The Koptic priestess sat hunched in on herself as they forced her into the chair, twisting her hands together compulsively in her lap and trying to keep them from trembling.  Beauty and dignity now seemed so very far away, barely a half-remembered dream.  The black cells were like a realm of their own, cut off from the surface, echoing with lunatic wailing, a dark, sunless abyss into which souls were cast, and lost forever.  The men of the Empire had created a plane of living nightmares, and hidden it beneath their proudest city.

Loka understood now why the Imperial church did not need a Hell.  They had built one of their own.

There was the thick, muffled sound of doors opening and closing, muted voices, indistinct, laced with veiled aggression.  Loka shifted uneasily in the sparse chair.  The hiss of her own breathing filled her black little world.

She spat a lock of hair from her mouth as the suffocating bag was finally drawn from her head.  Her face was drawn, skin glistening with sweat, and her eyes flicked rapidly around the candlelit chamber, coming to rest again and again on the hard-faced stranger in front of her.  He was frustrated.  Angry.  Well.  Perhaps she would be angry too, once she could keep from pissing herself.  

He spoke, in the tone of a man trying to mitigate a disaster.  She blinked, quickly, candlelight dancing in her dark eyes.  The question was so out of place, so different from the other interrogations, that it caught her off-balance.

"...I am Deva Loka of Irem Kopt," she said at last, her chest rising and falling heavily, "I have fourteen brothers.  When I was young, I wanted to be a dancer.  I like spiced milk, honeyed bread and [i]not being tortured[/i]." 

She leaned forward, lowering her voice to a strained, musical whisper.

"Why am I here?  They talk, about 'redemption', but I hear 'politics.'  They tell you to 'use' me, why do I feel, it is you who is being used?"  Her eyes dropped to her white-knuckled hands. "I do not understand this.  But.  Please.  Do not send me back to that place."

She took a long, uneven breath.

"It is evil."