cutting the edge.

After the last toe was dislocated, she hung in twitching agony, trembling in
terror at the torment of her femininity which would follow, as always. Her
spinning mind returned to a time when the sun shone, a summer evening after a
long march when casual contact had wrought a fleeting pleasure through her
nipples. But the daydream turned sour as the sun faded into torchlight,
and her thoughts went to how the nubs of her femininity fared now, scraped
raw, shredded and peeled after days of torture and partial healing, and she
screamed from the unrelenting torment, shriveling from fear.

It took her clenched eyes some time to realize that Grod was leaving, and the
relief at having her nipples and clitoris spared lasted only until the leer of
the Southerner appeared in her sight, making her scream as fear and surprise
turned her jerk into a frenzy of screaming torment. When her agony subsided,
the gnarly old man smeared her nipples and clitoris with a reddish powder and
then covered them with small caps lined with short fur inside, which he
tightened with loops of thin cord, smiling.

They left her without light, as usual, but this time were was no pretense of
allowing her to rest, even in strenuous restraints, as she hung in relentless
torment, shaking in frenzies of bitter screaming when the slightest quivering
sparked horrid agonies which climbed to spasmodic jerks and hoarse screams
before exhaustion made them subside with excruciating slowness.

As the shudders from the cold water subsided, an itch mounted in her shredded
nubs, faint at first and then unmistakable. Just as she realized the
deviousness of the torment, the itch turned to unbearable stinging as the
powder irritated the shredded tatters of her nipples and clitoris, making her
squirm and then rattle her restraints as the squirming turned into the first
of many frenzies of horrendous agony.

Unbridled terror burst in a scream of despair as the thought of the
uninterrupted agony awaiting her impressed on her mind, pleasuring the corpse
silently standing nearby almost to the point of revealing himself. But as her
screams waned and waxed, he lost himself in them instead, transfixed at the
convulsed jerks ripping her stretched orifices.

When the torches brought light to the torture chamber again, Kayleen hung on
the brink of death, twitching in demented agony. She had lost track of how
long her torment had continued, as the fierce itch in her nipples and clitoris
had made her trash relentlessly in her hellish restraints, bleeding profusely
from the scraping of her innards. Lyral was allowed to heal her at length, but
soon her power reached a point where it could not heal wounds which Kayleen's
restraints relentlessly ground open. At least the caps were removed.

Meanwhile, the Easterner had been heating thin, curved iron blades in a
brazier which he brought nearby, making Kayleen's nostrils flare as the
horribly familiar smell heralded the torment that would follow. Fire or hot
iron, one of the torments she feared most and which her torturers favored for
this very reason. She was no longer able to utter coherent words, her voice
spent in uninterrupted screaming and yet still able to vent her torment when
the pain inflicted on her body reached new heights. Her spinning mind quaked
at the thought that the Easterner would slowly drag her through supremely
excruciating agonies, and then the gnarly old man from the South would be
given free reign of her body, finally his to defile and violate at leisure.

The curved red hot blade pressed into her left leg, cutting slowly where an
iron band dug into her flesh and wrenching a scream from her mouth, pitiful
enough to scrape plaster from the walls. It took many such screams to complete
the cut above and below the band, which was then tightened even more, sinking
through the wounded flesh and grinding the bone while her voice cracked in
despair at the thought of this agony coursing all over her constricted flesh.

If the jerks induced by the dislocation of her fingers and toes had been a
descent into hell, those induced by the red hot blade cutting under the bands
constricting her limbs were a nightmare of frenzied agony. Lyral was
repeatedly called upon to stem her friend's bleeding, but the torture was
mercilessly continued although Kayleen inched closer and closer to madness,
especially when pain flared in her scraped orifices or a convulsion tore the
hooks piercing their distended rim.

The curved hot blade was slowly dragged through the constricted flesh, pushing
back and forth while she twitched in hoarse torment, on time with her screams
cut short as the voice was unable to produce protracted cries because of the
bands crushing her ribs and the hooks raking her breasts. Not only was the
pain of the red hot blade as horrid as in previous occasions, the tight grip
of the bands made it last far beyond the actual cut and her jerks ground the
iron inside the seared wound, protracting it.

When the funnel filled her mouth with the syrupy liquid which returned some of
her strength but made pain all the more excruciating, the agony of the iron
studs scraping her bones through the seared wounds was already enough to start
another frenzy of twitching agony. When the blade started carving around
another iron band, such frenzies followed one after the other while the blade
dug in the seared flesh, raising litanies of pitiful howling under the vaults
of the torture chamber. Lyral's healing had partially restored her ripped
orifices, only to have them wasted repeatedly in spasmodic jerks.

The blood from dozens of cuts circling the girth of her limbs flowed down the
twitching muscles as the protracted torment fanned the pain to levels even her
previous ordeals made hard to fathom. It was as if the bone scraping which she
had gone through had been multiplied by the dozens, albeit clumsily effected
by her own spasmodic jerks. What this application lacked in fierceness and
expertise, however, was more than made up by sheer quantity as dozens of studs
had been brought to grind the bones of her stretched limbs.

Images of her former agonies replaced those of her present torment, as the
band around her forehead prevented her eyes from fixing on the places where
pain flared anew as her torture was carried on. Lyral's voice rose from the
ghosts of nights past, trembling with dread, or was it her own voice screaming
pitifully, strained to a wheezing hiss by the uninterrupted torment ?

The red hot blade cut across the flesh stretched over her broken ribs, tracing
a dented gash which the iron points caught at the first heaving of her chest
under yet another wretched scream. Her mouth still felt the syrupy taste mix
with the blood even Lyral's ministrations could stop only temporarily.

Each gash traced a white hot line of agony through her spinning mind just as
it cut between wisps of smoke under the crushing iron band, a line whose
protracted duration she could guess with agonizing precision after the first
two or three, but which nothing could stay from running its full, agonizing
course. Screaming madly, she returned to the occasions when she could have
told them what they wanted and be believed. There was nothing she could do now
to stem the agony of the red hot blade, or the torment of the iron points on
her cracked ribs, or the rivulets of blood as the hooks ripped through her
disfigured globes some more at each convulsed frenzy of screaming agony.

Even the splashes of cold, salt water were but another occasion of horrid
torment. Truth was, the bands would have made her twitch in pain even if she
managed to keep still somehow, and only exhaustion could lend her some respite
from the relentless torture. But Lyral's touch, the sips of syrup, the
cold water and the continued application of new torments allowed for none.

The tip of the curved blade cut into one dislocated finger just as her eyes
opened after another splash with cold, salt water. The pain wracked her arm
and coursed through her body in a squirm, which ground dozens of studded iron
bands against her trapped bones and sent droplets of blood squirting from the
points crushing her ribs. A hoarse scream rose and broke in her lungs, and a
constricted convulsion rattled her from toe to fingers, reopening the gashes
in her disfigured breasts and ripping the tiny hooks through the distended rim
of her orifices. More sputtering and twitching followed as pain coursed back
and forth across her horribly wounded body, while her voice cracked in the
attempt to carry the protracted screams surging from her torn chest.

In a flash of realization amid waves of maddening pain, her mind reeled at the
thought of what agonies still lay ahead if a red-hot tip could cause such
frenzies of excruciating pain for the enjoyment of her undead captor, now that
the only thing he sought from her was her woe. She had tried begging, she had
tried pleading, she had answered his questions and betrayed her people, she
was ready to to it again, to do anything if only the torture would stop.

The red hot tip cut into another finger, and the frenzy of excruciating agony
flared anew through her body, wracking her in screaming pain punctuated by
gasping hisses and convulsions so spasmodic that they rattled her restraints
to the point of bending the cold iron. The Easterner waited until they settled
to splash her with cold water and cut into a toe.

It took time to drag the red hot tip over her fingers first, and her toes
next, while her blue eyes shone in the reddish light, bulging in pain so
excruciating that it bordered madness, and her delirious voice blabbered pleas
through bubbling froth when not gurgling from agonies to horrid for screams.

No longer clenched in agony, her blue pupils bulged in transfixed horror even
as her visage contracted from the excruciating torment of the red hot tip
scraping the rim of her sphincter. The taste of blood was mixing in her mouth
with the sweet syrup she did not even remember drinking, and the agony from
the seared muscle wracked her in waves of spasmodic jerks.

She thought for a moment that Lyral would be brought forth, and then pain cut
through her left breast as the red hot tip insinuated under the claw-like
bands constricting and disfiguring it, and the pain started another frenzy of
screaming and twitching. How her voice could sustain the effort, she could not
tell, and the thought that maybe they would stop if she lost her voice crossed
her spinning mind as the blade cut again, slowly searing along the shallow
wound cut by the iron claws while her voice teetered in a broken cry of agony.

