[RPG] [Atamara] [Abby/CE] Pain, like never before...

[Kimberly Amthor]

She would have much prefered being stabbed in the back by a fellow
shadow-walker...

Riamh didn't dare move.  Crumpled on the floor in the corner of a
Cagilan prison cell, her tears flowed freely, washing trails of blood
from her cheeks before falling to the cold stone floor.  Every emotion
was kept strictly in check that she would not allow even the faintest
sob or shudder, which would unleash even more pain by jarring the
still-fresh wounds of Strider's torturous fiend.  Even her breathing
was shallowed, sensitive to what she was certain to be several broken
ribs.

Riamh lie still, as the stone walls around her.

Her eyes stared, unseeing...did she understand, now?  Did she finally
understand her place?  Servitude...not gratitude.  The gods were not
with her.  It had been beaten into her as a child...as an aspiring
noble woman in the Highland Empire...even in Ethiala...now, she was
wounded on behalf of a realm about which she knew very little, by a
realm about which she knew nothing.  Did this sadistic bastard from
Cagilan think Abington was careless enough to relay any sensitive
information to their infiltrators?  For a split second, her mind raged
again, as it had when they first drug her from the cell...when she
first realized these men's intent...

'Every moment of victory, matched by ten fold suffering...'  In the
following moment, she noticed the warmth of her own tears...which only
served to increase their abundance...

'I need a drink...' came a half-conscious thought.  Riamh lost
consciousness again as her fellow captives in the Cagilan's dungeon
sang, "Mary had a Little Lamb"...