Somewhere inside of a cell in Veridiania
It had been about a week since Crow had been dragged into this place. The cell was a cold, featureless box of bare stone containing nothing but a metallic toilet—no bed, no furniture, and not a single window opening to the outside world. It was a sensory-deprivation tomb clearly designed to methodically rot the mind and shatter the sanity of anyone locked inside.
He had lost all track of time. He didn't know what hour of the day it was, nor when the guards would return to march him back down to the dwarven artificers. When he was first brought in, they had immediately attempted to extract the information directly out of his skull. But because he was undead, his neural pathways simply didn't function like those of a living being. The complex magi-tech device they had clamped onto his head had failed completely, forcing the dwarves to go back to the drawing board to engineer a new apparatus specifically suited for an undead mind.
They had tried twice more since then, both attempts ending in failure.
"I don't think they're going to fail this time," Crow whispered to himself, huddled tight in the darkest corner of the cell. His voice was hoarse, hollow, and barely audible.
He looked significantly worse for wear. His physical body was brutally battered, covered in a sickening array of deep cuts, severe burns, and broken bones from continuous interrogations. They starved him relentlessly, ensuring his necrotic flesh lacked any sustenance to trigger its natural healing process.
Physically, he was completely broken. Mentally? Between the physical agony from the burns and the suffocating isolation of the cell, he was rapidly getting there.
Suddenly, the heavy echo of incoming footsteps resounded from behind the thick steel door—a door as flat and featureless as the stone walls around it. Crow lifted his hollow gaze toward it as the sharp clinking of keys turning in the lock grated through the quiet.
The door creaked slowly open. Standing in the entrance was an armored guard alongside a stern-faced Inquisitor.
"Get up. It's time for your extraction," the Inquisitor commanded, staring down at Crow with unbridled contempt.
The Inquisitor's presence was no coincidence. The very first time the guards had entered the cell to transport him, Crow had lashed out with his remaining magic, killing three of them before he was finally subdued. Ever since, they had dispatched Inquisitors—specialists explicitly trained and equipped with magi-tech weapons to neutralize magic users—to oversee his movements.
Crow pushed off the cold floor, leaning heavily against the corner walls for support as he dragged his battered body upright. He slowly limped toward the pair. The guard instantly shoved heavy iron shackles onto his wrists, clamping them tight before grabbing Crow by the shoulder and roughly forcing him forward.
"If this works, you won't have to suffer any longer," the guard muttered, giving him a harsh shove. "You'll be executed—even if a creature like you deserves to rot for far longer."
Crow merely grumbled a low, unintelligible response under his breath, neither man bothering to listen.
They marched him down a long, dreary corridor lined with dozens of identical steel doors. Goddess only knew who or what else was being kept inside those pitch-black tombs. After a grueling walk through the facility—its layout deliberately engineered into a confusing, disorienting maze—they finally brought him through a set of heavy wooden doors.
The room inside was unexpectedly opulent. The walls were decorated in an aristocratic fashion and lined with shelves displaying various intricate pieces of magi-tech. In the center of the chamber stood two dwarves: one sporting a long, bushy beard and the other wearing thick brass goggles over his eyes. Both were busily making final adjustments to a heavy metal chair fitted with a bizarre apparatus boasting three wicked, pointed spikes.
"You brought the prisoner? Have ye?" the bushy-bearded dwarf asked, looking up from his tools.
"Yes, we have," the Inquisitor replied stiffly. "Hopefully this extractor of yours actually works this time, Artificers."
The dwarf with the goggles carelessly waved a hand in the air. "Oh, dinnae ya worry 'bout it! It'll work this time, we're sure of it." He gestured toward the frame. "Get 'im in the chair."
The guard didn't hesitate. He slammed the wight down onto the cold metal seat and rapidly secured the heavy leather straps around his chest and limbs.
"Aright, let's start this up," the bushy-bearded dwarf said, reaching for a glowing lever on the side of the apparatus. "Dinnae worry, ye'll feel nothin'."
Crow stared directly at the three gleaming metallic spikes hovering above his skull, knowing with absolute certainty that the dwarf's promise was a complete and total lie.