The red hot tip moved from one globe to another with cruel slowness, following
the web of iron claws twisting her breasts into disfigured cones of twitching
torment. Some of her hair was still wet from the repeated drenching with cold,
salt water, but what covered most of her body was a sheen of sweat and blood,
which her agonies renewed more profusely than water or healing could address.

When the tip neared her crotch, she jerked in her restraints, twitching in a
frenzy of screaming which wrought horrid agonies through her convulsing body,
the mere fear of the torment to come enough to renew her pain. Terror made her
babble something, pleading in helpless despair for a mercy the corpse standing
before her totally opposed. The red hot iron engaged the top cleft of a gash
ripped by one of the hooks pulling down the rim of her vagina and stretching
it down the grating wrought on the sides of the iron cylinder, and started to
nudge it up, searing it wider while the heat cauterized the sides.

If the frenzies started by abject terror were excruciating, those started by
this wretched torment were unspeakable nightmares of convulsed agony which
contorted Kayleen's face into a mask of pain so ghastly it made the Easterner
turn away. When the red hot tip seared through a wound, she could not help but
try to pull away, and this made her muscles pull spasmodically, rekindling the
torment of the skewers through her hip joints and the grinding of the studded
bands on the bones of her supple, twitching legs.

She could not prevent her arms and legs from pulling frantically against her
dislocated toes and fingers, or the pain bursting through her lungs from
sending stabs of white hot pain through her cracked ribs and lacing her
disfigured breasts with the bloody raking from the spiraling iron claws. She
could only twitch, suffering through abysmal agonies which lasted until her
muscles were too exhausted for more convulsed jerks, only to snap again from
the heinous agony of the red hot tip searing another torn gash in her vagina.

She gurgled insanely when her mouth was invaded by the funnel, shaking at the
prospect of further pain or simply out of her mind from agony. The tip caught
her left nipple, tracing a shallow cut in some encrusted wound partially
healed after her previous torments, shallow enough to make the blood sizzle in
the heat while her voice rose and broke in coughing screams of exhausted
despair which punctuated frenzies of spasmodic jerking, the blood soaked froth
in her mouth making her look almost rabid as hoarse wheezes replaced the
pitched screams her voice no longer managed.

The red hot tip lingered on her nipples for a long time, and also carved
bloody screams of hellish agony from her clitoris, but something behind
Kayleen's eyes was being eroded, and unbearable agony stoked a madness which
secluded what little remained of her sanity behind delirious wheezing. Lyral's
healing addressed the worst wounds and the blood loss, but when the Southerner
stepped in, his leer died on the gnarly face as he examined his victim.

"Master, we cannot continue the torture," he said reluctantly.

"What ? Are you, of all men, getting squeamish ?" growled the robed corpse.

"Not at all, Master, but .. she's not feeling it. Her mind shriveled from too
much pain, she ... retreated within herself. I've seen it happen before, we
could continue for days and she would just keep whining mindlessly,"

"What can we do ? I don't want her to escape her punishment so easily", said
Zhorun, his voice low with repressed anger.

"We must suspend the torture, and let her recover. She must be healed, and
then allowed to rest. We might have to replace her restraints, also" mused the
gnarly old man, obviously stymied by this development.

"But I want to see her suffer!" burst the former wizard.

"I cannot say ... it is as if the mind retreated into madness to escape
further pain. Maybe if the torture is suspended the mind will believe it's
over and come back, but sometimes it doesn't," added the Southerner, unsure
about how the undead wizard would react to his words.

"We'll try a variation of the approach you suggest, at least until the time
comes for my apprentice to prove her worthiness once for all," said Zhorun.


Chapter 30 - The Worst Screams

In the unlit torture chamber under the ruins of Zhorun's castle, Kayleen was
sleeping. For the first time in days, she was not screaming in horrendous pain
nor writhing in strenuous bondage. She still wore heavy irons at the chafed
wrists and ankles, and the iron bands at the elbows, knees and thighs still
bruised her skin. Torchlight would reveal more abrasions at her waist,
clinched by a heavy iron band, and around the base of her breasts, caught in
serrated iron rings which made the generous globes bulge slightly.

Loose chains at her wrists and ankles kept her spread-eagled on the cold stone
floor, but she had not been drenched in freezing salt water this time, and
Lyral had been allowed to heal her fully, except for the chafing caused by the
irons which Zhorun had not wanted removed. Even her nails had been restored.

This time, Zhorun did not linger in the darkness to secretly enjoy her
agonies. In cold rage, he poured over his collected tomes from the times
before the Priestesses defeated the lords of the undead. Of many details he
used to skip when seeking for magic of power, he was now reconsidering how
captured Priestesses were first questioned and then gruesomely executed.

While Kayleen was allowed some rest, his mind indulged in the images of the
horrid torments minds twisted by undeath had devised to take out their hatred
on their opponents. He discussed those which struck his fancy with his three
torturers, eager to see them put to the test and oblivious to the lack of
enthusiasm from the Easterner and Grod, who ventured that Kayleen's mind would
collapse again very quickly before such horrors.

The undead wizard caught himself before lashing out at the man, whose long
service no longer meant as much as it used to. This obstacle should have been
addressed by someone else, he conceded before leaving.

Shandra started when her master stormed in the laboratory granted to her use,
feeling the magic crackling around him as his rage permeated the power that
now completely defined the nature of his existence.

"I reckon thy progresses have been slow, apprentice," whispered Zhorun's
voice, thick with contempt and hatred. Shandra swallowed fear.

"I am nearly done, Master. I modified a spell which provides courage in battle
to strengthen a mind enduring pain ..." she stammered.

"No! I don't want a spell which reduces the pain," he hissed.

"It does not, Master. It increases willpower, so a victim which is trying to
resist the pain is emboldened and able to endure ... more," she finished in a
whisper, handing him a scroll with the spell.

"What is holding thee back, then ?" he asked eagerly, perusing the scroll as
red pinpoints of light burned in the empty eye sockets.

"The duration is very short, Master." she said, bowing her head.

A clawed hand rose and slapped Shandra's face, scratching her cheeks while her
head turned in surprise. The slap had been weak, but the gnarled bony hands
were covered with hard ridges. She trembled.

"Improve it! Tap a different source, if need be. I will brook no further
delays." he raged, his whisper lowering in growled menace as he left.

When light shone again on Kayleen's restored body, she did not wake up. Her
chest was rising regularly, and her head turned once, but she did not wake up.
Zhorun grew impatient.

"Wake her up," he ordered with a whisper full of expectation.

Grod shook the sleeping woman, whose restored beauty now almost shone in the
flickering light, but to no avail. Even slapping proved fruitless. Ammonia
salts made Kayleen's eyes open, but the gaze in the clear blue eyes was remote
and soulless. After a nod from Zhorun, Grod caught a nipple in the grip of a
pair of iron pliers, twisting and crushing the tender flesh, but although the
mouth opened in a throaty scream the eyes remained lifeless.

"She's still lost," confirmed Grod.

"Bring forth her friend and proceed," ordered Zhorun to the Southerner.

The young Priestess was dragged forward and her wrists fastened behind her
back to a chain from the ceiling, which was pulled amidst pitiful screams
while her arms shot white hot pain through the twisted shoulder sockets, until
her feet left the ground dangling above Kayleen's face.

Lyral's ankles were then fastened to the ends of a steel bar and a chain ran
from the bar and over her shoulders to a vise constricting her pearly breasts,
which was tightened while her head shook under pitched screams of bitter
agony. Steel wires were twisted around the base of her nipples, and a braided
whip licked the trapped nubs of feminine flesh wrenching horrid howls of
pitched torment from her young voice. She still wore the wizard gag, which
prevented spell casting but not screaming under torture.

"No reaction," observed Grod, studying Kayleen's face.

The Southerner pulled from a brazier a red hot copper strip, safely hanging
from a long handle, and rubbed it on the Lyral's taut belly, making her writhe
and howl while she arched in the frantic attempt to avoid the fiery contact.
The whip lashed at the singed skin just as the strip was pulled away, and the
agony in her pitched voice would have made stones cry.

The red hot strip lingered on her left sole, and moved to the other just as
the whip traced a sore cut in the singed skin. Lyral's jerks rattled the
chains she hung from and her shrieks echoed under the vault of the torture
chamber as the torment was slowly protracted, striping the pearly body with
angry red burns crisscrossed by the bleeding welts of the heavy whip.

Kayleen's head shook left and right, as if the blood and sweat dripping from
her suffering friend above could wake her up. Lyral's shrieks increased when
the red hot strip caught her left nipple and lifted it while the whip lashed
the trapped piece of feminine flesh from above, and Zhorun bent to whisper in
the ear of the supple beauty spread-eagled on the floor.

