From nothing the thong of the whip lashed at her waist and coiled round her narrow middle tightly, and she was his. Suddenly she felt his hand wrapped round the length of her hair behind her scalp, and he yanked her to her knees. The voice of a man sounding long since dead reverberated in her young, perfect ears. “Your occupation here matters very little to me; your opinion on the ritual, even less,” it his hissed with little more than breath. “The gods have brought me to you, and they shall have you along with me. You shall entertain.”<br/><br/>Even as the heat from the fire reached her naked front, her back was cold and wet as a highland bog. He unwound the whip from above her hips, but he still held it firm in his hand should she attempt to fly. He also let go of her hair and rose from her, the distance, paradoxically, giving him even more power over her in its allowance for him to react to any move she might make. He dared not tell her of the power of the ritual they were about to undertake together, but instead he simply initiated it, reading from the book he carried and held in his left hand as he gripped the whip in the right.<br/><br/>His voice was not only incredibly clear now, but deep and authoritative, as if the gods themselves lent it credence, and spoke through him. The language he used was ancient and indecipherable, the only word recognizable the proper noun Leviathan. Water trickled over her naked body, falling form a place unseen, hidden in the mists; the heat of the fire powerless to evaporate it. A paralyzing ice cold at first, the waters then turned hot, making her body literally steam from its heat. Warm water began to surround her, slowly filling the bathing chamber. She buoyed on it, much like a ship on the ocean. Droplets of coercion condensed on her cold psyche, each one the voice of an elemental water spirit entering her mind.<br/><br/>The ritual continued on to a new verse, a new invocation. Waves began to push her this way and that, urgently guiding her along a torrential river. The line between dream and reality blurred, warped, and then all but disappeared. She was being carried by the waters to place unknown where she was to be marooned. A holy place presided over by a holy man. The warden of the spirits who presented her to him.