A week had gone past. Anakin did not know what was real and what was not. He knew that he was alive but it did not feel like that. This was because he was hurting so much from his broken up shoulders and hips that he wanted to die but he could not move enough to kill himself.

He thought there was motion. The bindings that held him dropped him hard onto the slimy floor. Now he could move but it hurt so bad that he stayed there and his face was pressed into the floor. It smelled like rotten things and he coughed.

"There you are." Said the woman who had come in. She was tall and thin. Her skin was gray and had tattoos all over it in pictures of leaves and vines and flowers and thorns and there were a lot of colors. She did not have hair but she wore a mass of colored tentacels on her head instead. Her eyes were yellow with red and green centers and then they went all red and yellow when she looked down at him. She wore a long flowing robe that was alive. It clung to her body to show that even for a yuuzhan vong she was shapely. She would have been pretty if she did not have slash mark scars on her arms and her tattoos. But the yuuzhan vong thought she was beautiful. Anakin did not think so because he was still thinking like a jedi.

She stood near him and kicked him in his ribs. He shouted and she leaned down. She covered his mouth with her hand. It was not a people hand but a shaper hand that had eight fingers made of different tools. Most of them were sharp and and one of them cut his upper lip. Red blood trickled down. It dripped off his chin and made a puddle on the floor.

"Do not speak jeedai," she said. "Or I will put you back in the embrace of pain for another week."

In that time he did not eat or drink anything. There were ropes in the room. The ropes had sharp needles on them that stabbed into him and gave him water and poisons that made him sick. But the poisons had enough food in them that he would not starve.

Anakin tried to shake his head. She pushed his face back into the floor hard. "If you think that was bad then you will wish it was what you have. Because we will do worse things to you. You are a heretic. You are a jeedai. That means that death is too good for you. We will not let you die now because you do not deserve it. Maybe if you are good and be our slave for a very long time then you can die."

Another shaper came in. it was another girl. She used her fingers like razors. She shaved off all of Anakin's hair. Then he was naked and bald and feeling cold. Both the shapers leered at him. "what do we have planned for the jeedai Mistress Klarissa?" the second shaper asked.

"well we will have to implant him with the vong bladder. But we will do that tomorrow. For now we will put the cross through him and bring in the slitherer."

The second shaper girl brought in two long spikes. They were as wide as anakin's thumb. She pierced his mid section with it. He cried out and felt another pain. There was another spike crossing the first one inside him. They set the spikes up high so that he was suspended by them.

Another spike was in the Klarissa Kwaad's hands. She dropped it on the floor. It was more like a long tentacel. It moved and wrapped around Anakin's legs. It left a trail of oozy water over him. It slid between his legs and over his stomach and his back and again and again.

He had to talk. "Don't leave me here," he said. "I will do what you say if you take me down."

"We make the rules now jeedai," she said and then they walked away from him out of the room. They laughed and Anakin cried until he was too tired.