"Don't you hear your friend's screams, O Queen ? She's being tortured in your
place, as you can hear. You failed her just as you failed your people, and now
she suffers. It will get worse still. My esteemed guest from the South has
been dying to have your young friend all for himself," he hissed.

"Kayleen! Don't listen to him!" cried Lyral.

The red hot strip slid down her belly and reached the curls of hair at her
mound, singing them while searing the soft flesh in spite of her spasmodic
buckling. Her howls of pain came from the burns but also from the jarring of
her poor shoulders, whose muscles were much less developed than Kayleen's and
were already giving. The Southerner did not follow up with the whip, as he did
not want to put Lyral's maidenhood at risk unless Zhorun told him to.

Kayleen's head jerked in a cry and her eyes bulged, focusing on the writhing,
screaming form above her just as the whip lashed Lyral's soles.

"Wait! Stop it! Leave her alone!" shouted the spread-eagled blonde.

"Welcome back among us, O Queen. I hope you indulged your rest, because we're
going to start from where we left," mocked Zhorun's chilling voice.

"Someday you'll pay for this, wretch" said Kayleen, her voice trailing as her
consciousness took in the torture chamber and her predicament, dwindling to a
whisper as the memory of past agonies crept up.

The Southerner lowered Lyral onto her friend's spread-eagled body, eager to
get going with the torture of the blonde woman to the point that his member
rose under his flowing white robes.

"Be brave, Kayleen. For heaven's sake, be brave," whispered Lyral, still
stuttering from pain, and yet speaking with such intensity that Kayleen
remained speechless at how the respective roles had switched.

After a glance to Zhorun, the old man from the South sheathed his member in
spiked leather and knelt between Kayleen's legs, watching her clear blue eyes
widen as the recollection of past agonies foreshadowed what would follow, and
then penetrated her violently, grabbing her breasts while pushing into her
with a cruelty rekindled by her renewed lusciousness.

With rutting abandon, he thrust into her over and over, pulling her off the
floor by her breasts and panting as she screamed from the bloody raking of her
womb by the spiked harness. When his lust waned, he repeatedly chewed her
nipples, keeping his flaccid member inside her to feel her writhing in pain,
protracting this pleasure until Zhorun grew impatient.

With Grod's help, Kayleen's legs were clenched together at the ankles, knees
and thighs and then folded behind her back. Her elbows were fastened together
behind her neck and her wrists pulled until they could be fastened under her
ankles, making her arch. The Southerner pushed his spent manhood in her mouth,
still forced open by the spider gag, and caught her head between his legs.

A short, barbed flogger landed on her stretched belly, making her scream and
writhe in bitter pain. The heavy leather was soon wet with blood, but had also
been soaked in brine and the Southerner made sure it remained so during the
subsequent defilement of his restored victim. His drooling leer loomed over
Kayleen's pain-wracked face while the flogger traced welts of agony all over
her splendid body, renewing the gurgling pleasuring of her tormentor's member.

Each lash made her turn left or right in a spasmodic jerk, exposing her to
more pain. The Southerner aimed often for her soles, a difficult target, but
also cruelly striped her thighs and buttocks. He took to grabbing curls of her
pubic hair and pulling on them before each lash, so that her subsequent jerk
ripped some in a flash of blinding pain which wracked her deliciously.

The Southerner stopped flogging his buckling victim only when Grod approached
and yanked her on her knees, dragging her to the instrument of her further
torment. It consisted of a pair of hinged iron rails, each about six feet long
and jutting off twin stone pillars. Only Zhorun's magic had allowed the device
to be constructed over the night.

The rails currently stood vertical, but could obviously pivot around the axle
they hung from, and the relative placement of the hinged sections could be
adjusted by operating a collection of ominous screws. Thick protrusions
jutted menacingly from the iron at regular intervals.

Grod mercilessly tightened the iron collar on Kayleen's windpipe before
undoing her restraints, but it took all his muscle to force the strong woman
onto the device and fasten her elbows to the rails, revealing the purpose of
some of the protrusions as rests for the elbows and knees of a victim. When
her windpipe was freed, Kayleen was about to insult her tormentors but a
glance towards Lyral changed her mind, and she just prayed under her breath.

Grod then twisted her leg around another protrusion and cuffed her ankle well
inside the iron bar, braiding the limb around the rail and making his victim
wince at the strain and cry when the same happened to the other leg. When her
wrists were similarly braided above her head, Kayleen hissed from the pull on
her ligaments and the stress on her bones, harbingers of worse torments ahead.

Grod secured her restraints and then operated a crank which increased the
separation between the rails, sliding them left and right and pulling on her
thigh and shoulder joints. The tension was slowly increased, and liquid fire
bubbled in her knees and elbows as they carried most of the pull, turning her
hisses into gasping screams of desperate agony.

A few cranks had been enough to reawaken the agonies of the rack, and the
blinding pain from the knees and elbows was being slowly overshadowed by the
pull on her hip and shoulder joints and the tearing of her ankles and wrists.
They were not even pretending to question her any more, just making her suffer
for Zhorun's perverted pleasure, and she could not stop them in any way, not
even by giving up. The tortures had become increasingly gruesome, to the point
that only Lyral's healing kept her alive.

The heavy irons cut into Kayleen's ankles and wrists; the angle prevented
damage to major blood vessels, but red rivulets flowed lazily from the bruised
skin. Her arms and supple thighs already trembled from the strain, and the
tendons showed under the stretched muscles while howls of demented torment
wracked her taut, glistening body. Her mouth tried to refuse the jug, but Grod
pinched her nose and forced her to drink among gasps and sputters.

With cruel slowness, the rails were cranked to the point of leaving her hip
and shoulder joints teetering on the brink of dislocation, with such fiendish
accuracy that each breath sent flashes of howling pain through her shoulders
as it pulled them beyond dislocation for an instant. The Southerner neared and
thrust his member into her rectum, distending it violently and pushing with
cruel strength while she screamed from the jarring of her bones.

After a brief inspection, the Southerner slowly pierced her left nipple with a
barbed hook, making her arch and buckle amidst screams of wretched agony,
twisting it back and forth until her spasmodic buckling dislocated her
shoulder joint and keeping up the torment for a while before running a chain
from the ceiling to the hook, stretching the swollen bud mercilessly.

"This is how the Priestesses used to react in times of old, O Queen, when put
through the ministrations of the Bone Dance, as this was named," cackled
Zhorun's voice. Kayleen's mind whirled between waves of unspeakable pain which
had all but erased the brief moments of relief granted in the morning. She was
not herself enough to resist, and there was nothing she could withhold from
her tormentors anyway. They were taking their pleasure from her, and she could
not deny them anything, not even her agonized screams.

As the rails were cranked wider apart, the Southerner used another barbed hook
to scratch her other nipple, teasing it while she howled in demented agony
before sinking the tip through the swollen flesh and raking it, his grip
steady in spite of her jerks and protracting her agony until she dislocated
her other shoulder, the arm pulling from the socket while she arched in pain
and froth bubbled in her mouth between a scream and the next.

The screws on the rails were slowly adjusted to further bend her joints and
bones, making her howls more pitched and desperate as she found no respite
from the pull keeping her bones near cracking point. Grod periodically cranked
the rails one notch wider, making her scream in horrendous pain as her
convulsions wracked her hip joints beyond dislocation and back. His face was a
mask devoid of any expression, but a sheen of perspiration covered it.

When her teary eyes focused on the gnarly old man, it was because he was
rubbing her innards with the white powder which made them parched and dry, and
her recollections left no doubt about what would follow. When a thin barbed
needle pierced her clitoris, she arched in demented pain as her muscles pulled
the hips out of her joints for a moment while she jerked in spasmodic howling,
and her screams grew even louder when his member penetrated her violently and
the spikes on the harness sheathing it cruelly tore her innards.

His vicious thrusts pushed the needle piercing her clitoris deeper, bending it
when it caught against her pubic bone, while the parched walls of her vagina
were being rasped and raked by the sadistic violation which wracked inhuman
agonies through her stretched hip joints. Her head jerked left and right when
his leather sheathed member abraded her insides, and her mouth opened in
ghastly howls of blinding pain when the spikes cut new wounds through the
parched insides. Each push twisted the barbed needle through the sensitive bud
and scraped it against her pubic bone, pushing the heads of her thighs out of
their sockets for interminable instants of blinding agony.

As the old man protracted her violation, her screams became more gut-wrenching
and desperate until her left hip dislocated while she arched in a howl of pure
agony. Unfazed, the Southerner continued thrusting into her, making her twitch
in agony on the barbed needle and lingering inside her even after his lust had
been spent. She was made to drink from the jug again, and repeatedly splashed
with cold, salt water. The only thing she could do was hope they would make a
mistake and hurt her beyond repair, and then death would finally bring an end
to the merciless agonies inflicted on her femininity.

