After a long night of carnal pleasure, Mordai woke up expecting a few things. As an experienced drinker, he expected to have a mild headache from the heavy drinking. Unfortunately, he experiences a skull splitting pain, utterly unproportional to amount he drank. That is the first red flag that waves itself in his bleary mind. Mordai is an open-minded sort of fellow, especially when it comes to his sexual preferences. Waking up, tied down in an unfamiliar place, is not an unexpected event for him, nor is it that rare. What is unexpected and rare, is waking up strapped to a cold, metal table placed facing up, diagonal from the floor in a bright white room. This place is far too alien for is comfort. An alley, trash pile, or strange room? Yes. A sterile, white room? No.

Acting out of habit and instinct, Mordai tries to wipe the sleep from his eyes. The sharp metal edges of the manacles fastened to the table cut into his wrists and hold him down. He strains against the bindings, but even with his powerful, muscular frame looming at over seven feet, he is unable to free himself.

“Ah, let me get that for you,” a charming masculine voice says, a damp cloth wiping his eyes moments later. “Have fun last night?”

His eyes clear, Mordai squints at the owner of the voice, standing over him. It takes several seconds of observing the stranger’s most prominent features, dark skin, well dressed, immaculate beard, but recognition springs into place like a cat pouncing on a helpless mouse. Mordai recognizes this man. He is the Guild’s enforcer. Quinn’s husband.

Questions, excuses, and accusations build up at the back of Mordai’s mouth. They roll forward to the tip of his tongue, pressing against the inside of his lips like a dam about to burst. Unable to help himself, Mordai opens his mouth to blurt out whatever came first. A dagger, inserted into his open mouth, stops him in his tracks. The tip of the dagger tickles the back of his throat. He holds his mouth still, knowing the slightest movement may slice open his mouth on the sharp edges.

“No, no. Let me stop you right there,” Quinn’s husband sighs. With a bored tone, like he has done this a thousand times or more, he instructs Mordai. “The whole ‘where am, why am I here, you can’t do this, etc.’ gimmick is overplayed and I have no interest in going over it. Let’s cut to the chase. We will play a game of questions. If you answer one of my questions with the truth, I’ll let you ask a question. If you lie, I’ll hurt you. Are we clear?”

The dagger is withdrawn from Mordai’s mouth, allowing him to speak again. “When you say you’ll hurt me, do you mean the whips and ball gags kind of hurt or the knives and fire kind of hurt?” Mordai says, unable to help himself. Bad jokes and sexual innuendos are ingrained into his personality, even with the gravity of the situation.

“Good question!” Quinn’s husband smiles, without a hint of sarcasm. He taps the dagger on his lips as if considering how to respond. “The answer isn’t as clear as I would like, but the truth is that I will do my best to hurt you in a way that will break you in mind, body, and spirit. That may take some experimenting to get just right. Everyone has different weak points. With that out of the way, my first question is the following: Does Quinn love Snowflake?”

“She makes a lot of love to him,” Mordai winks.

“Your answer was unsatisfactory,” the man sighs, putting his dagger away into a bag much too small to hold it. With a smooth, practiced movement, he presses his palms together and pulls them apart. Between his hands stretch threads of lightning, bright blue and white against his dark skin. He presses his hands against Mordai’s skin, one at his waist and the other at his shoulder, moving with slow, deliberate motions to let Mordai’s brain register the incoming pain. Electricity surges between the two points of contact, burning Mordai’s skin and ravaging his organs. After what seems like an eternity, he releases his grip. When Mordai’s screams turn to whimpers, Quinn’s husband speaks once more. “Heal yourself and try again.”

Mordai cycles Life Attributed Source through his body with a desperation born from more than a will to live. A priest, seen as the safest class, only wears full plate mail into battle for one reason, if they hate pain. Mordai, a priest that wears full plate mail, hates pain, an unfortunate truth born from his life as an orphaned street urchin in the religious capitol of his old world. Fate was not kind to those who looked like demons in that city.

The minutes tick past as Mordai, works to put himself back together, to stop the pain. Tears stream down his face as he works. He does his best to distract himself from the pain by thinking of an answer that would please his captor. He decides on the truth, hoping it will be enough.

When Mordai’s fried nerves are repaired enough for him to speak again, he addresses his captor in a more serious tone, “I am not close enough to Quinn to know for sure, but they seem happy together.”

“Hmmm… Alright,” Quinn’s husband finds no fault in Mordai’s answer, but still appears unhappy. “You’ve earned your first question. Use it wisely.”

“What do you want from me?” It’s a question Mordai recognizes as subpar, but he doesn’t care. He needs to know.

“A practical, boring question, but a good one nonetheless,” the man’s well-groomed beard does nothing to hide his look of disappointment. “I want several things from you Mordai. First and foremost, I want information about Quinn and Snowflake. However, helping you find your truth is almost as important to me.”

