*** In the past ***
The young slip of a girl that was known as Elena Martyr was busy trailing behind her mistress, her long brown skirts getting in the way of her feet.
All around her, there were cages and cages and cages again. They were terrifying, because there were people in there. She could hear them moan, plead, beg, cry, scream.
Her heart palpitating painfully in her chest, the young girl got closer to her mistress - a refined, beautiful and petite middle-aged woman, who looked completely unfazed by her dismal surroundings. The lady wore a sophisticated red and golden corset upon which rested her inquisitorial rosette and the symbol of the Ordo Malleus.
" You see, Elena, that's what happens to your kind when it does not behave like a good little pup. I want you to take a long, good look at them. "
Elena didn't want to do that, but Lady Maria's words were laws in her mind. The young girl shivered and got closer to a cage, her dark, voidborn eyes not needing much light to guess at what was inside.
Inside the cage was what she supposed to be a young boy, somewhat her age. His head was bald, and he had no hair on his face. He was handcuffed to the bars of his cage with a long leash, so as to not escape the device he was in.
Elena contemplated the device for a few minutes, trying to make sense of it. It was composed of two panels, carved for a human shape, and it was covered in very thin and small needles. They were everywhere, except on the face. The boy was laid into that, unmoving and unflinching, tears in his eyes. Droplets of blood were falling to the ground.
" Psykers are dangerous, child. Fear, pain, anger, love, desire, all those feelings, if not controlled and curbed, may provoke a breach in their psyche. This attracts the daemons lurking in the unholy warp like flies to honey. There is nothing more terrible than a daemon incursion in realspace, child. Only one of your kind could bring in the doom of thousands of lives should they ever slip or lose control."
Lady Maria had stopped, her hands clasped in her back, glancing approvingly at the young boy in the cage.
" That is why we have to test you and determine how resilient your mind is. It is unfortunate, but your resistance to torture will be most decisive in your future affectations. Those that cannot endure pain…cannot be allowed to live. This one is made of a fine material. See how he uses his psykana to dissociate himself from pain ? You will learn that technique. Torture brings physical and psychological pain. Your extraordinary abilities make you able to subside and even ignore the physical effects of it…for a while. In time, though, Elena…everyone breaks. You have to learn how to delay that moment as much as possible. "
Lady Maria took a key hanging from her belt, and opened the cage next to the boy's one. Inside, there was the same device.
A sense of profound dread took hold of Elena's intestines, twisting her stomach painfully. She felt tears of fear tingling in her eyes - and she bit her lips so as to not show her fear.
Noticing her reaction, Lady Maria smiled kindly. Did Elena imagine it, or was there even a glimmer of compassion in her brown eyes ? Maybe she'd just imagine it, but she would hold on to that thought. Lady Maria loved her. She needed to believe that.
" It is normal to feel fear, Elena. Fear is a biological reaction made to help humanity survive. However, fear weakens your aggressivity and resilience. Dissociate from its physical effects. They will not help you there. Here is my little tip for you : do not get afraid. Get angry. Inner rage, when controlled, will drive you to overcome all obstacles. Now, Elena, come on in."
Trying not to cry, Elena went into the cage with a thank you on her lips. *****
– The present –
– Commorragh, Tervantias's lab -
When she was younger, Elena learnt that resilience to torture underwent five stages.
First, there was denial. Then anger. Bargaining. Depression. And finally, acceptance : that was when everything that was you broke, until you're just a sack of meat and tubes made out of pain and fear.
The trick was to delay all stages as long as possible. If you were lucky, at one point, torture would end. Either if people came in to rescue you - or if you were able to finally die at one point of the process.
But the drukhari that had abducted her were no amateurs. They would not kill you by mistake. And Elena didn't plan to die anyway. So that option was out the windows.
That left only the 'rescue' option open.
None would have believed that that would happen in a place like Comorragh.
And yet….
Elena knew it would. She just had to hold on until then.
****** FIRST STAGE : DENIAL ******
Yes, she would be rescued in time.
