(Near) Death by a Thousand Cuts

After climbing up onto Rifkin and Henshaw’s shoulders to remove the, now accessible 'control' crystal to prevent the 'orb' from restarting, Arowe steps through the gap and quickly takes in the 'trap'. The large, cold-iron ring has stopped perfectly in alignment with the wall itself, so as not to restrict entry or exit, causing the tall Elf to, once again, begrudgingly, admire the Gnomish precision engineering of it all.

Inside the ten foot diameter, circular space, though empty of any prisoner, there stands a large, vertical, black metal ‘T’ frame, well over six feet tall, with self-tightening, cold-iron cuffs for wrists and ankles. They've recently been unclamped but the last setting they’d been at was tiny! Slender as a child perhaps or a shrivelled old woman? 

Surprisingly, the ‘T’ frame has also been designed to rotate, but slowly, in the opposite direction of the outer ring and marginally out of kilter, possibly to add to the level of disorientation. It’s also slightly arched to allow uninterrupted access to its captive’s back and buttocks and stands in the middle of two concentric rings of recessed, slender mechanical arms. One thousand of them, each ending with a tiny gauntleted fist grasping a wavy, two-inch, cold-iron sword. They’ve been cleverly designed to be able to ascend from their slots, slash at the restrained victim and then retreat in a complicated, seemingly random pattern to maximise the area of flesh sliced. 

Whoever it was being tortured, they were able to endure this treatment for decades upon decades without succumbing.  

More concerned with what lies beyond the 'cage' though, the Elven archer/slinger steps quickly out of the prison area and into the strangely unlit other half of the room beyond. Rifkin follows closely behind but Henshaw delays a moment to closer examine the bafflingly complicated and sadistic machine.

Fortu, Doberman and Barbella are next to arrive and are relieved to find this room already defeated, with lanky Henshaw beckoning them through the metal-ringed gap in the wall. Once inside though, he points out something that's bothered him.

“This spinning ring fing, the cuffs and the tiny sword blades are all made outta the same metal as the ‘poison-to-Fey’ swords Briefadel gave me and the boys. Same as that talkin' door Fortu cut through wiv his magic sword. What’s the reason? Could the prisoner be one of the Fey? Like Estrid, them Pixies or that Half-goat bloke… Magritte?”

Intrigued, Fortu kneels to better examine the circle of the thousand tiny swords. Each one is an exact but minuscule replica of the wavy bastard sword he's currently using. Grasping one to examine it even closer, Fortu realises that these intricate, little-finger-sized miniatures of the weapon in his hand, even feature the unreadable sigils etched along each side of his blade.

The ex-gladiator stands back up with a puzzled expression hidden behind his dark helmet. The mechanical knight, the outer lock, the ghost’s tabard and now this? Fortu begins to suspect that the sword he’s gripping so firmly in his hand, holds a significance far greater than just being…‘Awesome’.