Blaguna only smiled, pouring the liquid into the metal tube, allowing it to flow into the wound. Sly began screaming, his screams turned into howls as his body dangled on the metal chain, when the liquid reached his muscles and started eating its way through them. An ear-piercing scream resonated from the walls of the room. Sly's eyes became mad with pain, and tears flowed down his snout.

"You piece of shit!" Yuki shouted, "How dare you, how fucking dare you! He can’t tolerate pain, try me, let’s see how good you are!"

"As you can see, Geldi, a little heat makes wonders if you apply it right." Blaguna said in a pleasant tone, ignoring the scout. "It is quite nice to see how the victim is dangling, trying to fight for another breath. Am I right?" A hint of a need for validation was in the tone of Nokto. She poured the liquid into the second tube, and Sly's screams became even louder, before his voice broke, only barely audible whispers came from his throat now.

"Yes… yes." Geldi managed to speak in a strange and quiet voice. Horror became absolute in her eyes. Aranea was not sure if the woman was fully here anymore, it looked as if she was in some fantasy land. This was not the voice of a sane person.

"Ah, his voice has already broken... Pathetic." Blaguna spoke in a bored tone, seeing how Sly's shriek became hoarse.

"Where is Kostya, you damned scum?" Aranea had trouble keeping her voice steady. Yet she refused to give this creature the pleasure of pissing her off. Let this... thing to do whatever she wants to the wolf hag. Aranea will try to remain calm until the bitter end just to spite Blaguna.

"Kostya, Kostya…" Blaguna looked at Yasen.

"Shirtless guy." The regulator laughed, regaining his cool and arrogant demeanor.

"Ah, the old fart! He was no good, I'm afraid." Blaguna put the pot back. "His heart gave in during the second hour. I just chopped up his remains and sent the meat to your cell."

Yuki vomited, and pieces of meat and water fell on her knees as she stared at Blaguna, who shrugged and walked to the bucket in the room's corner. Nokto searched inside and lifted the head of Kostya, holding it by his ear. Yuki vomited again, and Sly went along with her this time. Geldi staggered and almost fell.

"I will kill you," Aranea simply stated. "No matter how long it takes, I will find a way to end you."

Blaguna laughed and let go of the head. With a wet sound, it fell back into the bucket, splashing blood.

"Oh, foolish girl," Nokto reprimanded Aranea, "You and I are not connected." I have no reason to spare you, thus you will never get the chance to get me. You simply owe me a blood debt. Your test will be flame."

"You said to try you, is this right? Fine then. For your bravery, you will get a special treat. Your test will be violation." Nokto addressed Yuki. "How about a game? I will give both of you a dose of phantom pain. If the wrong one of you screams first, then I will play with your boy here for a long time. If the right one screams first, then I will play with her first, leaving this boy for later."

"How do we know who is the right one and who is the wrong one?" Aranea demanded to know.

"That’s the best part, you don’t know. Since only I know who is the wrong one and who is the right one, for all you know, I could be bullshitting you. But if you want to save your male…" Blaguna's fingers run across Aranea's wounded arm, pressing into the wound and tearing through the bandage. She lifted her bloody fingers and licked the blood off them, "… try to keep your mouth shut as long as you can as you are under the effects of phantom pain."

"The hell is this phantom pain?" Yuki snarled at her.

Blaguna went around the chairs, picking something up behind them. Aranea felt something pressing against her back. Some sort of cable.

"Yes, quite an ingenious thing. You see, back in the Old World, this place was a rehab facility. For patients who suffered heavy mental trauma or recovered after injuries," Blaguna started explaining as she worked on their backs, connecting cables to their skin. The voice of Nokto was calm, she sounded almost bored, "This device behind you can transfer feelings of others into your brain. Love, kindness, and other shit. Doctors found volunteers, saved their signals on terminals, and used them to heal mentally ill people. My daddy," She said in a mocking voice, " Tried to heal me in such a way. The problem is, you can’t fix what is fully broken. As I learned, you can nudge a person in the right direction, but in my case, I had been screwed in the head since my birth. I asked daddy to do what was right, but he never gave up on me," The leader of the regulators cheerfully laughed. "I love my old man, still do, but I am what I am. And thus, one day, I did what I liked to do to him. Thus, Regulators got a new leader. Yours truly.”