So, when Marazai captured her, then shoved a freaking maggot through her eye and into her brain, then tried to make her dance to his tune in his trial, she did not back down. She did not break. Through pain and fear, she clenched her teeth and denied it all, not letting the illusion cloud her judgment.
She watched with a wicked smile as Marazai was condemned to the arena.
She stilled her heart when Yrliet revealed herself to have hidden her agenda and arranged the meeting with the drukhari.
But afterwards….what came afterwards…
Oh, she didn't smile anymore.
She was back in the cage. Her captors grabbed her by the arms to pull her up, her head throbbing with pain as the maggot inside her skull grew, its toxins released in her system.
She put up a fight then, suddenly, with no screams at all. She was quickly beat down.
They laid her down on a vivisection table. She was naked. The cold was the last worry on her mind right now.
A drukhari with arms like that of a spider inclined himself towards her. She was powerless. At least physically. The toxins in her brain made her will harder to focus.
The spider traced her sanctioning runes with a curious, clinal claw.
" Interesting. We'll see if those runes hold only a symbolic hold."
The peeling and flaying was long and awful.
But Elena knew how to endure it.
Her will was hard to focus, but she invoked it. She let her mind float away from her body, dissociating from the pain. She could go into the past, into the future, her psykana unflinching.
She could deny it all.
She came back to her senses, still on the table. The burning screech of pain made her vomit, and she nearly drowned into her own fluids as her mouth was constricted with a strange device that wouldn't let her speak.
Sighing, the drukhari slashed her cheeks open and the vomit escaped from there. The pain and the shock made her scream in rage - a strangled sound around the choke collar.
" So you try to escape through using your powers. So do your companions. The interesting thing, mon-keigh, is this - no one can escape from me. I have tamed psychics far more powerful than you will ever be. In fact, I am most amused by the intellectual process that consists in determining how to turn what you think of as your risible gifts against yourself. I will not inflict pain on you you cannot resist, because I have to keep that for later - but I will make you destroy yourself from the inside. If you are fortunate, this will happen before the mind maggot does exactly that. "
The drukhari was laying out her skin patiently on a line above her, as if there were purity seals made out of her own flesh. In the process of peeling the skin over her skull, he had ripped off her blond hair that was now filled with blood.
He made a sign to his minions and she was dragged back to the cage.
****** SECOND STAGE : ANGER *****
She would be rescued in time. In fact, she would even be the one doing the rescuing. Her retinue needed her help. The Expanse needed her. The thought was enough to make her persistent, to turn her fear into rage.
She was in a shitty place right now. Quite literally. The ground of her cage was oozing with piss and shit from predecessors. The person that had been sharing the cage with her was dead. It was certainly the best for him. Sadly, her captors didn't deem necessary to clean out the litter and she was faced with two options : either lay down on the ground and sleep in dead body's juices and excrement, or try to sleep against the bars of the cage - barbed and spiked bars, of course, making it impossible to sleep or not hurt yourself in the process.
Where the drukhari had flayed her sanctioning runes, her exposed flesh was slowly getting infected from the lack of tending. In fact, after she fell unconscious in her cage on her belly, her right arm started gangrening.
She thought about the Nurgle-infested Black Ship then. What did those ghosts say ? Let Decay come in ? Father Nurgle would erase the pain ?
She was trembling from fever and disease.
" No," she said. " You won't have me."
There were other people in the adjacent cages. Most of them had fallen in a deep mutism, those still relatively new crying softly.
Her heart was heavy in her chest from witnessing so much pointless suffering.
She looked at her right arm and saw white maggots feeding on her muscles. She went blank for a few seconds.
She needed to cut that off if she wanted to live. Otherwise, she wouldn't make it until the rescue.
" The rescue ", she said. " Need to hold on until the rescue."
Someone laughed at that, but she was too absorbed by her wounds to care.
She looked for a cutting instrument. There was always so much cutting involved in this place, yet she couldn't find a knife in her own cage. She looked at her neighbor - a giant man, with red mane, busy eating on something. Yes, he had a pocket knife, she was sure of it.
" Give me your knife", she ordered.
The man barely glanced at her. " What for ? So that you can end your life ? I don't think so." His words were like rumbling thunder in the storm.
