text: I flew straight and fast to the Pit of Despair Prison; secrecy seemed pointless. I wore every defensive spell that Llred or Ythac or I could cast, and scribbled notes to Ythac constantly. Like, "Ghemel looks worse every time I fly over it. Xolgrohim's been ripping homes down and building factories and smelting plants." Not that I particularly needed the distraction, but if I got killed, best if Ythac knew what was going on for purposes of revenge.
  
  "I wish I could find out why that was," wrote Ythac. Information mages always hate not knowing things.
  
  "I'll ask him if I see him," I scribbled back.
  
  And there was the Pit of Despair Prison: a huge complex surrounded by thin walls of powdery stone pierced by several roads. There was a great deal of new construction, mostly in a ring around the Pit of Despair proper, and the air stank of iron and oil-smoke and chemicals, and the despair of hovens. The trap proper was nicely marked, with a big sign on a building saying "Welcome, Jyothky. This way to Tarcuna."
  
  The arrow pointed down into the pit.
  
  I circled the prison in the air, watching, thinking. Well, I could... Destroy all the surrounding buildings? And maybe kill Tarcuna if she's being kept there. Oh, and certainly kill lots of Xolgrohim's hoven pawns. Turn into something tiny and try to infiltrate? Silly at this point, and undignified. Ask Ythac? "Sorry, no good advice," was his answer.
  
  "I'm just going to follow the arrow and fly into the trap," I said. So I tried. Actually I had to land on a conveniently placed and non-dangerous ledge and climb down, since the pit wasn't big enough for much flapping of wings and I didn't want to use a levitation spell that anygod could swat away and tumble me inelegantly into the pit. They had conveniently installed a very solid wooden staircase, with heavy beams stuck out of the steel-clad walls of the pit, just big enough for me, so this was obviously part of Xolgrohim's plan.
  
  As I climbed down, I heard a tremendous grinding of gears from overhead. Three huge metal jaws were closing off the top of the Pit of Despair, snipping me off from the light of Virtuet. "I think I know what Xolgrohim has been foundering," I told Ythac.
  
  "Foundreying. Yes, it sounds that way. There's your trap, I guess."
  
  "Not much of a trap, if that's all. Those doors won't be a dozenth as hard to melt as Kuhankun Mountain," I wrote.
  
  "If that's all, yes," wrote Ythac. "Keep your nineteen senses up, OK?"
  
  "All of them? I am nibbling on the wall now. Yummy!" I wrote. I wasn't, and it wasn't.
  
  The spiral staircase took seven turns around. At the second turn, Tarcuna called up to me: "Jyothky! You came!"
  
  "Oh, hi, Tarcuna. Nice to see you!"
  
  "I was hoping you wouldn't, actually," she said.
  
  I strolled down the staircase, my tail thumping on the wall. "Oh? Got a better companion than an alien monster who mostly ignores you?"
  
  "No, I still love you. But I'm pretty sure this is a trap," she said.
  
  "Absolutely, it's a trap. Did you see the poster, and the doors closing?"
  
  Metal slammed against metal, twice, and hoofsteps tapped out on the pit's floor below. Someone shouted up, "I am afraid that, yes, it is a trap. Please don't be offended." The voice sounded half-familiar.
  
  "Xolgrohim, is that you?" I asked, and looked down. It was Murghal. Rather, it was Murghal's body, with a heavy sevenfold cable of bitter sorcery wrapped around it and trailing off into the distance, and tenasensitive signs of strain everywhere. "Or Murghal?"
  
  "Xolgrohim, using Murghal's body," he said, and I saw the cables twitch with each word. "Perhaps I could explain the conditions of the trap in a bit more detail, to start with, and thereby avoid or at least postpone unpleasantness?"
  
  "Nice little puppet you've got there," I said. The stairs ended thirty feet above the floor, so I leapt down to the middle of the clear half of the room. It wasn't safe, but its loud hiss of menace was all potential. Tarcuna ran over and hugged my foreleg, and I folded a wing around her protectively.
  
  "Well, the most important thing to remember about the trap is the walls. I know you could burn your way out of anything on Hove. But these walls are special. They are a sandwich. The outer layers are steel — enough steel, I believe, so that you cannot easily claw or bite your way through them; you will have to breathe. The inner layer is a very insidious sort of filling. It is ampoules of various chemicals. If you burn them, or pierce them, they will form any number of fearsome toxic vapors, which flood the pit. I am not sure if they will kill you or not, though they are quite strong. They will certainly kill Tarcuna," said Xolgrohim, in a smallish voice.
  
  "So I shouldn't grab Tarcuna and burn my way out of here," I said, and relayed Xolgrohim's words to Ythac.
  