“But this got me thinking. If you can deceive the conscience by sending false signals to the brain, and even create false memories... Then living beings are just biological machines. If you can trigger false feelings without needing to create the original sources of such feelings… Say you can create a fake memory and a fake feeling in the patient’s head about eating a cake without feeding this cake to the patient. So, first and foremost, what is pain? When I cut someone, cells that are damaged by my blade create a signal. It goes through the spinal cord all the way to the sensory cortex of the brain. And then your brain tells you, 'You are hurt'. We understand pain because of signals that are sent to our brain," Blaguna pressed her face to Yuki's ear, her voice finally changed—a note of excitement appeared in it. "Now listen well, because this part is important."

“What would happen if I were to replicate this signal? You will feel "pain" even without being cut. Despite the fact that there is no wound, pain persists. Thanks to the manuals and extensive testing, I learned how to replicate such signals. Cut. Burning. Violation. Drowning. Electric shock. These are the types of pain that I have recorded so far," Blaguna’s grin widened, "However, the best part is, to get these signals, I needed to 'write them down', so to speak. This means that I used live test subjects to save new signals into these machines," The woman's voice became that of a cheerful student, proudly explaining how she had finally completed her project, "Of course, because I was looking for the most extreme pain, all of the test subjects had died by now... However, these machines can now replicate this pain and even make it far worse than the real thing! Without blood loss. Without physical injury. And not once. Many times. Your friends have already experienced this, and now it is your turn… Anyway, enough of the presentation. Time to start!" Blaguna came to stand before Aranea and Yuki, the remote control in her hand. She pressed a button, and chairs began to move backwards, into the spherical devices.

"Try your worst, bitch! It’s not like we will die, so I don’t care! I won’t break!" Yuki laughed in Blaguna’s face,

The devices absorbed both Aranea and Yuki, the spheres closed around the wolfkins, putting them in utter darkness.

With a "clop" sound, some weird cloth has started to enlarge from the sides of the sphere, filling the insides. The cloth pressed to Aranea’s snout pressed itself into her eyes, nostrils, and mouth. The wolf hag had tried to bite through this cloth, but to no avail. She was in a panic for a while, she could barely breathe, the cloth was filling every free place inside the sphere. Nothing happened for a long time, and Aranea has felt cold sweat running down her spine. Just what will happen? What was going to happen to her and Yuki? Will they just choke to death in this place?

The wolf hag felt a burning sensation on her left hand. It was a small thing at first, as if she held her hand over the bonfire. Then the feeling increased, as if someone had spilled hot liquid over her skin. It's annoying, but tolerable. And then it hit her. As if someone had pushed her entire hand into a bonfire. Aranea jerked her body, trying to instinctively pull her hand back, yet she failed to move even an inch, the damned cloth restrained all her movements. The burning sensation moved toward her shoulder, slowly spreading. Soon, Aranea could barely breath. Cloth did not allow her to look down, she could barely breathe. Darkness was filling her vision, and in this darkness, Aranea burned alive, feeling her skin melting, feeling fur disappearing, feeling her muscles turning to ash...

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The halfbreed felt her skin turn to coal as her skin burned. Her lungs were on fire, she could feel her insides being melted. Tears flowed from her eyes, and Aranea tried to understand how she could even see. She was sure that her eyes had busted out of their sockets a long time ago. Her agony had no end, her nerves refused to die as flames tormented her body again and again. She felt herself in a solid metal cage as fire licked the metal outside, overheating the cage, causing her skin to burn at the touch. All that she could feel was pain and the smell of burning flesh, a disgusting smell of…

Scream, I must scream. Torment will end, I must… Aranea had bit her tongue, feeling blood. The Wolf Tribe took her in. Sly was the one who was entrusted to her. Panic and horror hit her again and again, and yet she refused to give in. I have the duty. The duty to watch over the pack. I will not allow myself to break or…

The cloth vanished, along with the pain, when the sphere opened up, ejecting the chair with Aranea on it. The chair moved back to the center of the room, with Yuki stopping nearby. Just like Aranea herself, Yuki looked horrible, tears were flowing from her eyes as well, as she blindly looked forward.

