few I had. Things had changed a lot since those days. For all of us.
I looked out the airship’s glass front, onto the prison. From the outside, Damnation looked like little more than a landing platform on top of a rocky hill. The only entrance was on top of the mountain.
The prison itself lay within the hill, underground levels entirely surrounded by rock. Prisoners were kept in cells with Magitech barriers that neutralized their magic.
Or so I’d read. I hadn’t actually visited the prison before. It was under Damiel’s jurisdiction, and he came here often. But I stayed away. I did not enjoy watching the Master Interrogator break people’s minds.
So it was pretty ironic that he’d named me the interim Master Interrogator while he recovered. I guess he didn’t trust anyone else.
The airship had finished docking. Colonel Holyfire and I disembarked and took the elevator down.
Damnation was not at all what most people would imagine. Despite being entirely underground, the prison’s interior was neither dingy nor dirty. The walls were bright white, unadorned with paintings or pictures. The floor was made of shiny-smooth white marble. The lighting was cool white; it felt like walking through an icy cavern.
If you thought about it, though, the bright and shiny interior was perfectly in line with the Interrogators’ style. They’d made their prison like their spotless white uniforms. So pristine. So clean. So that every drop of blood would stand out against that spotless canvas. Everything from the Interrogators’ clothes, to their interior decorating, served a single purpose: to frighten their prisoners into submission.
Everything here was so quiet, so still. Every step that we took echoed loud and clear, like a single pearl bouncing off the floor of a silent opera chamber.
At the end of the hall, two Interrogators in those spotless white uniforms stood outside the door to the interrogation chamber.
“Is the prisoner Eva Doren inside?” I asked them.
“Yes, exactly as General Dragonsire instructed.” The left guard’s gaze flickered briefly to Colonel Holyfire. “The General informed us that you would be coming alone.”
I didn’t sigh, even though I had every right to do so. Instead, I said, “Colonel Holyfire will be assisting me in this investigation. On Nyx’s orders.”
The soldiers nodded, then they both stepped aside from the door to allow us entry.
The room was completely dark, except for the bright white spotlight over the interrogation apparatus, a metallic chair that was hard and cold, with metal bands over the prisoner’s ankles and wrists. There were bands over the prisoner’s chest and waist too.
A golden shimmer glowed over the chair, a Magitech field powerful enough to neutralize an angel. It didn’t hurt much—so long as you didn’t try to break free of the chair—but if you did try to escape, it shot a mega-punch of magic through your body. I knew this because I’d been the one to design the chair.
In between being the Angel of Storm Castle and playing the part of the Sea Dragon, I tinkered with tech. It was a hobby I’d had most of my life. There was something just so incredibly soothing about the simple act of putting pieces together to make stuff work, especially in a world where things rarely added up, let alone made sense. Over the years, the Legion had made good use of my tinkering hobby.
The interrogation chamber was eerily quiet. I could hear every scrape of Eva’s clothes against her restraints as she breathed, every thump of her beating heart. The echo effect was supposed to be unsettling for the prisoners. They could hear everything, just as they could see every drop of blood on the Interrogators’ clean white uniforms.
I wasn’t wearing white. I hadn’t had a chance to change since our mission on the Elemental Expanse. My clothes weren’t pristine or perfect, courtesy of Idris Starfire’s mammoth skeletons and dragons. Rips and tears marred the fabric, along with a tie-dye pattern of singe marks.
The metallic scent of blood never left this interrogation chamber. Neither did the rancid stench of sweat from all the chair’s previous occupants.
Eva wasn’t bloody or sweaty. She sat in the interrogation chair like a queen posed upon her throne. She looked pretty damn unconcerned—and awfully arrogant for someone who’d been locked up in a Legion prison for two decades.
“Cadence Lightbringer, darling of the Legion,” said Eva. “It’s been too long.”
“Not long enough,” I replied. “I never expected to see you again, nor did I ever wish to.”
“I can understand your reaction.”
There was a ‘but’ coming. I could