  "Exactly! I knew you would be sensible!" he beamed. "Now, the floor."
  
  "The very dangerous floor," I said, since dangersense was rather howling about it.
  
  "Don't listen to him! It's twistor guns!" shouted Tarcuna.
  
  "Excuse me, Tarcuna, but I am having a conversation with Jyothky at the moment. You should not interrupt," said Xolgrohim.
  
  "Actually, I am at least as interested in what Tarcuna has to say as in what you have to say," I told him.
  
  Xolgrohim smiled apologetically. "Very well then! Feel free to interrupt as you wish, Tarcuna. The floor is very thin, just big enough to support you and the other contents of the room. Beneath it are three of the largest twistor projectors I could manage in the few months that I had available to me. They are not, unfortunately, up to the standards of the Peace Everywhere Array, though they do have a range of some dozens or hundreds of miles. At a word to my gunners, though, they will entirely fill the Pit of Despair with torque. I do not know for certain that even that will kill you, but I rather suspect it might. I am certain about what it will do to poor, interrupt-prone Tarcuna."
  
  "I have destroyed many large twistor guns," I said.
  
  "And no doubt you could destroy these as well! But they are arranged so that any destruction of the gun itself will also set off the torque battery. Again, that might not kill you, but it will be a remarkably potent occurrence, which Tarcuna may find unfavorable," said Xolgrohim.
  
  I thought about the devastation that even a single battery had caused: more dangerous than my strongest breath by far. "An excellent precaution! When I destroyed the Peace Everywhere Array, I worked from a distance, but in your poison-walled pit, that approach is not available."
  
  He beamed. "Exactly. Exactly! It is a pleasure working with you, Jyothky."
  
  "What, precisely, do you mean by 'working'?"
  
  Ythac's wrote to me in letters jagged with alarm, "Jyothky! Dragons!" Xolgrohim said something too, but I didn't catch it.
  
  "Who? Arilash and Csirnis?"
  
  "No, no, the sky over Khamrou Voresc is crawling with dragons. More than a dozen of them."
  
  "Oh, dear. Send them my greetings, I suppose. At least can you find out who they are?" I looked back at Xolgrohim. "I'm sorry, but I was lost in thought for a moment. Could you repeat that?"
  
  "Well, I don't specifically want to catch you, Jyothky. Your parents killed me, as you may recall. It is certainly a flaw in my personality — I regard it as such in any case — but I cannot refrain from trying to kill them in exchange. Or, failing that, to bring them whatever degree of sorrow and woe I can."
  
  "Jyothky won't cooperate with you!" shouted Tarcuna.
  
  "I certainly don't want to make my parents unhappy, or dead," I said. "Nor you, nor myself."
  
  "If you risk your own life to save mine, I am going to kill myself!" said Tarcuna.
  
  "You have the oddest concept of helping me, Tarcuna," I said. "Please, let's let Xolgrohim tell us his plans before anyone kills herself to foil them?" She threw herself to the metal floor by my feet, stinking of anger and shame.
  
  "Now that you have, temporarily, subdued our loquacious and lecherous lure, may I explain your role in the upcoming festivities?" asked Xolgrohim.
  
  "Tultamaan's back. Chevethna back from her mating flight, Arthane flying next to her so I bet they're married, Ignissa back from her mating flight, Vuuthon, Ressal,... Kuro for heaven's sake,... lots of dragons I don't know," wrote Ythac.
  
  "That's bad," I said. That many dragons my age, already mated, are probably here for conquering.
  
  "I should be fascinated to hear it," I said. I curled my tail around Tarcuna, and cast the Library in Scales and wrote to her, "After he has finished, we will discuss our next step privately. Now please let's listen. I'm trying to write to Ythac too, and if I'm not careful I'm going to get horribly confused."
  
  "Bad, bad. I'm holding territory now. It might be me and Llredh against fifteen of our age-peers," wrote Ythac.
  
  "Well. Ressal and Tultamaan barely count. And I'll help you when I get out of here," I said.
  
  "All right, all right, I'll be quiet," said Tarcuna. "For now. If you're going to kill me, Xolgrohim, I at least get to tell you what I think of you first." She cuddled into the arc of my tail.
  
  "Four to one is certainly an improvement over seven to one. Are you getting out soon?" asked Ythac.
  
  Xolgrohim spread Murghal's hands apologetically. "For the moment, I simply request that you — both of you — remain in the Pit of Despair. My part-time messenger on Mhelvul should earn his extravagant pay soon, or so I hope, and your parents should arrive within, perhaps, a day or two? You know them better than I do: how long would you guess they would delay when their darling daughter is in deadly danger?"
  
