20.0

The torture troopers guarding the entrance to the Castle Blackpools' notorious Dungeon of Death beamed in delight as the new queen sauntered past them They never for a moment considered impeding the path of the only woman in history who had unrestricted access to this most feared part of the castle.

"Strength to the faithful!" the uniformed men greeted in a rough chorus.

One balled up his hand into a fist and held it in the air, staring straight ahead at the wall behind Zyrdicia. They had learned the Lyrian salute in Geshna and thought themselves sophisticated and worldly for showing it off.

She nodded indifferently and automatically clicked the knuckles of her own gloved fist against a guard's as she past. Had she been in a better mood, she might have been amused that Dirk's most trusted soldiers now behaved like colonized subjects of Lyr. Tonight she was too intensely aware of what awaited in the dungeon to pay any attention to these men.

For the first time ever in Castle Blackpool, she was nervous. Her stomach was in knots. Her muscles tightened with anxiety. There was precious little in the material plane she could recall evoking this particular emotion in her. She frowned at the strangeness of it, struggling to remember the last time she had felt this way. Battling a Sephiroth or slaying a god could do this to her, certainly - but never, ever a mere man.

Dirk intended to unleash the blood hunger deliberately tonight. He wanted to see for himself what effect it had upon Zyrdicia. When they had discussed it a few hours ago, Dirk had patronizingly told her that he found the idea of seeing her helplessly enthralled with a lust to kill anyone and everyone he set before her "amusing." She cringed as she recalled the conversation, remembering that he had even used the word "cute" at one point - saccharine condescension dripping from his voice.

His cocky certainty that he could somehow control the diabolic madness and use it to his advantage was dangerous and absurdly foolish. She believed he had not the faintest inkling of the force he would unleash. And knowing that he was going to use her reaction to the blood as his evening's entertainment was almost more than she could bear. Nothing she could say would convince him of the gravity of the situation.

She walked down the stairs leading to the torture chamber slowly, pausing at the top of the stairway leading down into the castle's subterranean bowels. She weighed silently whether to call the evening off.

She inhaled deeply, cursing her indecision. Dirk was so very sure of himself, of his ability to make this thing inside her bend to his will like some new minion. At the moment, she truly feared this evening would end the way her last one at the Cauldron did, the night she killed Magnus. She groaned softly at the thought of leaving herself so alone.

"Before it gets dangerous for him, I will simply leave," she promised herself quietly.

The long, dark stairway had been carved directly into the rock beneath one of the castle's towers. Frigid air poured through a series of square ventilation holes far above the stairwell. This time of year, the thick layer of subterranean slime normally coating the walls and steps had frozen into a dark, slippery layer of ice.

She mildly regretted ignoring Anthony's suggestion that she dress warmly. He had been hounding her for days to incorporate heavy, fur-lined garments into her daily routine. She had steadfastly ignored him. She loathed those sorts of bulky clothes. Tonight she wished she had listened. It was damned cold down in the dungeon.

The stairs ended in a passageway, guarded by more of the ever-present torture troopers. In the distance, she heard someone scream.

"It sounds as though Dirk started without me," she muttered to herself, passing the guards without so much as glancing at them.

"Just a short time ago, my queen," one of the soldiers replied congenially, smiling at her in a blatant effort to curry favor.

She ignored him, mildly annoyed that he had dared to reply at all. Her irritation instantly manifested itself in a pillar of purple flame. Before she had even formulated a thought to invoke the magic, hellfire enveloped the source of annoyance - and all of his companions.

Zyrdicia's jaw dropped in surprise as she stared at the small pile of ash that had been human flesh but a moment ago. She had not meant to kill them. She certainly had not intentionally activated any magic.

She looked around suspiciously, as though some other spell caster might be lurking in the shadows. Finding no one, she frowned at this latest evidence of her loss of mastery over her magic.

She continued on her way, her mood noticeably darkened. She clicked her fingers along a pair of stones set into the wall to her right, disabling a twelve-foot-wide blade that would otherwise drop from the ceiling as she passed.