" I won't end myself. I will just cut out my arm."
" That seems like it's your problem. Not mine," replied the man, unfazed. He turned his back on her.
She turned her face to the other side.
" Kunrad, " she said. " Give me your knife."
Kunrad was laying against the bars, arms crossed, a satisfied smile on his lips as he was watching her lose her mind. He was unharmed by the wires and cutting edges of the cage.
" I am not in a position to help you, sadly, dear sister of mine," he purred, eyeing her with curiosity. " You have ignored the shard of sword I gave you. Thus you deserve not to have a knife. "
She groaned. " You worthless piece of scum", she said. " Fine, I will do it all by myself then. I don't need any of you !"
Neither Kunrad nor the red-haired giant said anything.
She went to the dead man's body. If she was going to cut off her arm, she needed a tourniquet. Otherwise she'll bleed out. She cracked first the bone of the wrists, extracting the fragment of bone to use as a scooping device as she dug into the man's belly, spreading its content to the floor. The smell made her vomit.
" You're a resilient slip of a girl, aren't you, Elena ?" said Theodora as she leant over her shoulders.
She shivered as she heard her name for the first time in a long time. Yes, yes, she was Elena. Elena von Valancius. Rogue Trader. That was her. But that wasn't important anymore, was it ?
" You have what it takes to be my heiress. You certainly don't lack courage nor resolve."
" Why, thank you, Theodora," she replied. " I really appreciate you taking the time to say that to me."
No one answered her.
" I don't get afraid", whispered Elena, twisting the intestine's chord and testing its strength. The fiber was resistant enough. After all, they made rackets and stuff out of pig's intestines. Why would the human's one be less solid ?
She wrapped the disgusting thing above her right elbow, cold sweat getting in her eyes, forcing her to blink.
" I get angry," she sighed. Once the tourniquet was fit enough over her arm, she turned to the barbed and razored wires over the bars.
When she was done cutting her own arm off, the red-haired giant deigned to look back at her.
His voice like thunder, slightly appreciative, slithered inside her feverish mind as she fell into blackness :
" You certainly don't lack the will to survive, mortal. Either you are completely mad, or a hero ! "
Yes, she would live through that.
She would live as long as was needed to be rescued.
******* THIRD STAGE : BARGAINING *********
She just needed to hold on a little more. Just a little more. Then she'd get rescued ultimately. She'd seen it. She knew it. That would happen, right ? Her visions were not misleading her ? Surely not. Surely not.
Her captors dragged her to another stage. There was a man. He was in a sarcophagus of sorts, filled with needles and barbs coated in blood and fluid.
The man should have been dead by now, but his wounds seemed to be closing up as she gazed - in envy, to be honest.
The man looked like someone she knew.
" Heinrix ? " her voice sounded more like a hiccup than anything else. Her vocal chords were too strained from screaming on and on and on and on.
" Doesn't look like your pretty spy-boy has got long to live," commented Kunrad, kneeling by her side. His four eyes flickered with something like compassion. It was disturbing.
" Fuck you, Kunrad," she gurgled.
He smiled back and drew her attention towards Heinrix. He was in the box, the human shaped box. Like the boy in Scholastia Psykana ! Yes, yes, she was back to Lady Maria, at least !
But her hopes were crushed when a vulgar drukhari seized her by the chin and lifted her face up from the ground.
" Scream for him, plaything," ordered the drukhari.
" Don't hurt him. Please. I'll do anything ", she said.
The drukhari looked at her scornfully and let her fall on the ground. " Anything ?" he mused. " Not that you have much left to offer. Maybe we shall cut out your other arm as well ? You dared mutilate yourself in the absence of any right to do so. You are ours, plaything. You do not harm yourself without our express agreement."
She yelped helplessly, trembling. Something in her mind stirred. She didn't want Heinrix to see her like that. His bloodied face didn't seem to focus on her for the moment.
" I'll cut off my other arm if you want to," she offered. " Please let him be. Let me speak to him. "
The fever made her delirious. Has she always been so weak and pathetic ?
