Daniella dipped the cloth in the tin of varnish and carefully wiped it onto the heads of the nails that held the dolls against the wall. She had a step ladder with her to ensure that she could reach all of the dolls. She couldn't remember why the warnings had been nailed to the walls. Perhaps to remind Debilitas of the fate that came from running across the mat? He was fool enough to forget easily enough and although she hardly cared for his life, it would be a difficult task to clean up the mess had the warnings not been put into place.
Footsteps padded up to her and a sharp knife was placed against her throat. She could feel her neck tear against its serated edge but it was a faraway concern, much like ripping her dress would have been. A rough hand gripped her wrist, warm, foul, earthy breath blasted across her face.
Men. They smelled like pigs even when they were hardly adult.
"Where are they?" demanded Harry.
She paused, her hand reaching halfway up to one of the dolls. "I have a job to do, sir."
"And what job is that?"
"I must varnish the nails, sir." She reached up to wipe more varnish on a nail, carefully setting it into all of the grooves.
"I want my family."
She ignored him.
He uttered a short, primal snarl. "What is this room?"
Daniella turned her head a little towards him, pleased at how he hesitated, moving the knife a little away from her throat in fear of hurting her. And oh, how he looked afraid, with sweat leaking from his pores, his eyes red-rimmed and the space between nose and mouth covered in dried snot. "This is the doll room, sir."
"What are you going to do with my family?"
The thought of his family in the cells almost made her glad. She smiled a little, conjuring up the false sensation of joy to meet her intellectual desire. "Extraction ... Azoth ... perhaps?"
"My family don't know anything." His voice was shrill. "Look, you're going to help me release my parents. Now. This way." He walked her around the interior wall to where the trapped rug lay.
She could see the masks on the wall and knew the nails they would shoot and she wondered how many nails it would take to force her master to rebuild her. It was a shame that Harry would have to die for he might have held life in sufficient quantity to have life extracted from him, much as the Other One had.
The moment before her foot would touch the rug, she pulled her consciousness from all her limps and went slack in Harry's grip, sliding down, the knife grazing her throat and cheek, her arm twisting in Harry's grasp. She hit the rug face-first just as Harry stepped forward to stand beside her.
The nails shot forward, tearing through him with wet schlicking sounds. He slumped onto her, his hairy body leaking blood along with sweat, landing on her and soaking her dress with his still-warm fluids. Daniella pulled herself free and went over to switch off the trap. Then she went to fetch Debilitas to clean up the body, perhaps putting it in one of the many miniature furnaces or chopping it up to replenish their dwindling meat supplies.
Oh well. Daniella would soon have to venture into town and obtain more supplies. Perhaps she would be forced to go further afield and find some likely specimens, as well. It would be unpleasant to be forced to be with those who held within them what she lacked, whose very minds and souls were so weak, so stewed in their own filthy, they couldn't respect, much less understand, their very gift.
Much as Debilitas' early pawings back before he realised her resolute determination and incapacity to feel pain meant she would always win, always, proved that he was too filthy to deserve life, so did all of the cowed or abusive humans, simpering and whining and indulging themselves in the feebler emotions, show that they were unworthy. She would win out over them as well.
She made her way to the cells, passing the other moving dolls, chanting and beating their heads against the wall. They lacked a large enough fragment of Azoth to spread within the clay of their bodies, animating it with will alongside motion. Their portion was too small to be recaptured, dispersing the moment they were destroyed, as she had once discovered.
She picked up a pole that lay rested against the wall and turned to one of the clay monstrosities that had so hideously wasted a fragment that could have given her greater life, and beat it until it trembled, its limbs twitching in ways that suggested structural damage, one arm hanging from its body by a thread.
Then she turned back toward the cells and peered in at the still sleeping humans. It was unlikely that these specimens contained enough life to extract in a sufficient amount for her own higher awakening or for the immortality of the already awakened. They were unhealthy, impure, suitable for only making clay move.
And yet, the little girl seemed healthy enough as she slept. She seemed to almost glow. Daniella reached in between the bars and stroked her hair.
Soon, at least, Daniella would know for sure.
