The Shield of Sentiment

Uetum shot forward at Demidicus’s back.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Demidicus taunted without looking. With his free hand, he made a sharp gesture. The shadow chains around Helartha tightened, and she cried out in pain. “I am merely disciplining a failed subordinate. If you interfere, however, this disciplinary action becomes a public execution. And then poor Helartha’s death will be on your conscience, not mine.”

Uetum froze mid-lunge, her claws extended, her face a mask of pure, impotent rage. She was trapped. She couldn’t save Helartha without getting her killed.

With one last smile of victory, Demidicus pulled the dark elf into the depths and created a whirling portal of shadow behind him, leaving Uetum alone in the empty, silent room.

The shadow portal closed behind them,

The room was a perfect, smooth cube of antiseptic white stone, lit by an unseen, shadowless light. There was only a single black iron chair, anchored to the center of the floor.

Demidicus stood over her. The game was over. The experiment was about to begin.

Tears of terror and pain streamed down Helartha’s face.

All her composure, all her pride as a spymaster, was gone. “Please, my lord,” she sobbed, scrambling backward on the floor. “Demidicus, please, don’t hurt me. I was wrong. I was scared. I’m sorry! I’ll tell you everything, I swear!”

“Oh, I know you’re sorry,” Demidicus said, circling her slowly like a shark.

“But you are not sorry for failing. You are sorry you got caught.” He stopped in front of her, looking down with utter contempt.

“And you were scared. Scared that your precious little plan to free your family from the mines would be ruined.”

He knelt down, his face inches from hers. “You see? That is your fundamental flaw. You are hobbled by sentiment. This grand, noble quest for your people… It is a pathetic, exploitable weakness. And it has made you a liability.”

From her cheek, his fingers traveled to her forehead. Smoky, black tendrils slithered from his fingertips and pierced into her ears and eyes. Helartha's thoughts was filled with a deep, violating sting, and she shouted.

It was the sensation of having her whole being—every memory, every secret, every worry, every priceless idea of her family—forcefully torn apart, scrutinized, and categorized by someone else.

When he finished, he got up, leaving her on the floor of the white room as a broken, crying wreck.

"Now, now... we haven't report yet..."

The sterile white room dissolved into a vortex of screaming shadows.

Helartha felt herself being dragged through an abyss of cold nothingness before being violently thrown onto the hard, blighted earth of Yarte’s throne room.

She landed in a heap at the foot of the skeletal throne, trembling and disoriented.

Demidicus stepped out of the portal behind her. Lord Yarte looked down from his throne, the white fires in his eyes pulsating slowly.

“Well?” the lich lord rumbled.

“Our spymaster is more resilient than I anticipated, my lord,” Demidicus reported, his voice tight with a barely concealed anger. He looked down at the terrified dark elf with contempt. “I checked her memory, and it is clear she hides many things from us.”

He paused, choosing his next words carefully to mask the full extent of his failure. “I attempted to extract the information directly, but her mind is a fortress. Her psychic protection wards are of an ancient and potent design. I could not break them.”

Helartha kept her head bowed, her body shaking, but a tiny spark of defiance lived within her terror.

He had tried to violate her mind, but her training, her very will to protect her people and Anna’s secret, had held firm.

“However,” Demidicus continued, a cruel smirk returning to his face, “the effort was not entirely fruitless. While I could not access her deeper secrets, I could sense that she is repeating the same word over and over again... It is ‘Saint Anna.’”

The name ‘Saint Anna’ hung in the air like a death sentence. Yarte’s burning gaze fell upon Helartha.

“Please, my lord, I’m sorry!” she cried,  “I saw… I saw things I didn’t understand! I was scared! Please, don’t kill me! I don’t want to die, please… I just think she could actually saved my kind... That's the meaning... Yes! That's it!"

But Lord Yarte’s patience had run its course. His cold fury was absolute.

A tool that kept its own secrets was a defective tool, and defective tools were to be discarded.

He raised his skeletal hand, the air crackling as a sphere of soul-destroying, negative energy began to form in his palm. Demidicus watched with a detached interest.

“Let her go, nyaa!”

The voice was a sharp, angry squeak. Uetum suddenly shot forward. Before Yarte’s spell could fully form, a brilliant, blinding portal of pure, holy golden light—the very antithesis of Yarte’s domain—erupted between the lich and the terrified dark elf.

Uetum didn’t hesitate. She grabbed Helartha’s arm, pulling the stunned spymaster to her feet.

“Let’s run, nyaa!!!” she yelled, and dragged Helartha with her into the incandescent gateway.

The portal snapped shut again as quickly as it came.