More Ythfas
The room did not look like one might expect a torture chamber to look. It was not dank, nor musty. The light from the crystal chandelier overhead was bright and clear, not dim and flickering. The walls were white marble, unadorned with trophies or manacles. Where one might have expected a dirt floor, or at the very least, a stone one strewn with straw and rat droppings, perhaps spattered with bloodstains, this one was immaculately clean, lined with ceramic tile.
There were no rats at all in the Tower of Secrets.
But perhaps the most marked difference between this room and a more traditional torture chamber was not in its appearance at all - it was the noise. It was, in fact, rather quiet. The victim now secured to the steel table in the room’s center was not screaming. Only a soft whimper could be heard from the balding priest. There was the gentle “plip” of the priest’s last toe splashing into the jar of grain alcohol. The soft hiss as the hot needle was applied to the priests’s foot where the toe had just been severed to stop the bleeding.
Winterlock wedged the wide cork lid into the jar’s mouth, and handed it to his master. Ythfas swirled the toe in the clear fluid, watching the thin tendril of blood from its severed end trail off and dissipate. He set it down on the table next to the priest’s face. The priest tried not to look Just as he’d tried not to look at the other nine toes, each in a separate jar arranged abut his head. But, as usual, his unparalyzed eyes were drawn to it, and they widened.
“You know,” Ythfas began casually, his voice deep and soothing and his tone utterly without malice, as if discussing the weather, “There are those that would laugh at using a pain-killing drug during interrogation. They would say that the pain would help convince you to talk.”
The warlock turned his back to the victim, still speaking as he dipped a long glass tube into a flask of rosy water, stirring with a delicate clinking sound. “But I would disagree. I’m not a fan of needless pain, you see.”
He turned back to the priest, his thumb at the top end of the glass tube, a carefully measured portion of the pinkish water suspended at the other end. His mouth had the barest hint of a smile. “And though the drug in this tube is incredible expensive, the look on your face when you see for the first time just what it is we’ve cut away from you... well, that look is priceless. The surprise, the horror, the grim realization that a little piece of you is gone forever, and you did not even feel it pass away.”
The priest whimpered again, his eyes pleading, but his mouth sealed tight.
“Come now, you must open your mouth. If you don’t get a new dose, you’ll start to feel what Winterlock is about to do to you. I’m sure you don’t want that, do you?”
Reluctantly, the priest’s lips parted, and Ythfas aimed the tube into his mouth, releasing his thumb to let the drug slide down. He smiled pleasantly. “There you go. Doesn’t it taste wonderful? Already you can feel the faraway throb of agony retreating. The drug works so quickly. And while your mouth is open, perhaps you can answer my question: Where is Altena?”
The priest closed his mouth again, shifting his eyes away.
Ythfas sighed. “That’s a shame. A man can live a fairly normal life without toes. I only had those severed to give you a prelude of what comes next. But if you wish to continue this, I have a good supply of this drug on hand, and you can be shown just how many bits a man can lose, and still survive to carry my message back to his masters.”
The warlock nodded toward the end of the table, and the priest again struggled to lift his head to see what was to be done to him. Again, he failed. “Wait!” he cried.
“Yes?” Ythfas’s tone was merely curious, not at all urgent.
“You will let me go if I tell you what I know?”
The warlock shrugged, “Why should I not? You were merely doing your job, trying to plant evidence here in the vicinity of my tower. The true criminal is the man who sent you. The one who is even now plotting to have my Shadowguard killed. But of course... there may not be much of you to set free if you refuse to tell me what I need to know.”
The priest swallowed hard, a new hope in his eyes. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“Have I lied to you yet?”
A loud hiss, and a puff of steam rose from the table to linger at the chandelier.
“Please, stop, I’ll talk! Your paladin is defending Southwatch Post! Horde reinforcements are marching there to arrive in two days. When they get there, during the battle, a new private just transferred in will accidentally put a crossbow bolt through her skull. That’s all I know!”
Ythfas nodded, and accepted a jar from Winterlock, he swirled it in view of the priest, watching the two bloody walnut-sized objects orbit one another in the clear fluid.
The warlock smiled almost sadly, “It’s a pity you did not speak faster, priest. But, there are many orphans to adopt in Stormwind, after all.”
It was then that the priest let loose his first scream.
Ythfas waited paitently for the man to run out of breath, then continued, “You will stay with us for a few days, so that your body can heal and this plot can be thwarted. Then you will go back to your patriarch and tell him to think very carefully before meddling in the affairs of Eclipsed Sun, or threatening one of its own.”
Ythfas sat at the small stone table under the gallows tree, the whisper of its leaves rustling in the summer breeze blended with the work-song of the slaves as they gathered the first harvest of grapes from the new vineyard. He sipped from a cold glass of lemonade, smiling over the rim at the young girl across from him.
“Father, it’s a silly tradition.” The beads in Ishkoodah’s hair rattled as she tossed her head indignantly.
The warlock set his glass down and folded his hands on the table, still the picture of calm, despite his daughter’s outburst. “I’m sorry, but this is your fifteenth Summer, and now that the Scourge have been beaten back, I’m out of excuses. You must have your First Dance.”
The girl threw up her hands, “But I already know all of your friends, what’s the point of going to all the expense of a ball?”
“The point, my dear is not for you to meet my friends, but the friends of my friends, their family, youth closer to your age. In bygone years, offers would be made for marriage at a girl’s First Dance. I don’t expect that to happen now, but still...” his voice grew softer, more concerned, “It’s not good that you spend so much time alone.”
The girl crossed her arms in front of her. “I’m never alone, father, you know that.”
“The spirits, comforting and helpful though they may be, are not proper company. And besides, all of your training in etiquette will be for nothing if you don’t attend a formal event now and again.”
“Mother thinks that’s a waste of time anyway,” she shot back.
“She told you this?”
The girl turned bright red. “No. She laughed at me when I was walking around the main hall with a book on my head.”
The man chuckled, “Well then, she is excused from attending. But you, my daughter, are not.”