Naiobe blinks slowly, her eyes going distant as she feels the presence against her again. The lack of power does not make for a lack of intensity, and Naiobe finds herself tingling from head to toe. The rush of it is nearly orgasmic, all pain and pleasure wrapped into one exquisitely excruciating package. Her screams fill the chamber, interspersed with wordless cries and no small amount of flailing. And then there is nothing. She goes still for a moment, seeing the world around her in a new light, all shiny and full of sinister promise.<br/><br/>Stiffly, she slides herself off the altar. She can still feel the echo of the creatures around the cavern, and the remembered memory of her brother above them with his slave is still fresh. She walks across the dais toward the stairs as if in a fog, her mind still whirring with the weight of what just happened. She had walked in here thinking she had a choice and that had not been the case, but she doesn't regret coming. The obsequious man that kneels at the base of the stairs hardly catches her attention, but she approaches him anyway. As if in a dream, Naiobe pauses beside one of the torches that still glows with unnatural fire. She pulls it from its well with a dull scrape of wood on stone and carries it down the steps with her, as if to use it to light her way back to her rooms.<br/><br/>However, she now knows these caves better than she knows her own castle. As she passes the kneeling man, she raises the torch and drives its pointed base into the back of the mutant's knee, pushing it through flesh and past bone until it wedges in a crack in the stone walkway underneath. She can smell the well of fresh blood as the man lets out a screech of pain, and a small smile touches her lips when she hears him struggling to get his leg free. She leaves him, then, to await the arrival of those dark things that hover in the caves around the edges of the altar, or to bleed to death if they don't get him first. She doesn't stop, and she doesn't once look back at the live offering.<br/><br/>Malikai has a new vassal.