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SUMMARY: A tale from the dark future world known as Harrowed Earth. A slave recounts the tale of her capture some ten years ago and gives a glimpse into the torturous world of the Sati-Tormentus.

Ten cycles have passed since I was first taken, although not long enough for my memory to have totally deteriorated into the bleak oblivion of time. I was once a free woman; I had a name, a family, a cause. Now I am called slave, prisoner or breeder. Those that would now be considered my family, those other unfortunate women of the convent are no more a comfort to me than the pain of birthing itself. In place of the cause or purpose I once had, I now find my only hope to be death.

I am a breeder, birthing children of madness for the unclean masses of this accursed world. A slave to the Order of the Spiral, condemned to the task of reproducing their disease ridden minds in the heads of innocent children. I have become an abomination to my own kind, a thing, an instrument being used to corrupt my own world against my will. If I were of a braver notion I would take my own life and the lives of every other woman here, to help slow the destruction that races throughout the world and provide them with the same escape that my mind and body long for.

I have birthed ten of their children, infants who are doomed to undertake what they call the sacraments of the Spiral when they come of age. Whispers throughout the halls here tell that our children are birthed with the sole purpose of becoming some type of holy person for our fiendish masters. I can only pray that the harsh climates as of late have kept the last two of my children from breathing longer than a day.

I am currently in my seventh month; at least I believe I am, carrying my eleventh child. Deep in the back of my mind I know that my captors were once human, but it has been so long since the Harrowing that one can scarcely believe that that was ever the case. The ‘priests' of the spiral are all men, born and bred to us ‘breeders' here in the convent beneath the massive structure of what I believe is their church. The last that came to me was even more misshapen than his predecessors, perhaps they have added to their sacraments, rights of passage and ordeals that every one of their ‘priests' must complete.

I do not know all of the sacraments of the Spiral, but I do know that the first is the sacrament of silence, a tribute to the glorious pain of the sacraments that are to follow. To pass through this first sacrament these insane creatures willingly have their mouths sewn shut. Their lips woven together with a coarse twine looped through a curved hoop needle and slowly drawn threw their flesh.

The second sacrament that I am aware of is that of service. To complete this sacrament these deranged beings are placed before a cauldron of iron, which had been boiling on embers and flame for three days. The outer rim of this gigantic iron pot is encircled with raised markings and symbols whose meanings I do not know. Those passing through this sacrament are then required, with bare torso, to press themselves against the cauldron, placing the markings upon their chest and then wrap their arms, fully extended with open palm, as far around the cauldron as they are able.