"You lose," Blaguna smiled, addressing Yuki, "Such a shame. Barely lasted fifteen minutes. Tell me, did you like the insects inside of you? Physical maiming? Or…"

"How many." Yuki whispered, "Just how many women did you…"

"Oh, I see now what you liked the most… Yasen, how many were used?"

"Nine, my lady." The regulator bowed.

"How could you?" Yuki ripped at her restraints, "Butcher you! I will tear through your flesh, I will devour your insides!"

Blaguna only smiled. She came closer to Yuki and looked her in the eyes, putting her hands on the metal locks.

"Let’s see you try," The locks fell, and Nokto stepped back, as the scout had leaped from the chair, unleashing her claws, her jaws open, aiming to tear the smiling face away. Blaguna had lazily kicked with her leg, sending Yuki's body to the ceiling. Yuki had slammed into stone and fallen, only for Blaguna to catch her by the neck and slam Yuki into the floor.

"See? You are boring, your rage is boring, everything about you is boring." The knife in Blaguna’s hand moved, crashing under one of Yuki's claws and moving up, pulling out the claw and causing the scout to scream from pain.

"Let her go!" Sly screamed, trying to break his chains. Aranea kept her silence, straining her muscles in an attempt to break the steel that confined her. Her efforts were rewarded with chains pushing deeper into her flesh, tearing it, and drawing blood. And yet, no matter how hard she has struggled, the damn things just won't break.

Yuki had tried to bite away the Blaguna’s face, but the woman merely dodged the attack, knocking Yuki out with a punch to her temple. Blaguna stood up and snapped her fingers, calling for guards. "Take her to chamber eight. I will toy with her later. Let’s see how much she can take before she breaks."

"Listen!" Sly shook in his restraints, "Listen to me! I can lick your shoes, I can become your slave, I can do anything you want! Just let her go," Blaguna looked at him curiously, and Sly continued, allowing eagerness and hope to slip into his voice, "Just think about it. What will you get from her? Nothing, she is a dumb brute who hits hard. Hah! Big deal. Just throw her out, what need do you have for her, right? But I, I can amuse you, become your jester if needed. You say jump, and I will ask, 'how high?'. I will aim to fulfill your every desire. Come, this is clearly a better deal, what need do you have for…" His voice turned into a moan of pain when Blaguna slammed the knife into his lower and upper jaw, connecting the lower and upper palate with her weapon.

"Such a curious boy. You think that I can’t make you lick my shoes as it is? No, we will try so many ideas later…" She chuckled, turning away from Sly and reaching for another knife in her pocket. She walked toward Aranea, playing with her new hooked knife. "But first things first. The blood debt. Let’s make you shirtless."

The knife pierced Aranea’s skin near her belly the wolf hag gasped for air as pain hit her. She felt the steel inside her, Blaguna was moving her hand deliberately slowly, keeping Aranea in place with one hand. The knife moved to the left, easily slicing through the skin, and Aranea could barely breath while the knife had started circling around her torso. Looking down, she saw the blood pouring out from her side.

