Emilia awoke in a terrible mood. Too much was swirling around in her head. Firstly, she hadn’t actually gotten anywhere with her investigations. Secondly, she did get somewhere but it didn’t align with her direct assignment. She didn’t want to, but could she get a few brownie points for outing the Lady of Mercia? Something in her told her this was wrong, and against herself, but it can’t be if she played it to her advantage. No one was on her side, but maybe she could gain something for herself from this. She may be treated like livestock, she may be belittled and abused by those around her, but no shortcomings of hope will change her destiny. The Lady of Mercia yearns for an unrealistic future, a subdued crown. She does not know of the spies and assassins that lurk beneath her clean feet.

Seeing the sunrise Emilia hurriedly continued to get ready, no other noble would be up this early so she opted for her usual top and trousers but with no skirt over top. Fashioning her hair into a tight knot on her head, she headed towards the dungeons. She knew today would be terrible. Landervik will be pissed with her shortcomings, nobles will be pissed over the vikings breach the day before, and the king and queen will be pissed at their lack of rallying more power. Emilia would face all of that today. He liked to take out his anger on her saying it would only “strengthen her armor”. Begrudgingly, she descended the damp staircase and headed towards the depths of the dungeons.

She was right, Landervik looked pissed. As she approached he sent her a venomous glare, telling her basically to strip to training gear. When she trained with him she was forced to fight in bare feet with no weapons or protective gear. After she slid out of her shoes and removed her weapons she went further into their training room.

Landervik was a rough around man. Emilia didn’t really know where he came from, he spoke with a thick accent she couldn’t recognize. He did have very pale skin and a bald head, nothing else stood out except for the scars that peeked out from his neckline. There were none on his face, but those that peeked out from beneath his clothes during training were abundant; maybe he was trained the way she is. He also never really showed any emotions except anger, Emilia wanted to hate it but the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in this case.

Their training always started with a warm up stretch, there weren’t warm up stretches for fights but if she tore something here she wouldn’t be able to fight. The warm up stretch consisted of a slow rotation of fighting and balance stances accompanied with going through the motions of sparring. After Landervik would go through specialties, hers being daggers they would practice target throwing, dueling, and constantly go over the right spots to hit for each purpose of a strike. Emilia thought their teaching would be more… encompassing and complete but Landervik had an odd way of thinking. He believed mastering one trade was the key to dominance in battle, being good at multiple would’ve been good for a spy but Emilia was only partially involved as a spy. She could quietly maneuver like a spy but attacked like a warrior, and that was her advantage.

They’d only gone through the normal rotation of training at this point. Once they finished reviewing Emilia headed to her things in the dimly lit corner to get a drink. She did hate Landervik, but the more repetitive things made it easy to tune everything out and focus directly on mastery. They were about to get into the section of training that diverged from… training. Landervik took this opportunity to teach her mental fortitude by either continuing training and correcting her mistakes with burns on her abdomen or simulating her being caught and tortured for information, making her pay if she even showed a hint of pain in her face. He said these were tactics to strengthen her, to make her invulnerable, to help her; Emilia opposed it and hated it but it worked. It made her want to scream out and cry for help, but she’d done that many years ago and it’s only backfired.

Today seemed like Landerviks anger had really wanted to show out. He mumbled something about simulating torture as her gestured for her to sit in a chair. Emilia had been restrained for this before, but normally with her hands tied; being restrained to a chair was felt different. But she only knew it was different when he gagged her and blindfolded her. She tried to subdue her fear as she did in so many other circumstances, but Landervik was different and her complete restraint scared her.

She’d realized the reason for the gag and blindfold too late, she felt him bring a knife down on her finger slowly piercing the skin.

“I heard you had a little chat with the Lady of Mercia yesterday.” The words felt like poisoned daggers. This was an actual torture interrogation. “Why didn’t you report to me?”

No, it wasn’t. Emilia was gagged, she couldn’t give anything even if she wanted to.

“That was a rhetorical question,” he said with nothing but monotony in his tone, “you can try to speak up but you chose silence when you did not talk to me last night, today you get to feel the consequences of the silence you chose.”

She was scared. She’d been compliant, she hadn’t gone against him in any way in years. When she was younger he made sure to burn and purge any ideas of rebellion from her mind, those were days she had to pack away for the sake of her own mental sanity. But those memories came flooding back now, she remembered the genuine fear she felt then. Believing he would take off her finger or carve out her eye or decide she wasn’t worth it and kill her. She knew logistically he wouldn’t cut her finger off but logistics were out the window in her mind. All Emilia knew was fear, he was going to do it, he didn’t care, he'd lost it, she’s not worth it. She screamed against her gag as he made his way through both hands, nearly cutting off each finger. By the time he got to her face she’d screamed hard enough to not speak against but somehow she screamed even harder.

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Emilia knew it would be a terrible day. She ached in her fingers and in other hollow places. Landervik had left her face out of it but the rest of her body burned with cuts and deep purple bruises. Today she had no patience, today she would go see the soon to be Lady of Larson who was seen speaking with the Lady of Mercia, today she was authorized any measures deemed necessary as long as she provided results. And today, she would get results.