Sequestered ((Solo))

[DarkDelights]

The obstacle completely overran the hall, and the Witch was forced to pick her steps with the tips of her toes. The coils of razor wire bunched in the path like briers, and even in serenity, her pulse quickened as her bare leg glanced one of the million small blades. It wouldn't cut her. It had no power over her there, and it was a matter of respect that she avoided touching the edged wire – as if with the tremorsense of a spider in its web, She would sense its vibration and know the Witch was about. Her lean, pale legs moved in slow-motion and exaggerated strides, making steady progress over the razor wire, until she cleared the last few feet of the tunnel, and into the Chamber of Knives and Vanity.

Yvain is dearest to me of the five, though my love is not true nor one-fold. Her native land is the Pit, where all smells of brimstone and the wind blows in screams. The punisher as she was punished, stray souls of hell were hers to torment, and through cursed looking-glasses, she twisted mankind for as long as they have aware of their own reflections.

Clear of the tunnel's yawning mouth, the Woman was free to move about the veritable museum of blades, instruments of torture, and queerer things. Her hands brushed the levers that slackened or pulled taught lengths of iron chain that ended in hooks. The winches were well used, and well oiled. She laughed softly, and a corner of her dark lips lifted in smirk. She parted rows of dangling manacles and bashfully approached a relic that sat upon a plush red velvet pillow, like a sultan's prize. It was small, the size of a necklace. Two leather straps, joined by steel rings, fused to a glistening black ball – a toy meant to stifle the cries of the submissive. She touched the smooth, black orb fondly, and thought how yielding it would be with her teeth pressed over it, how it would hold but not harm.

Oh, but it makes your jaw ache...

She passed pristine glass display cases which boasted an array of dark delights: surgeon's scalpels, taxidermied childhood pets with their pelts removed, a heart within a cold-iron birdcage that beat stubbornly in a steadily supplied pool of red ichor. A collection of disembodied eyes, jarred in formaldehyde, blinked wide with horror as she passed. A gimp suit of human skin with a zipper made of teeth...

The witch passed suits of spiked full-plate. Had she stopped to examine them, she would have noted that the hollow armour was barbed on the inside as well.

The resonance of trickling liquid came crisply through the maze of malevolent artifact. She rounded some war machine she didn't recognize, but could imagine how it would cut down legions of warriors in violent fashion as it rolled through them. There, in a glaring spotlight of unholy brilliance, beyond the gallery of suffering, was a porcelain fountain of shimmering crimson liquid. The trickle of the arching streams was as music and the air smelled deliciously of copper. Something within the fountain beat steady and rhythmically like a drum. The Witch leaned in low, pressing her hip against the sill of the fountain which challenged the ivory of her skin, as she traced her index finger through the surface of the pooled blood in lazy circles.

Maybe tonight, just tonight, I don't need to visit those other places. Maybe I'll just sit by the fountain for a bit. Yes, and then I shall return to the sanctuary, and sit with my feet in the water, and await daybreak's tickling of my eyes. I'll go no further tonight. Just this one time.

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