Iron doors lined the corridor, each hiding a cell filled with misery. Pitiful faces stared out of small grates in the doors as she passed. She paused long enough to admire the desolation in their eyes. In some ways, those executed would be the lucky ones. Anyone forgotten in a cell would probably freeze to death slowly as the winter temperature dropped.

At the end of the corridor, she stopped and pressed another series of stones in the wall, resetting the blade. She had discovered, and successfully disarmed, this particular trap on her own during her first, uninvited trip down here, months ago. She had not bothered to look for a mechanism to reset it then. Dirk had been even more annoyed by that oversight than by her intrusion into his most hallowed space in the castle. Failure to reset traps and lock doors was unforgivably stupid in his eyes - any castle guard would pay for the error with his head.

Once he had accepted the fact that he could not keep her out of the castle's secret passages and dungeon corridors, he had taken half an evening to show her how to at least use them responsibly last summer. Now that she lived here full time, she resolved to be bit more careful about it.

20.0.1

When Zyrdicia entered the main torture chamber, the few guards in the room exited immediately. They did not have to wait for an order to leave - in prior months it had been incontrovertibly established that Zyrdicia's presence in the torture chamber with Dirk meant all the guards had to vacate the room. Once in a while the pair would call for another plaything from the holding cells, but everyone - including Vector - knew better than to interrupt them otherwise.

Zyrdicia looked around the room curiously. She had not been down here in many weeks. Sometime before Dirk's birthday, in October, had been the last time. Nothing had changed. Vector's annoying little, magical helper-drones were gone, but that was to be expected given the mage's disappearance.

She watched apprehensively as the guards left. Their thoughts fluttered against her, reminding her what Dirk's men mistakenly believed went on in the dungeon when the royal pair was alone. The fact of the matter was the pair simply liked to kill. Or at least they used to. Previously, torturing together was fun, their closest approximation to spending "quality time" together as a couple. Which was not to say it never had a sexual undercurrent - just not always.

Zyrdicia glanced at the room's sole other remaining occupant and frowned, "You know they spread rumors about what we do down here?"

"Hi. Those are hardly the least flattering rumors circulating about you, I'm sure," Dirk replied curtly. He stood with his arms crossed impatiently. He had been kept waiting for her far too long - an offense he would surely kill anyone else for committing.

Occupied with a prisoner as he was, he did not move to greet her when she entered. One foot rested upon the side of the face of a man chained to the floor. The victim writhed in agony as the small spikes on the sole of Dirk's boot pierced his skull. Nearby, she recognized Baron Vandor and several of the spies strung up on chains hanging from the ceiling. All were gagged, anxiously awaiting their turn to receive the new king's attention.

Dirk adjusted his foot to put more pressure on the head beneath him. The head's owner groaned. He glanced down approvingly, pleased at the response.

Zyrdicia could smell the trace of blood beneath Dirk's foot, its warm fragrance seeping up to her despite her effort to ignore it.

Dirk offered his hand to her as she stepped over the rapidly expiring person beneath her husband's foot. He brought her leather-clad fingers to his lips. "Are you ready?"

She nodded reluctantly, a flicker of dread in her eyes. She then stepped upon the dying man's chest as though it were a piece of furniture. She paused, both feet balanced firmly on the body beneath her, then looked down at the face obscured by Dirk's boot. Standing atop the man, she strained in vain to see his face.

Dirk smirked sarcastically, "Standing there, you know very well that you are in the way." His hands closed around her hips, then he lifted her off her dying perch. He set her down next to him.

The man on the floor groaned again as the motion exacerbated his agony. Zyrdicia's eyes fell to the obscured face again. Her expression became exceedingly curious as the victim's mind's content swirled around her. Baron Reznit. She moved perceptibly nearer her husband, until the side of her body was almost - but not quite - touching him. One of her gloved hands settled lightly on his thigh, directly above the spiked boot in the head of the man on the floor.

"Why didn't you wait for me?" she wondered, mildly surprised that he could amuse himself without her.

"Boredom. I sent for you over half an hour ago. Let this be a lesson to you not to tarry when I call for you," Dirk replied darkly, a hint of menace oozing into his tone. "Where were you?"