The Southerner started tracing shallow cuts through her pubic mound and
ripping curls of hair and skin, gearing the pulls towards dislocating her
other hip without following through completely until her mound was a bleeding
stretch of raw flesh. He kept pulling on the curls rooted in a purposefully
large patch of skin, increasing her agony as the joint twitched closer to
dislocation on the wave of searing pain and leaving her thus until the head of
the bone bulged under her jerking muscles. With drug-induced lust, the
Southerner violated her vagina with renewed viciousness, fiendishly cutting
her insides with the spikes while froth bubbled between her desperate screams.

The rails were cranked wider apart some more, wrenching further howls of
bitter agony from Kayleen's gaping mouth. The weight of her torso now hung off
her dislocated joints, which would have been enough to keep her under constant
pain even without further intervention. The rails bent the bones of her limbs,
and Grod adjusted protrusion after protrusion to bring them closer to cracking
point and make them wreak pain through her dislocated joints, pausing now and
then to splash her with cold, salt water. Lyral healed her briefly.

While Grod continued to operate the rails, the Southerner neared her left hand
and grabbed her middle finger, slowly ripping the nail off with pliers while
her howls rose to new heights as the agony wracking her arm jarred her bent
bones and the dislocated joint. Finger after finger, and then toe after toe,
her convulsed jerks bent the bones of her limbs from near cracking point into
broken shards deforming the stretched muscles while screams desperate enough
to scrape soot from the stones echoed in the torture chamber.

The slack on the chains leading to the hooks piercing her nipples was slowly
reduced until some of her weight was carried by her stretched, bleeding
nipples. The screams wracking her chest rose again when she felt the rim of
her vagina cut by a serrated blade, rising in pitch cut after cut until
her tormentor penetrated her again, ripping open the bleeding cuts with
thrusts which wracked her like a broken doll.

Her thoughts wandered in a maze of deranged torment, unable to escape the
sight of her tormentor's triumphant visage. The agonies from her violated
femininity fought with the flashes of pain from her taxed joints, and the
tears mixed with froth and semen on her contorted face. Her mind spun in
search of something, anything, that would put off the next thrust, quench
the fire from the cracking bones, stave off what she knew would follow.

The rutting thrusts made the broken bones twitch under the muscles and tear
the flesh, sending waves of trembling agony through her chest to burst in
howls of wretched despair from her mouth. The drool from the Southerner's
mouth dribbled over her bleeding mound while his hands ripped the remaining
curls of pubic hair, and his head jerked back in mad pleasure as she convulsed
in abysmal pain on his rutting member.

When the old man's drug-enhanced endurance finally faded, her long, bitter
screams waned into harsh gasps, but her teary eyes did not miss Grod nearing
with a pair of large, serrated pliers. She vainly tried to twist her hand
away, but the iron jaws closed on her thumb and slowly crushed it to the bone,
twisting and cracking it while she arched and convulsed in wretched torment
from the finger as much as from the some bones breaking and ripping through
the stretched flesh and from the relentless tearing of her swollen nipples.

Her mouth sputtered on the syrupy contents of the jug, trembling with pain in
spite of Lyral's brief touch, and then the iron jaws moved to another finger
and her howls rose again under the vaults of the torture chamber. Grod was
crushing and breaking the phalanxes one by one, pausing in between to let her
arch and jerk in hoarse agony until exhaustion crept over her twitching body.

The nightmarish torture continued finger after finger, punctuated by
occasional splashes of cold, salt water. Lyral healed her repeatedly, still
trembling from her own wounds and sobbing bitterly at the sight of Kayleen's
horrid predicament. The long bones were fracturing, and each jerk twisted the
splinters inside the twitching muscle. After making her drink from the jug
again, the iron jaws were moved to her toes, and more screams of agony echoed
under the vaults of the torture chamber in a protracted descent to hell.

At the bottom of this hell the leer of the gnarly old man awaited her, and she
barely managed to recognize him before he drove into her vagina again, mad
with cruel lust and rocking her with fiendish thrusts which sent bone
splinters jutting through the skin while she dangled from the nipple hooks in
gurgling frenzies of unspeakable agony. The swollen pieces of feminine flesh
still carried whatever amount of her weight her spasmodic efforts kept off the
fractured bones, fiendishly braided on the protrusions jutting from the rails
to make sure she would suffer no matter the position she managed.

His endurance, fueled by cruelty as much as from drugs, lasted through
multiple pauses, which brought no respite because he stopped only to let Grod
push iron hooks under rib after rib and fasten them to the rails, tautly
enough to cause abysmal torments when her chest rose in a scream. Under the
thrusts of her defilement, the hooks pulled the ribs near cracking and her
spasmodic jerks and inhuman screams ended up breaking them one after the
other. Her eyes darted left and right, wide open from pain and terror, looking
for an angle where no bloody splinters would jut from her twitching flesh.

She lost count of her ribs as her violator's thrusts and her spasmodic jerks
cracked and fractured one after the other, in a protracted nightmare of agony
and defilement which her frenzied screams recounted in a hoarse tale of
wretched torment. The spiked harness had scraped bleeding gashes deep in the
walls of her vagina, and she bled so profusely that Lyral had to be brought
forth repeatedly to heal her. Her tormentor stopped using the white astringent
powder he favored to make rape more painful and rubbed the bloody leather
sheathing his manhood in rough sand instead, bringing her howls to new pitches
as her last two or three ribs cracked under his thrusts.

The jug made her eyes regain focus just in time to widen in horror as she
caught Grod pushing the arms of an iron vise through the cuts in her vagina,
until they caught her pubic bone in their grip. He then scraped the needle
piercing her swollen clitoris on the bone, feeling for the exact position of
the needle tip before bringing the pliers to bear, cracking the bone while she
arched with a scream of unspeakable agony, at the top of which he hammered the
needle into the crack, a feat of consummate ability which he performed with
meticulous cruelty in spite of her jerks of spasmodic agony.

Just as she thought that she could not know more pain, the old man tore into
her bleeding vagina again, and she realized in a flash of inhuman agony that
the needle lodged in the bone was bending and widening the crack under his
rutting thrusts. The bone splintered and added his own agony to the searing
pain of the fractured bones raking her stretched muscles and jutting through
the flesh while she arched in twitches in unspeakable torment, writhing on
his aroused member while he fiendishly protracted her agonies, savoring every
scream, every gasp and every howl until his lust finally subsided.

Kayleen felt Lyral being brought forth to heal her briefly, and then a large
meat hook was thrust in her lacerated vagina and pulled up using a chain from
the ceiling, relieving some of the traction on her stretched nipples but
causing her to scream at the agony in her fractured pubic bone.

Although nearly delirious, she realized she was about to be left alone for a
while. Her mind was suddenly clear somehow, and what she could not notice was
that Zhorun had cast Shandra's spell, to see how effective it was. The first
splash of cold, salt water confirmed Kayleen's guess, and after a while they
left her drenched and shivering in the unlit chamber.

Even without the freezing water, her position would have allowed her no real
respite as some of her weight rested on bones which had been fractured and
splintered mercilessly, and each breath wracked her cracked ribs with white
hot torment. But the shivers were an hell of rolling agony which shook her
with bitter gasps and broken screams, and in her torment she realized that the
pull on her nipples and especially on her splintered pubic bone was steadily
increasing. Zhorun savored the despair in her voice, well aware that water was
filling buckets at the other ends of the attached chains.

When they returned, she was writhing pitifully on the hook, her brief screams
cut by flashes of breathtaking agony from her ribs, her head jerking left and
right while her crushed, bloody fingers and toes curled and twitched. Lyral
turned her head at the sight, sobbing silently and curling in a corner as the
Southerner strode up to the victim he so enjoyed tormenting.

Kayleen twitched with a broken scream, born as what had started as a shudder
of fear turned into a jerk of agony. The gnarly old man's unnatural arousal
hid nothing of his intent. In the haze of pain, something within her asked why
it was always him, why he would not tire, questions which had cut her prayers
short before. Pain swept them away when he started rubbing the rim of her
sphincter with sharkskin and then thrust his leather sheathed manhood into the
bleeding orifice while she still screamed from the pain.

Anguished howls echoed under the vaults of the torture chamber, caused by a
lust fueled by drugs and, unbeknownst to Kayleen, from sorcerous magic
coalesced as drinkable potions. The old man had deemed unwise to meet Shandra
not in Zhorun's presence, but he had made his wishes repeatedly known and the
undead wizard had seen that they would be fulfilled. Now Zhorun was enjoying
the pain distorting Kayleen's visage into a nightmare of wretched screaming.

The old man protracted Kayleen's violation with pauses where he used his white
astringent powder to absorb blood and deny his victim even its lubrication,
until the tissue was dry and parched for a new bout of rutting penetration,
hoarse screams and pitched howls of utter despair, brought about as much by
the shredding of her bowels as from the jarring of her splintered bones.

