There were old myths – she’d learned about them as a child, in Mystacor – of vengeful Gods with a penchant for cruel and unusual punishments. Once, she’d had nightmares about the eagle that came to feast on Prometheus’ liver each day. It was a monstrous bird, its talons sharp and its wings a blinding burnt gold, and there was a fire of purpose in its beady eyes that couldn’t be stolen.

Hordak was no God, but he had the cruelty of one.

[hr]

Every morning, at precisely six o’clock, Shadow Weaver was woken from restless sleep by two guards. She had exactly ten minutes to have her breakfast (a small glass of water and a bowl of the gruel they fed to the less-promising cadets), before she would be escorted through the winding corridors of the Fright Zone’s prison to the interrogation chamber.

They never needed to do all that much to her: she knew what that equipment could do, and she knew that they were holding back. After all, her body was frail, decayed from years of experimentation with darkness that left her limbs weak and her bones fragile. And Hordak had insisted that whatever damage they did to her mustn’t last, so that they could do it again…

(Some days the interrogation chamber would merely have a chair – no rack, no electrodes, no restraints – sat in the otherwise empty room, the same cheap, rough model used in cadet classrooms. Those, Shadow Weaver thought, were the worst days. Screens lined the walls, and each screen would show footage from helmet cameras of some skirmish or other. And she would watch – she would [i]have[/i] to watch – the consequences of her greatest mistake play out before her, over and over again.)

They would stop for lunch, of course. The guards would eat theirs in front of her, warm and aromatic, as she would be given a second bowl of gruel, and a glass or two of water. She would be allowed one trip to the bathroom, if only because she had convinced the guards that they wouldn’t want to have to clean up after her if she weren’t. And then they would begin again, and she would have no choice but to let it happen.

(And on the days that the room was lined with screens, she would eat her lunch in that little chair in the middle of the room as Adora, paused and flickering, gazed down upon her from every angle. There was no mercy in her eyes.)

At precisely eight o’clock in the evening, the door would open, and she would be returned to her cell. The guards would all but carry her – even without the torture, her legs had long since decayed, and without her magic she could no longer support her own weight fully. The shield would close. More gruel, more water. And the restless sleep, the nightmares of her Adora, the shrieks and moans and wails of her fellow inmates, would come again.

[hr]

There were old myths – she’d learned about them as a child, in Mystacor – of a titan who’d stolen fire from the Gods, and whose punishment would last until a hero of strength would come to slaughter the eagle, and set him free. Shadow Weaver had believed that she had stolen from the Princesses their greatest weapon, that the Horde might turn Adora against them – an irony as great, she had thought, as any from the old myths. Now she would be punished for her hubris.

Adora was no Heracles, and there would be no rescue.