Good enough.

Encourage them to continue testing their preferred candidates.

They do, but it becomes increasingly obvious that they are only doing so from fear, and that fear has begun to fade. 

Nonetheless, torture happens and devoted cultists recant their beliefs after shorter and shorter experiences of agony. 

“Enough,” the priest says eventually, likely recalling his own experiences and his assumption that the girl and her voice are not in fact sent by his god. “My children, listen. We have been tried. We have been tested…” 

The girl stabs him through his open mouth, and watches with mild amusement as he drowns on his own blood. “Right,” she says. “Well. They stopped cooperating. Bloodbath time?” 

We can do a little more! Say something to the lesser cultists about how you have rescued them from the tyranny of their leaders, who would sacrifice them to save themselves from a bit of pain. We've got some good betrayals so far, but I think we still need the lay flock to betray their priests. Oh, and we need to find something to light on fire.

“Umm, disregard the bloodbath talk,” the girl informs the crowd very seriously, because that’s how sister is always so believable. “We rescued you from your priest. He was going to sacrifice you just to save home self a bit of pain. Whereas the voice in my head wants me to find some things to burn so I can sacrifice you just because.” 

Eh, good enough. Light a fire and kill them all.

Fire is easy. Killing is too. She is strong and swift, and the voice has unattainable high standards in training. She is a scythe, and they are wheat. 

But there is quite a lot of wheat and, while she is dislodging her ancient sword from a newly-shattered rib cage, a cultist behind her manages to get a dagger into her shoulder. The girl has suffered more in the past, this pain is nothing compared to the stone table that broke her childhood, but it is a knife in her, and that brings back memories. This time though, she is free and armed. The girl moves in a blind unfeeling rage, and the cultists… not so much “fall” as “spread across the chamber’s rough floor.” 

Eventually, the girl is left standing in a sea of body parts and viscera, breathing hard, blood running down her arm. 

Hm. Acceptable work. Are you present?

“They…” she gasps. “They won’t…. I can’t… don’t make me… please father?” 

The altar… a huge slab of limestone studded with the fossilized remains of forgotten aquatic creatures. Worn, salt-stained leather straps. Rough channels for limbs, a shallow alcove for a torso, a slight depression for a head. It reminds her of that terrible stone table. 

“I’m here,” she gasps. Ignores the way her enhanced muscles burn. Ignores the tightness in her chest, the difficult rapidity of her breathing. She brings the sword down hard on the altar. A chip of shattered limestone flies across the chamber. She brings the sword down again. Another shallow gouge. 

Don't lose yourself, girl. Blow it up if you need to, we have a scroll of Shatter.

“Shatter,” she agrees, and lets the voice read the scroll. She kicks the broken chunks of rubble halfheartedly. “Now what?” 

Let's retrieve the original sacrifice. And your cloak, better if the slave doesn't recognize you.

“Cloak,” she agrees, and makes her way woodenly back to the storage room. 

The half-elf remains in the rusty cage, bound and blindfolded. She's managed to twist herself around to get some leverage pushing at the bars, but she freezes up when the heavy door creaks open.

The girl remembers when she was tied to a stone table so similar to the now-shattered altar… remembers being kept restrained in a side room while her wounds healed enough for another bout of procedures. She was never kept in a cage, but this half-elf seems almost to have her face… 

She remembers…

The deep ritual lacerations had been closed by magic, but that did nothing for the oppressive ache in her bones where the arcanist’s chisel had etched runes into her bones. That did nothing for the ache in her mind where something alien moved. 

The room was small and dark- the dark of a subterranean stone chamber without candles or lanterns. She didn’t mind though: it hurt to open her eyes. It hurt to see. It hurt to think even. 

Why, grandfather? 

He had answered that question, but she still had it rattling around in her crumbling mind. Why? 

Because mother and father are missing and the succession is in jeopardy. But why?

Because Nerissa must be protected, and who more trustworthy than her own sister. But why?

Because she will be more durable now. Stronger, faster, tougher, with wonderful innate abilities. If all else fails, one princess at least will endure. But why? 

Because King Ronan loves his granddaughters. Then why didn’t it feel like it? 

She laid there on the bed asking herself questions she already had the answers to, and wishing very much that she had died. There were no restraints on this bed. They weren’t needed. She was too weak- suffering too greatly- to stand, much less to try to escape. And even if she had? The arcanist and his assistant were just on the other side of the door. How far would she have gotten, really? 

She remembers pain…

And she remembers a voice, growing in volume and clarity as the integration proceeds, and raging violently against its bonds. It took a week for her to be able to make out its words, but weeks more for it to go quiet enough that she could even hear her own thoughts again.

The voice grows louder in her thoughts, for neither the first nor the last time.

You're losing yourself, child. Do you hear me?

“Hear you,” she confirms aloud because even after all these years she isn’t sure whether the voice can hear her thoughts as she can hear its…

Center yourself. What do you see?

“Girl,” she replies. “Crates. Cage. Blood.”

What do you smell?

“Blood,” the girl replies again. “Salt.” She sniffs her blood-soaked tunic cautiously. “Me?” 

What do you feel?

“Cold,” the girl wriggles her bare toes in the dust and muck of the floor of the little storage chamber. “Mostly just that, I think.”