When he finally stopped, he immediately had the rails moved so that he could
circle her and invade her mouth with his flaccid manhood, and then set about
making her screams revive his arousal. He picked a longish strip of sharkskin
a palm wide and wrapped it around her leg, slowly dragging it back and forth
around the limb by the handles at both end. The sharkskin started abrading the
skin, making her twitch and scream in a paroxysm of wretched agony which
gurgled around his manhood as her muffled howls betrayed the inhuman depths of
depraved torment she was undergoing. The tiny barbs of sharkskin ripped the
skin off bit by bit, lodging in it and ripping it in tiny pieces.

The subsequent drenching with cold, salt water made her jerk and twitch like a
pitiful rag doll, and the sharkskin was moved to her other leg while blood
oozed from the abraded flesh. Pitched howls of demented agony came out as
bouts of helpless gurgling while the old man made sure her torment lasted
enough to help the drugs return his manhood to arousal. She realized he had
pulled out when she felt the taste of the syrup in her torn mouth.

He brought forth Lyral to heal Kayleen's twitching and screaming body, then
changed her inclination again and rubbed sharkskin on her labia and clitoris,
keeping her howling and jerking madly until his member hardened and he could
grab her by the folds of ripped skin on her mound and slam onto her shattered
pubic bone, making her arch in the first howl of a frenzy of hoarse screaming.

The needle, now bent out of shape, still pierced her swollen clitoris and
wracked unspeakable torment through her cracked pubic bone, but her love
channel had been scraped raw and cut to shreds, and when he rubbed the leather
harness sheathing his manhood in sand her pitiful howls reached pitches hell
itself would have been proud of. Lyral was repeatedly brought forth to heal
her madly twitching friend just enough for the torture to continue until the
old man's artificial lust was temporarily sated again.

But his taste for his victim's agonies knew no respite, as he proved by
cranking the rails to lower her head until he could straddle her mouth,
filling it with his blood-stained manhood while he wrapped the sharkskin strip
around her bent arms and started rubbing, tearing off bits of skin while her
agonies gurgled around his spent member and jarred her splintered bones.

The Southerner worked the strip back and forth with ecstatic abandon, basking
in his victim's frenzies of gurgling agony as the coarse surface abraded the
skin in countless tiny cuts, ripping it bloody bit by bloody bit while the
muscle underneath twitched and each jerk jarred the splintered bones and
wracked the body into fits of spasmodic buckling which twisted the limbs as if
in a grotesque dance of wretched torment. Lyral had asked Kayleen to be brave,
as if bravery had any chance against the horrors being heaped on her now.

"This interpretation of the Bone Dance by our esteemed guest appears to be of
your liking, judging by how you put your mouth to use," whispered Zhorun, in a
stinted attempt at horrid humor. Kayleen was desperately trying to stay
abreast of this nightmare of depraved defilement, and was barely herself
enough to burn with rage in some recess of her pain-wracked mind.

No echo of Lyral's words of courage could be heard in Kayleen's hopeless
screams when the old man pulled out of her mouth, his manhood readied for a
new violation by her pitiful gurgles as her arms had been slowly abraded to
twitching raw flesh and the broken ends of some ribs jutted out, pulled by her
spasmodic jerks. If her trapped mind could come up with anything of interest
to her tormentors, she would have screamed it to the top of her lungs.

When the sharkskin strip was wrapped behind her back, she would have betrayed
anybody and anything to stop the savage back and forth motions which ripped
the skin from her shoulder blades and made her broken ribs bend in and out of
her flesh in blinding flashes of abysmal pain. Even if Lyral had stopped
healing her, they would use potions as they had already done. If only he
stopped, just for a moment ... the sharkskin was ripping raw flesh now.

As if her tormentor wanted to answer the pitiful pleas interspersed between
her screams, he slowly moved the area abraded the strip along her back until
her reached her buttocks, but there was no mercy in the act as the rails had
been reclined to make her crotch rest on her tormentor's erect manhood and the
abrading strip made her twitch left and right on his spiked member, further
grinding her shredded insides while her screams took the rhythm from the
alternating motions impressed on the ends of the bloodied sharkskin strip.

When he finally pulled off, her buttocks had been scraped raw amidst a frenzy
of increasingly gut-wrenching howls as the tiny teeth had been dragged across
bleeding raw fresh after ripping off the tender skin while she jerked and
twisted madly on his spiked manhood. A sudden influx of renewed awareness
shot through her mind, making it snap back from depths of all-consuming woe
just as her splintered bones snapped out of her stretched limbs. Shandra's
spell had temporarily restored her will, but it would not last.

Lyral was brought forth again, and was allowed to heal her for quite some time
as the old man watched his victim's bloody, twitching body return from the
brink of death just as his arousal returned under the impulse of the drugs. As
he was not ready yet, he cranked the rails and invaded her mouth again, his
gaze wandering on her face wishing to feel her terror.

He discarded the blood soaked strip and picked a fresh one, which he wrapped
twice around her left thigh before pulling it back and forth. Her bleeding
body arched in a gurgling scream as the flesh was scraped by the myriad of
tiny teeth embedded in the sharkskin, and his pleasure rose alongside her
pitiful screams while he pulled on the strip with cruel, deliberate slowness.

The motion added to the abysmal torment of the sharkskin proper the rhythmic
jarring of her broken thigh bone, whose head rattled at her hip joint and
whose splintered ends could be seen bulging under the twitching muscles each
time his pull dislodged them a bit further. Lyral, sobbing from her own recent
torture and all but forgotten in her chains, was watching with her mouth agape
as the depths of depravity poured on her friend pounded on her sanity.

The cold, salt water made Kayleen jerk again, screaming in bitter agony, and
in the process reviving her somewhat, just as intended. She drank avidly from
the jug, consuming the concoction devised to keep her nourished, enhance her
sensitivity to pain and prevent her from sliding into unconsciousness. Zhorun
had took the opportunity to improve the formula.

The old man removed the hooks from her nipples and cranked the rails, turning
them over until she hung facing the floor. As the slightest movement wrought
unspeakable agony through her broken bones, he made sure that the operation
was slowly staggered, allowing her to scream herself near exhaustion while her
own weight was being shifted from fracture to fracture and cranking the rails
only when her pain appeared to subside, gleefully rekindling her agonies.

He rubbed her sphincter with the white powder, did the same on the spiked
harness he still wore on his now erect manhood, and lingered against the
rosette of her anus while terror wracked her with tremors which turned into
screaming jerks of bitter woe. She knew what he would do next, she knew what
agonies would follow, and terror shook her in spite of her feeble attempts to
find some anchor for her sanity. With a raucous laugh, he started penetrating
her, pushing slowly while she arched and screamed in horrid pain.

Instead of thrusting with abandon, he had opted to force her into pleasuring
him with her frenzied twitching, and he set about engendering it by wrapping
the sharkskin strip against her dangling breasts. Once he started pulling it
back and forth, her screams and jerks came at the rhythm he most enjoyed, and
he set about making this exquisite pleasure last.

He repeatedly changed the angle and wrapping of the strip on her breasts,
ripping her skin off bit by bit without grinding her nipples flat and searing
swaths of bleeding raw fresh across the firm globes, always forcing her to
twitch and buckle on his erect manhood, causing her to arch spasmodically and
wreak unimaginable torment through her fractured and splintered bones.

When his lust was sated, he circled her pitifully screaming form to make her
drink from the jug again before invading her mouth with his flaccid member,
freed of its harness as he wanted to feel each scream to the fullest. Kayleen
was mostly beyond herself from pain, but in a corner of her mind managed to
despair at the accursed endurance the drugs allowed the old man.

When her tormentor fetched a new strip, and its twin halves pressed against
her crotch, separating her labia as he expertly pulled them like a crotch rope
but with the rasping side resting against the insides of the soft folds of
feminine flesh, Kayleen realized that hell truly had bottomless pits.

A the first pull, her spasmodic scream gurgled around his member while she
arched in abysmal pain. The strips were abrading the inside of her labia, but
also cutting a bleeding gash at the top and bottom clefts of her vagina,
deeply raking the wounded and stretched flesh and catching on existing cuts
and wounds, reopening them mercilessly. The waves of unspeakable agony rising
from her crotch coursed through her dangling body bringing white hot torment
to the splintered bones and bitter woe from her broken ribs.

The bloody abrasion of her raw flesh was protracted until her tormentor's
arousal returned, and splashes of cold, salt water washed over her, announcing
that the pain was not over yet. He wore a different harness, brimming with
stiff bristles, but first slowly cranked the rails back to their original
position, dragging her through another slow carousel of frenzied agonies.