  I paused, as if to consider the question, but actually to write "Not sure. I might need to do something stupid and humiliating, like promise to come right back after the fight," Then I said, out loud, "Last time, they came in a hurry, but that was easier. They'd have to get directions here, and find someone to cast the Triangular Cyclonette. And probably another day or several to learn it, so they can get back afterwards," I said.
  
  Xolgrohim laughed. "Yes, I suppose they might think that getting back would be relevant to them and make arrangements. No more hurry than that?"
  
  "I suppose it depends on what your messenger told them, and how much they believed it."
  
  "My powers of sending messages between worlds are not so great, and neither are Tultamaan's. He was supposed to tell Cterion and Uruunma that you had been trapped in the heart of a vast ruby, which your companions' fire was inadequate to melt but which Cterion's own flame probably could. He sent back the chirp that he was to send when he had done so."
  
  I stared at Xolgrohim. He lowered Murghal's gaze, and apologized, "I merely sought some story which would require their presence, and not raise too many suspicions about the actual situation."
  
  I was still staring. "You got Tultamaan as your messenger?", I said out loud, and summarized the matter to Ythac.
  
  "Regular couriers between here and Mhel are infrequent, and their rates are extravagant! There is rarely one available when you want one," Xolgrohim explained.
  
  "We haven't particularly wanted to send many messages back. Arilash told Greshthanu's parents that he had been killed, is the only one. Plus whatever Tultamaan wanted to say," I said.
  
  "Which, I believe, included a dramatization of your capture. Ah, and speaking of that regrettably brutal event, perhaps I shall return to my catalog of brutalities and menaces?" asked the lich-god. Neither of us stopped him. "Well, then, there are few other points of note. Observe the ventilation ducts there, and the servant's entrance by which we provide food and cleaning services? They cannot, inherently, be as well-armored as the walls proper. Nonetheless they are well-defended, by means of mighty electrical currents. Behind them are no fewer than three deified hovens on guard, one of whom was once an enhanced agent of Trest. Even you might find them troublesome in battle."
  
  I opened my organs of theoception, and yes, the place was crawling with minor gods. "Why are you boasting about all of them? You're just giving me that much of an easier time defeating them," I asked. Which was a stupid question — I should have let him explain.
  
  "Ah, but I hope that my precautions are never actually necessary. If they are tested, they may succeed, or they may fail; in either case it will be expensive and may well interfere with my ultimate wishes. If they are untested, they will not fail. I should prefer that you know enough not to make the attempt. Your immediate death would not serve me well."
  
  "My immediate death...?"
  
  He smiled. "Well, one possible outcome is that Cterion and Uruunma remain too powerful for me to defeat, even with the tools currently at my disposal. I should be compelled, in that case, to inflict whatever injuries I could arrange, before they inevitably kill me again. Killing you holds no intrinsic pleasure for me, but killing you in front of their eyes would be a passable second choice. And, in case it is not clear, killing you before they arrive would be a distinctly inferior third choice, but still provide a form of revenge. So do not take my wish to preserve your life as too much of an encouragement to attempt to fight your way out of the Pit."
  
  "Time for me to be a bit crafty," I wrote to Tarcuna. Out loud, I said, "So, either I can try to escape and your traps and gods might kill me, or I can stay and you probably will kill me."
  
  "I should judge the probabilities in the reverse," he said. "My traps and gods will probably kill you. If you stay, I might kill you."
  
  "You underestimate both me and my parents!"
  
  "Forgive me! I withdraw all measures of probability! In either case, it is possible but not certain that you will be killed."
  
  I spread my ears. "Well, then. Give me some extra reason to want to say!"
  
  "Observe the caskets and armoires behind you," Xolgrohim said with a wave. "The contain many treasures of Ghemelia..." He yelped as I breathed sparks at him.
  
  I snarled. "Treasure-hunting is for drakes. I am a dragoness. This attempt to bribe me is an insult to my future husband!"
  
  "I meant no offense! I am regrettably ignorant of draconic etiquette!"
  
  I towered over the body my captor wore. "No, I want something else. Something that you alone can provide."
  
  Murghal flattened his ears in fear, but Xolgrohim, being far away, was not much impressed. "My resources are at your disposal, save for certain necessities — large of a martial nature — I wish to keep for my own purposes..."
  
  "I haven't felt anything since I was six years old," I said. "I miss it, as much as you miss life itself. And your powers concern the sense of feeling."
  
  Xolgrohim dipped Murghal's head. "With all due respect, my specialty is pain. I have a limited selection of spells for pleasure, but they are not my strongest."
  
  "Start with them!" I roared.
  