“Find my truth?” Mordai gasps, feeling drained from the effort of healing himself, not to mention the effort of enduring extreme pain. Unfortunately for Mordai, Quinn’s husband doesn’t respond with words. Instead, he plunges his hand into the meat of Mordai’s thigh. His fingers slice through Mordai’s muscles and tendons with ease. He twists his hand before wrenching it out in a spray of blood. Headless of Mordai’s screams and curses, Quinn’s husband pulls a small basin and a bar of soap from his magical pouch, placing it on a workbench built into the room. Slow and methodical, he fills the basin with water and washes his hands, waiting. When Mordai grows quiet, he speaks.

“You’ve only earned one question, please don’t speak out of turn,” Quinn’s husband rebukes, his voice soft but heavy. He pulls a chair from an unnoticed corner and sits down, making himself comfortable. He takes the posture of a teacher, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and hands clasped in front of him. “I will offer you a piece of information to help this go more smoothly. I can see the truth. Don’t look at me like that, it’s true. In my old world, it was my god-given destiny to seek the truth of the world. I was the Truthseeker. Lame, I know.

Quinn was sent from the heavens to aid me. But the truths I saw, the things I found… You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. No one would. No one could. But that was just the start of it, I saw through the gods and their lies. I saw through the very world, my realm of reality. It was all lies. It was fiction. So, when I came here, to this world where my power was stripped away, I decided to forge a new destiny for myself.

I don’t need a god to give me a destiny because eventually I’ll become a god myself. The god of truth. No, no. Shhh, I’ll give you a chance to talk soon enough. Wait until I ask you a question. Now, where was I? Don’t answer that or I’ll hurt you. Ah, yes. My destiny. I forged for myself a new destiny. Instead of seeking the ‘truth of the world’ I am helping people find their own truths. I help them dig deep, to the darkest corners of their soul, and embrace themselves for who they really are.

Now, it comes to you, and your truth. Well, not just you. Quinn and Snowflake as well. I will help you all find out the truth about yourselves. Before you waste a question asking me how, let me tell you.

I will break you, all of you, in mind and body. I will shatter your spirit into as many pieces as I possibly can. Then, when you’ve reached the depths of despair, I will make you put yourself back together again. Only when you’ve been broken, truly broken, can you know yourself.

Please forgive my monologue, it’s a habit that my author wrote into me. You cannot believe how hard it is to change something like that. Anyway, the point is that the Guildmaster has helped me regain a portion of my power, despite my obscured memories. I can see the truth, which has proved invaluable for unlocking the mysteries of this world’s magic. So, since you can’t lie to me, please consider answering truthfully.

My next question is, what is the most effective tool I can use to break someone?”

Mordai’s mind races, trying to process the new information as well as search for the correct answer. The pain, and fear of pain, cast a feverish hue over his thoughts, coloring them with desperation. From the darkest recesses of his mind, a thought, a memory emerges. The cruelest way of breaking someone’s spirit bubbles to the surface of his mind. At first, he rejects it. What if Quinn’s husband uses his answer against him? But, if he doesn’t answer truthfully, the punishment will be swift and merciless.

“Rape,” Mordai blurts. “The most effective tool to break someone is rape.”

“Good answer,” Quinn’s husband reaches out to caress Mordai’s face with his hand, like a tender lover. The hand glows white, waves of heat visibly emanating from it, distorting the air. Mordai twists and strains to avoid his grasp, but to no avail. The restraints binding him do not shift nor strain. He tries to cast every spell he knows or has ever heard of, but outside his body the Source disperses. The hand looms closer and closer, before landing in a gentle, but firm, manner on the side of Mordai’s face. Mordai’s red skin bubbles, melts, and burns, sending immense waves of pain through his body.

“But, unfortunately, it was the wrong one,” Quinn’s husband sighs. “Don’t waste your Source trying to attack me. Just keep healing yourself, you will need it.

Are you listening? I need you to stop screaming now. Nod if you can hear me. Good, good. Let me tell you the correct answer. It’s hope. The most effective tool to break someone is hope. Ah, I see you don’t believe me. I didn’t believe at first either, but I came around.

You see, in the Guildmaster’s library I found the personal journal of someone with the [Psychologist] class, a strange sort of mage. The journal has the details of many experiments, but two stood out to me. The first experiment had a group of goblin children contained in a room filled with water. The [Psychologist] timed how long it would take them to drown, about 6 hours. Then, the [Psychologist] took another group of goblin children and put them in the same room. Right before the six hour mark when they would presumably drown, he took them out. He dried them off, fed them, and let them sleep. The next day, and this is the interesting part, he put them back in. This time, instead of drowning in six hours, they took a day and a half to drown, a full 36 hours. Do you see? By giving them hope, they were broken so much more than they would’ve been.