He drove the hooks through her nipples again, and pulled them savagely,
stretching the flesh mercilessly before wrapping a thin strip of sharkskin
around them, so that pulling back and forth would scrape both stretched pieces
of feminine flesh. With a leer on his gnarly visage, he thrust into her vagina
while pulling on the strip with both hands.

Kayleen's body arched in a scream too desperate for the stone walls to
contain, a scream whose despair visibly shook her trembling friend nearby. The
thin strip was causing unimaginable agonies as it ripped bits of stretched
fresh from Kayleen's nipples, while the bristles were proving even more
hellish than iron spikes as they scraped into existing cuts and wounds, and
both of them made her convulse in wretched agony which was multiplied manifold
by the jarring thus inflicted on her fractured and splintered bones.

Although the angle was not completely favorable, the old man's consummate
ability meant that the strip slipped only a few times, allowing him to keep up
her defilement. When the raw flesh had been ripped off her nipples to such an
extent that further scraping would have torn them off, he moved to her
clitoris. He used a pair of pliers to pull the bleeding piece of feminine
flesh, stretching it along the bent needle still piercing it, and wrapping it
in a thin strip of sharkskin he could pull. Her mind cleared suddenly just in
time to see the strip close on her bleeding piece of feminine flesh.

He cranked the rails to bring her hips up and make the operation somewhat less
cumbersome, although he was in no hurry and wished to protract the penetration
of her bleeding vagina, thrusting mightily with the obvious intent to tear the
abraded wounds apart some more. Slowly and awkwardly, he rubbed the sharkskin
strip on the shredded tatters of her femininity while she howled like a
demented animal, arching spasmodically as far as his manhood allowed and
buckling madly around its bristled caress while splinters of white bone, red
with blood, jutted from her twitching limbs and heaving ribcage.

The old man was now exhausted, and it was a tribute to the heightened
effectiveness of the drugs and potions he used that he could still manage to
prepare her for the customary change of pace from raging torture to protracted
torment. The rails were reclined until about half way and a thick wooden wedge
soaked with gleaming liquid was brought against her sphincter. The base was
set firmly, and then the rails were further reclined until most of her weight
concentrated on the wedge, which started stretching the rosette of her anus
while she shook gasping and arching a in a desperate howl.

When cold, salt water splashed her she writhed in a jerk of spasmodic torment,
and more followed as they repeatedly drenched her with the liquid which
usually left her shuddering from cold, but now burned the countless abrasions
of her skin like raging fire. She could not help but slide a few inches along
the hacked, splintered surface of the wooden pole. Lyral healed her briefly.

Just as the torches were carried away, plunging her in the darkness she had
experienced countless times, she realized that the wood had been soaked with
some caustic whose concentration increased along its length, because the rim
of her sphincter twitched in atrocious pain as it slid down the pole.

With a bitter scream, she pushed spasmodically on her broken limbs, trashing
in the effort to pull away from the caustic fire. Somehow her spectacular
muscles managed to gain one or two inches, while her head arched in a howl of
desperate agony which echoed in the darkness, reaching a motionless standing
corpse whose hands rose in the dark, as if to welcome the scream and the
others which followed, sparse at first and then increasingly desperate.

Even under ordinary circumstances, Kayleen would have had to exert herself to
keep from sliding down the pole and spare the atrocious burning touch of the
caustic soaking the wood. With her bones broken, after protracted tortures,
she nonetheless managed to pull away repeatedly, at the price of atrocious
frenzies of screaming agony which could not hide the fact that each time she
slid a bit further down. The pole burned her bowels mercilessly, and the
sphincter rubbed on its girth each time her muscles faltered.

Slowly losing the battle with the pole she slid further down inch by inch, her
hoarse screaming a veritable music to the ears of the motionless corpse. The
darkness at least spared her the sight of the splinters of the broken bones
jutting out from her twitching muscles, a sight which somehow had made her
torture more revolting and was now haunting her sanity.

Because of her own screams, she failed to hear the return of her tormentors,
but managed to pull herself up along the pole when torchlight shone on her
twitching, bleeding body. Lyral gasped at the horrid wounds cut by the broken
bones through Kayleen's flesh, and was allowed to heal her for a while.

The Easterner brought a brazier closer, inspecting the tools heating therein.
His face was even more impenetrable than usual, but his hand closed on the
handle of a thin rod brimming with tiny curved hooks. Kayleen's bitter sob
turned into a low scream from the agony in her broken ribs, but she had seen
the brazier, and her mind shriveled at the recollection. Fire, again. Rape and
fire, fire and rape, how could the gods deny her the slightest respite
stammered her lips trembling in terror.

He hesitated a bit before picking up a copper roller with a double row of
curved hooks and dragging it along Kayleen's bleeding thigh. The hooks sizzled
against the raw flesh, torn violently by her spasmodic jerk of howling pain.
The roller did not stop, following the twitching limb howl after howl as it
snapped against the protrusions it lay on, deformed by the broken bones
bulging under the taut muscles. Kayleen's head jerked left and right as the
frenzy of screams merged into a protracted howl of bitter despair.

Another roller traced a sizzling path through the abraded flesh of her leg and
her jerks increased when the hooks descended along the foot and ripped bits of
flesh from the crushed, deformed toes. Protracted, desperate howls wracked her
body, making it flail between the protrusions holding it against the twin
rails which had become the only support for her twitching limbs.

The roller was dragged up and down between her broken fingers, wrenching
horrid screams from her gaping mouth whenever the hooks caught against
splinters jutting through the twitching flesh. Her eyes glazed over when pain
became so overwhelming that her vision drowned in a wave of white hot agony.

The roller slowly traced a path of mad screaming through her other thigh,
making her buckle and twitch her pelvis as it wrought sizzling agonies across
the raw flesh exposed under the abraded skin. Hoarse screams punctuated its
course as spasmodic jerks rattled her dislocated hips and tore the splintered
bones inside the twitching muscles. Something within her turned at the sight.

The hooked rod was placed against her sphincter, so that each time the roller
ran down her other leg her jerks caused repeated contact with the red hot
hooks, ripping bits of flesh from the torn muscle, the sizzling noise lost
amidst her harrowing screams. The rod was seated in a stout coal brazier, and
repeatedly cranked deeper in, half an inch deeper each time, and the path of
the roller wrought wretched jerks of abysmal torment through her broken body,
ripping more twitching bits of flesh from her raked, seared bowels.

The cold water she was splashed with barely managed to bring her mind back
from the hell of uninterrupted torment she was being dragged through, although
in a place deep within her soul she was still herself enough to thank the
powers of good because it was not salt water this time. The syrupy taste in
her mouth was expected, just as the jolt of stark pain it brought, but she was
surprised by the realization that her tormentor was troubled.

White lances of searing pain surged from her toes when the red hot hooked
roller was dragged through the mangled flesh, causing her to rake her bowels
on the hooked rod in frenzies of howling agony, but her mind was still clear
enough from the syrup to feel his hand tremble. Days and days of unimaginable
torture had left her deeply aware of the slightest nuances in her tormentors
attitude, she realized in a flash before pain wracked her into another scream.

The roller climbed across her belly, making her howl in wretched torment as
the soft flesh was caught and ripped in tiny sizzling bits while the rod was
so deep inside her rectum that she bent it with her jerks. Lyral was brought
forth to heal her before it was extracted, cruelly twisting it around while
she howled and jerked in abysmal torment, made worse by the sudden wave of
awareness resulting from another casting of the willpower spell.

The accursed roller sizzled across her ribs, ripping through the undersides of
her generous globes while she arched in demented pain and screams pitiful
enough to scrape soot from the stones echoed under the vaults of the chamber.
Her trembling muscles still jarred the splintered bones of her limbs back and
forth, and the rails had been reclined slightly so that her own weight spread
her thighs and pulled on her dislocated hip joints and broken pubic bone.

Another hooked rod, with much longer hooks, was fetched from the brazier, and
her eyes bulged when it sought the torn rim of her vagina. The roller was
raked up her ribcage and across her mauled breasts, making her arch
spasmodically in a screaming effort to pull from the fiery rolling points,
only to fall back with her full weight on her broken pubic bone scraped by the
sizzling hooks with a harrowing scream of wretched agony.

Her tormentor caught her amidst an insane scream, raking the roller upwards
through her other breast to induce her into arching again, and she trembled in
the spasmodic effort before falling down screaming on the red hot hooks again.
As the torture was continued, the roller caught on her broken ribs repeatedly,
but as the rod was brought deeper up inside her the frenzies during which
abraded flesh was ripped from inside her lengthened, as exhaustion made her
trembling efforts to escape the sizzling raking of the rod harder and harder.