  "Certainly," he said, and concocted a gleaming clove-scented lump of (metaphorically) lace and crumbs on the astral plane and stretched out his hand to put it in my head. I reared my vô away to let him do it. It sat right in the chasm in my psyche where feeling ought to go.
  
  "Is it in?" I asked.
  
  "I have activated it. Do you feel anything? A sensation as of a thousand mhelvul lips kissing you everywhere, perhaps?"
  
  "Not a thing," I said. "Pity. You'll have to try harder."
  
  He tried harder, indeed, did Xolgrohim. He chanted and wriggled Murghal's fingers. He danced the most ominious jig that I could imagine a hoven dancing. He called for skull rattles and a necklace of bloodied feathers, and built a bonfire of wood and the bones of ancient kings. Astrally, he brought forth huge spiky things that stank astrally of asafoedita and terror, and I let him put them into me, too.
  
  Finally one worked, at least a little. The forks of my tongue felt as if they had been dipped in fire.
  
  There's no describing it. Not the sensation itself, you can probably understand that unless you're one of the pawful of dragons injured the way I am. You're probably thinking, "Ow, pain." But you are too used to pain, too used to feeling anything.
  
  This was the best thing I had felt in five dozen years. (Yes, also the worst, but that didn't matter.) It was all I could do not to roll around in happiness. Not pleasure, just happiness.
  
  "Remind me that I should marry Osoth, so he can raise up a tame paingod for me," I asked Tarcuna.
  
  "I don't much like paingods," she said. "Aren't they dangerous?"
  
  "Probably it's a bad idea," I wrote. I grinned a huge grin at Xolgrohim. "Well, that one worked, a little bit."
  
  "A little bit!" he exclaimed. "I have no stronger spells!"
  
  "You couldn't impose pain on a stone," I said, "And my body's not much more than a stone, as far as sensation goes. But my tongue is a bit less broken than the rest of me."
  
  "I am sorry, then, that that spell is the only one that works! If, at some future time, you wish to ransom my non-life, I offer to try to develop a spell that provides more pleasant sensations," he said.
  
  So I yelled at him about how this was the best thing I had felt in five duodecades, and all of that.
  
  "This is not a usual reaction for a paingod's powers!" he said. "But if you proclaim yourself satisfied, far be it from me to argue with you." He looked at me hopefully. "So, now I have provided my best attempt at what you have requested?"
  
  "You have done admirably," I said, and I meant it. "So here is my promise. I shall not attempt to leave the Pit of Despair for so long as this spell lets me feel." I spoke the ancient formula which binds us to our word on pain of dishonor. Though I did say ȑṳsṡ instead of ȑṳṡs, making the vow on pain of dumplings instead. If I ever get in the position of arguing about whether I were dishonored or not, that classic bit of sneakiness would count just a little in my favor. That wasn't my real trick.
  
  Xolgrohim beamed. "I am delighted that we have found a basis for temporary cooperation! I was not hoping for such amity!" He is not any sort of fool though, even if he doesn't speak Grand Draconic, and he added: "You will, I hope, understand and forgive me if the means of imprisonment that are already in place remain in place. It would be impractical to remove them at this late date."
  
  Tarcuna, who maybe has picked up some Petty Draconic, looked horrified. "Jyothky! How can you make such a deal with that!"
  
  I grinned the vicious draconic grin to her. "It's not quite the deal he wants. I promised not to leave the Pit of Despair: nothing more. I will go kill his gods and destroy his projectors, if I can. From inside, as long as I don't leave." That wasn't my real trick either.
  
  Xolgrohim stared Murghal's square eyes at me. "Oh, dear. I did not expect a great deal from a few words, but this is less than I might have hoped. I should have insisted on a vow of greater passivity."
  
  "The vow was not yours to insist upon, foolish paingod!" I thundered. Where by "foolish" I mean "clever enough to catch me in quite a nasty trap" of course.
  
  "Well, of course. Forgive me for the suggestion that it was... and forgive me also, but I would like to remind you that the walls, weapons, and warriors of the Pit of Despair are just as deadly even though you have your vow. Indeed, the reduced flexibility of motion may make them just one bit the deadlier. So I fear that I must recommend that you stay inside of the metal prison of the Pit of Despair, even though it is not strictly required by your vows."
  
  "For now, I am going to enjoy being able to feel!" I roared. I can play arrogant, short-sighted, and self-centered extremely well. It's not very far from the truth.
  
  "I am pleased to have been of some small service to you, even though I have done a greater disservice."
  
  I rolled on my back and enjoyed the pain in my tongue, as long as I had it. And traded a few notes with Tarcuna and Ythac, and completely ignored Xolgrohim. After an hour or two, he politely excused himself, and departed, leaving a rather worried and utterly undefended Murghal with us in the Pit of Despair.