Don’t worry, I’ve verified that this theory to be applicable in adult, sentient beings with a few experiments of my own. You have to be careful about how you do it though, which brings us to the second experiment and its findings of ‘learned helplessness.’

The [Psychologist] used a magic circuit to run electricity through the floor of two separate rooms. Each room had a short wall running through the middle. In one room, the whole floor was electric, but in the other the floor beyond the wall was electricity free. The goblins he released in the in the wholly electric room, we’ll call them group one, jumped the wall to find no relief from the stinging pain. Eventually they laid down and accepted it. In the other room, the goblins, group two, found relief on the other side of the wall. When the [Psychologist] made them switch rooms, group one immediately laid down without jumping over the wall, a task they had deemed futile. The [Psychologist] called this ‘learned helplessness’ because they convinced themselves that no matter how hard they try, there is no point. Group two never stopped trying.

Tell me, how do I keep the people I’m helping from becoming victims of this ‘learned helplessness’?”

Mordai, as disgusted by the cruelty displayed in the story as he was, payed close attention. Close enough to know the answer to this question. “You give them enough hope. A way out.”

“Good! Now, you’re getting it,” Quinn’s husband flashes a brilliant smile, his white teeth shining through his dark beard. “It is harder than it sounds. Even Quinn, my soon to be masterpiece, suffers from learned helplessness from time to time. I let her indulge in her little acts of rebellion, like your friend Snowflake, to keep her hopeful, but it’s hard. Don’t get me wrong, learned helplessness has its uses when it comes to controlling people, but it is still irritating, nonetheless.

Enough about me, you’ve earned a question. Go ahead.”

Mordai grits his teeth, mentally and physically exhausted. With his healing touch, the searing pain has faded to a dull ache. But, the dull ache is a reminder of the intense pain waiting just around the corner. But… Quinn’s husband was clear that part of his master plan to break people involves a measure hope. Hope is something Mordai could use even the barest measure of. Although Mordai is no stranger to hardship, having even an ounce of hope to help carry the load would be a great boon.

“How,” Mordai asks. “Are you going to give me hope?”

“I like you, Mordai,” Quinn's husband's smile grows a touch wider. “That is an insightful and well-thought out question, that deserves an equally insightful and well-thought out answer. The answer is your friend Honey. As you know, she is a talented fighter, but what you don’t know is that she managed to evade my people and join up with the ‘Resistance.’ With their help and training, she may be able to save you.”

Mordai stifles the hope blooming in his chest. Although Honey has great potential and her saving him seems likely given her demeanor, he’d be a fool to lay all his hope on an obvious trap. She isn’t the only fighter, and he has one more card to play, one last attempt to make. Source leaving his body is dispersed, but ambient Source refills his stores as per usual. The Source in his body moves freely, unaffected by whatever magic is keeping him from casting spells.

Mordai steels himself for this course of action, due to the extreme self-inflicted pain he is about to endure. With great purpose and precision, he removes all Life Attributed Source from the tip of his finger. The finger withers and deflates, becoming skeletal, but he doesn’t stop there. He keeps pulling, making his finger a place not only devoid of Life Attributed Source, but hostile to it. By doing so, he creates Death Attributed Source. It is an understanding he stumbled across on his first trip into the Undead depths of the Dungeon. Death is the absence of life.

“Do you think she will be able to save you?” Quinn’s husband’s eyes twinkle, like he knows the answer to the question before he even asks.

Mordai, of course, believes she can save him. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t feel any hope at the news of her being free, but he doesn’t respond right away. He pretends to think about it, like the question is a trap. Every second he waits, is a second longer he has to prepare his attack. When he feels that waiting any longer will be too suspicious he mutters, “No.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Quinn’s husband chuckles. “I thought you’d know better than to lie to me by now.”

He shifts forward, presumably to hurt Mordai in a new and exciting way, just the way Mordai planned. As soon as he is close enough, Mordai flexes and strains his wrist and hand. All he needs is to brush the finger against Quinn’s husband, that’s all it would take. It is a long shot, but a shot Mordai must take now, before he is too drained. Contrary to Mordai’s expectation, the man doesn’t move away from the sudden movement. Instead, he reaches his finger to meet Mordai’s. Life Attributed Source floods into Mordai’s finger, nullifying the attack.

“I see, the truth, Mordai. Source and its uses are just another truth to me,” Quinn's husband withdraws, standing over the workbench built into the wall of the room. He pulls a large black box out of his bag, placing it on the bench. With a twist and a pull, the box separates into several pieces, spreading to display dozens of cruel instruments, each one impeccably clean. “The question game is over for now. First, you need to learn a lesson.”