To Harodiah, it felt like all of her bones were crackling and twisting in unnatural shapes, her joints bending in impossible directions. Her muscles and sinews screeched with agony as if they were being hyperextended, tearing themselves apart. Her skin was splitting open, stretched too far and unable to yield any longer. She desperately wished she could scream, but her diaphragm was frozen so she couldn't summon the breath. The torturous agony felt like her body was being reworked and remolded like clay by some titanic hand…
Only it didn't feel like that at all…
It felt a hundred times worse.
But if someone had asked her to describe it that would have been the only description she might be able to give, because if one wasn't a psychic, one could never understand. How could she describe to someone that it was her mind, her psychic powers that were being reshaped. But they were as much a visceral part of her as muscles, tendons, and bones were to anyone else. As Gaius' psychic power flooded around her, penetrating her, filling her, it pushed the matrixes of her psychic powers around like arranging a child's building blocks, or assembling a circuit board. Like twisting and gnarling someone's body into some physically impossible contortion without the benefit of anesthetics.
Suddenly the fire in her nerves was gone and the world snapped back into place around her. She reeled drunkenly, falling to the cold concrete floor painfully, sprawling out spread-eagle, face first in a most undignified fashion. After a few seconds, Harodiah pulled herself up into a kneeling position, her forehead pressed against the frigid floor. Her breath was like a ragged panting with muffled sobs she couldn't withhold from giving voice. She desperately wished to hide any sign of weakness from him.
Gaius walked to the small table in the corner of her cell, filling his wineglass from the bottle there. It, along with a narrow wardrobe and her Spartan bed were the only furnishings in the room. He gulped down the wine, quenching the thirst that was parching his throat from the effort and concentration of wielding his powers. He ran his fingers through his sweat-drenched hair as he refilled it again. He plucked at his shirt of royal purple, plastered to his body and soaked with his sweat, despite the chill of the room. In the months after the final battle with the Orks, he had moved his headquarters deep into the STC facility itself, hundreds of feet underground. It was always cold down there, but Gaius was willing to put up with it. He needed the seclusion right now for his…"projects".
"Get up," He commanded with a wave of his hand. "We're almost finished."
Tears streamed down her face as Harodiah slowly lifted herself up, wavering severely, "That's…two sessions today…" She managed between gasps for breath. Catching his stern look she added, "…master."
"Are you saying you can't take anymore?" He asked after swallowing down the second glass of wine.
Harodiah's blood went cold, knowing the intimation behind his words. The Inquisitor had given her a choice, those months ago. He could tear her mind to pieces and turn her into a Penitent, a slavering slave and psychic lightning rod like Helvia and Vispasia had been. However, he thought that was a terrible waste of her innate psychic talent. Her other option was far more difficult, more painful, to have her psychic powers channeled and bound. She would become an Acolyte, an Inquisitor in training, her psychic power channeled into Gaius to increase his own formidable powers until she was ready to become an Inquisitor herself.
If she could survive the torturous process…
She leaned against the wall, resting her head against it, hoping to quell the dizziness and nausea. She wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her crimson and white vestments tight against her skin. Harodiah still wore her habit from the Order of Saint Celestine instead of a new uniform of the Inquisition. She assumed it was because it amused Gaius at some level, a reminder of his victory over Magdalena in securing her. Her mind felt as though it had been fractured, then glued back together piece by piece…but into a new shape….a shape that didn't quite seem to fit inside her head…a shape that was not yet complete, with pieces yet to be set into place. The metaphorical glue wasn't yet dry, and each crack throbbed with intense pain. Picking herself up off the wall, she wearily replied, "I am ready, master."
