The research tent was a monument to scientific curiosity and absolute disregard for human decency.
What had appeared from the outside as just another military structure revealed itself as something that belonged in the deepest circles of hell, designed by someone with advanced degrees in both anatomy and nightmare fuel.
The space was massive, easily three times the size of the command tent, divided into distinct sections that each told their own story of horrors inflicted in the name of knowledge. Surgical areas with tables stained dark despite obvious attempts at cleaning.
Arcane apparatus that hummed with barely contained energy, their purposes unclear but undoubtedly unpleasant. Specimen storage units lined one entire wall, preserving things that had once been alive in solutions that glowed with sickly bioluminescence.
But it was the walls that made my enhanced vision flood with alerts about psychological trauma and immediate danger.
Preserved organs floated in glass jars like some macabre museum exhibit, each one labeled with clinical precision that somehow made their presence more disturbing rather than less.
Hearts that still beat with phantom rhythms. Brains suspended in solutions that sparked with residual electrical activity. Eyes that seemed to track movement despite being severed from their hosts.
Dissected magical creatures hung from hooks like butcher shop displays, their forms partially intact enough to identify what they'd once been.
A Gravernyx wing spread wide to show the intricate bone structure beneath the scales. Something that might have been a dragon's claw, large enough to belong to a creature I didn't want to contemplate meeting while it was alive.
At the center of this academic abattoir sat an obsidian table that radiated malevolent purpose.
The surface was carved with restraint runes that pulsed with their own inner light, creating patterns that hurt to look at directly. Channels had been carved into the stone to guide flowing liquids away from the center, and the stains around those channels suggested they'd seen extensive use.
"Welcome to my laboratory," Virelia said, her voice carrying the same cheerful tone she might use to offer someone tea. "I do hope you'll find the accommodations... educational."
The guards who'd escorted me here moved with the mechanical efficiency of people who'd done this many times before.
They stripped me of my remaining clothes with clinical detachment, leaving me with nothing but the mysterious bracelet that they somehow completely overlooked, as if their eyes simply slid away from it without recognition.
Thank god for small mercies, I thought as they hauled me toward the obsidian table. At least I still have—
[HOST PHYSIOLOGICAL STATUS: CRITICAL STRESS RESPONSE DETECTED]
[CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: ELEVATED TO DANGEROUS LEVELS][RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION FROM HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT]
Not helpful, system, I thought as the restraints locked around my wrists and ankles with the finality of a tomb sealing. Unless you've got an escape plan hiding somewhere in your programming.
The suppression runes carved into the table activated the moment my skin made contact with the obsidian surface. Fire raced through my nervous system as the magical bindings interfaced directly with my enhanced physiology, finding every augmentation the cosmic forge had grafted onto my soul and systematically shutting them down.
My enhanced strength faded like water through a sieve. The mana flows I'd learned to manipulate became distant echoes. Even my improved healing factor slowed to a crawl that would take days to repair what minutes of damage could inflict.
"There we go," Virelia cooed, approaching the table with a collection of crystalline instruments that looked like they'd been designed by someone who'd studied both neurosurgery and medieval torture techniques.
"Much better. Can't have you accidentally vaporizing my equipment like you did that poor construct."
She selected what looked like a neural probe crystal, its surface faceted like a diamond but glowing with internal light that made my teeth ache just from proximity. The device was roughly the size of a pencil but carved with microscopic runes that seemed to writhe and shift when I wasn't looking directly at them.
"Let's see what makes you tick, little mystery," she said, positioning the crystal near my left temple with the careful precision of a surgeon making the first incision.
The moment the probe made contact with my skin, reality exploded into fragments of sensation that my brain was never designed to process.
It wasn't pain in any conventional sense, more like having my consciousness forcibly expanded beyond the boundaries of my skull while someone rifled through the contents with steel wool gloves.
Images flashed through my vision in rapid succession, memories and thoughts torn from their context and examined like specimens under a microscope. My childhood in foster care. Late nights coding in darkened rooms. The obsessive streaming sessions that had consumed my life. The moment I'd clicked "YES" on that fateful game interface.
But beneath it all, instead of the cosmic forge memories Virelia was clearly seeking, there was nothing but endless oceans of fire.
Not the controlled flames of the Astral Crucible, but wild, chaotic conflagrations that stretched beyond the horizon in every direction. The neural probe struck that barrier of flame and recoiled like it had touched something that burned with the heat of dying stars.
"Interesting," Virelia murmured, her free hand tracing patterns in the air that made the crystal probe glow brighter. "Neural barriers. Deliberately constructed, not natural. Someone's been very careful with your memories."
She pressed harder, and the fire-ocean roared in response. I screamed as the probe tried to force its way through defenses I hadn't known I possessed, the sound echoing off the tent's walls in ways that suggested they'd been designed to contain much worse noises.
"Where are you from, really?" she asked, her voice taking on a clinical edge that somehow made it more terrifying than any shouted threat. "Your magic signature is completely wrong for this region. Wrong for this continent. Wrong for anything I've catalogued in fifteen years of research."
I tried to stay silent, to endure whatever she was doing without giving her the satisfaction of answers, but the neural probe was like having someone drive railroad spikes through my consciousness while demanding I remain coherent enough to hold a conversation.
"I..." The word escaped before I could stop it, and Virelia's eyes lit up with predatory satisfaction.
"Yes? Go on. I find honesty so much more productive than stubborn silence."
"I'm from a distant kingdom," I gasped, the lie forming through sheer desperation. "Learned magic from travelling scholars who....."