Lady Maria sighed with deception in the background, just above her shoulders. " All that for a mere man. You are more weak minded than I thought. Girl, we ought to control them and use them. They're merely tools. Do not let yourself be fooled by your mediocre feelings. "
" Elena ?" gurgled the man in the sarcophagus. His hoarse voice was barely audible.
" Heinrix ! " she cried out.
Their calls to each other seemed to please the drukhari, whose smile extended as his eyes roamed from one to another.
" The plaything said she would do anything so we could stop hurting you", said the drukhari to Heinrix, approaching. " What shall we do to her, I wonder ? I have so many ideas."
Heinrix shivered and tried to break free from his prison, howling like a beast. His screams made Elena's heart bleed and break. He didn't even sound like himself. He managed to let loose one arm, the tubes and needles creating a geyser of blood.
" Stop it, Heinrix, you're killing yourself," pleaded Elena.
Heinrix screamed of rage, trying helplessly to grab the drukhari with his free arm. The beast laughed wickedly and put on a choke collar over his mouth, shutting him up.
The tormentor went to her side. " Open your mouth, plaything," he ordered. " Obey, or we shall close up this thing on the mon-keigh."
She did what she was told, trembling like a child, awaiting whatever horror the drukhari was going to unleash upon her. She was surprised when she felt the hot splash of urine fill her mouth then face.
She gagged and nearly threw up, but the drukhari lifted a vicious finger at her.
" Keep it in or I'll disembowel the mon-keigh in front of you."
She forced herself to breathe through her nose, the acrid taste and smell overwhelming her. She did not think she was going to be able to bear that. The humiliation made her weep silently. She caught Heinrix eyes widening with fury, looking at her from the other side of the sarcophagus.
As she was drowning in drukhari's piss, battered and humiliated to the last fiber of her being, she found herself thinking that she loved him. She wished she was a telepath, so that he could hear her words. She wished she could speak, but she barely dared move.
Heinrix lashed out once more, wriggling inside his box, trying to get out. The show of despair made the drukhari laugh in delight and clapped his hands like a child discovering a new toy at Sanguinalia.
Sadly, she couldn't keep it in anymore. The thing burned in her throat. She threw up, crying all the while.
" That's too bad," commented the drukhari.
She watched as he closed the iron maiden over Heinrix's once more.
His screams stayed with her as they went to torture her afterwards. Was it weird that she found comfort in them ?
******* FOURTH STAGE : DEPRESSION **********
Once the drukharis found out that they could use Heinrix and Elena to torture each other, they had some fun for a while, twisting their minds and bodies for their own depraved pleasure.
Her mind was scrambled. Fortunately Kunrad was here with her, talking her through. She found that being in his company relieved her from the torture.
Back in the cage.
Would she be rescued, truly ? Would it happen ? She found herself doubting that more and more everyday.
What broke Elena Martyr, eventually, and as Terventias predicted, was her own powers.
She had always been good with divination. She had used it time and time again to dissociate from her body. Alternating between past and future had enabled her to ignore part of the pain, to evade. And she'd always been good at psychometry.
Which meant she could relive memories and feelings of objects and people.
Terventias had deemed it interesting to make her relive the torture he inflicted upon other subjects. And so her cage had been filled with fresh bodies. So she could live through all their torment.
Where did her soul begin and theirs end ?
Fleeing from it in her mind was useless.
" Lord Captain", said a voice.
Back in the cage.
Laying on the dead bodies, unrecognizable, she looked through the bars. A woman with brown skin was looking at her. A silvery device was screwed inside her head crudely. Her eyes seemed blank - but not totally empty of thought.
" Elena."
She'd been calling for her for sometime, she realized. But she didn't have the strength to move. Everything hurt. She was catatonic. She could not even speak anymore. They had dismantled her mind.
It seemed to her that the woman calling her wiped a tear, shaking with emotions.
" Elena, please don't breach, don't fall.. Please hold on. Here. Take this. I stole that for you. "
She said nothing until the ghost of a woman she had known went away.
