"Torture is a highly inefficient tool for interrogation. More often than not, should you break someone from torture, you would just get someone who would say whatever they thought would please you in order to avoid more pain.

Because of this, information gleaned from torture must always be considered as suspect at best. A far better way would be to break a person down mentally, until they see you as their only friend in the world, and get them to confide this way.

This method however, does often take more time than what most have to spare, especially in the battlefields." - Fibuela Svensdöttír, Chief Interrogator for the Kingdom Down Under, Circa 287 FP.

"I will talk! Ask me anything! Anything! Just please don't hurt me anymore!" screamed the young noble the moment the Crown Prince's interrogator removed the cloth that gagged his mouth.

His terror seemed quite genuine, and the young man was crying as he screamed, with snot trailing from his nostrils, quite an indignified appearance to say the least. Even as the interrogator looked at him with a blank, baffled look the man broke down and sobbed loudly.

Reinhardt was present in the room, an underground chamber in the fort's dungeons that was clearly used as a torture room in the past. All sorts of torture implements dotted the walls of the room, a rather comprehensive selection that even made the royal interrogator the Crown Prince brought give an appreciative whistle.

The people gathered for the interrogation included Reinhardt, Elfriede, Barnaby, Grafs Harscape and McBaine, the Crown Prince - Aethelbald Stahlfaust, as he insisted that the commanders could drop some formalities with him - and the military commanders of the main force.

Most of them had come just to see some pain inflicted on the hated enemy - emotions had run quite high amongst the dwarves these last few days - but clearly none of them had expected to see the captive to give in before they even touched him.

"I'll speak! Please! Just please don't hurt me!" cried the young man tied to the chair once again.

"Feh!" the royal interrogator looked at the captive with evident disdain, before he spat to the side and left in disappointment. Most of the rest of the group gathered were surprised at the development, especially Graf Harscape who had dealt with a tough captive before.

"Very well," stated the Crown Prince calmly as he walked a little bit closer and lifted the young man's chin with one thick finger. "Let us start with the simpler questions first then. Who are you? And what is your position in Theodinaz?"

"F- Finch Larsen. I-I'm the third son of Count Larsen of Zefirous," said the young captive with a nervous stammer.

"So, Finch, why are you in the secret passage? Running from your duty? I thought your people would rather die than do that?" asked the Crown Prince once more, this time with more genuine curiosity in his voice.

"F-f-fuck that bullshit!" The captive yelled suddenly, his voice becoming animated for the first time. "I'm not like Leandra or those idiotic fools who lapped up the priest's words as if they're some sort of heavenly decree or something! I just want to live! Was that too much to ask for!?"

After the outburst, the Crown Prince gave the captive a moment to regain his wits. After a few minutes, the captive calmed down, and then he began answering their questions more calmly, like a man who already had nothing to lose.

Finch Larsen was as he said, the third son of the Count who ruled Zefirous. It turned out that he and his older siblings - the aforementioned Leandra and an older brother named Terrence, who was the heir - were sent southwards with a mission to buy time for the city to prepare itself against the invasion from Knallzog.

Terrence and Finch had prepared Fort Prydwen for resistance, while their sister Leandra - who was a far more zealous believer of the God-King than her brothers - had insisted on taking the fight to the enemies, and she had left to lead the gathered militia that were meant to buy time further south, near the abandoned Fort Ascher.

Leandra never returned from the south. All the reports they received from the survivors who trickled in said that she - as well as most of the gathered militia, all forty-five thousand or so, the able-bodied inhabitants of every village in southern Theodinaz - was dead.

The latest such report arrived a scant week ago, and gave Finch a headache. Without a commander, the overzealous priests had ordered a charge against the cornered invaders in Fort Ascher, which had only ended in mutual destruction.

It was at that time that Terrence took the eight thousand man garrison of Fort Prydwen and left to reinforce Zefirous, as he had judged that the smaller fort would stand no chance whatsoever against the dwarven main force headed their way.

That was a correct assesment, true, but it also meant Finch was left behind with only the fifteen hundred or so elderly volunteers who had resolved to give their lives if it could delay the enemy even a moment longer.

He did not want to die. With nearly ten thousand men, eight thousand of which were proper soldiers, they might have stood a chance to resist for a while. With what he was given? There was no chance whatsoever.

Finch knew his brother was just using the situation at hand to conveniently remove potential obstacles for his own future. His own siblings included. He had despaired until one of the elderly volunteers symphatized with him, and shown him the secret passage just before the attack commenced.

The old man had worked as a soldier in the fort's garrison for decades when he was younger, hence his knowledge of the passage. Finch had left along with his ten bodyguards, though they had not expected to be ambushed the moment they walked out of the passage.

He went on and rattled what he knew of Zefirous, including the troops there and the gates, before the gathered leaders left him to confer for a moment between themselves. Some of the information he had relayed were quite discouraging in nature, and they needed a moment to discuss about it.