"Philip. He thinks he's discovered something about the monocles."

"What has he found?" Dirk demanded, moving his foot from the victim's head to its neck.

Once his foot moved, Zyrdicia could watch the agonized submission to fate in Reznit's eyes. She groaned softly, her eyes fixed intently on the sight. The baron gurgled in pain as the spikes on his tormentor's foot pierced his throat. She swallowed hard, forcing herself to look away.

"His obsession with useless Sephiroth prophecies. Something about The Book and monocles ushering in the Twilight..." she mumbled, losing her train of thought as her eyes wandered back to the crimson stain now spilling across the stone at her feet. She licked her lips as the scent became overpowering. Her fingertips reflexively pressed very hard into the flesh of Dirk's thigh.

Like a monstrous beast stirring in its lair, the Sephiroth lust for destruction awoke inside her. The delicious odor of blood was strong enough that she could almost taste it as she breathed its fragrance through her parted lips. It quickened her pulse. She turned her head and closed her eyes, trying desperately not to inhale. An involuntary shudder ran down her spine. It took every bit of self-discipline she could muster to keep from bending down and lapping the glorious, ruby-colored substance from the floor. Reznit's dying heartbeat called her in an intent, seductive whisper.

She opened her eyes to find Dirk peering curiously at the yearning, wonder-filled expression on her face. His head angled to the side as his appraising eyes traveled slowly down the length of her tension-filled torso, then back up. He brought his right hand to her cheek, running his thumb slowly along her lower lip. As his thumb reached the center of it, she drew its tip between her teeth and bit softly against the leather of his glove.

She pondered for a brief instant severing his thumb with her teeth.

When her eyes met his, the hunger for the blood became inextricably intertwined with another hunger in her mind. She realized instantly that it always had been so. It had been when Azriok savored her own blood, many years ago. Now that she was on the other side of it, she feared her own subservience to it. Staring into Dirk's eyes, it was not Reznit's heartbeat that quickened the hunger - it was her husband's.

Zyrdicia pushed his hand away roughly. Her eyes darted from the pool of blood on the floor to the new king's face. She groaned as every synapse in her brain seemed to fire at once - demanding to taste him, to devour him. Nothing existed but the warm scent of the blood, and the bitter ache for more of it. The urge to slice open Dirk's throat in a quick, fluid motion, to put her lips to the wound and taste the inimitable intimacy of mortal fear, the heat of his soul as she lapped it up from his writhing body - it was quite nearly irresistible. Her dagger was in her hand almost before she realized it.

"I think not!"

The sharp voice momentarily jarred her brain out of its agonizing need. When she saw his hand move toward her, she suddenly feared the temptation of his pulse against her skin. She backed away from him quickly, dodging the touch as though it were a lethal poison.

She backed against the rough-hewn stone of the wall behind her, desperate to put space between their bodies. She looked down at the dagger in her hand, confused. At that moment, she had no recollection whatsoever of calling it from the ether. Her hand opened tentatively, letting the weapon's hell-forged metal drop to the floor.

On the floor, a final moan escaped Reznit as the baron bled to death. Zyrdicia took one final, wistful look at the steaming, crimson fluid glistening on the stone floor.

"Good bye," she whispered breathlessly. "I don't want do this."

"Don't you dare l-" Dirk's command stopped mid-sentence. She disappeared before he could finish it.

20.0.2

Suddenly alone in the silent torture chamber, Dirk grimaced in exasperation. The entire episode had taken but a minute - in that time, he had seen her face transform from desire to something else. The "something else" in her expression had ended in horror, perhaps even fear.

He was certain the yearning expression on her face had been for him. In his mind, it was typical of her. The torture chamber often used to have that effect on her, before the madness of Baal's arrival.

She had pushed his hand away and shrank from it as though he were some sort of beast. After growing used to her irrational, desperate need for constant touch, her new-found revulsion to it surprised him. He had always derived a perverse joy from the looks of fear and horror he could evoke from people. He never expected that it was possible to evoke such a look from her.

He sighed in frustration, calculating how to proceed. He left the torture chamber, slamming its iron-studded door behind him.