The woman in the fine clothes was tied to a chair in her cell, Nannade sat on a crate before her. She was still licking the wounds from her foolish attempt to save Gracia; the cut may have been sealed shut with magic, but the wound still needed to properly heal. Every step hurt and Nannade’s body was too far into the healing process to help along with magic. The woman was still uncooperative, but Nannade would make her change her mind soon. She had shed all semblance of pity. Not just because her ilk had killed Gracia. Ssil had given her to understand something; Nannade was the priestess and caretaker of the temple, but guidance still was the serpent's. If the priestess refused to fulfil the rituals and duties that came with the title, the serpent would not descend to her any longer. That included casting her spells as demanded as well as other things. The key to power through deities is attunement, and the girl had refused exactly that. Without attunement, the two of them were only scared lonely beings, fighting for their individual survival, bound to the same body, but not united in dance.

“I really don’t like torturing people.” Nannade said. “But I also really need some info on your pals and your plans. Your actions call for punishment, and that is my function, but reward is also something I can grant you.”

The woman merely continued to scowl at her.

“So, here’s how this is going to go down.” Nannade pulled a tiny flask out of her pocket. She had filled it with the venom she could squeeze from her hollow fangs. “I’m going to give you a tiny drop of this into your veins, and if you still feel like resisting, you’ll let me now, alright?”

Nannade dipped one of her claws into the yellowish clear liquid, then she stung the woman’s finger with it. It was a tiny prick, just to get the claw under the skin and the venom into the blood stream. The woman started to grunt, and as Nannade sat in front of her, watching her struggle against her bindings, it got worse, and it showed. Her finger started to swell, her face was bright red, tears ran down her face. The wood of the chair started to creak and click under her struggle. Her grunts and moans turned into gagged screams and cries.

Nannade did not just watch and sit idly by however. She was writing everything down in her notebook. She knew worryingly little about the serpent’s gifts and needed to learn their true potential, and so she wrote down everything she could recognize about the effect of the venom on the woman. The way her head swayed, the way sweat pooled on her forehead, the way her eyes darted and twitched around, the way drool dripped out from the corner of her mouth, the way spasms and cramps surged through her body.

The experiments continued. Nannade repeatedly administered tiny doses of the venom on different parts of the woman’s body and occasionally helped her body heal as far as she could. The damage the poison did was slow and distributed, so magic itself helped little, but she made sure her source of information would not escape her into death. As the day went on, Nannade could see that the woman developed abrasions where the rope rubbed against her skin and the gag started to get bloody. The woman’s cries had become delirious, but with every fresh dose, she was jolted awake again by a new form of pain. Nannade tried to distract her conscience with meticulous documentation of the entire process. Eventually, the woman passed out from pain and exhaustion. Nannade made sure she was stable before leaving her back in her cell. Experimentation would continue the next morning. Nannade had replaced the transmuted grate with a wooden door made from crates back in the storage houses, so she would not waste valuable flux and time just removing and restoring the grate every day.

When Nannade approached the cell the next morning, she could hear the woman scampering inside before even opening the door. When she entered the cell, the woman was cowering in the corner, attempting to crawl into the furnace to escape, whimpering at the sight of Nannade. With her hands around her head, the woman begged Nannade.

“No, please! I’ll be good, I’ll tell you everything, everything!”

No mercy for the wicked.

Another session of experiments began.

A quick death is a blessing. Make sure it is deserved.

Nannade had upped the dose and chose new body parts.

The defiant must dance the dance of venom.

The hands and soles of the feet seemed to be especially sensitive.

Brutality is crude; pain is graceful.

Nannade considered experimenting on a certain other sensitive area of the woman’s body.

Injury heals; Agony imprints.

The signs of repeated and long-term exposure started to show.

Truth has its price.

The woman tried to tell Nannade something, but it was not yet time to reap the fruits of her labour.

Pain and blood are valuable currency.

Nannade began to worry that the woman might not survive much more.

Do not turn away from what you must do.

She looked into the woman’s pleading eyes and saw success.

Let nothing escape your gaze.

Nannade left the woman conscious this time. She would return in the morning, but before that, she had to experiment on something else; she had mastered the stick, but it was meaningless without the carrot.

The third day arrived. The woman had bruises and lesions all over her body from her own struggle against the venom and the ropes.

“Today is the day you will tell me everything.”

The woman nodded hastily with a desperate smile on her face.

Nannade held up a piece of paper. “On this is a spell that will purge the venom from your veins. It took me some time to properly develop, even with your help. I shall use it to clear your head from the pain when I need you to speak clearly. So, back with you on the chair.”

When the woman realized what Nannade was about to do, she screamed in agony without a single drop of venom touching her yet.

Tied to the chair, the woman started to babble out every secret she could apparently remember, but Nannade put the gag in, then moved closer to her.

“I already know quite a bit, so don’t think I won’t be able to tell if you’re lying to me. And when I do, the pain will remind you of the difference between truth and lie. Do you understand?”

The woman nodded, with tears in her eyes.

Nannade had stopped feeling sorry for her. The venom might have been in the woman’s body, but it had killed something within the girl’s mind.

The priestess started the ritual once more.