When the roller started raking her arms, her efforts were further curtailed as
her tormentor ran it counter her twitching muscles, making her arch in long
howls of demented agony which cut short her efforts to lift herself off the
sizzling hooks. Deviously, he waited until she had managed to pull herself up
somewhat before tracing its searing path of burning agony, so she repeatedly
screamed harrowingly as her jerks raked the spiked rod up and down her
innards. Lyral had to heal her often, but this just made her pain worse.

"I reckon it is time to use the Hand of Agony," hissed Zhorun, pointing at a
copper tool which had been left in the brazier. Somewhat reluctantly, the
Easterner picked up the copper device, which had been fashioned after a
six-fingered skeletal hand, clawed and brimming with curved red hot hooks.

When the device was dragged along her left arm, the articulated fingers caught
the smallest cuts and abrasions of the skin and ripped them in sizzling bits,
alternating between tearing and cutting mercilessly while the pain made her
twitching muscles jerk spasmodically in frenzies of demented howling.

Somewhat hampered by his heavy gloves, her tormentor closed the claws of the
device around her left breast, deforming it in a cone as they tightened on the
abraded flesh and raked it while she howled in unbridled agony from the
sizzling hooks. She had been brought from almost full health to the brink of
death, and Lyral's power had been perverted into another instrument of her
torment, but the utter anguish which burst from her mouth when her tormentor
pulled the claws and started twisting them was beyond comparison.

Droplets of blood squirted from her scraped globe as bits of ripped flesh
sizzled on the wicked red hot hooks, while the claws dug horrid lacerated
gashes through her once voluptuous mammary. Her mouth was open wide, almost
near dislocation, in a teetering howl of demented woe which rose and dropped
along all notes on the scale of agony. Her head shook left and right in rhythm
with the shredding of her breast, and blood frothed at the corners of her
mouth when her voice cracked from pain too inhuman to withstand.

During this frenzy of shredding pain she had not been spared the agony of the
splintered bones piercing twitching muscles, nor the raking of her innards by
the fiendish rod, and once the jug was emptied in her mouth these returned
foremost in her mind as white hot lances of pain wracked her mercilessly, just
as she connected the sudden bursts of awareness with Zhorun's gestures. The
memory of how to recognize wizardly casting returned to her for a moment
before a wave of pain surged from her cracked ribs.

Unthinkable agonies wracked her when the device was heated again and used on
her other arm, wrenching horrid screams from her frothing mouth, caused like
before as much from the scraping itself as from the agony her jerks wrought
through the broken bones and the relentless torment of the fiendish rod. She
shuddered pitifully when Lyral was brought forth for some healing, screaming
hoarsely her despair at the agonies that would follow.

The device was moved to her buttocks, and she arched in a frenzy of spasmodic
torment while the hooks sizzled across her wounds, digging into the abraded
flesh, and bloody splinters of bone widened the gashes in her disfigured
thighs and forearms. Her screams never stopped, except when the device needed
to be heated again, and the shredding of her flesh continued mercilessly.

The taste of syrup in her mouth broke the sequel of howls crowding her throat
into sputtering and coughing, and her teary eyes bulged when they recognized
the sizzling claws about to close onto her other breast. Her scream of terror
turned into a demented howl of wretched agony as the hooks ripped across her
abraded flesh, left and right, searing and tearing while she jerked like a
mad doll in the throes of unspeakable woe.

The Hand was heated several times, and her breast repeatedly shredded into a
twitching globe of atrocious pain, dragging her through agonies whose equal
she had seldom experienced even since being brought here. At the bottom of
this descent into deeper hells, the six-fingered hand awaited her, and she saw
it through teary eyes just before its caress clawed gashes of flashing pain
across her chest, with the red hot hooks catching onto the splinters of her
broken ribs and tearing through flesh abraded by the sharkskin.

The rod was removed from her vagina, twisting it back and forth while the
rails were cranked to a reclined position, and then the claws descended
across her belly while she arched in abysmal pain, and raked her mons leaving
sizzling lacerations before shredding her labia. Lyral had been brought forth
to heal her, but the torment was continued while the healing took place and
the red hot claws tore bits of sizzling flesh from her labia and clitoris,
still impaled on the needle wedged in her pubic bone.

Her mind cleared suddenly just as the device was folded and pushed inside her
rectum, making her arch in a howl of demented pain and twitch in screaming
agony while it was turned left and right mercilessly. She shuddered when it
was slowly pulled out to be heated again, wishing she could die before it was
used again, and more screams followed when the torture was repeated. Lyral had
to be brought forth soon to stop the bleeding of her shredded bowels.

Her mouth burst in another horrid scream when the sizzling claws distended the
rim of her vagina, and she howled pitifully when the device was twisted left
and right, raking her shredded innards while her blood bubbled on the hot
metal. Her eyes almost popped from her head when the device was extracted,
ripping shreds of her love channel in a twitching frenzy of howling jerks.

"An adequate performance, Chang. Do it again," hissed Zhorun, the image of the
torments of ages past revived before his empty eye sockets. Kayleen's screams
rose quickly as the device entered her torn orifice amidst sizzling hisses and
spasmodic jerks of hideous agony, and continued while the torture was repeated
until even the repeated casting of Shandra's spell could only return awareness
to her eyes for moments too short to satisfy Zhorun's malevolence.

Lyral was brought forth, shaking in bitter sobs, to heal her dying friend, and
the thought of letting her die rather than protracting her agonies must have
crossed her mind, and probably not for the first time. Kayleen's lips tried to
form a prayer, but only wheezing screams burst through. She realized that they
were preparing her to suffer alone again, and when a wooden wedge distended
the torn rim of her vagina she tried hard to find the words for a prayer.

Exhausted as she was, she immediately slid down and felt the caustic burning
the stretched flesh, and when the first bucket of cold salt water made her
writhe in screaming agony her mind lost the words she was cobbling together to
pray. More buckets following, making her howl as the salt burned the abraded
skin while the cold would leave her shivering, unable to stand still enough to
reduce the agonies whatever predicament she was left in would exact from her.

Still unaware of Zhorun's presence, she squirmed on the wedge distending her
vagina, screaming when a splinter lodged in the bleeding raw flesh. Even the
splinters had been thoroughly soaked in caustic and burned like hot needles,
but she found herself forced to push on them with her aching muscles to spare
the stretched rim of her vagina the relentless burning touch of the girth of
the wedge her weight rested on.

Unlike the pole she had suffered upon before, this one was impossibly thick,
roughly triangular in section and literally brimming with splinters, and the
thought of sliding down was horrid enough to spur her into frantic efforts in
spite of her dwindling strength. Her screams echoed repeatedly in the darkness
of the unlit torture chamber, and a deeper horror tinged them as she realized
that she could not hope to reach a point where the girth of the wedge would
halt her descent, because the caustic was strong enough to eat away flesh and
expose new raw tissue to the hellish torment.

This realization, however, only made the occurrence more harrowing, as her
waning endurance could not prevent her from slowly and agonizingly sliding
down, the rim of her vagina being slowly burned away on the hellish wedge and
continuously distended to face more hellish agonies. Zhorun almost purred at
the inventiveness of his predecessors while Kayleen's screams of desperate
agony filled the eerie void of his undead soul.

In spite of the light brought by the torches, Kayleen's eyes remained closed,
as if she didn't want to contemplate the bloody swath of pulsating raw flesh
and splintered bones hanging between the twin rails which had been her fine
warrior's body. When a voice echoed in the chamber, however, her chest rose in
a sob of despair which her broken ribs turned into a desperate scream.

"I'm back, Whore Queen. You missed me, I bet," laughed the old Southerner.

He cranked the rails, reclining them until she was halfway vertical, and then
dribbled her gouged breasts with the contents of a jug. She jerked and howled
in wretched pain as the thick brine burned her abrasions and cuts, seeping
mercilessly in her wounds while his leather sheathed member nudged her
sphincter. The leather had been smeared with irritant and rubbed in sand, but
he lingered while she buckled like a rag doll, her limbs snapping as the
splintered bones reopened the wounds in her twitching muscles.

When he saw her cracked lips form a coughing "No", he grabbed her ribs and
drove into her with rabid lust, holding fast against the subsequent frenzy of
demented buckling while the sand raked her abraded bowels, allowing the paste
to sting the raw flesh like the kiss of hell's flames. Her jerks and twitches
wrought horrid torments through her jarred bones, and her violator thrust into
her with vicious abandon while her mind was rattled by yet another horrid
defilement, unable to react, unable to escape.

The violation was protracted with lewd persistence, shattering her meager
hopes that his endurance could have a limit which drugs and magic could not
overcome. His congested complexion and bulging eyes suggested an impending
stroke, but he pulled from her only to crank the rails until her head was low
enough to invade it with his manhood, almost dislocating her jaw while she
sputtered on the mix of paste, semen and her own blood.

