The pain amplification hit me like a physical blow. Whatever device she'd activated sent feedback through the neural probe that turned my nervous system into a live wire carrying more electrical current than it was ever designed to handle. I convulsed against the restraints, feeling the obsidian table's runes burn brighter as they absorbed the energy of my suffering.
"Deception detected," Virelia said with the tone of someone noting an interesting data point. "I really do prefer honesty, little specimen. Let's try again, shall we?"
She adjusted something on the probe, and the next wave of intrusion felt like having my skull opened with a rusty can opener while someone sorted through my brain with garden tools.
"Who trained you in Aetherscribing?" she continued, her voice maintaining that horrible clinical cheerfulness. "No mortal should have access to that level of direct mana manipulation. It requires understanding of cosmic principles that take centuries to master."
"Traveling scholars," I repeated desperately, clinging to the lie like a life preserver in a storm of agony. "They taught me..."
The amplification this time was worse. Much worse. I felt my back arch against the table hard enough to crack vertebrae, heard my own voice break as I screamed with a pitch that would have embarrassed my teenage self. The fire-ocean in my memories roared in response, pushing back against the probe with enough force to make Virelia grunt with effort.
"Fascinating," she breathed, sweat beading on her forehead from whatever psychic strain she was enduring. "Your mental barriers are actively fighting me. Not passive defenses, but something... alive. Protective."
She reached for another instrument, this one resembling a mana extraction needle that glowed with the same sickly light as the specimen jars. The device was designed with obvious malevolent purpose, covered in barbs that would make removal excruciating and trailing tubes that led to collection containers I didn't want to think about.
"What did you do to my compass?" she asked, positioning the needle over a major artery in my wrist. "It was a priceless research tool, keyed to dimensional resonances that took me years to calibrate. And you absorbed it like it was a sponge."
"I don't know," I sobbed, any pretense of stoic resistance crumbling under the sustained assault on my nervous system. "It just... it happened. I didn't do anything."
The needle pierced my skin with the delicate precision of an expert torturer. I felt it burrow into the artery, finding the main flow of blood and beginning to draw out something that was more than just cellular fluid. My life force, my mana, the very essence that kept me alive, all being siphoned away drop by precious drop.
"Truth," Virelia noted with satisfaction. "Finally. But incomplete truth. Who sent you to infiltrate our operation? What organization has the resources to plant sleeper agents with memory alteration this sophisticated?"
The blood loss was making thinking difficult. Combined with the neural probe still grinding away at my consciousness and the mana extraction needle draining the energy that kept my enhanced body functional, I was entering a state where rational thought became impossible and survival instincts took over completely.
"Another world," I gasped, the words torn from me by desperation and the growing certainty that I was going to die in this tent if I didn't give her something she could believe. "I'm from another world. Summoned to trials. Divine forge."
For the first time since the torture began, Virelia paused. The neural probe's pressure eased slightly, and I caught a glimpse of something like genuine curiosity in her crimson eyes.
"Another world," she repeated slowly. "Dimensional travel. That would explain the signature incompatibilities, the magical techniques I don't recognize..." She leaned closer, and I caught that ozone-and-parchment scent again. "Tell me about this divine forge."
"Cosmic fire," I whispered, my voice barely audible over the sound of my own labored breathing. "Trials that lasted... a thousand years. Forging weapons from impossible materials. The system that brought me here, it said...."
"What's a system?" Virelia's eyes narrowed. "What kind of system? Magical? Lost knowledge? Divine mandate?"
"I don't know," I sobbed, truth and lies blending together in my desperation to make her believe something, anything, that would make the pain stop. "It just... appeared. Told me I'd completed some trial. Brought me to a place with weapons and treasure and—"
"You're clearly a spy with memory alteration," she snapped, her moment of scientific curiosity evaporating into frustrated anger. "Dimensional travel is theoretical at best. Divine trials are mythology. This elaborate backstory is obviously designed to..."
She selected a new probe, this one shaped like a crystalline scalpel with edges that seemed to exist in more dimensions than my eyes could process. Without warning, she drove it directly into my left eye socket.
The pain transcended every previous definition of suffering I'd ever imagined. It wasn't just the physical trauma of having my eyeball penetrated by a mystical surgical instrument, but the way the probe interfaced with my optic nerve to transmit agony directly to my brain's visual cortex.
I screamed until my voice broke entirely, thrashing against the restraints with enough force to leave permanent impressions in the obsidian table. Blood and worse things streamed down my face as the probe did its work, exploring the inside of my skull with the methodical thoroughness of someone conducting a very personal autopsy.
"Dimensional nonsense!" Virelia snarled, her clinical mask slipping to reveal something genuinely unhinged underneath. "You're lying to me, and I despise liars almost as much as I despise mysteries I can't solve!"
She twisted the probe, and I felt something important rupture behind what remained of my left eye. The world became a kaleidoscope of pain and fractured vision, reality splitting into fragments that no longer fitted together properly.
[HOST PHYSIOLOGICAL STATUS: CRITICAL ORGAN DAMAGE DETECTED]
[OCULAR SYSTEM: SEVERE TRAUMA REQUIRING IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION]
[BLOOD LOSS: APPROACHING DANGEROUS LEVELS]
[PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA: BEYOND RECOMMENDED PARAMETERS]
Hours passed, or maybe days. Time became meaningless when every second contained more suffering than most people experienced in their entire lives.
The neural probes continued their relentless assault on my consciousness. The mana extraction needles drained me drop by drop until my enhanced healing factor slowed to a crawl that could barely keep me alive.
Virelia worked with the focused intensity of an artist perfecting their masterpiece, adding new instruments to her collection as my resistance crumbled entirely.
Pain amplification devices that turned minor discomfort into existential agony. Blood analysis equipment that traced my genetic magical heritage through samples that left me dizzy with loss.
"I spent a thousand years," I whispered finally, my voice hoarse from screaming and pleading and offering information she refused to believe. "Forging one hammer. In a cosmic trial that existed outside normal time. The system brought me here, to this world, and I don't know why."
It was the complete truth, or as close as I could manage through the haze of blood loss and neural trauma. The fire-ocean in my memories had finally been breached, not by her probes but by my own desperate need to make her understand that I wasn't the spy or infiltrator she believed me to be.
Virelia paused in her work, a device resembling a soul-viewing apparatus halfway to my remaining eye. "A thousand years," she repeated thoughtfully. "Forging a single weapon. That would require..." She trailed off, her scientific mind clearly working through implications I couldn't follow.
"Divine trial dimension," she murmured, more to herself than to me. "Impossible, but the magical signatures, the aetherscripting abilities, the way my compass reacted..."
She leaned back from the table, leaving me gasping and broken but momentarily free from active torture. For the first time since this nightmare began, I dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, I'd finally given her something she could believe.
That's when I felt the bracelet around my wrist grow warm.
Not the burning heat of the suppression runes, but a gentle warmth that spoke of protective magic activating in response to genuine mortal peril. The system, which had been silent except for medical alerts, suddenly blazed to life with information that made my vision flood with hope and terror in equal measure.
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[HOST LIFE SIGNS: CRITICAL]
[DIVINE ARTIFACT INTERVENTION AUTHORIZED]
[PREPARING EXTRACTION SEQUENCE...]
Finally, I thought as the bracelet's warmth began to spread through my broken body. Maybe I won't die in this hellish place after all.
But as the extraction sequence began to build power, I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever came next would be just another chapter in a cosmic joke where I was perpetually the punchline.
At least this time, someone seemed to be trying to keep me alive long enough to see how the joke ended.