WARNING, this chapter deals with extreme aspects of torture.
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Cold, bone chilling agonizing cold. The kind that sets the body trembling violently. Catha awoke to the cold. Shaking, she realized that she was restrained upon an icy metal surface.
Her wrists and ankles restrained by more freezing cold metal straps. Cold and in darkness. She could hear sounds, a thumping bass drumbeat, loud rhythmic squelching sounds. Erratic unidentifiable noises.
Catha realized, something was in her mouth, forced into her throat. It was causing her to try and vomit unsuccessfully, keeping her in a perpetual state of gagging. It was when she tried to scream that she realized that something was stopping her. She could only make Choking whimpering sounds.
This was her perception in the first moment awakening. Things remained that way for an unknowable time. Minutes, hours, days, she had no way of knowing.
After some time, long enough for the shaking and continual retching to become a new normal. Catha began to think, to try and assess her situation, her surroundings. It took some experimenting with what limited movement and controls she had. She noticed that the echoing bass thump sound was in synch with her heart beat. The odd loud squelching was the sound of her skin, freezing to the metal and being torn away by her convulsive shaking. In short, all of the sources of sound came from her. Struggling to concentrate Catha could not discern any other sounds.
Another period of time passed. Catha learned to isolate her noises from her surroundings. There was nothing. So far, she had no idea what or why or where or who. Why was she here, like this? Searching her memories, her last thoughts before waking here had been the security chief and her assigned guards informing her of her parents death.
In the back ground warning sirens sounded, piercing ululating wails bespoke an attack under way. Distant crumping sounds, bright flashes of multi colored light. The scent and taste of panic, terror on the air. The guards were trying to get her somewhere safe.
Evidently there had been no such place. It did not take much thought to connect the dots. The source and cause of the attack could only be the Fomor. They had struck her lakeside palace roughly the same time that her parents had been attacked at the peace meeting. Nodens would not leave her here, captured and tormented. They would be coming for her. Fiery vengeance would be forth coming.
That was what she kept telling herself, a mantra she repeated in her mind over and over. It became her only source of hope. After awhile she did notice that she had not gotten thirsty or hungry. Surely she could not have been here that long.
The second thought added to the mantra, it won’t be long. Catha tried to relax, she could not convince her body to respond to her will. Which, was odd. Aos Sidhe have extensive conscious control of their body usually. Catha could only slow her heart beat for a few beats then it went back to panicked racing.
It sank in that she had no control over even her own body. That induced panic. She struggled , arching her back up away from the metal surface was the extent of movement she had. Her head was restrained by something, she had no idea what, only that she could not move her head. Then again, with no frame of reference how coud she know? How could she know where her eyes strained against the dark to look? Which direction? She could not even know if her eyes were were open or closed. This further disturbed her.
Catha lay on that surface, tears flowing. She could feel them tracing their way down her cheeks. Eventually the tears built up enough to run into her ears. So, her head was facing up. If up existed.
What could they want with her? Her parents dead, she held no significance or authority other than her biology. Images and thoughts began playing through her mind. She was imagining them doing experiments.
That thought was terror of another stripe. Now her trembling was from other things. Fear, was she in a laboratory? Were they observing her. Fear of the unknown arose.
Catha now existed in continual cycles of fear. Time passed, Catha lay there alone in the dark. Her new consoling thought was that it couldn’t get any worse. She had no understanding of what was awaiting her.
At some point Catha slept. While she slept her nightmare driven world morphed and mutated. Things with great slavering green ooze encrusted snouts chased her through her dreams. Now and again one would grab her ankle tearing into it. After a few dream cycles Catha could no longer tell if she were awake or in her dreams.
She began talking to her mother and father, her distant ancestors, praying to them. The Aos Sidhe knew no gods save themselves. Their ancestors are their deities. Aos Sidhe carry their gods within themselves. Within their very DNA lay the memories of all of their ancestors. Knowledge, wisdom that with learned techniques could be unlocked.
Catha lay in her nightmarish state desperately praying, seeking her ancestors through prayer and blood. She had managed to chafe her wrists. Working them until she felt a wetness flow across her wrists. Catha sought blood covenant. Rescue and revenge. She would find who ever was behind this and see them dead. Slowly.
Bright! Nerve burning brightness. Everything a brightness. It hurt. Even with eyes closed she couldn’t escape the light. With the light came new pains. The cold had become a companion. This, this was a stranger burst in her house setting all ablaze. Catha could discern nothing save white light. The light brought new sensation. She could feel warmth building on her skin. The metal surface on which she was restrained began to warm up. It did not take long for Catha to wish, beg the gods, for the darkness. Evidently they had heard her prayers to free her from the darkness. This was their response. You cannot trust the gods to do or be anything other than their personal agendas which they serve. Ours, mean nothing. The gods also, have a perverse sense of humor and a twisted honor. They have integrity only within their agendas.
The heat from the table became painfully uncomfortable. The roasting of her skin had raised blisters. Catha knew this because she felt the wetness of the blisters bursting. She writhed. It could not be called agony, such sustained madness transcended mere agony.
Even with the apparatus down her throat, she screamed. Her screams did not echo. They faded. In between her choking screams, she felt the skin on her back sizzle, she could hear it. She was cooking. This continued. Catha passed into another place. She could feel every nerve ending screaming in pain. She felt her skin cooking. She could smell herself cooking, it smelled like burnt bacon. She could only hear her own screams. Through all of these sensations, Catha drifted.
She floated in a sea of exquisite agony. There must be a word in some language to describe the feeling. The soul wrenching intensity. The heart breaking awareness that she was alone. Her tormenters gave no indication of their existence beyond turning on the light.
Catha now floated on that sea of despair, loneliness, pain. She prayed, if the gods would not give her back the darkness, she begged them to let her drown in this sea of horrors. Again, there was nothing to mark the time. Catha could have been burning for seconds or weeks. She had no concept of duration. The only thing she knew, was fire. First had been the darkness and ice. Now was the light and fire. Slowly the consoling thought that this , would end her life at last, that she would find peace in the soothing embrace of death. Her universe became that thought. Her prayer and mantra wept for death for mercy for release.
The lights went out. The darkness fell like a black silken veil to sooth her. The burning faded. The cold began to creep in. This brought fresh new forms of agony. Every nerve ending had been on fire. Now the burn of ice began to creep in. It did not take long for Catha to scream in new pitch and pattern. The darkness and cold burned away at her soul in new ways. Despair, hopelessness, had passed into a realm of all devouring moths.
No emotion attached to the experience, only the unrelenting pain. Each time she reached that state of acceptance it would change. Once, the darkness remained while the metal beneath her grew hot and her traumatized nerves sizzled with the pain.when the light blazed and the metal grew cold Catha began laughing. The device forced down her throat tried to impede the laughter. It could not. As Catha convulsed with laughter, the thing was expelled. She felt it as it lay upon her throat. It registered as a new sensation to be remembered. Her laughter continued. A scent drifted on the air around her. Catha faded into oblivion. Unconscious, she found no relief.
The agonies replayed through her dreams. Without the thing in her throat, Catha could scream. Scream she did. She did not awaken. She lay unconscious locked within her dreams and screamed. Those screams composed a requiem for midnight, a requiem for terror, a requiem for fury, a requiem to define evil and madness.