This was<i>personal</i>to him, she realized. Dradiro didn't simply want to put down the rebellion, he wanted to break the one responsible for it--her. He wouldn't be satisfied until he had bent her to his will, until she was little more than a thrall beaten in both body and spirit. He wanted her followers to see her, and everything she stood for, crumble into dust.<br/><br/>Her strength was finally beginning to flag, darkness creeping in at the edges of her vision. Her tortured body was beginning to shut down of its own accord in a desperate attempt to keep her alive, but even then, she still had enough fire left in her to glare as he walked off, instructing for the poor angel to be imprisoned while she and Vehran continued to hang, kept from death by his dark magics. Her gaze burned with equal parts fury and fear as she watched him leave, until unconsciousness finally took her.<br/><br/>The two drifted in and out of consciousness for that first week. Hunger and thirst were soon constant, agonizing companions, but the seething shadows binding them to their crosses prevented their bodies from succumbing. Whenever they were both lucid enough, Vehran tried to lift her spirits, promising her weakly that her rebels would not give in to the bastard god so easily. He was in agony, just as much as she was, yet refused to be broken. Perhaps it would be wrong to say that she was "grateful" she had someone to share in her misery, but the presence of one of her closest confidantes helped to ease the torture.<br/><br/>Then, they took him away.<br/><br/>Too weak to do more than struggle and snarl, Vehran had been dragged away from the crosses, taken off to some unknown place and leaving her alone with her agony. She hoped, desperately, that Dradiro would honor his bargain and not kill her followers, that the ever-loyal wolf would receive at least a modicum of medical care after the ordeal he had been through. There had been healers in employ of the king, if they were still at the castle. Hopefully, her followers had not simply been tossed in a cell to rot.<br/><br/>Her own condition was just as severe, however, if not worse. Though Dradiro's magic prevented her from dying, it did nothing to dull the pangs of hunger and thirst, or the pulsating agony of her broken wing. The punctures on her hands festered in the beating sun, a dull burn of infection gradually giving way to a chilling numbness. She was no longer aware of her surroundings, only the fevered pain wracking her exhausted body.<br/><br/>She was roused somewhat when they finally cut her down, Dradiro reappearing to greet her as she was dragged out of the square. Despite being on death's doorstep, when he forced her to look up at him, it was clear that her hatred for him had not waned. And so she was sent to an entirely new prison, this one a cell deep in the bowels of the castle rather than a cross out in the center of the city. Fear had bloomed within her as he ordered that she be kept in total darkness, in a tiny confined space--two things she had always feared. In comparison to what she had just been through, they were a pitiful attempt at torture, but no less effective. Even if she had the energy to conjure her fire, she had a feeling his shadows would have extinguished them just as they had on the cross. Her chest burned with pain every time she took a breath, and after being stretched out for weeks, her arms could hardly move, the shoulder joints too damaged and torn. Even if they had been working, her punctured hands throbbed with infection, fingers stiff and lifeless. This forced her to shuffle about blindly in total darkness whenever she heard the rusty rasp of a slot being opened to pass her water and stale bread, then eat from the bowls like an animal. Worse than that, however, was her wing, which she could no longer even twitch. After this long, the bone and muscle would have tried to mend, but without a proper setting, it was doomed to heal improperly, forever robbing her of flight--a fate that was even more terrifying than the idea of being kept in this hole.<br/><br/>Without her flames, or her followers, there was only one defense she had against the darkness.<br/><br/>She talked to it.<br/><br/>When she could bear silence no longer, Aryel filled it herself. She'd speak of her childhood on the cold northern steppes, of her warchief father and the demoness of greed who served as his consort. It was there that she had learned to ride, and fight, and make her way in the world. She spoke of her eventual split from the tribe, unwilling to follow in her sire's footsteps as a marauder, and her travels before coming to Aetus. She spoke of her life as a wandering mercenary, and how she found her purpose in more than gold and glory. How guarding and escorting others satisfied the darker, greedier side of her nature in a way that she could actually find value in.<br/><br/>She recounted stories of her training as a knight of Aetus. Initially, her parentage had made others suspicious, but King Fenris had been willing to take a chance on her, and for that she had been eternally grateful, working harder than she ever had before to prove herself worthy of joining his ranks. Her voice swelled with pride as she recalled her years in service, protecting the kingdom she had come to see as her home, her tone then growing bitter as her memories shifted to Dradiro's insurgence. She recounted the friends and allies she had lost, among so many others who had died in his assault on the capital.<br/><br/>Even then, however, hope had not entirely left her. She remembered, fondly, how she had formed the rebellion from those refugees who chose to stay and fight, hoping that one day they could retake their homeland. She had known almost all of them by name, remembered their life stories and how they had come to join her. She spoke of Vehran, roughshod and grizzled but unflinchingly loyal to those he considered his friends, and of poor Liir, whose son would be forced to grow up without a father. She wasn't sure if Dradiro could hear her stories through his shadows, or if she was only talking to herself, but she would not let him extinguish her so easily.<br/><br/>She had long since lost track of the time, unable to even count the passage of days once she was locked away, but it felt like an eternity before she heard the sound of heavy boots outside her door, then the squeak of rusty hinges as the door to her cell finally swung open. Aryel squinted as torchlight pierced the darkness, hissing in pain. After so long in total darkness, her eyes felt strange, and it took them a minute to re-adjust and allow her to see the bastard god himself standing in the doorway, flanked by guards. Not a hair on his head was out of place, though the same could not be said for Aryel. A month's worth of plaza dust and dungeon grime covered her, hair and feathers both disheveled, to say nothing of the state her wounds were in. If he had expected her to come crawling out of her cell, however, begging for mercy, then he was going to be sorely disappointed. She attempted to rise to her feet, weakly bracing her shoulder against the stone wall while her wings dragged limply on the ground behind her, the one he had broken twisted in a sickening fashion. "What did you do with my men?" she rasped, eyes narrowed as she faced him. Until she knew their fate, he would receive no cooperation from her.