His hands reached for another jug, and the smell of bleach reached her
nostrils just before pain engulfed her arms, washing blood from the splinters
piercing her muscles and fully exposing the gleaming white streaks which
fanned untold agonies into the slightest jerk of her nightmare. She gurgled
and gasped in a frenzy of muffled pain, but this only made her tormentor
continue the aspersion of her twitching flesh with the strong bleach. When he
splashed her with cold, salt water, it almost proved a relief.

When his member hardened again, he smeared it with the irritant paste and
cranked the rails so that he could slid it between her breasts, which he
proceeded to wrap with knotted twine soaked in a caustic which burned like
liquid fire. Her mouth trembled in howls of bitter agony as the twine was
tightened with devious cruelty while he thrust his manhood back and forth,
scraping her globes with the bristled leather and making her arch in demented
agony from the twine cutting across the abraded, gouged flesh.

She sputtered as her mouth was filled with syrup, but the bleach she could
smell was forthcoming and did not spare her belly and ribcage, and after a
while he took a liking to her desperate buckling and pushed his flaccid member
in her vagina, using the bleach to make her turn left and right on the
bristled intruder in a frenzy of demented screams. He continued this torment
until his arousal returned, at which point he smeared her insides with a
strong astringent before thrusting into her with vicious abandon.

Unable to stop screaming, unable to escape the whirling waves of agony and
defilement heaped upon her, Kayleen jerked spasmodically in the throes of
unspeakable pain while her mind sought some place to curl up and hide from all
these horrors. Her defiler produced a pair of needles and used them to weave
knotted twine through the flesh of her labia, lingering inside her while she
shook in abysmal pain as the knots ripped through the raw flesh.

After wrapping the ends of the twines around her abraded clitoris, still
impaled on the needle lodged in her pubic bone, he started pulling their ends
left and right, making her twist and arch in demented torment with little or
no respite given, buckling and screaming as the twine tightened the abraded
flesh against the bristled intruder and the caustic it was soaked with seeped
in the scraped feminine flesh with each jerk and thrust, burning and stinging
mercilessly yet again what had become the seat of her worst nightmares.

He took some drug in the meantime, something which rekindled his arousal
as he reveled inside her, pressing her innards against the pulled twines while
the shearing of her femininity continued among her tormentor's mad laughs of
perverted triumph. She hoped that it would stop, and it would not, it got
worse as he kept pulling on the twines. She prayed that he would tire, but he
increased his thrusting as if possessed by a lust from the pits of hell
itself. She prayed that she would die, but he continued jarring her pain
wracked body for an unbelievable length of time while she was consumed by
frenzies of hapless screaming and arched in spasmodic agony.

After making her drink from the jug again, he invaded her sphincter. He had
used the astringent liberally, but replacing the bristles with spikes meant
that her own blood soon provided the lubrication her desperate howls
desperately begged for. He did not protract this violation for long, and had
Lyral brought forth to heal the worst wounds. He then brought forth a large
container of liquid, whose funnel he inserted in her rectum which he then
proceeded to fill with astringent and sew shut while she howled in mad pain.

He started cranking the liquid inside her and her eyes bulged while she arched
in sudden fear. The torment mounted with each crank as the liquid seeped into
every available nook and cranny, finding more abrasions and wounds to sting as
pressure increased. She could not believe that such pain could last for so
long and still get worse over time, but as her jerks snapped new splinters in
her broken bones even such remnants of coherent thought were washed away.

She shook herself as the syrup mixed with froth in her poor mouth, dimly aware
that Lyral had healed her a bit and sputtering as the liquid made, as always,
the pain worse. She had been allowed to empty her bowels, which still burned
enough to keep her screaming for a week, and no sooner did she take a breath
than her tormentor thrust into her rectum, this time after coating the leather
with irritant paste mixed with gross sand. Awareness flashed through her mind
again, and she was now aware that magic was being used.

She howled in demented pain when his hands caught her ribs and pulled down her
pain wracked body against his invading member, thrust with vicious abandon up
her bowels in drug-induced lust. The gruesome violation dragged her down
depths of frenzied torment made worse by the invasion of liquid agony she had
just endured, and the protracted rasping from the hellish sand slowly brought
her near the edge of pain-induced insanity.

She continued screaming even after the violation stopped, trembling from the
agony seared deep in her bowels by the brutal scraping with the sand and
sputtering as the contents of the jug were poured in her mouth. Of the many
torments heaped on her orifices, scraping wounded raw flesh with sand was
possibly the worst, even worse than the spikes, because blood made it worse as
the grains stuck and continued to inflict pain.

His flaccid member entered her mouth, and somehow in a deep recess of her mind
she still managed to rage against the violation, as if it had not been part of
what he liked to perpetrate on her for days, as if she could prevent him from
doing as he pleased. She vaguely remembered the agony wracking her bones as
the rails were cranked into position, and she saw as if through murky water
her own body shivering and arching as some caustic liquid was dribbled over
her abraded limbs to pleasure his member with her gurgling screams.

The clear liquid seeped in the innumerable abrasions before starting to hiss
and sizzle faintly, causing exquisite frenzies of spasmodic howling which his
expert hand could mold by varying the amount of liquid poured and the speed at
which it left the vial. He fully intended to make it last, drop by drop, but
he could not help but indulge in the sight of how her pierced clitoris
twitched on the impaling needle when the liquid caught hold, and so he often
returned to the raw nub of feminine flesh, savoring how her gurgling screams
bubbled in mounting despair around his throbbing manhood.

To continue the torment he would have had to call upon Lyral's healing, so he
shifted his ministrations to her stretched nipples instead, which twitched
almost as deliciously and brought similar pleasure from her harrowing screams
of wretched woe. Besides, even ordinary abraded flesh provided enough pleasure
when it curled and sizzled under the caustic, so he managed to protract the
torture until he could feel his member harden again in drug-induced lust.

Kayleen burst in a scream when he popped out, and continued as the liquid kept
burning her mercilessly, pausing only when awareness returned to her just
before he started cranking the rails up, enough to lower her crotch to drive
into it with vicious strength. His hands clawed her poor breasts, grabbing the
mauled flesh to pull her brutally onto his member, making her howl in demented
pain as the gross sand inflicted gruesome torments on the raw walls of her
love channel. The nightmarish violation was protracted through a row of cruel
pauses, which he introduced whenever he saw hope in her eyes just to savor her
despair when he suddenly thrust into her again, ripping the cuts around the
rim of her vagina open some more while she arched in screaming despair.

When the excruciating defilement finally stopped, she thought for a moment
that her prayers had been heard, but then she caught her tormentor preparing
another container of foul liquid. How could she be brave before the horror
about to be perpetrated on her she did not know, but somehow the words of a
prayer formed in her mind as the Southerner pushed a funnel into her bleeding
vagina and brutally stitched her torn labia around the funnel in spite of her
mindless attempts to oppose him.

When the liquid was allowed to flow, a burst of searing agony coursed through
her reclined body as the caustic liquid inflamed her insides mercilessly,
engulfing the shredded strands of torn flesh in a wave of relentless torment.
Her mouth opened in a howl so anguished that the voice broke as her ribs
cracked and only wheezing screams followed in its wake, harrowing phantoms of
agonies too atrocious to contain and which continued their assault as more
liquid was poured inside her. Lost in horrors beyond the boundaries of sanity,
she looked at the clanking rails, wondering how they could withstand her
protracted frenzies of mindless buckling or the rabid jerks which pushed
splinters of bleeding bone through the knotted muscles.

The liquid continued to flow while her agonies mounted, even after Lyral was
briefly brought forth to heal her, and her screams continued to echo under the
vaults of the torture chamber while her innards were slowly filled with the
agonizing concoction. She lost count of how many screams wracked her until the
liquid started gushing out from the cuts of her stitched labia, too mauled to
be sealed tight even if he had attempted it. As awareness flashed through her
mind again, she realized while the pain increased that this had never been the
intent anyway, because the caustic bursting through the cuts in her labia was
one of the few means of pain that could possibly increase her agonies beyond
the point they already stood, as her desperate howls testified.

The funnel was removed from inside her and the opening stitched with knotted
twine, then the rails were slowly cranked, her twitching body suspended
between them, quivering in screaming pain as her weight shifted from one
fracture to another. Over the journey, she realized that the liquid inside her
was increasingly pressing down against her stitched flesh, seeping through the
cuts and bursting them painfully as it burned its way out while at the same
time soaking the twine which held the tatters of her flesh in place.

Before Zhorun's eyes, Kayleen's body started buckling spasmodically as the
horrid torment of the caustic pouring through her stitched vagina made her
arch and scream in harrowing pain, repeatedly making bloody splinters of her
broken bones snap through her twitching flesh at the rhyme of screams and
howls from the Bone Dance resurfaced from times of ancient malevolence.

Review_This_Story || Email Author: Synon55


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