"Whoopsie!" Blaguna said, with a fake apology in her voice, "Seems like I cut a bit too deep. Oh well," She removed the knife, "How about I just pull your insides out and strangle you with…"

She never finished her sentence, for the iron door leading into the room was forcibly torn away. Some massive force from outside grabbed it and pulled it out. A large man stepped inside, throwing the metal door aside. The doorway was too small for him, and he smashed through part of the stone with his head, leaving debris behind him when he entered. His skin was replaced with metal, tubes and wires ran across his massive body. His hands resembled claws of steel, each big enough to crush Aranea with ease. Only his eyes and the flesh around them were that of a human being. Two green eyes locked at Blaguna. Behind him stepped a woman dressed in a white coat, blue pants, and black boots. Her muscles were almost as big as the muscles of a warlord, despite being made from flesh and blood, she nearly towered over her companion. An enormous scythe was behind her back, the curved blade gleamed with weird dark steel. Long blonde hair reached her waist, bored-looking black eyes looked around the room in disgust.

"You!" Blaguna shouted in anger. "How are you here? Why? Who told you!?" Blinking through the pain, Aranea had noticed that Geldi went pale at this question.

"Yasen spilled the beans." The steel man responded calmly and in a human voice.

"This is a lie!" The regulator screamed, almost pressing his body against the steel wall in an attempt to escape Nokto's gaze. "I swear to you, my lady, I am loyal, loyal!"

"Loyal? Just like you were loyal before, when you scratched my prey?" The regulators' leader asked in a honeyed voice.

"Filth." The woman said, addressing Blaguna. "Have you gone fully mad, or are you just pretending really well?"

"Shut it, Jekaterina." Nokto responded, standing up and walking away from Aranea. "You should have heard from King by now. ‘We will hang the bodies of our enemies from the walls of our cities’ and all that crap. I am just following the…" She stopped as Jekaterina reached for the scythe in lightning-fast motion, slashing across the room and stopping the blade’s tip an inch away from Blaguna’s neck. Blaguna had reached for the remote, pressing a button. The ceiling in the room moved, unleashing several turrets. Before the machines could even finish their descent, Jekaterina had already moved, slicing off the closest weapons next to her. Her scythe moved in a blurring arc, slashing through the turrets with ease. The woman controlled her long and deadly weapon with graceful precision, not allowing the deadly blade to touch Yasen or Geldi. The steel man behind Jekaterina simply looked at the turrets, and they moved back, even the sliced one. Blaguna's eyes widened as she attempted to press a button on the remote, but nothing happened.

"Don’t play with me, filth. Resistance was established with specific rules, and yet you have managed to bring us shame time and again. I have asked you a question, filth, answer it or lose your head." Jekaterina has kept talking with the same disgust in her voice, pressing her weapon back to the neck of Blaguna.

"I am sane, you vapid bi…" The blade pierced the skin of Blaguna, causing blood to drop from her neck. Blaguna's body tensed with bottled-down rage, and she clenched her fists, ready to lash out at any moment. "Do you really want to give up your life this badly, grandma?" The remote crumbled in Blaguna's fist. "You think that your power will save you in this place? This close to me? If so, let’s go, let’s see how long you can last!"

"Enough," The man calmly said. The metal of his body shifted, countless guns erupted from within his steel frame, taking aim at Blaguna. A light showed up in the barrels of the guns. "Try to let out your smoke, and I will shoot you down like the mad dog you are."

"What. Are. You. Want. Tlaltzin? This is Regulators’ turf, screw off…"

"Calm yourself, moron," This time a hint of anger appeared in the man’s voice. His voice was surprisingly human-like, it was deep. No sound of machinery or static could be heard in his voice, "Think, think for once! If you kill and torture soldiers of the enemy, just imagine what they will do with our own troops!" The metal claws twitched. "King talks a big game, but you know full well that this is all merely posturing for morale," The machine man had moved his head, looking at the prisoners, "We take the wolfkins away and return them to the reclaimers."

"She owes me a blood debt!" Blaguna shrieked like a vulture, pointing at Aranea, while Jekaterina walked past her, taking off her coat. She had used it to bandage the wound around Aranea’s waist, "Don’t touch my toy! She is not even human!"

"You already took enough blood from her to pay for any debt." Jekaterina replied to Blaguna, uncaring that her back was wide open. Aranea wanted to ask about the rest of her pack, but the woman simply pressed her hand to Aranea's forehead. And the darkness had returned.