" A traitor to her kind," grumbled the thunderous voice in the cage next to her. " A servant of the Dark Ones. Yet she helped you, the madwoman. And called you Lord Captain. I wonder why…? "
" She is not a traitor. She is merely lost. You don't seem in a good position to judge, Everlost ", Elena said with her mind, or maybe with her words, or maybe with her eyes, which she had only two of, contrarily to Kunrad currently watching over her.
The giant spoke after that, his thunderous voice shaking her bones, but she ignored him.
The woman had left something for her.
A cup of clean water.
She drank it in one go and it made her feel human again, for a split second.
She would never be rescued from that hell.
********** FIFTH STAGE : ACCEPTANCE ******
She was nothing and could not even remember being in a different place and time.
She was the shit on the ground the drukhari walked over.
She was meat and tubes, made for pain.
Her mind ? A fucking mess, a helpless tool. Using psychometry to torture her had unravelled her completely. All the threads of her identity, all the things that held her together vanished, one after the other. Maybe she'd been that mother who saw her child being torn apart. Maybe she was that woman watching the man she loved shoved in an iron maiden. Maybe she was the child, the mother, the lover, the woman, the man and the tormentor all at once. Soon Chaos would use her as a puppet. Only a strong sense of mental conditioning did not permit her to call for help, to ask Decay to come for her. She was going to break at the gentlest push now. Decay could come for her, smother her, embrace her, help her bear through the suffering. She was close to accepting her fate now.
She was brought once more to Tervantias. The drukhari had been busy. A human had been split open, forming a blood eagle. Red fabric hung over his arms. Instead of bones and flesh, he was made out of metal and machinery, his exposed ribcage silvery and shimmery in the green light - it was almost beautiful. She watched dreamily as Terventias inserted some xeno mechanisms inside the man's organs. Dark spidery things, cruel things, replacing a heart, a valve, a tube, a cog. It looked painful, and the poor man's vox inducer went static with his screams, but… at least it wasn't her.
She searched her eidetic and perfect memory for the man's name. Alas, she couldn't find it. Abel, perhaps ?
The xenos turned his attention to her after a while. She'd just waited patiently for her turn. She just hoped she wasn't getting the blood eagle. She couldn't take it.
He glanced at her with barely one look.
There was only one thread holding her together. A sense of something. Something she ought to do. It was fading away. Something important… but not anymore.
She was going to break and she accepted it.
" You are nothing anymore, mon-keigh. I doubt you could even try to provoke a disjunction. "
She was going to break any second now. Just another push…she waited for it. For the big moment. The exact second her soul would give in and shatter. She was on the verge of the wave, waiting for it to crash her down with what was almost exhilaration now.
" Throw it away. This one's empty ", said the drukhari, getting completely disinterested in her. He turned his back to her, not caring anymore about her. The man in the red robe seemed much more satisfying to him.
She barely understood whatever that meant. Her lips trembled. She wished to cry. Were her screams not good enough ? Wasn't she going to be given the last push she needed to justify unfolding completely ?
She was dragged down again, and someone said :
" I'll take care of that, master."
" See that you do, mon-keigh."
The same woman that had been giving her water came into view, leaning over her. It seemed difficult for her to speak or focus, as if she was struggling with an exterior power. She sweated profusely.
" You… can't stay here, Lord Captain, but…maybe you'll survive down there. You're not dead yet, Elena."
The woman rinsed her face with a wet cloth, compassion and kindness in her eyes. " You saved me once. Now I pay you back." She lifted her from the floor, dragging her under her arms. " If you make it, Elena, please come for us. Don't forget us. I…we need you." The woman sobbed miserably as she pushed her down a tunnel of some sort.
She fell.
She was going to break…
But it hadn't happened.
She was not broken. She'll survive dismantled.
Notes:
And here we go again ! Commoragh has been in my mind for so long, I am so excited to bring to you whatever horrible things I have come up with !
Should you wish to take a look at the recap of Tapestry of Fate, you can go read the last chapter which summarizes all the work here : /works/49280683/chapters/136869100
Finally, I would like to thank Skolas for picturing our two Elenas (from chapter 26 of ToF I) :
See you soon :)