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.For a moment, the human’s thoughts sank to resignation, surrender, and sacrifice to prevent more death.Still, there was a small spark of promise that kept Teldin from utter despair.Apparently, while they had him, the neogi did not know their human prisoner wore the cloak.That, the farmer guessed was all that kept him alive.Teldin squatted against the door and tried once more at the clasp, hoping to get it unfastened.With it off, his numbed mind rationalized, he would be free from its burden and the neogi might even let him go.As he fumbled with the chain, the face of the dying alien came into his mind.The spelljammer captain had perished rather than surrender to the neogi.She had taken an entire ship and her crew to their deaths, taken them by choice.How many more had died to keep it from the neogi’s grasping little hands? Teldin wondered.Could he give up, or would surrendering now be a betrayal of the captain and perhaps others, even his father? Worse still, the neogi had hinted that the cloak could enslave whole planets.Howmany untold innocents would be killed then? Almost sadly, he realized the cloak could not be given away, at least not to them.It felt as if Amdar and hundreds of others all had spectral eyes trained on him, a lone human captive in a shipful of the enemy.A thumping vibration came through the floor.Alerted, Teldin pressed close to the door and listened.Without light, there was no distraction from his sense of hearing, and the human discovered this sense was more acute than he suspected.Through the wall, the thumps ended in clicks, and Teldin guessed they were the footfalls of the huge lordservants, the beetle-headed umber hulks.“Door open," a voice hissed.Futilely trying to hide, Teldin scrambled backward in the dark, until he cracked his head against the edge of a table.The prison door swung open and light from a lantern streamed through the doorway, blinding the dazed farmer, who could only sit blinking at the glare.Silhouetted in the door was a pair of umber hulks, while behind and between them was a small neogi, holding a lantern high.Farther back were more of its kind, twisting to catch sight of their prey.Lantern light glinted off the lordservants’ mandibles and the neogi’s yellow eyes.“Lordservants meat grab, kill not,” ordered the neogi.The two umber hulks leisurely rumbled forward, confident in their own might.Teldin avoided the gaze of their multifaceted outer eyes, focusing instead on the small, beady pair at the center of each of their broad faces.Nonetheless, the farmer could not help but glance at the strange orbs, and the minute he did his mind felt fogged and confused, like the time he’d gotten sunstroke working in the fields.It was a struggle to think, to act, but his mind would not obey, and the lordservants were on him before he could even formulate a thought.Seizing the human roughly, clawed hands gouged skin and the beasts slammed their victim onto a table, then ruthlessly pinioned his arms and legs.Shoulder joints strained as one of the lordservants pressed Teldin’s arms backwards over the edge of the table.“Me lift up,” rasped a sinister voice.From out of Teldin’s sight, a third lordservant mutely hoisted a neogi to where the human could see the creature, a ball of flesh and legs gently cradled in the monster’s arms.The little body was tattooed with brilliant designs of red and gold, marking it clearly as different from the creature who had captured Teldin.The neogi twisted its neck about and looked over its prisoner’s scraped, cut, and bleeding body.The creature’s eyes gleamed with feral hunger.“Cloak you know where is,” the neogi intoned with leisurely sibilance, its fanged maw barely inches from the farmer’s face.The words were a statement, not a question.The neogi tipped its serpentine head toward one of the lordservants.Already crushing Teldin’s wrists, the umber hulk pressed down on the human’s spread-eagled arms.The yeoman heard his shoulder joints creak while his vision dimmed, tunneling down until he could see only his tormenter’s black-gummed, gleaming teeth.The pain roared in his head-for seconds or minutes, Teldin did not know.Then, gradually, the pressure subsided.“Cloak you tell where is,” the leering eel face promised.“But not yet.First play I must.” It smiled, or at least showed its teeth, in a gruesome mockery of friendship, and then signaled the lordservant once again.The pain rushed back in on Teldin, distorting his senses.He was keenly aware of sweat running down his temples, soaking his hair, and the roaring noise that returned to fill his mind with grinding and hammering.Shoulders popped and cracked, biceps burned.All he could see was a single point on the ceiling.Time became meaningless.At last, the tearing pressure eased again and faded to a steady burn of his tortured muscles.“Again,” instructed the neogi in a whisper just loud enough for Teldin to hear.The torment flooded back, swallowing the farmer in it.Once more it faded, then returned again at a word.The cycle continued endlessly-peace, pressure, suffering, then peace again.The torture pulled a scream from the victim’s lips, one he could not stop even when his throat was raw.“Enough,” commanded the neogi again
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