"Your key phrase is, 'Autumn Wolves Can't Won't Chorus,'" said Titanomachia.

Voice. Hands. You couldn't see her eyes, but you could feel them following the lines upon your body. All the way back to the origin. The headphones slipped over your ears, fingers again touching the spots of the piercings - and then, sound.

Not coherent. Barely audible. It was not music, not rhythm, not open skies. This was not sound for sleeping or dreaming, this was sound for focus. Crystal lines of sound, the sound of foreign skyscrapers in winter, glass shining crystal. A heartrate that was aspirational, coaxing an increase in tension, even as the gentle cushion of the levitation field intensified. There was no pressure but even squirming against the bonds became almost impossible. The will for movement became disconnected from physical results. A tired mind was intensified with nothing to focus on. The feeling of the cubegel across your skin crackled. And then

Pain. Scalding pain. [i]Familiar [/i]scalding pain. A single drop of boiling hot coffee had dripped precisely down onto that point in the center of your spine where the first dot in the sequence waited. It hurt as it channeled all the energy it could directly into your nerves. 

Soon the fire was spent - a single drip of warm sweat on your exposed spine. The gleaming beat of the music was not aspirational any more; your heart rate had risen to sync with its pounding, hypnotic focus. It held your mind there, as suspended as your body -

- and then the next drip landed. Just as hot. Just as painful. The next drip in the sequence.