Antius shows Sabina the cornu he's about to set in place, the only thing she will have to rest on when the agony of the nails becomes too much to bear. Her reaction is to try to cross her legs protectively, but she's exposed no matter what she does. Sabina narrates this quite lengthy part:
And then Antius was there with his hammer, and to my horror, I recognized the raw wood in his other hand as the freshly carved cornu I had so stupidly made Ajax show me. Was it only yesterday?
I heard myself sob, “Oh no, not that, please, no, don’t…”
Through the agony, I heard Ajax growl, “Your throne, princess, made just to fit your cute little ass. Yesterday you just had to see it, and today you’ll get to feel it. Up your ass or stuck up inside that tight pink cunnus of yours, you get to choose!” Hercules chuckled at that along with others that heard it. “Either way, whichever hole you pick,” Ajax continued, “you’ll soon find yourself eager to spread your legs for it. Going to be the hardest cock you ever had in you!” He laughed. “Shame it’ll be the last one, too!”
“Yeah, it’ll never go soft and floppy, but you’ll sure wish it would!” A woman in the crowd shouted, and everyone laughed at me, laughed at my agony, my humiliation, my helplessness.
That… that wooden horn is going to go up inside of me! I thought, shuddering. There’s no escape! Why did my Domina have them use this on me? Wouldn’t a sedile have been cruel enough?
I knew nothing I could do would move it or keep its point from penetrating deep inside of me. I had seen it used on other girls, the horror, shame and agony on their faces. Ever since yesterday when Ajax taunted me with the cornu that my Domina had added to my punishment it had never left my mind. The scenario had played itself out over and over in the dark of my cell, a nightmare that never ended:
I would be so tired and the agony in my nailed feet so bad that I could barely hold myself up. I wouldn’t even know that I was slipping lower on the cross until I felt that hard point touch me there, on the lips of my porcella, or in my cleft somewhere. Probing insistently, like a man’s cock, searching blindly for the entrance to the depths of my body.
How many times before I surrender to it? Let it into me? Ten times, twenty maybe? I wondered, desperately thinking I could last a long time before I’d give in. Be heroic and never let it violate me? All of that was last night in my dark cell.
On the Sessorium, hanging naked in the sun by my throbbing nailed wrists, I know better: No. No, it will be less than that. No one ever lasted that long before the agony broke their will. This agony I feel right now… and then my feet… no one can begin to imagine what this is like, how bad this is. No, it won’t take me long before anything is better, no matter how horrible.
Back to last night in my cell: I would have already felt that point enough to know it well, even though I would never see it. And the horror of having it penetrate me would be too much, worse than my agony and exhaustion. All those times, I would have pushed my hips forward enough to drop past it, feel it rasp spitefully along the crack of my buttocks as if in frustration because I had escaped it again. My arms would go taut and I would settle to hang by my wrists again.
But the time would come. It always did, I’d seen it before, enough to know. And I knew my limit might come early.
When someone is crucified, dying begins as soon as they’re nailed to the cross, and dying goes on moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, their strength slowly sapped by the cross until death finally comes. Two days is a quick death on the cross. Three or four is usual and expected. Any more, and they have to be helped along by breaking their legs, or worse, roasting alive over a slow fire, a large, hot fire being considered too merciful. The price of justice must be paid.
Once I watched a girl dying slowly on the cross with only a cornu to rest on. She avoided it for a long time, maybe a dozen times she raised herself up, then slipped back down to hang by her wrists. When she finally broke, it was when she had died enough that her agony had finally driven her to give up.
I’d heard someone in the laughing crowds say about some slave girl, “she decided to sacrifice her asshole or her cunnus to the horn so she could take herself a little rest.” Money would change hands; there were bets on which hole she would choose, how many times she would “get a feel of its point” before she would surrender to it.
With a man, his cock and balls hid what was happening. But with a girl, nothing is hidden. Everyone could clearly see between a girl’s legs, see her body trembling with exhaustion when time ran out, probing her soft flesh with the point of the horn to find the opening she meant to offer as sacrifice, hips swiveling urgently to get it lined up just as she would if she were about to take a hard cock into her. A look of relief would stupidly pass over her face when she succeeded in getting the point into the entrance of her hole. But that was immediately replaced by fear, resignation and gritted teeth as she let herself slip lower, ever so slowly letting the horn enter her more deeply.
Often she would change her mind, try to rise, get off of it. She might, but more often than not, her quivering, straining body no longer had the strength left. The crowd would always laugh at her look of wide-eyed horror when she found that she was helpless to stop herself slipping down onto the hard shaft. She would try to spread her legs, open herself to it to make its entrance easier. They would laugh at her screams when she felt the horn widening and stretching the opening of her vagina or rectum painfully with no idea how much worse that might get.
In my nightmares, her face was replaced with mine, her screams became mine.
Soon it would be me that the crowd would be laughing at.